The Bee Gees in “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”When you think of the great narrative operas of our time, you think of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper. Actually, you don’t—the Fab Four’s 1967 masterwork was as loosely defined as concept albums get, if it even qualified as that. But that didn’t stop someone from thinking a movie version was a swell idea, with the unrelated songs somehow telling such a fabulous story that additional dialogue wasn’t...
more The Bee Gees in “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”When you think of the great narrative operas of our time, you think of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper. Actually, you don’t—the Fab Four’s 1967 masterwork was as loosely defined as concept albums get, if it even qualified as that. But that didn’t stop someone from thinking a movie version was a swell idea, with the unrelated songs somehow telling such a fabulous story that additional dialogue wasn’t even necessary. For the Bee Gees, who’d spent a lot of their career being compared to the Beatles, stepping into those iconic uniforms couldn’t have been a more terrible idea. “As for the Bee Gees' acting talents,” wrote Leonard Maltin, “if you can't say something nice..." Having Peter Frampton as the fourth Bee Gee didn’t help, nor did incongruous appearances by Aerosmith, Steve Martin, and Billy Preston. Said the New York Times, “The movie may have been conceived in a spirit of merriment, but watching it feels like playing shuffleboard at the absolute insistence of a bossy shipboard social director… This isn't a movie, it's a business deal set to music.”
less 
