Grant Walters – The Light Appears

The Bee Gees in the 1970s is the follow-up to the 1960s book that was published in 2021. The three music writers of Andrew Mon Hughes, Grant Walters, and Mark Crohan write about all the songs the band recorded throughout the 70s. At the beginning of the book we are greeted with the fact that the brothers were completely broken at the beginning of the decade, each working on separate projects.

But by 1979 they were the biggest band in the world with smash hits that would eventually lead to Bee Gees overload. The band got their groove back while working with producer Arif Mardin on songs such as “Jive Talking” and “Nights on Broadway”. Eventually the brothers would contribute greatly to the Saturday Night Fever OST that saw them hit the stratosphere of fame and fortune. The 1970s edition of the series is a well-researched book that will have the reader regularly searching for songs on Youtube and Spotify.

8/10

Reading this book in early 2022 while the trucker’s “Freedom Convoy” worked its way across Canada to then occupy downtown Ottawa was a stark contrast in realities. Colson Whitehead’s book, The Underground Railroad, from 2016 was hugely popular – it won a Pulitzer Prize before eventually being turned into a TV show. The book follows Cora as she escapes the plantation she is enslaved on in order to find a better life. In the book, the underground railroad is an actual railroad that takes ex slaves around America through secret tunnels. Even as Cora runs further and further away from the plantation, her past is never far behind. It’s a powerful book that should be widely read.

9/10

The first book in a series that will follow the songs of the Bee Gees decade by decade. Starting off in the 60s, this volume is split between the group’s Australian beginnings and it’s first brush of international fame with their first UK albums. The book written by several authors including Winnipegger (and friend) Grant Walters is expertly written with many in-depth anecdotes about the Gibbs’ brothers writing and recording history. It is a book that will keep both the hardcore and casual fans entertained throughout.

8/10

On top of work, working towards a Business Analyst certificate occupied a lot of my time in early 2022. This book taken for the Business Re-Engineering course was a companion for a few months. Workflow Modeling is a way of looking at the design of work/process mapping to gain more insights into where process improvements can be made. Certainly, dense with a lot of information, the second edition by Alec Sharp and Patrick McDermott has several interesting business stories and is swimming with swim lane diagrams.

7/10

Prairiefire Magazine – Summer 2021, Volume 42 No. 2

Tag: Grant Walters

Andrew Mon Hughes, Grant Walters & Mark Crohan – The Bee Gees in the 1970s

Q1 + Q2 Read It 2022