by Hector Cook
“When the great day came,” Barry said, “all of us – including Kenny and Paul – went down to the theatre at 10 o’clock. I was clutching the record. We were going up the steps outside the cinema when I dropped the record and it smashed. We said, ‘What now? No record – no miming.’ Someone replied, ‘We’ll have to sing for real.’ One of us said, ‘If we haven’t got the record then we’ll really sing.’ The thought was unimaginable. Anyway, we did and it was awful.
“The manager gave us a shilling each and told us to come back the next week. The next time we got ourselves more organised. Us three brothers did the singing while the other two moved about clapping their hands.”
Robin’s recollections agree with Barry’s up to this point, but he added, “The Saturday came just before Christmas, and we were going up the stairs of the Gaumont when Barry dropped the record … Barry had a guitar, which he had taken along to help the miming, and he suggested that we go out and really sing. So we went out and sang ‘Lollipop’ by The Mudlarks, and it went down well. We ended up doing five more, including ‘That’ll Be The Day’, ‘Book Of Love’ and ‘Oh Boy’, and that was how The Bee Gees began.”*
As there was not enough room in the Gibb’s ground floor flat, Paul’s mother, now Mrs. Sarah Salt, allowed the youngsters to practice in her cellar, where the expensive £150 drum kit she had bought as a 1956 Christmas present for her son was kept. “I must have been one of the first to recognise their talent when I think back,” she says. Her younger sister, now Mrs. Dorothy Wilson, occasionally minded her young nephew Paul, and heard some of their early rehearsals. Although she maintains that she’s a big fan of the group today, she was unconvinced when she first heard them. “What a racket!” she exclaimed.
They were certainly capable of “pumping up the volume” with Paul on drums, Barry on guitar, Kenny on a tea-chest bass, and the twins Robin and Maurice singing – and sometimes “playing” on toy guitars. Their skiffle era tea-chest bass was also stored there and Kenny says that Barry hand-painted the band’s name, “The Rattlesnakes,” on the side of the tea-chest bass. After months of faithful service, the tea-chest box was eventually left out at the side of Paul’s house, where it lay for several months before it was finally thrown away in the latter half of 1958. Paul still remembers it fondly, describing it as “a tea chest with a long broom handle fitted with strings. We used it as a bass,” he added, “every group had a bass in those days.”
After several weeks of practice, Barry proposed that they join the ranks of other kids who performed at the Gaumont, the venue where all the local children spent their Saturday mornings. Nicholas Adams was with them when Barry made the suggestion about performing themselves, but he was never a member of The Rattlesnakes quintet, just one of their increasing gang of friends.
The Rattlesnakes’ first “professional” performance was given on the first Saturday after Christmas, December 28, 1957, at around 11.10 a.m. Like Barry, Paul is confused about the details of the broken record but Kenny is certain that it was indeed Lesley’s Christmas present, ‘Wake Up Little Susie’ by The Everly Brothers – released in the autumn of 1957, and that it was dropped in the street before they even reached the Gaumont Cinema.
The usual procedure on Saturday mornings was that the Gibbs always popped over the road for Kenny first, before setting off to collect Paul at number 23. On this occasion, they also collected the tea-chest bass from Paul’s basement before undertaking the short trip to the Gaumont Cinema. This was negotiated via a back alley to Selborne Road which joins Barlow Moor Road / Manchester Road just opposite from where the Gaumont was situated.
The logistics of the operation narrow down the identity of the butter-fingered culprit. Barry was carrying his guitar, Paul and Kenny were carrying the tea-chest bass between them … which leaves either Maurice or Robin carrying the record until it was dropped. As Robin has never previously been linked with the incident, Maurice may well be deserving of the credit for kick-starting their career, as he has often claimed. While the songs they sang at their weekly performances during January and February of 1958 would vary, it seems safe to assume that ‘Wake Up Little Susie’, the record they were due to mime to, was also the first song they sang live.
The routine was that the Saturday morning kids’ film started at 10.00 a.m. At approximately 11.00 there was an interval, during which the manager of the cinema encouraged anyone to get up on the stage and perform while the audience tucked into ice cream and refreshments. Most performers usually mimed to hits of the day in front of an announcer’s microphone. Kenny remembers a Brian Lewis who regularly had the first 10 minute spot, and who sang Cliff Richard songs. The Rattlesnakes, singing Everly Brothers’ songs, would be up for the next 10 minutes. After some adverts, the films resumed until 12:00 noon when everyone went home.
It would be nice to imagine that their performances were met with the enthusiastic adulation they enjoy today. Sadly, that was not always the case. Kenny confirmed that there was a small group of lads, including two brothers who called Barry “Smelly,” who thought it very funny to boo and hiss whenever The Rattlesnakes came on. Somewhat peeved at this lack of respect, Barry asked Kenny to come along to help “sort out” the two brothers, who he knew had to go home via a narrow passageway between some houses. When these two brothers appeared, Barry bashed them both together at head level. That was the end of the heckling!
A couple of photos of these early performances survive. The earliest first appeared in the 1979 Authorised Biography but more recently, Hazel Shacklock neé Gibb, the daughter of Hugh’s brother Roy, rediscovered a slightly later one. Although no longer in pristine condition, it is a remarkable relic from the time and clearly shows all five, not just the three Gibbs, singing their little hearts out for all they are worth.
Another from those days with a good memory is Eileen Callaghan. “I remember them at the Gaumont Picture House when I used to go on a Saturday morning, but I don’t remember them at school.
“[Barry] wasn’t in my class,” Eileen continued, “but I think his teacher would have been a Mrs Brown or a Miss Reeves. Mrs Brown had very straight hair but [wore it] in a bun, and was a rather busty lady. Miss Reeves must have been about six foot tall, she was huge, very slim and very tall. The headmaster at the time was a Mr Jones and my teacher was called Mr Jurski. Oswald Road was a very friendly school, the kids were nice there.”
Eileen can recall events at the cinema too, and cites “Hopalong Cassidy, Flash Gordon, Buster Crabbe and things like that,” as films she watched during that period. They might even have watched the 1956 film Smiley, which featured an Australian child star who would later play a major role in The Bee Gees’ career.
“The Gaumont Picure House was on the corner of Manchester Road and Nicholas Road in Chorlton, it’s now the [Co-Operative Funeral Service]. There was a little lady called Mrs McLellan who was the paybox lady, and then the lady with the torch was called Maureen, she was the usherette.
“When it was your birthday, you got a birthday card about a week to 10 days beforehand which enabled you to get in free, and you could also go up for a free ice lolly! And there were things like pet shows, you could take your pet one Saturday morning, and I can remember the cats and the dogs were all screaming at each other one morning; it was really good fun! There was an interval when everyone went wild and then they used to have these talent competitions.”
In early March 1958, an opportunity arose for Barry to appear on television, but circumstances conspired against him. A solo audition was arranged for 7 p.m. at the old BBC TV premises in Piccadilly, Manchester. Because dad Hugh was out playing with his band every evening, Barry asked Kenny to go along with him. Their plan was to catch the 5.30 p.m. bus, but when Barry called for Kenny at around 5.00, it was already dark and Kenny’s mother said, “There’s no chance of you going into Manchester. Not at your age, and certainly not at this time of night!”
So Barry, being only 11, decided to forego the audition.
This temporary setback notwithstanding, the Gibbs continued to seek out other places to sing. “We would find empty churches,” Barry recalled.
“We used to look for public conveniences,” Robin added. “We used to love singing in the toilets.”
“We used to go down to Lewis’ Department Store and sing in the gents’ toilet because of the echo,” Barry said. “You couldn’t get echo anywhere else in your voice, and that was the place that was our favourite spot. And now, even today, we get a microphone and fill our writing room with echo like a big toilet, if you would, and it can look like that too.
“So it’s just like doing a live performance; you get the echo of the theatre. That’s an inspiration if you’re writing a song because if you have musicians in the room as well, and you’re playing, it sounds like a record. You get an impression of a finished record without it having any of the sophistication or quality of a finished record.”
If an empty church or a lavatory could become a concert hall, so their basement could become a television station. With a television camera made of an old box and parts salvaged from broken binoculars, the twins would take it in turns to film elder brother Barry as the newsreader.
“We were like the Brontë sisters in that we created our own world and fed off our fantasies and ideas,” Robin said. “Once we created this inner world, we immersed ourselves in that. The Brontës wrote stories, we wrote songs. Outsiders thought we were mad, but once we discovered music, we never doubted we would succeed. It was never about money, it was about being recognised and liked.”
The age difference between the brothers barely seemed to exist. “We always call ourselves triplets, only something went wrong with Barry,” Maurice said. “The three of us have the same way of thinking, the same mentality, the same sense of humour, the same love of music that we’ve always loved. We looked up to big brother Barry, but you see, we started so young we were sort of never apart – we were like all more or less the same age.”
Lesley recalled that the other “children of hardly six years old” were nine-year-old Barry’s great admirers, although as a typical elder sister she says that she thought that in those days he was just a strapping lad with dirty fingers, nothing out of the ordinary. Still, how many ordinary nine-year-olds are budding composers? Barry recalls that his first effort was a song called ‘Turtle Dove’, but he insists today that all he can remember of it is the title so he can’t be persuaded to sing a few bars.
However, another original Barry Gibb composition may well have pre-dated it. Kenny Horrocks remembers how Barry wrote what he believes was the very first Gibb song. It was called ‘Hopscotch Polka’. “Barry was just making up words aloud, while strumming his guitar in the Gibb’s front garden, for several days until the song was finished.” Kenny says it was a good song, but unfortunately cannot recall any of the words. However he did confirm that, even back in those early years, “Barry was always music-minded.”
One Saturday evening, Barry’s guitar, like Lesley’s record, met with an unfortunate accident. Paul Frost had gone over to the Gibb’s house with some candles – the house was in darkness as Hugh was unable to pay the electricity bills at that particular time. Without lights to see, Paul sat down on a chair and promptly broke Barry’s guitar which was lying there. Paul recalls it was “broken in the middle” and almost completely irreparable. Fortunately for all concerned, the word “almost” proved to be accurate, and the guitar was soon back in use.
“Our next date was at the Whalley Range Odeon, when Maurice and I added [toy] banjos,” Robin recalled.
“They used to give us a shilling a week and our lunch,” Barry said. “Our pocket money was sixpence a week, and we reckoned we were rich.”
In early May, 1958, the family were on the move, resettling in Northen Grove, just off Burton Road in the West Didsbury district of Manchester. The move brought with it new opportunities and venues for the brothers, as well as a change of name, as Robin explained. “We did the Palatine [Cinema] as Wee Johnny Hayes and The Blue Cats – Barry was Johnny Hayes.”
At this point, Paul and Kenny left the band just as the brothers were beginning to broaden their horizons, although the two would maintain close contact with their former neighbours. Kenny can recall that Barry did a solo spot as Wee Johnny Hayes at a “Minor 15,” a talent contest for under-fifteen’s held on Thursday nights, between 7.00 and 9.00 p.m. at the Princess Club in Chorlton, so this may well be where the change in name originated.
David Stead was nine years old and in his next to last year at Cavendish Road Primary School, when he was given some additional responsibility. “Two boys,” he said, “I can remember quite distinctly, they were twins, Maurice and Robin, came in as new boys to the school. When any new people used to come to the school, they were always assigned somebody to look after them and, for that period of time, I was that person, although I became particularly more friendly with Maurice than Robin.
“They got quite well known in a short period of time, the three of them. I never really got to know Barry – Maurice was the one that I used to pal around with the most. The three of them used to have this acoustic guitar; they used to go into the park [on Cavendish Road], and the thing everybody knew about them was the way they harmonised to a song called ‘Lollipop’.
“The other place where people knew them very well,” David continued, “was a picture house called the Palatine Cinema at what they used to call West Didsbury Terminus, which is a bus terminus at the crossroads of Palatine Road and Lapwing Lane. It used to be sixpence on a Saturday afternoon to go and watch all these old films, but the three of them used to sing, and more often than not, all they used to sing was ‘Lollipop’ with this acoustic guitar. They used to get up before the start of the Saturday afternoon matinée.”
As David says, the brothers were now becoming quite well known locally. This was not lost on Hugh who began to recognise his sons’ potential and decided to intervene. Hugh’s band was playing at the Russell Street Club in Manchester, and one night he smuggled his three young sons into the club, where they sang a few songs to thunderous applause from the patrons. “We did our first sort of evening live thing for the audience,” Barry recalled, “and goodness, they liked us!”
They were given the princely sum of two and sixpence* by the manager and were once again smuggled out the back door of the club. Barry Gibb says he now realises the audience’s response had very little to do with their talent and a great deal to do with their age. “We were doing something nobody had ever seen before, we were three kids singing in three part harmonies. Kids and animals,” he laughed, “you can’t go wrong! From then on our father became devoutly supportive of what we were doing. He played on the drums for us that night and did do after that, even when we went to Australia.”
Hugh Gibb was hardly the doting father when it came to praising his children. “One thing about Dad is that we would come offstage, and he will always find the criticisms,” Barry recalled. “He would never say, ‘Great show!’ He would say, ‘You messed it up again, didn’t you?’ Our objective became to please Dad. And if we pleased him, we knew we were on the right track … These things would become implanted in our minds. It’s not that he never gave us a pat on the back ’cause I’m sure he did in his own way … But he always complimented the audience. When we came offstage and it had been a good show, he would always say, ‘The audience was great tonight.’ That was his way of complimenting us.”
Maurice was of a similar opinion. “Our father never once told us that we were good. Every time we came offstage, he told us we were terrible and I think this is what stopped us from being bigheaded.”
Although Hugh Gibb’s musical background is widely credited as The Bee Gees’ inspiration to follow a musical career, his influence on his sons was actually more indirect. “What Dad did, unknowingly, was to play a lot of music that was inspirational to writing,” Maurice said. “I would say The Mills Brothers, regarding my dad’s input from them to us, was
probably when you are on stage, smile. If you feel like crap and look like crap, people will feel like crap too. Dad would always be down the back holding a smiley face because that’s what The Mills Brothers did. I really did think that Dad wanted us to be little white Mills Brothers.”
“My father was always bringing great records home,” Barry added. “He was actually an opera fan as well as a big band fan, and it would either be Bing Crosby, who was his idol, or The Mills Brothers. It was from The Mills Brothers that we heard all about harmonies, and he would play these records non-stop.”
The boys added songs like ‘Alexander’s Rag Time Band’ to their repertoire, with big brother Barry strumming his guitar and Robin and Maurice providing the sound effects to the song’s “bugle call like you never heard before”. Although they would reprise this part of their act in the early Seventies on television shows such as The Midnight Special, Robin cringes at the thought today. “The sight of a grown-up man trying to do a trumpet is not quite …” he said, his voice trailing off in embarrassment. “When you’re about 10 or 11 years old and you’re doing these in clubs, you can get away with that stuff,” Maurice added, “but when you turn like teenagers, they all go ‘what the hell are they doing?’ ”
While it’s tempting to visualise the young Bee Gees as little white Mills Brothers or an early version of The Osmond Brothers, they are the first to quash that squeaky clean image. “We were never like The Osmonds! The Osmonds are Mormons, we’re morons! Totally different religion,” Barry laughed.
* * *
The brothers’ new found love of performing didn’t keep the boys out of trouble. Along with a friend, Barry stole a toy pedal car. The friend already had a police record, and his mother was afraid he would be sent to reform school, so Barry agreed to take full responsibility for the theft.