Sure, this particular man was evidently a murderer, but the sorrow evident in the lyrics and singing tone still made me sad for him.

Other Bee Gees songs crept into my youth and carved their little places in my mind. Lonely Days, Lonely Nights, a song that was on the jukebox in the firehouse party room, and I can almost smell the beer and hear the dings and buzzes of the pinball machine that was tucked away in the corner ever time I hear that song.

Perhaps no non-disco song of the Bee Gees ate at my soul more than I Started a Joke. My mother used to insist the lyrics were about Jesus or God. I suppose everyone has a way of putting their own feelings into it when analzying a song; in my young mind the song was about feeling lonely and unwanted, as if you were a big joke that was set upon the world. Either way, it's one of the saddest songs I have ever heard.

Everything changed for the Brothers Gibb in 1975 with the release of Main Course. Nights on Broadway and Jive Talkin' set a course that would take the Bee Gees to new heights - and the top of the disco charts.

I was 16 years old when Saturday Night Fever came out. I loved the movie, but the soundtrack drove me crazy. The song Stayin' Alive is forever etched in my mind not as part of Saturday Night Fever, but as the song Jack and Elaine were dancing to in Airplane! when the bar patron was stabbed in the back and everyone thought he was doing a funky dance.

It was about that time that I stopped listening to music with my mother and barricaded myself in my bedroom instead, headphones on or stereo turned up way too loud, trying to drown out the strains of whatever mom was listening to at the time.

I still love the old Bee Gees. I still get those pangs of melancholy when I hear Mining Disaster or I Started a Joke. And I will still deny that I ever danced to Jive Talkin' while in a drunken frenzy on my eighteenth birthday.

So long, Maurice and thanks for the memories.