Does anyone remember the short-lived, much maligned disco era?

For some, conjuring hazy memories of a bygone era adorned with glittering balls, neon dazzled dance floors, polyester hip hugging suits, platformed shoes, gold chained dinner plated medallions, and open collared bright colored blouses qualifies as a nightmare rather than nostalgia. During its heyday, there was the Bee Gees, crowned disco’s undisputed monarchs. Behind the pied piping Brothers’ Gibb in disco’s pecking order of popularity followed everyone else – scores of now forgotten artists and one hit wonders such as Village People, Tavares, Jigsaw, Boz Scaggs, Leo Sayer, and Donna Summer.

Featuring pitch perfect falsetto harmonies, seductive rhythms, and melodic hooks sharper and deadlier than a Ginsu, the Bee Gees’ Saturday Night Fever hit parade wasn’t just another colorfully packaged platter stocked among the record racks. It was a zeitgeist seizing, cultural signpost – at least according to slews of pretentious high-brow posing music critics and taste making mainstream gatekeepers. Shortly after being unleashed upon the public in 1977, Saturday Night Fever’s soundtrack held the distinction of having moved more units – to the tune of sixteen million – than any previous recording in the music industry’s storied history.

That is, before the moonwalking great gloved one, Michael Jackson, came along a little later to surpass it.

But it was one man holding the torch which blazed disco into an inferno, transforming an obscure subculture into a seemingly unstoppable corporate profit machine. The catalyst behind the Bee Gees lightning ascent to superstardom was an inspired impresario, a vision sparking Svengali named Robert Stigwood who, in addition to managing the Bee Gees career, also had connections to the Beatles and to Frank Sinatra’s Hollywood Rat Pack.

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Though he was often characterized by both the British and American press as a diffident and rather unassuming English gentlemen of some means, behind Stigwood’s modified public mask stood a gregarious if not magnetic Hollywood entertainment veteran who had been both a popular Vegas-styled lounge crooner and a renowned stand-up comedian. Stigwood was a keen-eyed opportunist of the type resembling a polished used car salesman whose golden ears had been well-attuned over a period of decades to identity a hit when it presented itself. Likewise, Stigwood’s superstar clients, the Bee Gees, were a trio of recycled music industry personalities operating under pseudonyms with a fabricated backstory attached. Harboring aspirations as a Hollywood film auteur and executive producer, Stigwood is historically credited as having been the visionary behind not only Saturday Night Fever but Grease, a musical paean to the teen subculture of the 1950’s which also starred a pair of then unknown actors cast as extras, both of whom went on to stardom during the following decades.

THE BOGUS STORY BEHIND THE BLOCKBUSTER

Before America became afflicted with disco fever, the Bee Gees’ career was in sharp decline, with the group resorted to bookings in seedy British men’s clubs, dingy dance halls, grimy saloons and fish and chip boozers. While the UK and Australian markets had proved somewhat prodigious for their brand of melodic, if not mawkish love balladry, by the mid-1970’s, the Bee Gees prospects for yielding substantial commercial success from the American landscape had grown fallow. With their creative energies on the wane, the Bee Gees hit machine had stalled, and at a time when the band was in dire need of a serendipitous sea change, the Brothers’ Gibb were gifted with a stroke of luck in the form of an article which was first published on June 6, 1976, in an issue of New York Magazine. Written by rock journalist Nik Cohn, entitled ‘Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night’, the article purported to be an accurate annal of New York City’s working-class night life. Though Cohn claimed his journalistic account was factually based, the article’s content represents a prime example of a genuine attempt at classic if not outrageous mythmaking. Indeed, upon further examination, the basis of Cohn’s reportage could hardly be described as authentic. Nevertheless, when brought to the immediate attention of the Bee Gees’ manager, Robert Stigwood, he became persuaded that Cohn’s dramatic narrative deserved to be put up on Hollywood’s silver screen. Caring not whether Cohn’s colorful chronicle was truth or lies, Stigwood saw the faux journalist’s story as tantamount to holy manna delivered from heaven and he quickly maneuvered to broker a licensing deal for a film adaptation. After successfully wheeling and dealing, Stigwood dashed off to Hollywood to fully develop Cohn’s piece into an entertaining script for Barry Diller’s Paramount Studios. The film with which Stigwood is credited as producer – Saturday Night Fever – went on to become one of the decade’s biggest grossing blockbusters. Both the film and its soundtrack proved most advantageous, a miraculous reversal of fortune and a career saving commercial boon for Stigwood’s Bee Gees.

In retrospect, while hypnotized by disco mania, no one ever seemed to have questioned the credibility of Cohn’s article.

SEE: https://nymag.com/nightlife/features/45933

In the New York Magazine article’s preface, Cohn claimed, “Everything described in this article is factual and was either witnessed by me or told to me directly by the people involved. Only the names of the main characters have been changed.”

Decades later, on the fortieth anniversary of his article’s publishing, Cohn repudiated his previous claim that the eyewitness testimonies used to authenticate his story were factual. Making an admission which appeared in a 2016 edition of The Guardian, Cohn indicated that his disco story was fantastical and had not derived from skillful or savvy investigative journalism but rather from mostly pure imagination. While Cohn’s admission about the lack of credibility attached to his article serves as just one more example among volumes exposing the pathetically dubious nature of mainstream journalism, in his attempt at vindication, his apologia evades ultimate culpability while appearing to lay the blame for his lack of due diligence on New York Magazine’s editors.

Cohn confessed to The Guardian, “It reads to me as obvious fiction. Albeit based on observation and some knowledge of disco culture. No way could it sneak past customs now. In the 60’s and 70’s, the line between fact and fiction was blurry…few editors asked tough questions. For the most part, it was a case of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’.”

Another ‘journalist’ writing in 2011 for CIA’s mouthpiece New York Times had this to say about the sweeping cultural influence of Cohn’s wholly concocted disco article, “Without Cohn’s origin story it’s possible that disco would be a dimly remembered fad from the days of the Ford administration: no Bee Gees megahits, no Travolta superstardom, no polyester nostalgia parties for decades after. Barry Gibb once reportedly said to Cohn, ‘It’s all your bloody fault, isn’t it?’ He may have been right.”

Not only was Cohn a peddler of tall tales but, according to Wikipedia, he was also an indicted felon.

“In the early 1980’s, he {Cohn} was indicted on drug trafficking charges for importing $4 million worth of Indian heroin. He refused to give testimony, and the trafficking charges were subsequently dropped. Instead, he was given five years’ probation and fined $5000 for possession.”

One would think that after being indicted for involvement in such a grossly criminal episode, Cohn would have been permanently drummed out of the profession of journalism. But alas, that wasn’t to be the case. During the 1990’s, Cohn landed squarely on his feet at The Guardian – SEE: Hidden Agendas Behind Bedford UK Train Crash Story – a propaganda arm of British intelligence, which probably explains why Cohn was let off so lightly after being caught red handed in possession of millions of dollars’ worth of imported smack.

MISTER SATURDAY NIGHT STIGWOOD

The backstory detailing the professional career of Robert Stigwood appears superficially convincing. However, on the other hand, when one takes account of the Hollywood actor/singer/comedian discovered behind Stigwood’s persona, the rocketing ascent of the Bee Gees to wild acclaim and their conquest of the popular music genre which became known as ‘disco’ takes on an entirely different perspective. The Bee Gees consisted of recycled music industry assets, all of whom were operating under pseudonyms attached to fabricated biographies.

Alleged to have been born in Port Pirie, Australia, a location in proximity to several military installations, Stigwood began his career working in cooperation with British record producer Joe Meek with whom he had a string of hits and a licensing agreement with EMI, the Beatles recording label. Meek appears to be a prime candidate for future investigation. Noted for a manic personality more eccentric than his American counterpart, Phil Specter, this apparent mental instability not only overshadowed Meek’s innovative contributions to the unique art of popular music record production but was said to have been a contributing factor which led to his suicide, committed in much the same gruesome manner as Kurt Cobain – with a loaded shotgun.

After Meek’s unfortunate demise, the ambitious Stigwood quickly moved on to become the Who’s booking agent on both sides of the Atlantic and the manager of Cream, a blues-based rock trio which featured legendary guitarist Eric Clapton.

In this case, Clapton turned out to be a key lynchpin tying the most prominent principals together during the course of one’s investigation.

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By the late 1960’s, Stigwood became a professional business colleague of Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein who eventually suggested that Stigwood merge the interests of his production/booking agency with NEMS (North End Music Stores). Why Epstein would offer to Stigwood a stake in NEMS, a valuable property in which he held majority ownership, appears nonsensical, perhaps even suspicious. Unless – one considers that both parties were merely frontmen for a music industry project controlled from the top down by EMI in association with British/military intelligence. Though Stigwood maneuvered to replace Epstein as the Fab Four’s manager after his untimely death, the lads from Liverpool were said to have strenuously objected.

Given the hidden identity of the artist known as ‘Eric Clapton’, this particular detail associated with the Beatles’ story constitutes a deliberate entrapment, keeping the clueless public lost in a labyrinthine legend. While compelled to think that boogeying the night away on the discotheque’s dance floor meant freedom, liberation, a majority of the public remained unaware they were being psychologically conditioned to accept yet another formulation of rigid conformity leading to their ultimate enslavement.

Spurned by the four mop tops, Stigwood was then reportedly forced to divest his newly acquired majority interest in NEMS and with a golden handshake moved on to manage the Bee Gees, a continuation of the Beatles’ intelligence project jointly executed by MI6 and CIA headlined under an alternative moniker. As seems to be the case with the Beatles, there are varying versions of just where, when, and by exactly whom the Bee Gees hit songs for Saturday Night Fever were composed and produced. One version of the story goes like this: while holed up in a Miami recording studio with record producer Arif Marden, the three Gibbs brothers fielded an urgent call from Stigwood who reportedly divulged his plans for adapting Cohn’s disco article into a Hollywood movie slated to star then network television actor John Travolta (aka Joe Namath/Joe Montana/Barry Manilow/Disney/Paramount executive Michael Eisner), and urged the Gibbs to fashion the songs they’d been working on with Marden to better fit the disco market. Still another version offers an alternative perspective – that the Gibbs met with Stigwood while vacationing in France and played him demonstration tapes of songs which they’d already recorded, songs which were subsequently accepted by Stigwood and his label, RSO, as more than suitable for the upcoming movie’s soundtrack album.

Take a gander at the RSO label’s official company logo featuring a blood red colored horned bull, symbolizing Moloch, an ancient God to which children were ritually sacrificed.

Occult symbolism of that sort of bloodthirsty nature certainly puts an entirely different spin on disco – does it not?

What undermines the official story ever further – how, why Stigwood’s Saturday Night Fever movie was greenlighted by Paramount, when, where, and who actually composed and produced the songs which appeared on its hit soundtrack – is that before his executive tenure at Disney, Eisner (aka Travolta) was working at Paramount under Barry Diller (aka US president Dwight D. Eisenhower) both before and during the time period when Saturday Night Fever’s script was being developed for film.

Below in succession: John Travolta, Michael Eisner, Barry Diller, Dwight D. Eisenhower

Here’s something else to keep in mind when further considering the compositional derivation of the Bee Gees songs which transformed Saturday Night Fever’s soundtrack into a commercial bonanza. After recording his now famous Derek and the Dominos LP at Miami’s Criterion studios, Eric Clapton suggested to the Bee Gees that they move from England to take up residence. Miami was also the home base of KC and the Sunshine Band, an act which, by the mid-1970’s, had scored a string of top ten billboard hits establishing the disco sound as commercially viable. A closer examination of the virtual grocery list of producers in addition to Arif Marden appearing on the sleeve of Saturday Night Fever’s soundtrack album indicates that two members of KC’s Sunshine Band were given record production credits. Given this, it appears that Stigwood, Marden, and the Gibbs trio made a collective and calculated effort to exploit and to thereby capitalize upon on an already well-founded popular music industry trend to ensure that Saturday Night Fever’s soundtrack would hit commercial pay dirt.

Marden’s biography includes some interesting if not telltale details. Marden began his career in the music business at Atlantic Records for label chief Ahmet Ertegun, the man responsible for bringing Led Zeppelin to the world’s attention, and was educated at London’s School of Economics, founded by the Fabian Society of Socialists, an organization with a logo which features a fang bearing black wolf donned in white sheep’s wool.

It is claimed that Marden got his job at Atlantic as house record producer through an unsolicited demonstration tape consisting of three songs which found its way into the hands of Quincy Jones. That story is complete and utter balderdash. For legal reasons, major labels have a policy of not accepting unsolicited demonstration recordings. Furthermore, as an independent contractor and as a proven industry professional with a track record as well as access to ace session musicians, if Jones determined Marden’s material had any hit potential, he most likely would have seized upon the opportunity to rework the demo, adding new titles, lyrics, repolished melodies, and razor sharpened hooks. With ownership of the master recording containing three newly composed potential hit songs in hand and an opportunity to license a deal with an artist already under contract to a major label, helping a then unknown prospect like Marden to develop into industry competition would not even have been a consideration for Jones.

But there’s more to consider.

Before working with the Bee Gees, Marden also worked with Ringo Starr, the former Beatle. After recording Saturday Night Fever’s soundtrack, the three Bee Gees ill-advisedly agreed to star along with rock star Peter Frampton in Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, a jukebox musical fantasy which, immediately upon its release, became a dismal failure at the box office. Sargeant Pepper is a reference to John Arthur Reid Pepper who was head of British Security Coordination in 1947, the same year CIA became a reality and exactly twenty years before the Beatles paid him tribute with the release of their seminal album in 1967. The critical and popular drubbing that the Sgt. Pepper movie received not only sent Frampton’s career into a tailspin, but the scathing criticism also irreparably tarnished what was up until then Stigwood’s immaculate professional reputation. Turns out, as usual, the popular music consuming public at large was being mocked. What they didn’t know is that two of the Bee Gees – Maurice, Barry – were former Beatles, while the third, Robin, was recycled from the titanic hard rock colossus known as Led Zeppelin.

Image comparison, facial recognition, ear biometric, and teeth analysis all but confirm that not only are Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, and Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees one and the same but that Barry and Robin Gibb are fabricated characters portrayed by former Beatle George Harrison and rock guitar demigod Jimmy Page.

Below: Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton

Below: Ringo Starr, Maurice Gibb

Below in succession: Barry Gibb, George Harrison, Robin Gibb, Jimmy Page

GREASE

Before falling flat on his backside with Sgt. Pepper’s debacle, Stigwood struck gold once again with Grease, a nostalgic 1950’s musical romp which again starred John Travolta co-starring with Olivia Newton-John, another serial perpetrator of Post-Modern Reality Simulation.

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The film’s soundtrack was another platinum level triumph, featuring the movie’s titular theme song warbled by washed up pop crooner Frankie Valli aka Al Pacino.

Below: Frankie Valli, Al Pacino

If there’s anyone who takes valuable time out their life to actually endure the insipid plot of Grease, one’s keen eyes might notice two extras in the background shots, Lorenzo Lamas, Michael Biehn. While Lamas was born into a Hollywood family and went on to star in the 1980’s television soap opera Falcon Crest, image comparison, facial recognition, and ear biometric analysis indicate he was also modified into Hollywood action star and future governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenneger. Most notably, Biehn went on to star with Schwarzenegger in Terminator and to co-star in Aliens with Sigourney Weaver. What is considerably less well known is that Biehn was also cast as the live-action host acting template which was modified into the character fabrications known as pop/rock stars Tom Petty and Julian Lennon.

Below: Lorenzo Lamas, Arnold Schwarzenneger

Below: Michael Biehn, Tom Petty

Below: Tom Petty, Julian Lennon

Below: Michael Biehn, Tom Petty

Below: Michael Biehn, Julian Lennon

Julian’s mother, Cynthia, looks very similar if not identical to Phyllis Barbour, the wife of Michael Nesmith (aka John Lennon/Rod Stewart/Steve Jobs).

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Image comparison, facial recognition, and ear biometric analysis confirm that Robert Stigwood, the guiding hand which forever cast the Bee Gees into disco infamy, was Hollywood actor, pop singer, and comedian Dean Martin in disguise. The identical epidermal structures of the respective eyes and the identically aligned forehead striations are particularly conspicuous.

Below: Robert Stigwood, Dean Martin