The Bee Gees – Massachusetts (1967)

Written On A Boat As A Challenge About A State They’d Never Visited

Released in September 1967, “Massachusetts” became the Bee Gees’ first UK number one on October 11, staying atop the chart for four consecutive weeks. The track hit number one in 12 other countries including Canada, Germany, New Zealand, and the Netherlands, peaked at number 11 on the US Billboard Hot 100, and eventually sold over five million copies worldwide. But here’s the remarkable story: the brothers wrote the entire song on a boat in New York harbor as a creative challenge, daring themselves to craft something commercial about a place they’d never visited with a title containing multiple S’s that everyone said couldn’t work. Robin Gibb explained it years later: when you look back, it’s quite a good exercise if you are songwriters to challenge yourselves to do something impossible. The song was initially written for The Seekers, the Australian folk-pop group the Gibbs idolized, but they couldn’t get it to the band’s manager, so they recorded it themselves instead.

The commercial success exceeded every expectation. “Massachusetts” became the first non-Japanese act to top Japan’s official Oricon Singles Chart when it hit number one on April 1, 1968, a remarkable achievement given that only 12 Western acts accomplished this feat in the chart’s first 54 years. The song spent 17 weeks on the UK chart and eight weeks on the US Hot 100, becoming one of the best-selling singles of 1967. Three days before its UK release, a devoted fan named Deirdre Meehan chained and handcuffed herself to Buckingham Palace to protest the possible deportation of the Bee Gees, whose work permits were expiring. Ultimately, the musicians were allowed to stay. On August 27, 1967, Beatles manager Brian Epstein told Maurice Gibb that Massachusetts is a great song that would be very successful. Epstein died later that night, making his prediction one of his final professional statements.

The inspiration came from observing the Summer of Love exodus to San Francisco. While Scott McKenzie sang about wearing flowers in your hair and heading west, the Bee Gees imagined everyone abandoning Massachusetts for California, leaving the lights to go out back east. Robin later explained: we always believed there’s no such thing as a title you can’t write a song to. They were touring America in 1967, staying at the Regis Hotel in New York City, when the challenge emerged. Some accounts place the writing session in their hotel room, but Robin insisted they wrote it on a boat in New York harbor. The title came first, as it always did for them, then the melody, and finally the lyrics describing someone longing to return home to Massachusetts after discovering the promised land wasn’t what they’d imagined. The song became an accidental anti-counterculture statement, suggesting not everyone bought into flower power and free love.

Recording took place with producer Robert Stigwood and featured Robin Gibb on lead vocals, marking one of the first times his distinctive quaver carried an entire Bee Gees track instead of Barry’s tenor. The arrangement emphasized acoustic guitars and strings, creating a melancholic folk-pop sound that contrasted sharply with their earlier rock-influenced material. The production stripped away excess, letting Robin’s voice convey the homesickness and regret embedded in the lyrics. Barry and Maurice provided harmony vocals that elevated the chorus, particularly on the repeated title phrase that became instantly memorable despite or perhaps because of all those S sounds everyone said would be tongue-twisters. The sparse instrumentation allowed the melody’s inherent sadness to resonate, making listeners feel the protagonist’s loneliness even if they’d never been to Massachusetts themselves or anywhere near it.

“Massachusetts” appeared later on the 1968 album Horizontal, the Bee Gees’ fourth studio album for Polydor in Europe and Atco in the United States. When initially released in the UK, the title was “Massachusetts (The Lights Went Out in)” but the subtitle was later dropped. In America, Atco Records delayed it to first release “Holiday,” showing the label’s uncertainty about whether American audiences would embrace a song about a northeastern state. The track has a minor claim to fame in British radio history as the second record played on BBC Radio 1 when the station launched, immediately following The Move’s “Flowers in the Rain.” The album also featured their earlier hit “World” and other singles like “Barker of the U.F.O.” that failed to match Massachusetts’s success, proving lightning doesn’t strike twice in quick succession.

The song’s legacy stretched across generations. Yugoslav rock band Siluete recorded a version in 1967 for the Yugoslav TV show Koncert za ludi mladi svet, shooting the video in Wild West settings at Avala Film Studios. The Seekers finally recorded it following Maurice Gibb’s death in 2003 for their Ultimate Collection after Judith Durham discovered through a chance London meeting with Maurice that it had been written for them three decades earlier. She was shocked: apparently the Bee Gees wondered if Tom Springfield had a monopoly on writing songs for us, because they had written a song they thought would be great for us. Their manager at the time had said Tom was their writer, so the Bee Gees kept it for themselves. In a 2011 ITV television special, UK audiences voted it third in The Nation’s Favourite Bee Gees Song behind “How Deep Is Your Love” and “You Win Again.”

But the most haunting footnote involves the Hither Green rail disaster. On November 5, 1967, with “Massachusetts” still at number one, 17-year-old Robin Gibb and his girlfriend Molly Hullis were traveling on the crowded 19:43 Hastings to Charing Cross train when it derailed near Hither Green station, killing 49 people and injuring 78. Robin had booked a first-class compartment with money from the song’s success, which he later said might well have saved us. He stood up to pull the emergency cord when a piece of railway line came crashing through the window, missing his head by inches. He would have been decapitated. Robin spent days removing glass shards from his hair and decades later told the Daily Mail that he knew what it was like to live through a massive disaster, contributing to his lifelong obsession with the Titanic. The song that celebrated homesickness and returning to safety had afforded him just enough success to survive tragedy by traveling in a safer compartment.