Description

The best-known image of the disco era is on this cover: John Travolta as Tony Manero in a white three-piece suit, one arm thrust towards the sky, standing on a glowing multicoloured dance floor. Above him, framed like a giant photograph on the wall of the club, the Bee Gees smile down in matching white. The film still and the portrait together sell the whole package, a movie and an album meant to be bought as one experience.

The pose was the film's defining moment. Writing for The Dissolve, one critic described Tony "stabbing at the air with his finger while wearing a white suit" and argued that the image shows him "as his ideal self," a working-class kid from Brooklyn who becomes a king only on the dance floor. The gatefold held some 22 stills from the movie, and the cover has been parodied so often that the pose alone now means disco.

The soundtrack came first. RSO, the label of producer Robert Stigwood, released the album on 15 November 1977, a month before the film opened on 14 December, and songs like "How Deep Is Your Love", "Stayin' Alive" and "Night Fever" pushed both to enormous success. The album stayed at number one for 24 weeks, sold an estimated 40 million copies worldwide, was the best-selling album in history until Thriller and became the first soundtrack to win the Grammy for Album of the Year.

Credit

Art preparation by Susan Herr and Tom Nikosey; Bee Gees photograph by Francesco Scavullo