Foo Fighters Pay Tribute to the Bee Gees With Dee Gees’ ‘Hail Satin’

Adi Mehta

The disco era was a period of outlandish excesses that history struggles to account for. The concurrent late ’70s forces of punk rock and hip-hop both defined themselves largely as a reaction to the vapid indulgences of disco, and have relegated disco to a subject of apologies. Yet, this has never quite added up. Punk icon Syd Vicious was a devotee of Abba. CBGB mainstays Blondie established themselves much more in affirmation of the prevailing disco aesthetic than in opposition to it. Sugarhill Gang’s “Rappers’ Delight” bore no ostensible signs of a critique, and resembled more of a homage, in its sampling of Chic’s “Good Times.” Among the few voices that have given disco its due credit is alternative rock fixture Dave Grohl. In a conversation with Pharrell WIlliams, Grohl credited his drumming on Nirvana’s “Nevermind” to disco influences such as Gap Band, Cameo and Tony Thompson. Grohl has a long record of making such statements. If one compares Grohl’s versions of Nirvana songs with the earlier iterations of original drummer Chad Channing, the truth of Grohl’s claims is obvious. Having modestly acknowledged the influence of disco for ages, Grohl now takes a leap forward, paying tribute to the genre’s most iconic entities, the Bee Gees. Foo Fighters’ latest release, ‘Dee Gees / Hail Satin,’ features a faithful reworking of five Bee Gees hits, along with five live in-studio takes on tracks from Foo Fighters’ latest dance rock focused album, “Medicine at Midnight.”         

Seconds into the first Bee Gees song tackled, “You Should Be Dancing,” Grohl and crew make clear the scale of their undertaking. Grohl’s vocals sound uncannily similar to Barry Gibb’s, which is remarkable for numerous reasons. Consider what an unprecedented oddity Gibb’s falsetto was, to begin with. The purported aim of falsetto singing is to mimic the higher registers that certain singers, mainly female ones, capture in their natural voicings. Gibb, however, largely abandoned any ambitions of producing natural voice tones, and let his experimental voicings run rampant. The alien intonations that resulted somehow caught on. Without the source material for comparison, Grohl’s singing in his five Bee Gees covers would be easily dismissed as strained, overly enthusiastic misadventures. Yet, they sound almost identical to the original vocals. The consummate craft with which Grohl convincingly recreates these bizarre expressions is truly something to marvel at.   

While the Bee Gees covers are remarkably faithful to the originals, Grohl and crew turn out their renditions with just enough hard rock edge to set them apart. The wah-wah guitar guitar voicings are recreated with more vigor than the relatively subdued originals, and the backbeat is altogether a more propulsive affair, with kicks and snares seeming to hit harder and carrying the songs in more of a whirlwind. On a more obvious level, ringing, distorted guitars make their way into the arrangements, beefing up the overall sound, and recontextualizing the Bee Gees’ tunes with some updated rock edge. The abrasive textures of the distortion turn out well-suited for the madcap, hyena overtones of Gibb’s utterances, making the reworks sound like a realization of latent inclinations. 

In “Night Fever,” the spastic urgency of the Foo FIghters’ rendition is a revealing insight into how disco made its way into “Nevermind.” The nuances of the song’s various parts are recreated in painstaking detail, with the relatively smooth harmonies and subtle finish of the bridge giving rise to the crazed outpourings of the chorus in the same spirit as the Bee Gees’ original. At moments, Grohl’s slurred muppet utterances, over the revamped, muscular instrumentation, sound like they could only be a parody. Yet, when one compares them to the original vocals, there isn’t a trace of embellishment. “Tragedy” is recreated with a similar faithfulness to its composite parts, but with a cumulative effect that spells a greater departure. The instrumentation is less tinny, the vocals less breathy, and the overall sound more momentous, in a way that hints at a sound more akin to hair metal, in a revelatory bridging of gaps. “Shadow Dancing” is a more relaxed Bee Gees cut that works its magic through freewheeling funk, and Foo Fighters’ version recreates the song’s mellow mood and fluidity, while adding a new dynamism and punch. The drum fills, in particular, shed light on how Grohl has taken inspiration from disco and made its sounds his own. “More Than a Woman” concludes the set of covers, and its placement is especially satisfying, as portions of the song’s melodies revisit those of “Shadow Dancing.” On this final track, Grohl’s reimaginations of Gibb can come across as slightly overdone, playing up the more outlandish aspects of his delivery, even though this particular song played them down. Still, this is only a minor lapse in an impressive tribute. 

The first half of “Dee Gees / Hail Satin” is clearly the selling point. The five live studio renditions of cuts from Foo Fighters’ latest album that make up the second half are masterful takes that offer fresh, alternate glimpses at recent songs. Placed after the Bee Gees covers, however, they function mainly to provide context for the disco inspirations, while offering a sense of grounding.  “Making a Fire” is a refreshing return to relative normalcy, as Grohl rebounds to his gruff, alt rock voicings with a disorienting alacrity that can leave listeners struggling to make sense of the hero worship that just ensued. Upon closer listen, however, the beat follows with disco immediacy, and Grohl’s falsetto utterances in the bridge reveal the markings of the Bee Gees. “Shame Shame” is further removed from the disco sphere, although it validates one of Grohl’s admitted inspirations for “Medicine at Midnight,” David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance,” a work firmly rooted in the sounds of the era. “Waiting on a War” sounds like a definitive Foo Fighters song, a rehashing of familiar instincts that recall decades of hits. Still, the song’s backing vocals and synthetic strings reveal the influence of the disco era. “No Son of Mine” is perhaps the furthest departure from Bee Gees territory yet, although its backing vocals link it to those sounds, with a feelgood revelry that balances the raw urgency of the main vocal and the musculature of the music. Finally, “Cloudspotter” flows with an ease that nods to disco inspirations, even though the associated sounds have all but disappeared into the bombast of arena rock stylings. 

At this stage, Foo Fighters are an alt rock institution, one of the few remaining instances of an ethos that largely dissipated after the ‘90s. The band’s trajectory has simultaneously preserved the legacy of the associated sounds and assimilated with the general turning of tides, securing a status as reliable rock stalwarts. The live in-studio renditions of recent songs offered in “Hail Satin” are effective affirmations of this status, as the band repurposes rock ‘n’ roll cliches with pronouncements all of their own, and puts on a flawless performance that more than justifies their arena posturings. With “Hail Satin,” Dave Grohl admirably uses the authority that comes with his rock giant status to pay an overdue tribute to the egregiously discounted phenomenon that was disco. A homage taken to such extents could easily come across as alienating absurd in other voices, but Foo Fighters take on the project with the disarming levity that has been a key factor in their appeal since day one. Grohl and crew march on in the same jokey manner they displayed in their 1996 video for “Big Me,” with the arbitrary role of Mentos now replaced by the influence of the Bee Gees, and a set of songs that does disco justice. 

“Dee Gees / Hail Satin” releases July 19 on Apple Music.