I've always considered the Bee Gees to be a very peculiar group when it comes to their history. Yes it's been said time and time again that Barry Gibb is a master songwriter and that he, alongside his brothers Robin and Maurice, created some of the greatest harmonies of their day. But unfortunately, despite having many global hits across multiple decades, to this day they remain just a tad less interesting to most people for anyone to look into their full discography, specifically anything before 1975. The Bee Gees were arguably as musically eclectic as the Beatles, but you would never know that if you talked to anyone that was only a casual listener. Don't get me wrong the disco stuff is great and is clearly well-known and renowned for a reason. But there's so much more beneath surface level that almost reaches those same heights as their commercial peaks.
In 1965, the Bee Gees released their very first album The Bee Gees Sing and Play 14 Barry Gibb Songs (not to be confused with Bee Gees' 1st, their first album released globally and their third overall). Released on the local Leedon Records label, it mostly functions as a compilation for their 1963-65 singles. And yet, it is still somewhat cohesive, with songs incredibly reminiscent of early Beatles material. After meeting and hiring their manager Nat Kipner, they were moved to another Australian label known as Spin, where they released their second record, Spicks and Specks. Named after arguably their greatest song recorded in Australia, the record musically improved on their first album, with psychedelic and baroque leanings that the first album didn't have.
Around June-July 1966, the group entered the recording studio to make another batch of songs. Among these recordings was "Spicks and Specks", the last of the albums' songs to be recorded, and its B-side. But there were also an additional 15 songs recorded during this time period that were never used elsewhere. This points to the idea that a follow-up to Spicks and Specks was at the very least considered before being dropped when the band sailed to England. Today, using a majority of these unused songs, we will be putting together a hypothetical third Australian album. The only way such an album could release is if the band decided to postpone their trip to England, even if it was for a month or two, but that's the unfortunate risk we'll have to take. Finally, here are my results:
In the Morning (1967)
Side A (15:59)
1. Morning of My Life - 2:52 [1]
2. Like Nobody Else - 2:33 [1]
3. Coalman - 2:51 [1]
4. Butterfly - 3:13 [1]
5. The Storm - 2:28 [1]
6. Lum-De-Loo - 2:02 [1]
Side B (17:14)
1. I'll Know What to Do - 2:18 [1]
2. All by Myself - 2:38 [1]
3. Forever - 2:43 [1]
4. Top Hat - 2:14 [1]
5. Terrible Way to Treat Your Baby - 2:51 [1]
6. Exit, Stage Right - 2:30 [1]
Bonus tracks:
- Lonely Winter - 2:28 [1]
- House of Lords - 2:46 [2]
[1] Bee Gees - Inception/Nostalgia
[2] Bee Gees - Bee Gees' 1st [2006 Reissue]
Before I start off explaining the tracklist and all that, I'd like to give a big shout-out to
Gibb Songs, which has been a big help for seeing what songs were recorded when. The website follows their entire career, but we'll only be using the 1966 page obviously.
All of the songs used here are sourced from the Inception/Nostalgia compilation, a release with dubious and unofficial origins, but the songs are all here as best as we're ever gonna get them, so it'll have to do. If you look at the compilation's tracklist, you may notice that I didn't touch the sequencing of songs used at all. While at first you may think that to be a bit lazy of me (admittedly, it kinda is), I thought that the songs already worked pretty well next to each other, and so no real change was needed. And it's not like those early Bee Gees albums are renowned for their track sequencing anyways. Plus, the fact that arguably the best song on the album is the first track and the song called "Exit, Stage Right" is the last one leads me to think that there was more thought put into this compilation's sequencing than I had originally thought! Speaking of the album's best track, "Morning of My Life" was clearly somewhat important to Barry, as he gave it away to another artist in 1967, re-recorded it with Robin and Maurice in 1970 and continued to play it live for most of their career as late as 1997. So the fact that it never made an studio album is baffling. So here it is in all of its glory. The album's title, In the Morning, also references the track, using its original name. Frankly, I couldn't think of a better name for it, so it'll have to do. None of the other songs here are anything to write home about unfortunately, maybe other than "All by Myself", the only song here that's primarily written and sung by Maurice.
Unlike the other albums I've posted here, I've also gone ahead and added two bonus tracks! These songs wouldn't be on the album's original release, but I thought I'd put them here as sort of "honorable mentions". Both songs were recorded at the same time as everything else, but for one reason or another I had to leave them off. "Lonely Winter" could've been Maurice's second lead vocal, but the song wasn't written by one of the Gibbs, so it had to go. "House of Lords", on the other hand, is an original song and is sung by Robin, but the version recorded during these sessions has never been released or bootlegged. Because of that, we are forced to use the version found on the Deluxe Edition of Bee Gees' 1st. This version is also sung by Robin, so I assume this is probably what it originally sounded like.
Overall, the albums clocks in at about 33 minutes with 6 songs per side, just like its predecessor Spicks and Specks. But also like its predecessor, it is just musically varied enough to carry its own weight as an album. However, the material sounding much like its predecessor may have been another factor in trashing these tracks rather than just releasing them later. This album would probably release sometime in March 1967, around the time they'd sail to England in this timeline and just a month before their first international single "New York Mining Disaster 1941". I know it's kind of a tight fit, with Spicks and Specks releasing in November of the previous year, but it's really the only way we make this work. Lastly, all of the Australian material, but none more than Inception/Nostalgia, is pretty hard to find, with none of it being on streaming services and barely any of it being on YouTube as far as I know. If you can't find any of the songs used there, I'd recommend a file sharing application such as Soulseek to get the tracks you're looking for. This exercise in alternate history really just shows how persistent these guys were; the fact that we can make an entire other studio album out of basically nothing is remarkable, I'd say. But it'll never compare to what came next for the band when they made the voyage to England.
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