Luckily Stigwood also managed Eric Clapton, who suggested that they record where he had, at Criteria Studios in Miami. The documentary also features the Bee Gees’ studio collaborators and, cannily, members of other bands of siblings: Oasis and the Jonas Brothers.

The documentary shows him performing as a headliner at the 2017 Glastonbury Festival, and he has an album due in 2021, “Greenfields,” that revisits the Bee Gees catalog with country musicians.

In the documentary, abundant archival footage - a cavalcade of flashy fashions from 1960s frills to 1980s cool - coalesces around 2019 interviews with the last surviving member of the Bee Gees, Barry Gibb, who is grizzled and thoughtful but by no means retired. It traces the ways artistic instincts, family dynamics, business considerations, cultural shifts and sheer coincidence can shape memorable songs.

“The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,” an HBO documentary directed by Frank Marshall, moves sympathetically and efficiently through the group’s decades of making music. The Bee Gees - the brothers Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb - had at least two, singing heartache ballads in the late 1960s and re-emerging in the mid-1970s as the multiplatinum pop face of disco. Most bands are lucky to get one Top 10 hitmaking streak.

Discovered, embraced, disbanded, reunited, ignored, reinvented, hailed, scorned, disguised, recognized - the Bee Gees’ long career was filled with improbable ups and downs.

Bee gees put your worries in my pocket