A moving tale of triumph and Tragedy

The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend A Broken Heart (12) Verdict: Falsetto but fabulous ★★★★✩ David Byrne’s American Utopia (12) Verdict: All grey but very colourful ★★★★✩

WE ARE in a golden era for music features and here are a couple more to cherish. I can’t claim to be a Bee Gees fan but Frank Marshall’s documentary contains some really compelling material whether you love them or not, including an interview with Noel Gallagher in which he says, rather sweetly, that: ‘When you’ve got brothers singing, it’s like an instrument that nobody else can buy.’

Of course, the brothers’ story contains Tragedy in more ways than one. Maurice Gibb was only 53 when he died in 2003, his twin Robin just 62, and their younger, non-Bee Gee brother Andy barely made it past his 30th birthday.

But what shines from this film is their prodigious talent, their profound influence, but also a certain humility, a rare commodity in that world, as in long-ago interviews they reflect on the thrill of finding themselves in the same stratosphere of fame and fortune as their idols, including The Beatles. ‘I had six Rolls-Royces before I was 21,’ recalls Maurice, incredulously.

The comparison with The Beatles is not a flippant one. For a while after the film Saturday Night Fever came out in 1977, the Bee Gees were just as big: no fewer than four tracks from the accompanying album reached No1. But as so often with documentaries like this, the details to savour are the tiny ones.

For instance, the film was going to be called Night Fever until Robert Stigwood, the Australian impresario who made the Bee Gees what they were, decided it sounded ‘too pornographic’. He then considered Saturday Night, before finally choosing to conflate the two.

DAVID Byrne’s American Utopia isn’t a documentary but a straightforward film (lovingly directed by Spike Lee) of his 2019 Broadway show. That’s insofar as you can call anything about the 68- year- old, Dumbarton- born former Talking Heads frontman ‘straightforward’.

Fans will love it not just for the music, not just for his singular stage charisma and philosophical musings, but also for the startling look of the thing.

Byrne and all his musical collaborators wear grey from head to toe, the set is grey, even his (abundant) hair is grey. But it couldn’t be more colourful.

BOtH films are available now on video-on-demand.