This is a really unusal musical experiment. Music videos had taken off by the early 1980s and Barry Gibb, who had embraced music videos as a member of British band the Bee Gees very early in the development of the genre, decided to take a different direction, by creating music videos for 9 of the 11 songs on his Now Voyager album. Linking the songs together in a dramatic and unsettling narrative, this is nothing short of intriguing. The storyline goes that Barry Gibb is a selfish guy whose life is fast paced and he has no time for anybody. When his car careers off a bridge into a river, Gibb is taken to a surreal world, where Michael Hordern gives him various lessons in life. To say any more would spoil the story.
Whilst the film is somewhat uneven, it is a great showcase for Barry's music. And the videos and linking sections are imaginative, well produced, and feature some well-known actors, such as Maryam d'Abo.
It is a shame that the album and video did not do well commercially, as it really broke new ground, both musically and with its merging of pop videos into a film narrative. Oddly, Barry had great success in the years immediately before this project, writing and producing complete albums for some of music's biggest names. He would, of course, continue with great success after releasing Now Voyager, both as a writer and producer of albums for other artists and as a mamber of the Bee Gees, who would continue to record albums until the death of Maurice Gibb in 2003. Barry would also have a late-career resurgence as a solo artist, with his albums topping the charts around the world, so he eventually succeeded in what he set out to achievewith this project, but it took him almost 35 years to achieve really big commercial success as a solo artist.
If anybody has an interest in Barry, the Bee Gees, the development of the music video, or just wants a trip to a fantasy world where nothing is what it seems, this is a great way to spend an hour or so.