This week in 1968
1 I’ve Gotta Get A Message To You The Bee Gees 2 Do It Again The Beach Boys 3 This Guy’s In Love With You Herb Alpert 4 I Say A Little Prayer Aretha Franklin 5 Help Yourself Tom Jones 6 High In The Sky Amen Corner 7 Hold Me Tight Johnny Nash 8 Fire! Crazy World of Arthur Brown 9 Mony Mony Tommy James and the Shondells 10 On The Road Again Canned Heat Almost a year after the Bee Gees had their first UK number one (with ‘Massachusetts’), they did it again with ‘I’ve Gotta Get A Message To You’. Written by the Gibb brothers, the song is about a man on death row, on his way to the electric chair, who pleads with the prison chaplain to get one last message to his wife. Fifty years ago this week, it replaced the Beach Boys’ ‘Do It Again’ at the top of the UK charts, spending a single week at No 1 before being toppled by The Beatles’ ‘Hey Jude’. It was also a number one in Ireland and gave the Bee Gees their first US top ten hit. Among the best-selling artists of all time, Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb sold in excess of 220 million records worldwide in a career spanning five decades. Barry is the sole surviving brother: Maurice died in 2003 at the age of 53, and Robin died in 2012, aged 62.