3 October 1969
Those of you following Robin Gibb’s 1969 solo run and his chart-topping ‘Saved By The Bell’ are probably waiting for the other shoe to drop: what happens now with the Bee Gees? Well, here’s their subsequent single without the third brother, now replaced by a Peter Mason.
You may be familiar with ‘Don’t Forget To Remember’ in its country & Irish guise as covered by Daniel O’Donnell and his wave of Jim-Reeves-loving altar-boy-4-life imitators. How come wee Daniel and friends are covering a Bee Gees record, you ask. Well, aside from its familiar strings-and-xylophone chamber pop arrangement, ‘Don’t Forget To Remember’ is a Bee Gees pass at a country song. Barry eases off the chipmunk-strangling falsetto to deliver this in a relatively deep and sonorous tone. This only goes to show that the whole falsetto thing is a bit, a scam, a hustle. The song itself is their usual dreary, unguent melodrama, though: that remains constant. Rare is the track where you think a Daniel O’Donnell version may be better, but here we are.
Whither Peter Mason? Well, he didn’t last long; no one’s sure if his vocals even made it to the final mix of ‘Don’t Forget To Remember’. As for this two-legged-stool iteration of the Bee Gees, they briefly split up also, before in 1970 all three Gibbs reunite. Oh good.
