Bee Gees 1941 Mining Disaster Song Personnel

I have to get it off my chest.

“Have you seen my wife, Mr. Jones?
Do you know what it's like on the outside?
Don't go talking too loud, you'll cause a landslide, Mr. Jones.”

But Mr Jones has not said a word, and does not. Unless we’re going to engage in some creative punctuation, the dramatic situation is one of two guys trapped in a mine, and he’s talking a lot while admonishing his silent interlocutor not to raise his voice lest they both be killed. If this were a Randy Newman song, the point might be “some people are gonna flap their gums all day even when it might kill them and whoever they’ve cornered,” but it’s not. It’s The Bee Gees, and it drives me batty. Does he know what it’s like on the outside? Yes of course he does! He is from there, as are you! You were both just there, presumably earlier today. Are we to understand that the speaker has gone mad? No, his thoughts are too organized for that; it’s the quality of the thought that’s lacking, not reason itself. Perhaps the point is that it’s still sad that someone dies in a cave even if they are an idiot. As points go it’s a fair one but still weird.

This has bothered me since childhood.

hadn't really considered this. another factor is that he says "there is something I would like you all to see," which suggests there's more than two guys. maybe the narrator has been in the mine a lot longer than Mr. Jones and Mr. Jones just happened to hop down right before the disaster, or before it got significantly worse? Also maybe it's happening right after Pearl Harbor and he would also like an update on world events.

maybe mr. jones is some kind of negotiator from the outside world with his ear pressed up to a crevice in the rubble? i have thought about this as well and decide to give up thinking about the logic of it and agree to disagree etc

Yeah if Mr Jones is somehow communicating with them from outside the mine you can read the chorus as the cacophony of voices trying to reach him and warning each other.

Yeah two people is not a disaster I assume Mr Jones is from the rescue party

The Bee Gees' lyrics are an abiding source of delight/bafflement.

x-post

yeah, but he's struggling to hear a sound Rom the rescue party and doesn't know if they've given up or not. no contact has been made, i surmise.

third option is that the singer knows he's in a song and mr. jones is us, he's narrating his ordeal to the listener but then how are we to not raise our voices to avoid cave in. we wouldn't be physically there, so no.

overlooked detail and maybe crux of the story is the photograph of someone he once knew. not his wife, because she's current. why is he carrying around a photo of this person all the time and why is it important, in maybe the last moments of his life, to share this with another? one option is that this is the true love of his life and he married the wrong one, and circumstances have forced that acknowledgement to the surface, a last act of unburdening before he can move on. or maybe not, just an old friend who was once part of his life that may be no more. here's a fragment of the person i was. this is brian, we went to university together and shared many adventures of that variety and then lost touch, that's how life is for everyone but this is a piece of mine, and it's all i have to hand off, to keep that small part of me alive with you.

also in the category of "who the hell are you talking to" songs is the type of song that goes "she's so beautiful, i see her walk by everyday, and i love you, you're everything to me" type thing that shifts perspective mid-way. are you talking to me about a girl or am i as the listener the girl. no examples but i know i've heard thee before.

i like the "knows he's in a song" theory

Maybe Mr Jones is a Tommyknocker, and is the cause of the disaster. The narrator therefore would have just cause to wonder if he's ever been outside - not sure if supernatural creatures have enough sentimentality to be swayed by a picture of your wife, but worth a try, right?

Alternatively, the narrator is trapped in a mine, has gone mad and is babbling nonsense.

If it had been a film, a better explanation would have been required, but for a three minute pop song more is forgiven

although I also heard that they were originally going to call this song "Ballad of a Tommyknocker"

The confusion is intentional, a way of conveying how much the previous 1,940 mining disasters have addled the protagonist's brain.

lol

Figured it was hallucinatory vision caused by sensory deprivation

The song is from the album Bee Gees’ 1st, which was their third album. Unreliable narrators or filthy liars, you make the call

The singer has already been rescued at the start of the song, but he's shellshocked and can't accept it. Mr. Jones is the newspaper writer from Dylan's "Ballad of a Thin Man" who's trying to interview the singer in the middle of his delirium.

Also, sonic structure of song and production, shadow ov lyrics, along w something about vocals, seem to prefigure "Space Oddity." (Many years later, "Ashes to Ashes" supposedly told us the real deal about Major Tom).

(Mr.Jones[Bowie's birth name] also maybe interviewing possibly imaginary subject in midst of his own rescued delirium.)

"Space Oddity" connection is a great call, especially the opening lines of this song, and of course the important role played by "my wife."

This is an even closer Bowie forerunner:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuX44Sj6hnY

I have never understood the narrative, but this is how I first heard the tune

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv9AFfidJZw

FFS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uYE-rhgTjg

i had the exact same thought about “space oddity” when i listened to the bee gees track today!

imho a telltale that mr jones is on the surface is "landslide", a thing that happens aboveground not underground in mines. narrator is worried the cave-in has made the whole topside area unstable

i sang this once at karaoke, nobody was amused

Also, sonic structure of song and production, shadow ov lyrics, along w something about vocals, seem to prefigure "Space Oddity."

Sure I've read that Tony Visconti didn't work on "Space Oddity" because he thought it sounded too much like the Bee Gees.

"Down to Earth" too--even the cover of that looks like something Bowie might have adapted back then! Working in a 90s CD store, I once heard a deep-dive Bee Gees collection, which, along with early hits,even had a bunch of album-only, b-side only tracks--from mid-to-late-60s, when they did seem to be competing with psych-pop Beatles as much as, I dunno, the Moody Blues, and even Tom Jones ("Massachusetts")? Some very involved orchestrations, and at least a touch of something different in the lyrics---"And the lights, all went ouuuuuut, in Mass-a-chusetts,"----I've never gone back in there, but now I think I might.

This makes it seem like realism, h'mmm (yes yes I see you've got footnotes):https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Mining_Disaster_1941 I wonder if they didn't mess with the original lines to make them seem weirder, more Beatles '67, or maybe it was a mind accident? What were they smoking, waiting for the lights to come back on?

One thing I love about psych-pop era Bee Gees is the utter strangeness of the lyrics, beyond just typical 60s psychedelic woo-woo. So many of the lyrics on those albums sound like translations of translations, or like they were written by someone for whom English was a second language, in the best way.

Oh cool, now I'll definitely have to delve more. You're reminding me somewhat of when I first heard Shonen Knife songs, on a tribute album (Every Band Has a Shonen Knife Who Loves Them), which added another filter, especially in that the material shone the more through bad sound, and often bad singing---big indie names without a lot of pop skills/talent, seemed like, though it was a dub---but fit with the impression that SK, though they may well have spoken and written English for many years (quite lucid in interviews I later heard), lifted it as this found thing, no longer dead, from the mud of familiarity: 70s-associated phrasing made new and fresh in the jaded 80s, sweet and seemingly naive, while hipper than the hipsters in their way.

And there was also a parallel proto-punk in the 60s, as heard in the Thai Beat A-Go-Go series, at its best, also various comps on he Sublime Frequencies label: just immediately treating Western punkoid-pop-etc, as this found thing, and customizing it.
But I haven't yet heard an Asian parallel to early Bee Gees...

DON'T FORGET TO REMEMBER: The Official ILM Track-By-Track BEE GEES 1968-1981 Listening Thread

This thread made me curious about covers of this song, so I tracked some down:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4H6HGO1OOUGwB9uLpznRoL
https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/new-york-mining-disasters/pl.u-BdW3JI5YZ0R

The Tragedy one is great if you like Tragedy's Bee-Gees-as-hair-metal gimmick. My favorite is Chumbawamba's, which is a phrase I think I have never said before.

Chumbawamba rule! (PVMIC)

Bee Gees hair metal of course! Why hadn't I thought of such a thing. Would love to hear Barry's falsetto with that---and goes w the early Bowie association, re hair metal's debt to GLAM, even covering Slade etc.