The Bee Gees’ 10th international studio album, Mr Natural, turned 50 in 2024. Produced by 11x Grammy winner Arif Mardin (Aretha Franklin, Hall & Oates, Dionne Warwick, Donny Hathaway, Carly Simon, Roberta Flack etc.), here’s a deep dive – including detailed track-by-track analysis – about why this lost classic is one of the most important records the Gibb brothers ever released.

“Gone like a memory the day before the fire” is a line in a Paul Simon song that’s always stuck with me. Wartime Prayers (from Simon’s 2006 LP Surprise) conjures up images of what might’ve been happening the day before 9/11, as in September 10, 2001. Or the day before JFK died. Or in a pop music sense, what happened in an artist’s career immediately before their career-defining moment in the sun. Or indeed, the fire, even if the fire in this sense is a positive.

Like how the album before Bruce Springsteen’s melodic, bombastic, radio-friendly, 25-million-selling, butt-on-the-cover Born In The USA (1984) was the bleak, home-demo, murder-ballad series Nebraska (1982).

Or like how you shouldn’t just listen to Off The Wall (1979) to get a picture of where Michael Jackson was at before Thriller (1982), but to his work with the Jacksons on the 1980 LP Triumph. From tracks like the paranoid Heartbreak Hotel, you can clearly hear the DNA to what became the biggest selling album in history just three years later.

And like how one year and one album before the Bee Gees began their record-breaking, falsetto-dominated mid-70s R&B overhaul, they released an LP that peaked at 178 in the States and didn’t chart at all in the UK. It was called Mr Natural and 2024 marks its 50th anniversary. It also happens to be one of the best pieces of work the brothers Gibb ever sent forth into the world. It’s just a shame the world didn’t hear it.

Almost. Some Australians heard Mr Natural with the title track getting as high as 11 on the Aussie charts and the album to a peak of 20 off the back of a sellout Downunder tour. And here’s something no-one tells you about this chapter in the story of the Bee Gees: the single Mr Natural was a bigger Australian hit than Jive Talkin’ would be the following year with Jive Talkin’ stalling at 14.

Which is of course an anomaly given Jive Talkin’ was a US #1 and UK #5 on its way to becoming as key as any song in the Gibb catalogue in securing the band’s legacy. And that’s the case even in countries where it wasn’t a mammoth hit because of what it represents – a new, perfect-for-top-40-radio, R&B influenced sound – and what it gave rise to – some of the most successful, most famous music ever etched into vinyl.

But all of that probably seemed like fairytale stuff for a group who’d gone two years without a US or UK hit in 1974 and who’d just had an entire album rejected by their record company for being too uncommercial. By 1974 the Bee Gees may’ve still been major act in Australia, New Zealand and throughout Asia, but their dwindling fortunes in the two most important markets in the world – the US and UK – meant they were in trouble.

The story isn’t straightforward though. Yes, April of 1974 had Barry, Robin and Maurice reduced to performing for half-full, clinking-cutlery English venues like the Batley Variety Club, but if they were breaking attendance records in Australia later that year, it clearly wasn’t all bad. Nor was the music.

It’s often said that the early 70s found the Bee Gees in a creative rut, but even that is too simplistic a description. Commercial rut in the US and UK? Sure, but let’s not forget the brothers still sent five songs into the US top 40 in the first half of the 70s: How Can You Mend A Broken Heart (US #1), Lonely Days (US #3), My World (US/UK #16), Run To Me (US #16, UK #9) and Alive (US #34).

So was it really a creative rut? Well… for a band as massive as the Bee Gees, perhaps yes, in the sense that the hits were becoming more sporadic. And by 1973, non-existent. But it’s an easy trap to presume the brothers’ misses were misses because they weren’t any good. And while their commercial antennae had gone a fraction askew, there’s a treasure trove of lost and forgotten Gibb songs from the early 70s that stand up artistically even if they weren’t exactly going to jump from top 40 radio.

Tracks like The First Mistake I Ever Made, Man For All Seasons, Walking Back To Waterloo, The Greatest Man In The World, Somebody Stop The Music, Please Don’t Turn Out The Lights, I Can Bring Love, Sweet Song Of Summer, South Dakota Morning, Method To My Madness, Come Home Johnny Bride, I Don’t Wanna’ Be The One, Home Again Rivers, King And Country and Elisa are hardly the resume of a band out of ideas.

Sure, they may be the songs of group no longer entirely in tune with the charts, and they might even be the output of an extraordinary songwriting team trying to rediscover their mojo. But the point is, only an extraordinary songwriting team could have mojo-wavering songs this good.

Which brings us to Mr Natural. Robert Stigwood has just told his proteges that their enthusiastically titled 1973 LP A Kick In The Head Is Worth Eight In The Pants has no hits and isn’t worth of having “Bee Gees” stamped on it. It goes on to become widely bootlegged but never officially released. The brothers’ previous album – the Americana-tinged Life In A Tin Can (also 1973) – has peaked at US #69 with its solitary single Saw A New Morning at #94. Though as is always the case with the Gibbs, everything was a hit someplace, somewhere with that someplace being Hong Kong where it topped the charts.

Those Hong Kong fans were so loyal they even sent Wouldn’t I Be Someone from the soon-to-be-cancelled A Kick In The Head to #1, as well as it getting to #1 in Costa Rica. Someplace, somewhere, but – no offence Hong Kong and Costa Rica – not where it mattered most.

It’s in that climate that the Bee Gees recorded Mr Natural. Stigwood may have been blunt enough to kick A Kick In The Head to the curb, but he wasn’t giving up on his boys, instead pairing them with the famed R&B producer Arif Mardin.

With Arif having people like Aretha Franklin and Hall & Oates (fresh from their iconic 1973 LP Abandoned Luncheonette) on his books, his job was to flesh out the R&B influences that had always existed within the wider framework of the brothers’ songwriting.

Just remember that from as early as 1967, the Bee Gees were writing standards like To Love Somebody with Otis Redding in mind, and that soul giants as diverse as Nina Simone, the Staple Singers and Al Green were routinely covering their material. Arif is among the most crucial puzzle pieces in the grand story of the Bee Gees, but if there hadn’t been a natural appreciation for black music from the brothers, what they pulled off in the back half of the 70s would’ve never been as significant. Or as authentic.

Recording at the Atlantic studios in New York as well as IBC in London, Mr Natural is a lush, soulful, beautifully recorded LP with only a couple uptempo deviations. There are hints of what’s to come, but they’re only hints. It’s one of the the most consistent Bee Gees albums and its one of the most beloved by diehard Gibb devotees. But as we know, it is – for almost all of the world – unknown.

So let’s right a historic injustice and dive deep into Mr Natural. Here it is, track by track:

Mr Natural, track-by-track

Charade

No music exists in a vacuum and somewhere deep inside How Deep Is Your Love (1977) lies Charade. Straight off the bat, the Americana of Life In A Tin Can has been swapped for another American genre, that of dreamy, soft-focus Philly-soul. And enter Arif Mardin with a typically sophisticated arrangement over a pretty, slowly-shuffling melody.

Exactly what the “charade” of the title is opaque: is this tale of moonlit romance on the beach something that can’t last in the daylight? Some first-rate leads from a whispery Barry and an upper-register Robin make for a solid – if quiet – opening track. And because everything someplace, somewhere, a hit in Chile, peaking at #7.

Throw A Penny

The pivot to R&B continues with a song that lyrically suggests it’s in part about homeless children, but ultimately is more about mood and feel. Notable for the sheer variety of leads: Barry in his soft whisper for the verses followed by his full-throated natural-voice belt for the pre-chorus, and Robin in terrific upper register natural voice for the chorus and then almost child-like vibrato for the bridge.

Some fans adore that curious Robin bridge, though I’d argue that without it the song would have more momentum. Plus it gets you to Throw A Penny’s real highlight more quickly, the hooky repeating crossfade of “throw a penny / for my children / for my children going down”. That crossfade melds right into track three, Down The Road.

Down The Road

Less R&B and more energetic, danceable rock the likes of which the Bee Gees had never done, Down The Road still provides a nod – both musically and lyrically – to the direction the band will later take on songs like Wind Of Change (1975) and Stayin’ Alive (1977). Barry is again in his impassioned full-throated natural-voice belt that he’d mostly park up post-Mr Natural, and as for the lyrics?

“I don’t need anybody, I don’t need anyone / Take it nice and easy mama / chicken on the run / And I don’t care / I’d show my body anywhere”.

The exact nature of Down The Road’s subject matter is perhaps less significant than the link it represents to a defiant survivalist song like Stayin’ Alive. Again, it’s the DNA. Down The Road may be merely a good song and Stayin’ Alive among the greatest songs by anyone ever, but you can chart the thematic through-line of “Ain’t no heavy Mister Leather’s gonna’ paddle my butt anywhere” to “Well you can tell by the way I use my walk / I’m a woman’s man / no time to talk”.

Though I still probably need to ask Barry what Down The Road is actually about. Is it a male stripper? A gigolo? Who cares! Butt-paddling or not, it sounds adult, urgent and like there’s fire in the belly.

Voices

A change of pace, Voices starts as a tender folk ditty complete with polite musings of “Dee doo doo doo dah dee doo doo / Doo doo doo dee doo doo doo dee doo dah day”. But what might otherwise be a pretty strum tip-toeing the tightrope of twee gets taken up a notch or three with the switch from Robin to Barry for the “If I were you and you were me” section.

Voices also finds the Gibbs playing with song structure with the track not having an obvious chorus, but more a soaring refrain that ultimately leads to a Hey Jude-like “nah-nah-nah” finale.

Give A Hand Take A Hand

The Gibbs were so prolific and forward-thinking that they hardly ever dug into their vaults for any new albums, but they made an exception for Give A Hand Take A Hand.

Originally released by P.P Arnold in 1969, this Barry and Maurice Cucumber Castle off-cut is very much in the soulful Americana mode the two-man Bee Gees had been locked into at the time, and it’s little wonder it also found its way to gospel crossover greats The Staple Singers in 1971.

Slowing down the tempo from the first version, this is the Bee Gees in full gospel mode with hopeful, poignant lyrics that fit with Mr Natural’s other socially conscious-tilted songs like Throw A Penny and Dogs. Some stunning three-part harmonies on the chorus.

Dogs

“Are you following me / just like Moses to the sea / do you think I’ll give you freedom in the end”, is often cited among the best lyrics on the Mr Natural album and a reminder that for all the attention the brothers rightly get for their melodies and harmonies, their lyrics were often highly memorable and far too frequently under-analysed.

Dogs is a case in point, though that said, fans are split as to whether this tuneful, clearly Elton John-inspired piano ballad is literally about dogs, or as I always assumed, homeless people. Another fan theory is that it’s Barry doing the leading of Robin and Maurice during this wilderness period with Maurice said to be struggling with alcohol at the time and Barry and Robin still finding their way back to each other emotionally after the band’s temporary split a few years before. But I’m sticking with the idea Dogs is in cahoots with Throw A Penny and Give A Hand Take A Hand as being softly about social issues and the haves and the have-nots.

Regardless, the verses are gorgeous and despite the Nights On Broadway (1975) falsetto origin stories you’ve heard for decades, if you listen closely there’s a detectable Barry falsetto background vocal in the chorus.

Mr Natural

There’s great harmony singing on pop records, and then there’s Mr Natural. In what would be the last Robin lead on a Bee Gees single for more than a decade, his vibrato soars with an assuredness to rank it up there with his all-time top performances. And so yes, Mr Natural always feels like a Robin song, but so much of what makes it great is that it also employs the Gibb Ace card of alternating Barry/Robin leads, alongside three-part harmonies with Maurice as precise, complex and fully realised as the band had laid down to that point.

A chugging mid-tempo pop track incorporating the brothers’ tack towards R&B, there are some standout lyrical images in Mr Natural, none better than, “Rusty rainbows / that’s how the pain goes”. But it’s those harmonies on “That a love that is lost / can never be found agaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiinnnnn” that are the magic in Mr Natural. You can see why Arif Mardin was so taken by his new act. And why Stigwood had never lost his belief. Should’ve been a global hit, probably should’ve been the opening song of the album too.

There’s a final aspect about Mr Natural that has somehow evaded fans and critics alike for decades: Pay attention to the fadeout and hear Maurice – not Barry – for some echoed falsetto ad-libs on the “come on baby” line. This never gets mentioned, but given in just 12-18 months Maurice would sometimes be handling Barry’s famed “blamin’ it all” falsetto ad-libs for live performances of Nights On Broadway (with Barry’s natural voice needed to carry the live melody line), this strengthens the oft-told yarn that Arif asked if any of the brothers could “scream in tune”.

That story is always about the following year’s Nights On Broadway and how it was Barry who put his hand up and there’s no doubt that’s true. There’s also no doubt Barry’s singular falsetto was a seismic breakthrough that changed the course of the Bee Gees’ career, lives and perhaps even 70s pop music in general. But it’s also possible Arif had first broached the idea of end-of-song falsetto ad-libs a year earlier than those hugely consequential Main Course sessions. And maybe it was Maurice who got that hand up first.

Lost In Your Love

If the title track was Robin’s individual high point on the album, the next song – Lost In Your Love – is Barry’s. A soul-baring piano-led devotional, Barry is both apologising “for the bad times I put you through”, as well as promising to “follow you where the wild bird flies / through endless skies I will go”.

Looking back now, the owner of the world’s most recognisable falsetto is too often overlooked for just how captivating he could be in natural voice and Lost In Your Love is a majestic secular-gospel defender of that point. Barry even repeatedly lifts a religious word – “sacred” – for the song’s apparently ad-libbed climax, saying that that not only does his lady make him feel “sacred”, but that she “makes love sacred”.

Sing it, BG! One of the finest non-hit ballads in the entire Gibb cannon.

I Can’t Let You Go

An enjoyable Barry-led singalong with strong Robin harmonies on the chorus and a spirited finale. A decent track, but more in the camp of the works the brothers were producing during the sessions for A Kick In The Head and Life In A Tin Can.

Heavy Breathing

Heavy breathing and by some distance the heaviest song on the album, Barry’s back in full-throated natural-voice belt for what sounds like a live jam session. Lyrically in a similar vein to Down The Road in the foreshadowing of the survivalist lyrics of Wind Of Change (1975) and Stayin’ Alive (1977), Heavy Breathing paints a desperate picture with a near-breathless Barry right at the absolute upper reaches of his natural range:

“Well, I don’t believe in ev’rything you say just to save my soul /
You know there’s got to be a way better than a big black hole /
Gotta take me from my suicide /
Now you know it’s love I crave /
You know we got to live like this from the cradle to the grave”

Desolate stuff, but you can almost hear Robin smiling as he let’s loose on the “so so tired!” chorus line. And beyond that, a worthwhile deviation from the romantic ballads that were the band’s stock-in-trade. For a brief time, a lively staple of the band’s live show too.

Had A Lot Of Love Last Night

A fitting exclamation point on an album drenched in harmonies and R&B and gospel influences, and another striking lead from Barry. Some sharp, brilliant lyrics too with lines like “fate no longer has the faith to walk ahead of me”, again proving that point of how underrated the Gibbs were as lyricists. That right there is Dylan, Springsteen or yes indeed, Simon-worthy. Up there with “gone like a memory the day before the fire”.

And yet here it is, an unknown song buried at the end of a little known album.

The Fire: What Came Next For The Bee Gees After Mr Natural:

Despite Mr Natural’s commercial failure, the brothers are emboldened by working with Arif Mardin and decide to relocate to Miami and record a followup. Arif instructs them to listen to top 40 radio to get more in tune with what’s happening in contemporary music and it’s clear Stevie Wonder during his mad Talking Book-Innervisions-Fulfillingness First Finale run is on high rotation.

Maurice – who’d played a diminished creative role during Mr Natural – starts unleashing the funkiest bass lines of his career. The presence and positive influence of drummer Dennis Bryon, guitarist Alan Kendall and especially keyboardist Blue Weaver become apparent, and Barry has a eureka moment when he realises just what he can do with his falsetto.

With Miami’s climate reminding the Gibbs of their formative years in Australia, their mood and optimism is the best it’s been in years and this flows into the music. The public notices. Main Course quickly shifts three million units globally compared to Mr Natural’s 300,000, it peaks at US #14 versus Mr Natural’s 178, and it produces three US top 20 singles, including the #1 Jive Talkin’.

From there, the Bee Gees become unstoppable not just as performers, but as songwriters and producers for hire. Between 1975-1983 they’ll send no less than 15 singles to the top of the US charts with eight for themselves and a further seven for other artists (brother Andy, Frankie Valli, Yvonne Elliman, Barbra Streisand, Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton).

Their record annihilating, era-defining 1977 soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever sells 40-million copies and becomes – for a time – the biggest selling album ever. Other studio albums like Children Of The World (1976) and Spirits Having Flown (1979) are also multi-platinum phenomena.

During these years Barry taps into the pop music zeitgeist in a way few superstars before or since have ever achieved. Robin mostly stops singing lead but develops an obsession with chart positions which further pushes his big brother to the forefront when everything Barry sings turns to gold (or platinum).

And of course, by the 80s, record company upheaval and a backlash ensues and the Gibbs decide to pull back from “the Bee Gees” and mainly focus instead on solo works and outside productions for A-listers like Barbra Streisand, Dionne Warwick, Kenny Rogers and Diana Ross. By 1987 they launch yet another comeback when their single You Win Again tops the charts in the UK making the Bee Gees the first act to score British chart-toppers in every decade since the 60s.

They spend the next 15 or so years until Maurice’s untimely death in 2003 with what in retrospect is a highly effective global victory lap, but in reality at the time was a vigorous, determined, sometimes uphill – particularly in the US – fight for their legacy. It’s a fight they ultimately win.

Releasing quality albums every two to three years from 1987 to 2001, each new Bee Gees LP yields at least one major hit song each, a rare feat for what is by then a heritage act. And in 1997, they cap off 30-years at the top of the pop tree with lifetime achievement gongs from the Brit Awards, the American Music Awards, and an induction into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame.

Afterword:

The Bee Gees are simultaneously one of the most commercially successful albums and singles acts of the 20th Century, while also having some of the deepest reserves of buried treasure of any act in pop. It’s what makes exploring that enormous back catalogue so rewarding and why people are usually so blown away when they find albums like Mr Natural for the first time. But more than just being a fine collection of songs, Mr Natural has added intrigue in being like a treasure map offering clues as to where to go next.

Or like a prequel to a landmark Hollywood blockbuster, or yes, like a memory the day before the fire. Mr Natural forever hides in the shadows between the Bee Gees’ first golden era from 1967-1972, and their imperial 1975-1979 era.

All told, the Bee Gees would sell upwards of 220-million records with 21 of their songs topping the US or UK charts. The dream came true. And Mr Natural – the now 50-year-old album that saw them properly explore R&B for the first time – is a significant part of that story.

Links:

• The Bee Gees’ finest post-disco era LP turns 30 – Size Isn’t Everything, track-by-track
• Still Waters at 25 – How the Bee Gees’ late 90s comeback cemented their legacy
• The Bee Gees Living Eyes Album at 40 – The lost song that gives Barry Gibb the chills
• The Bee Gees High Civilization turns 30 – Why this tech-heavy experiment is worth another listen
• The Bee Gees Cucumber Castle LP turns 50 & it’s time this brilliant, forgotten album was rediscovered