Two of the Bee Gees’ Drummers Have Died

Put on your favorite Bee Gees song. What catches your attention first? In the opening moments of “Stayin’ Alive,” “Night Fever,” or “More Than a Woman,” before the golden harmonies of the brothers Gibb come in, it’s probably the disco backbeat running through the whole song. And you can thank the late Dennis Bryon for that.

Bryon, who died at age 76 on Nov. 14, according to The New York Times, joined the Bee Gees in the early 1970s and stayed in the band through 1980 — a tenure that matches up precisely with their most successful era. His drumming was essential to the daring leap the Bee Gees made into the disco years, providing an insistent pulse for some of the decade’s most memorable hits.

In fact, the drum part in all three songs mentioned in the first paragraph of this story came from one 1977 session at a château in France. Working with the Bee Gees on their songs for the film Saturday Night Fever, Bryon recorded his part on “Night Fever” before leaving the studio to attend to a family matter. Engineer Karl Richardson then used the most advanced studio techniques of the day, literally snipping a small part of the tape and making it into a physical loop, to provide the drum part for “Stayin’ Alive” and “More Than a Woman.” “This was done solely to work around Dennis Bryon being away for a few days, but the effect was a strikingly mechanical beat,” Bee Gees biographer Joseph Brennan wrote. “As boring as this would become later in dance songs, it was new in 1977.”

In a somewhat morbid twist, Bryon was not the only Bee Gees drummer to die this month. The Times notes that Colin “Smiley” Petersen, who played in an earlier incarnation of the group, died Nov. 18 at age 78. Petersen was the Bee Gees’ first full-time drummer, joining the band in 1967 and anchoring them through their Beatlesque pop years. His drumming can be heard on early classics including “To Love Somebody,” “I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You,” and “I Started a Joke.” He also played on the Bee Gees’ ambitious 1969 double LP, Odessa, before the band split up later that year. When they reunited in 1970 to embark on a new phase of their career, Petersen was out.

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“I wasn’t the most technically skilled drummer, but I think that sometimes less is more,” Petersen said in a 2022 interview with the U.K. music podcast The Strange Brew. “When you’re limited, you have to get creative — just like Chuck Berry, who made magic with just a few chords. For me, it was always about serving the song.” Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb founded the Bee Gees as young men in Australia and led the group to some of the biggest successes of the 20th century. Maurice died in 2003, and Robin died in 2012, leaving Barry as the sole remaining Gibb brother.

Speaking to Rolling Stone’s Josh Eells in 2014, Barry Gibb reflected on their complex story and shared his regrets about his sometimes distant relationship with his brothers: “There were too many bad times and not enough good times. A few more good times would have been wonderful.”