Despite this, the album was deemed a commercial and critical failure, with over four million copies being returned to distributors and thousands more destroyed by RSO, who experienced a financial loss after its release.
[3] The creation of the soundtrack was marked with tension from the beginning, with Frampton and the Bee Gees both feeling wary of the other artist as well as being unsure as to how their music would work together on the same album.
The company itself experienced a considerable financial loss and the Bee Gees as a group had their musical reputation tarnished, though other involved bands such as Aerosmith were unscathed in terms of their popularity.
He wrote that, apart from the Earth, Wind & Fire and Aerosmith songs, "most of the arrangements are lifted whole without benefit of vocal presence (maybe Maurice should try hormones) or rhythmic integrity ('Can't we get a little of that disco feel in there, George?
')"[9] Writing in The Rolling Stone Record Guide in 1983, Dave Marsh dismissed the soundtrack as an "utter travesty" and "[e]asily the worst album of any notoriety in this book."
[11] Although there was reported resistance to the interpretation of the Beatles' songs, such as Martin's comedic take on "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", Earth, Wind & Fire's version of "Got to Get You into My Life" became a million selling single,[12] while Robin Gibb's "Oh!
[14] Owing to low box office receipts, the film failed to make back its production costs, but profits from the soundtrack album and the successful singles it spawned later covered those losses.
The latter was exacerbated by the environment of making the film and its soundtrack, with Maurice Gibb expressing shock at seeing crew members carrying around bags full of cocaine.
[4] Some of the most vicious criticism of the soundtrack was leveled at them, and the musicians felt a particularly painful sting at being labeled as mere "Beatles imitators" since that sort of pejorative tag had been with them since they began their pop rock work in the 1960s.