by Hector Cook
Redcliffe Pier was the main attraction for all the kids, with its pinball arcade nestled halfway down the walkway. There were many cracks between those planks inside the small arcade, and many is the time we would dive for the lost pennies which fell through the cracks, the water was clear and blue and provided excellent vision for the best divers, that was us!
During the summer days beneath that pier became our domain, whilst at night the various large sharks would glide and rest and watch us watching them watching us. Nobody would dive for pennies at night, but we would fish from the beach and of course there was ‘Redcliffe Speedway’ where the stock cars roared, and the little nats used to race that dusty oval. The smell of the oil, the noise and the atmosphere was incredible, and we were always there.
This was the first public appearance Robin, Maurice and I ever made in Australia. We sang through the PA system and people threw money onto the track, and we met Brisbane’s leading DJ and racing car driver Bill Gates, who suggested we call ourselves the BGs and even played our songs on his radio show, ‘Swingin’ Gates Platter Chatter’; hence, Redcliffe became the birthplace of The Bee Gees.
I returned here in 1989 and was delighted that it had not really changed. I have changed, but the child inside me has not. I’m still here on Redcliffe Beach. I’m still fishing for the tiger shark on a pier long swept away by time and tide.
I can still see the pie cart, the Saturday night dance, and the speedway, and first love. I remember visibly my childhood days here and I will dwell on my Redcliffe for as long as I live.
Although the original jetty at Redcliffe was replaced by a new one in November 1999, Barry would be pleased to know that the nearby Woody Point jetty remains intact, still used by local youngsters unaware of the famous family who fished from there some 40 years ago.
Redcliffe Speedway has become famous as the venue for the brothers’ first public appearance, but there is some doubt about where their first proper indoor show was held. A strong possibility is the bar in Filmers Palace Hotel, run and owned by Mrs. Mavis Filmer who proudly shows new guests the same stage on which three toothy youngsters performed in 1959. The hotel is situated in Woody Point, another part of Redcliffe, and is perhaps the same place Maurice refers to. “We started singing in a local pub just up the road from our house and our father had to drive us. My father just had to drive us around everywhere we went.”
Meanwhile, Bill Gates had been very impressed with what he had heard at the speedway track. “I tape-recorded six songs of theirs and played the hell out of them on 4BH. The response was so good that I sent [a tape of] the songs to [top Sydney DJ] Bob Rogers on 2UE and he played them to death too. The raw talent of The BGs was apparent. The harmonies were fantastic … Barry was able to write a new song in five minutes. It usually was the best one of the four songs [he’d] previously written.”
Sadly the 4BH tape no longer exists and Bill cannot remember all the songs that were on it. Over 40 years later a framed copy of the acetate that Bob Rogers had made from the tape was presented to Barry on the 1991 Bee Gees This Is Your Life British television programme. The acetate now hangs proudly in Barry’s English home. Likely title candidates for the original tape were ‘The Echo Of Your Love’ and ‘Twenty Miles To Blueland’, as well as ‘Let Me Love You’ which he had heard them performing at Redcliffe Speedway. However, Bill had wanted two more songs over and above the four that Barry had already written. “I sent the two kids out to buy a hamburger and gave Barry an hour to write them. He did it in half the time.” One was ‘(Underneath The) Starlight Of Love’ which would have greater significance later. Not yet old enough to assist Barry with his writing, Maurice and Robin often had to find ways to amuse themselves until their turn to participate came. The memory is a painful one for Bill. “The twins were real hell in the studio. They used to kick the wastepaper basket around!”
Maurice has a more selective recollection of the studio. “I just remember seeing that glass booth and I remember that booth particularly because it was like being in a spaceship – very futuristic.”
The six songs gained an enthusiastic audience on Bill ‘Swingin’ Gates’ Midday Platter Chatter programme as well as on Bob Rogers’ show down at 2UE in Sydney but Barry remembers that in the case of ‘Let Me Love You’ in particular this became a bit of a problem. “Bill began bashing our recording of the number across the air in Brisbane. It became very popular. People kept requesting it and asking where they could buy it, which was funny because there was only the one copy which Bill had made himself. He played it every day on his programme. Soon the local television studios started phoning and saying, ‘Loved that song. Will you come and do it on the show?’ ”
Even the newspapers picked up on the growing interest in the boys. Under the heading of “Yes, They’re Real Cool Cats,” one feature included a photo with the caption, “Three boys from Redcliffe who have jolted the radio and record world with a ‘rockabilly’ song … Barry Gibb and his nine-year-old twin brothers, Maurice and Robin. The song they’re singing is their own.”*
The family had been in their new homeland for less than a year but, even at this early stage, Bill could see that the boys had a big future ahead of them. With Hugh often away from home for weeks at a time, it was important that his sons had someone to nurture their careers so Bill took the task upon himself and offered to become their ‘promoter’. The title was chosen carefully as, with Barry not yet turned 13 and still at school, they had to be careful to avoid using terms like “manager” that had professional connotations which might attract the unwanted attention of vigilant Children’s Welfare staff.
Their new ‘promoter’ did not endear himself to their elder sister however. “When the boys were first starting in Australia, Bill Gates wanted me to sing with them. I was 14 at the time and every time Bill came round to the house, I used to lock myself in my bedroom to avoid being brought into the group,” Lesley admitted. “I was scared stiff of the idea.”
Bill was able to book Lesley’s brothers onto the bills of small outdoor concerts in Brisbane called ‘tent shows’ such as the EKKA Exhibition where he officially launched The BGs and also the Fosters one where they appeared with singer Toni McCann. Long time fan Tony Brown, now living in Norway but a native of Brisbane, is a year older than the twins and well remembers his first sighting of the trio in 1960. It would probably be fair to say that his initial impressions were not favourable.
“Every Easter time Brisbane had an exhibition for what Queensland primary industry [farming] could produce. My father moved his office to this huge cricket ground known as The Show Grounds. There he and two assistants issued insurance for the two week duration of the show. This was dreadfully boring for me and I found it dull. Everything was so bloody primitive and the noise and smell repugnant.”
As Tony explains, “The Brisbane Show had a number of small shows on the side that were called side shows. These stands, attractions, entertainers etc. attracted hooligans, pick-pockets and criminal types who’d come ‘down for the show’. This atmosphere was so cheap and in bad taste that I did prefer the primary produce area … The side show really was a filthy area.”
Obviously these days Tony is well aware of the group’s history but, at the time, he just did not know what to make of them. “The BGs were typical of the side show mob – a family affair – brothers or cousins no doubt … In Scottish tartan waistcoats, dumb expressions and Brylcreemed hair they were well at home. Trouble was they looked so dumb and would be doing these shows all their lives because they couldn’t do anything else. Later on they turned up on Saturday afternoon television’s Opportunity Knocks. They were corny, still bristling vanity and believing they were on their way. Someone, I thought, should take them to one side and point out that this TV programme is really just an exploitation show. Surely they know when they are being made fools of? This really exposed the dreadful state of television in Brisbane. Cheap and tacky and far too much light. It really showed them up unlike the dark
in the side show.”
To put things in a proper perspective, Tony admits to having changed his views by 1965. “I had become a fan of theirs for sure, but I didn’t have the attitude to be a fan.” It wasn’t easy for him to demonstrate his affection for the group in the midst of macho Australian men-folk, as Tony recalls that they considered “men who were fans of men groups were a little kinky”.
Summing up, he says “They were charismatic and believed in themselves I thought, so many fans would have Kodak Brownie snaps of them lying in attics around the outback towns. Many things are possible.”
At this time Australia, in keeping with much of the civilised world, was still some way behind Britain and America in the field of technological advancement. This was highlighted by the fact that it was only now that the first TV stations began to spring up beyond Melbourne and Sydney, where Australians had first seen television on home soil in 1956, due in part to that year’s Olympics. TV presented Bill Gates with another arena to showcase their precocious talent although that is not quite how Nancy Knudsen, hostess of the TV programme Swinging School describes them. “They were an incredibly dirty group,” she says. “They always turned up at the studio in dirty chequered shirts and jeans, and boy, could they swear! They were only about 10 or 12 years old, but four-letter words would be flying around everywhere! And this was at the time when four-letter words were just not acceptable, even in private conversation. I warned them about it several times, because my audience had a lot of mums and teachers and school kids in it, and they were getting very upset. But the boys kept swearing – so I fired ’em! Now when The Bee Gees describe the early days … they always mention radio but never TV – maybe that’s the reason.”
Their first Brisbane TV appearance came in March 1960 on Russ Tyson’s Anything Goes on ABC when Robin and Maurice were made to perch on boxes so they would appear the same height as Barry. There was no repeat of the controversy that attended Swinging School, thus enabling them to appear on several other programmes. Indeed, they soon obtained their own show, broadcast live on Friday nights. Filmed in Sydney, the boys needed to get permission from their school for time off to go and do it. “We were on all the local television shows,” recalled Barry, “and were eventually given our own show called The BG’s Half Hour which later ran to an hour a week! We used to do all this Monkee-comedy type stuff, with special guests each week. Dad thought up the idea of the show. We were in such demand, but after a year or so, the child welfare people stepped in and had our show reduced to once a month. Naturally it lost ground and was eventually killed.” Barry remembers that the reason given by the Children’s Welfare Department was that “they did not consider we were old enough to do this kind of work”.
As compensation they were offered regular spots on two other shows, BTQ7’s Cottie’s Happy Hour and Strictly For Moderns, both hosted by well-known local presenter Desmond Tester. Barry chose their first appearance to showcase another of his compositions, ‘Time Is Passing By’, and existing footage reveals that they were in every sense an act, dressed in matching zipped jackets with synchronised (well, almost) finger-clicking movements by the twins to accompany Barry’s guitar-strumming.
By now The BGs were gaining quite a high profile on Brisbane TV and Bill Gates began to worry about their continued growth and development. “I’m not a businessman, I’m a disc jockey,” he told their father, “and I’ve done all I can for them on my side.”
It now began to dawn on Hugh Gibb that things were becoming serious. “That’s when I began to realise that it wasn’t just a flash in the pan craze, just as I did when I came home from work one day when the twins were seven and heard these voices harmonising to a song. I thought it was the radio playing because the sound was so good.”
The group needed someone working full time on their behalf but who could Hugh and Barbara rely on to fill such an important role? Hugh was an obvious choice but the concerned parents faced an unavoidable complication.
“Suppose you were a booking agent. If I go on about the boys you’d say to me, ‘It’s all very well you saying that – they’re your kids.’ I don’t believe in that because I think it’s wrong for a parent to manage his own children.”
Barbara put forward the other side of the argument, “You couldn’t let them go with complete strangers! You never know …” Barbara’s inability to contemplate even finishing that sentence left Hugh with little choice. There could only be one outcome.
“My father had to give up his job to take us everywhere because we were under-age,” Maurice confirmed. “He had to take us into the place, and it was all down to pointy-toed shoes and polish and bow ties and nicely dressed. We did that for about three years.”
Hugh now had to turn his full attention towards making his sons household names in places further afield than Brisbane. This meant that his young prodigies would soon become exposed to things he had hoped to shelter them from. The majority of Australia’s venues in the early Sixties consisted of either sports or veterans’ clubs. At one you would find men who drank hard and played hard, open warfare being deemed acceptable on playing fields when the situation demanded it, while at the other you would find those who had been used to warfare of an entirely different nature. These were the RSLs which became almost a second home to Hugh and his sons over the next few years. Barry paints a typical picture. “We used to play Returned Soldiers [League] Clubs and there’d be a juggler, a guy with dancing dogs, a comedian and us. We’d do a lot of comedy; in fact, we were billed as ‘The Bee Gees Comedy Trio’. We’d sing ‘Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour (On The Bedpost Overnight)?’ and do little comedy routines. If you were going down badly, the secretary would come on stage and pay you in the middle of your act. Then we worked in places like dock-side clubs where sailors would actually have beer drinking competitions during the show.
“We played one night in a place with a huge hole in the roof. It was absolutely pissing down and a great torrent of water was falling straight on to our heads and all the audience were playing one-armed bandits which were positioned all around the stage. Then these two blokes started having a fight in the audience, but they were so drunk they had to fight sitting down! Australians are great. They’ll get into a fight for any reason whatsoever. That’s the way it was back then in the Fifties and Sixties. Brutal. It really was an amazing place to be a kid.”
Warming to the theme, Barry continued, “The big time to us, back then, was working in clubs, hotels, the RSLs. Let’s face it – that was our life from the pre-teen years onwards. Australia also toughened us up as The Bee Gees. An Australian audience is the hardest to please in the world, and I always found that if you could please an Australian audience, you could please any audience in the world so it was a good training for us as a group.
”We were into Col Joye, Johnny O’Keefe, Billy Thorpe and Normie Rowe, though I wouldn’t say they influenced us a great deal musically. Maybe they did in the sense of competition. We really wanted to get out and prove ourselves against those acts. We were three kids, and everybody loves kids, you know – a great dog act. I honestly feel synonymous with Australia. It’s really everything I learned about songwriting.”
Nowadays parents and social workers alike would most likely question the wisdom of such an upbringing but Hugh knew the dangers and shielded his boys from them. “They had to be supervised by me. They couldn’t mix with the audience and I didn’t drink and still don’t.”
Barry remains extremely appreciative of his father’s guidance. “We had very strong parents. When we were young, there were a lot of places we weren’t allowed to be in. When we went some place where drinking was taking place, our father was always with us. We weren’t allowed to come from backstage and blunder into the audience. We were all well protected from the kind of adults who might have tried to talk us into drinking or anything like that.”
Maurice takes a different stance from his eldest brother when reminiscing about his formative years. “We had a great
childhood. I always refer to the time when I was 11, in the changing room of a stripper and I think to myself, ‘Will I be a normal child?’ No! We never had friends our own age. Most of them were 10 years our senior and things like that and most of the kids I went to school with I couldn’t relate to.”
Barry tends to agree with Maurice about having a great childhood, although the highlights for him are less seedy than his those of the younger twin. “I often wish my childhood upon those people who say, ‘Didn’t growing up in show business take away from your childhood?’ For me it was the best childhood anyone could possibly want.” Obviously with Redcliffe in mind, he continued, “I lived on the beach and was always on the beach. It was a fantastic time. Amazing.”
Hugh’s involvement with the group went even further as they began to travel throughout the state of Queensland. By taking them into various nightclubs as well, their act needed a more professional approach and their father often appeared on stage with them, resurrecting his career as a drummer. Later, Maurice (bass) and occasionally Robin (piano) would complete the instrumental quartet. It may sound as if it was all work and no play for the boys but it wasn’t. One month short of his fourteenth birthday, Barry Gibb would find his first love.
* * *
For nearly 40 years, Ann Blackmore had kept quiet about her secret love. However, to coincide with The Bee Gees’ Sydney concert of 1999, she finally decided to share some memories with readers of Take 5 magazine.
It was a Saturday night in August 1960 and Ann was getting ready to go out on her first date at Brisbane’s Woolloongabba Church Hall.
She had never heard of The BGs, but later as she and her partner Jimmy bopped along to their songs, she decided that the group was really good. The Blackmores didn’t yet own a television set so, unlike some of her school-friends, she had yet to see Brisbane’s hottest new act.
During the break, while Jimmy was talking to some other girls, the handsome lead singer introduced himself. “Hi, I’m Barry Gibb. Would you mind if I joined you?” he asked with a smile.