Jive Talkin'

Barry Gibb sings lead on this track, taking out his frustrations on a jive talkin' woman telling him lies. She treats him cruel, like a dumbstruck fool, and he's sick of it. He wrote the song with this brothers (also his band mates) Robin and Maurice. The story is fictional: Barry Gibb had been married since 1970 to his wife Linda, a former Miss Edinburgh.

This was called "Drive Talking" in its early stages, but producer Arif Mardin suggested the change to "jive" to play to teenage sensibilities. "Jive talkin'" is a term for slang.

The rhythm was inspired by the chunka-chunka-chunka sound of a car rolling over a bridge crossing Biscayne Bay near Miami; the Bee Gees went over it on their way to Criteria Studios, where they were recording the Main Course album. Robin Gibb explained to The Mail On Sunday November 1, 2009: "We'd already thought up the title for this song, but it wasn't until Barry, Maurice and I drove from Biscayne Bay to Miami that we realized what the tune was going to be. We had the idea as we passed over a bridge. Some tar noises made a rhythmic sound on the wheels of our car, which created the feel to the type of song we wanted to write. We finished the song at the Criteria Studios that day."