Expedition: How Deep is Your Love

This morning, I was browsing In the Media and decided to filter by Songfacts.

Songfacts always yields nice results. You can see: 423 publications, enough to pick something from. I decided to pick Carly Rae Jepsen’s song: Call me maybe.

Carly Rae Jepsen is from Canada. There a quite a few Canadian artists!

Lawsuit

While reading the Songfacts my eyes come across this lawsuit that was filed against them by Ukrainian singer Aza. The song “Hunky Christmas” was involved.

Of course I wanted to see the Youtube only to find out it is a rather spicy video. The only similarity is: “Here’s my number”. The lawsuit naturally amounted to nothing.
At the bottom of Songfacts, I notice you can see other songs involved in lawsuits. Interesting, because I hadn’t seen this before, but mainly because I was actually curious about how many songs would be listed. That turns out to be a massive parade, pages long.

How Deep is Your Love

How deep is your love ? How could How Deep Is Your Love have been involved in a lawsuit? My interest was piqued, and I went to the article on Songfacts.

Songfacts

There is a wealth of information on Songfacts. For me, this is not just knowledge, but it changes the way you look at and listen to a song. Exactly like how you listen differently to the work of a famous composer once you have read their biography.

On Songfacts, people can leave comments, and here you come across all sorts of things that add a lot. For example, people having attended a certain concert by the singer or something they personally experienced with the singer.

Honky Château

Super cool: The Bee Gees wrote (and recorded) that song at Honky Château. Interesting info here:

• The piano that stood in a room must have been there for a long time, because Chopin is said to have played on it.
• Barry Gibb can sing in Eb.
• The line “I know your eyes in the morning sun” was apparently inspired because the sun shone through stained glass.

The song was initially intended for Yvonne Elliman, but ultimately the Bee Gees decided to sing it themselves after all (thank goodness! I don’t want to take anything away from Elliman, but the world simply never would have heard that special sound of the Bee Gees in this song). At the end, something striking is mentioned:

Dinner

Barry Gibb and Arif Mardin’s story is how “How Deep Is Your Love” originated at dinner at the Château d’Hérouville, when the chorus melted out of the Bee Gees’ mouth. He rushed everyone into the studio and asked keyboard player Blue Weaver to play that chord in that voice to set the tone for the song.

Well, that gives you a lot to think about.

• The idea for the chorus comes mid-meal
• Everyone to the studio
• Pianist Blue Weaver
• Nicest chord on the piano (I didn’t know this existed)
• Set the key for the song

Chorus

What exactly is that chorus in How Deep Is Your Love? Here are the famous lines:

How deep is your love? How deep is your love?
I really mean to learn
‘Cause we’re livin’ in a world of fools
Breakin’ us down
When they all should let us be
We belong to you and me

So this melody line pops up for him halfway through dinner. I want to know what he ate then hahaha. I want to get lines like that too. The song is indeed in Eb, exactly what Blue Weaver said.

You wonder what this “nicest chord” was. In that chorus, there is one chord that appears a few times: the Abm6. It is a chord with a lot of charge, a lot of atmosphere. I love playing it myself, and the voicing you use matters a lot.

In this voicing, you can see that the distance (interval) between the notes becomes smaller the higher you go: Ab – F = 9 steps, F – Cb = 6 steps, Cb – Eb = 4 steps. So it’s not that this voicing is necessarily the best one, but the sound that is created, is because of this voicing.

Moving on, there was a chord apparently very special to Barry Gibb. The tone was set for the entire song, starting from this chorus. Apparently the sunbeam through stained glass came only later.

Blue Weaver

Who actually is this Blue Weaver? On Discogs (lots of info there!) you can see that he has played in quite a few bands. To find that site, you search for the album that How Deep Is Your Love is on. What was that? Saturday Night Fever of course!

When there are so many hits on an album (and these are only the Bee Gees hits from this album), that says an awful lot about Saturday Night Fever. Reason to study this project properly. For another time.

Click on the Album and click on Discogs.

You can see that Blue Weaver played the keys on all of the Bee Gees songs on that album. Then you’re not a bad keyboardist 😉

When your bandmate leaves for Yes, that says something about the level at which you’ve played. I should listen to some of his projects sometime. Also something for later.

Château d’Hérouville

Where was How Deep Is Your Love written again? Château d’Hérouville (Honky Château). I need to look it up on Google Maps…

Indeed, northwest of Paris. And it turns out to still be a studio.

I’ve saved the location in Google Maps. If I drive through France again, I have another address to check out up close.

Au revoir!