By quantriweb2023 
Some of the Bee Gees’ most iconic tracks hide a secret beneath their legendary status: their original music videos have been forgotten or even shelved. The world knows the Bee Gees’ songs, but what many aren’t aware of is that some of their music videos—the very visuals that accompany their most famous hits—were not the ones originally intended by the band.
This intriguing mystery centers around as simple yet bizarre an issue as Barry Gibb’s beard. It sounds trivial, but it led to the group’s initial videos for ‘Stayin’ Alive’, ‘Night Fever’, and ‘How Deep Is Your Love’ being either abandoned or completely reshot. As a result, the videos widely recognized today are, in fact, replacements, disguising a fascinating chapter of the Bee Gees’ history that few have ever seen.
The legendary ‘Stayin’ Alive’ video, now iconic in pop culture, almost never reached the masses in its original form. The original footage was deemed unsuitable because of changes in Barry Gibb’s appearance. Imagine how much footage was lost and how the band’s image was reshaped because of a beard!
This behind-the-scenes twist leaves fans and music historians alike eager to uncover the hidden tapes and understand the true visuals the Bee Gees first created to accompany their timeless music. It’s a labyrinth of music video history that reveals just how much control and influence aesthetic choices have on an artist’s legacy.
As one longtime music producer involved in the Bee Gees’ projects stated, “We just couldn’t move forward with the original clips; it was Barry’s beard—odd as it sounds—that ultimately caused a complete overhaul of the videos. The new versions you see today? They’re a different story, created under very different circumstances.”
For those who grew up with the disco fever of the Bee Gees’ tracks, this revelation is both shocking and sensational. It forces a reconsideration of what we see on screen and what stories and moments might be eternally lost, lying quietly in vaults or erased forever.
The full details of these lost, alternate visual histories of these classic tracks invite exploration and speculation. How many other famous videos across music history might be concealing similar secrets?
The Bee Gees’ journey through music videos is not just a tale of song and dance—it’s a gripping saga of image, identity, and the unforeseen impact of something as simple as a beard that changed everything.
Video
Like the rest of the tracks in this list, ‘Stayin’ Alive’ was composed by the Bee Gees for the soundtrack of the film Saturday Night Fever, which was released in 1977.
As the Bee Gees’ official website explains, the band’s original music video for ‘Stayin’ Alive’ was recorded alongside videos for their other Saturday Night Fever singles: ‘Night Fever’ and ‘How Deep Is Your Love’.
In all three of the videos (recorded on soundstages in Miami, Florida) Barry was beardless, but by the time it came for the group to release Saturday Night Fever, he had regrown his iconic look.
As a result, the group decided to reshoot the original music videos, and shot the ‘Stayin’ Alive’ video most of us remember today at the MGM backlot in California.
The original ‘Stayin’ Alive’ music video was released in Europe, however, and is still available to watch on the Bee Gees’ YouTube channel (see above).
The video is called ‘Version Two’, even though in reality it was the first music video the group filmed for their famous track.
How Deep Is Your Love
Unlike with ‘Stayin’ Alive’, when the Bee Gees reshot ‘How Deep Is Your Love’, the group stuck far more to the original vision for the music video.
Both videos feature the trio singing in a dark room with minimal stage lighting and lots of very 1970s-era music video editing!
But in the group’s original idea, a mysterious woman features as the subject of the song – she is not present in the group’s reshot video, however.
The Bee Gees’ original video for ‘How Deep Is Your Love’ was eventually released, although it is not currently available on the band’s official YouTube channel.
Night Fever
The third and final Bee Gees music video from the band’s original Saturday Night Fever video shoot was for ‘Night Fever’.
Much like the band’s other Miami-shot videos, the video was shelved, but the song seemingly did not get a music video reshoot either.
‘Night Fever’’s original music video was reportedly only released in 2004, likely to coincide with the release of the Bee Gees’ Number Ones compilation album.
The video again sees the group singing in a backlit studio, interspersed with footage of the bright lights of a Floridian motel strip.
Barry’s beard is missing, just as it is in the original ‘Stayin’ Alive’ and ‘How Deep Is Your Love’ videos, denoting that the video released in 2004 is the one that was shot in Miami, and not from a reshoot filmed at another time.