by Hector Cook
Hugh indicated that he would prefer to have a little bit more peace and quiet than he was getting. “You’ve got to have a tin ear around here,” he complained.
For now, Lesley preferred more sedate activities – she was running the first Bee Gees fan club and, in TV Week magazine, she apologised for the delay in sending members their photos and membership cards which was due to printing problems.
Moving from the holiday town of the Gold Coast to the big city environs of Sydney was not without some trauma, however, and Robin described their new surroundings as being “[a bit] like moving to London.”
It was also a time when he would become the third of Barbara’s sons to narrowly escape the Grim Reaper’s clutches. “I had been out for a ride on my bike and was on my way home. I had to come down a steep hill and suddenly remembered I had no brakes. There was a delivery van just in front of me, and the driver signalled to pull into the kerb. Quick-witted as ever,” Robin quipped, “I decided to get between the van and pavement, and slow down by holding on to the door of the van. Well, I managed to get between the van and the kerb, but my back wheel just touched the van’s wheel and that was the last I knew for a while. Even my bell couldn’t save me that time! I was unconscious for two hours, and I had amnesia for another six. People passing by thought I was dead, there was so much blood all over the road.” Taking into account his temporary loss of memory, Robin does well to recall these events in such fine detail.
Thankfully, he made both a quick and full recovery. One benefit, according to local journalist Dale Plummer, was that Robin’s resultant gold filling in a front tooth made it easier to tell which twin was which.
The move to Sydney, coupled with their association with the Jacobsens, paid dividends almost immediately, for around that time impresario Lee Gordon was finalising arrangements for a Chubby Checker tour with Col Joye and Johnny O’Keefe as support acts. As a favour, Kevin Jacobsen asked Max Moore, the General Manager of ATA Records, to use whatever influence he could bring to bear on Lee in an attempt to squeeze The BGs onto the bill. Whatever Max’s powers of persuasion were, they did the trick and Lee agreed to see what he could do. Robin remembers the next time they heard from Col. “‘Would you be interested in doing a show with me and Chubby Checker at Sydney Stadium because we don’t have a fill-in act?’ Chubby Checker was very, very big at this time. He was very hot, we were very young.”
Against that background, it would have been a major surprise had the boys not felt a little bit out of their depth. “When Kevin Jacobsen first dragged us out of Surfer’s Paradise and took us to Sydney, he put us on at the Sydney Stadium … the opening [concert] for the Chubby Checker tour. It was totally mind-blowing for us,” admitted Barry. “It was the first time we had worked with – in terms of what was going on in Australia at the time – an overseas star. You had a crowd of screaming teenagers and these three kids – us – playing this stadium sandwiched between Johnny O’Keefe and Chubby Checker. We protested that we were unknown and would be murdered, but we were stuck with it. It was a complete nightmare.” To make matters worse for the already nervous trio, an attendant had pulled them up in the dressing room before they went on, demanding to know who they were. Their response was immediate and collective. “Just wait ’til after the show, and you’ll know!” Evidently they were a hit, for afterwards they accepted an invitation to join Johnny and Chubby on the remainder of the tour in Melbourne and Brisbane.
Although the twins were still at school, the group’s career now began in earnest as a regular support act for Col Joye. They endeared themselves to his audiences, particularly with their zany sense of humour. A “juvenile Marx Brothers” is how one member of the tour party remembered them.
Around this time they made the first of many appearances on Brian Henderson’s national TV show Bandstand. ‘Hendo’ was described by one colleague as the “patron of family pop when skin lotion was a by-word of his television career”. It was also said that those connected with the show enticed its pimply faced stars to sign up for an initial mandatory six appearances by boasting, “Half a dozen Bandstand appearances and the whole of Australia will know you, you’ll be big.”
The brothers also appeared regularly on TV shows like Sing, Sing, Sing and Saturday Date as well as making live appearances at clubs, the dates being secured through the Jacobsens’ agency. Although the money sounds poor, £15 – £20 for anything up to five hours work, it wasn’t bad for those days and was enough to meet the family’s bills. The boys’ own weekly allowance was meagre, Barry being allowed to keep £10 and the twins half that amount each. Money aside, the most important thing was that the bookings enabled them to hone their act and develop into true professionals.
Col certainly took every opportunity to boost their confidence, regularly announcing them as “the only Aussie group good enough to make it overseas”. Even allowing for his undeniable ability to recognise young talent, it was a remarkable piece of foresight on Col’s part.
At the same time the boys were also exposed to other important aspects of life. Bob Taylor, one of Johnny Devlin’s Devils, fondly recalls a very aware young trio, still in short pants, delivering a hilarious spoof of ‘Puff The Magic Dragon’ called ‘Drag The Magic Poofter’ at the Three Swallows Hotel in Bankstown, an unfortunate choice of name for the venue given the circumstances. Tales abound of the boy’s sexual precociousness, some quite startling. There can be no question that early exposure to the backstage traditions of show business provided Hugh’s elder sons with a personal maturity well beyond their years.
Kevin Jacobsen’s name was the one on the management contract, although in reality it was Hugh who effectively ‘managed’ them at this stage. He demonstrated considerable intelligence, foresight and drive in his dealings with those who might otherwise have taken advantage of the boys’ lack of show-biz experience, something Mr Gibb was not short of himself. It was said that what Hugh wanted, Hugh got, regardless of whose toes he stepped on.
As with other showbiz families, like The Osmonds and the Wilsons from The Beach Boys, music was in their blood and ruled their lives. “Music was a part of life,” Andy reflected. “I took it for granted and didn’t really take much notice until [I was] about [eight]. My brothers were always writing or singing or playing about with music. Robin was forever singing in the bath, the family all called him ‘a quavering Arab.’ ”
The Jacobsens were as good as their word with regard to a recording contract and the brothers’ baptism of fire at the Sydney Stadium turned out to have a happy ending. “Our first recording contract came the following year as a result of the [Sydney] concert,” Robin continued. “Sydney is where all the labels are – you don’t get signed up anywhere else.”
The offer came from Festival boss Fred Marks, probably tipped off by Lee Gordon, who had been monitoring the boys’ progress since the Sydney Stadium show. There had also been some prodding by the Jacobsens who were also on the Festival label. Kevin had allowed Marks to hear the tape of the boys’ audition for Col, but the Festival managing director was not at all impressed. “Vocal groups don’t sell,” he proclaimed. Not to be thwarted, a crafty plot was hatched whereby Kevin offered to demonstrate his faith in the trio by dropping one of his own recording acts, Judy Cannon, and replace her with the Gibbs although, truth be told, Judy was going overseas anyway. Impressed by Kevin’s “sacrifice,” Fred Marks agreed to sign the brothers to a contract, delegating their records to Gordon’s own label, Leedon, a Festival subsidiary.
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Fred Marks was born in Melbourne on September 26, 1924. During the Fifties, he was based in Adelaide in the cinema industry but in the final year of the decade, he moved to Sydney, working as Rupert Murdoch’s assistant at News Limited, a company which organised the distribution of free newspapers and continues to do so today. Within a year, News Limited had bought Festival Records and Murdoch installed Fred as its managing director.
The significance of this was twofold. Murdoch invested h
eavily in the label and was responsible for bringing Festival’s studio facilities up to a more than professional level. Secondly, Marks was shrewd enough to realise that Festival’s future lay not in solely looking inward and signing home grown talent, but in attracting major overseas record companies who wanted to do business in Australia. Rupert Murdoch’s money enabled Fred to travel and meet his overseas counterparts, thus striking many deals which were beneficial to both parties. These foundations, laid by Marks, would be crucial to The Bee Gees’ development a few years down the line.
In May, 1970, Marks was head-hunted by the Philips label and moved to London to become managing director of their UK operations. During the next seven years, he became the international MD of Pye Records, the British MD of Fantasy Records of California, as well as a stint with the music division of the Disney Corporation. In 1977, he was appointed MD of Billboard magazine in the UK before retiring after a long and distinguished career in 1979.
If Marks is to be remembered for anything in this world, he says it should be for discovering Herb Alpert before anyone had ever heard of him, and he reckons that the $500 he spent to acquire the Australian rights to ‘The Lonely Bull’ was the best value for money Festival Records ever had. At the age of 75, he was living in Surrey, England, with his wife Joan, who was assisting in his recovery from a fourth operation to remove a brain tumour.
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The Bee Gees’ first recording session in January, 1963, took place in Festival’s studio at 52 Harris Street, Pyrmont, and the engineer in charge was very likely the ubiquitous Robert Iredale who supervised many of Festival’s recordings. Documentation for the session appears not to exist which can probably be explained by the fact that much of the brothers’ studio time was unbooked; they were allowed to record during small time-frames when the facilities were not being used by the major acts on Festival’s roster. At the time Festival did not use the title of “producer,” and in addition to Iredale, there was probably an A & R (artists and repertoire) man who reviewed the material before recording (Lee Gordon may have played this role). One man definitely present was Col Joye himself who, to all intents and purposes, could rightfully have claimed production credits, while backing vocals and instrumentation were provided (again uncredited) by his very own Joy Boys.
Iredale, “a bespectacled rather studious person with a cutting sense of humour,” was known for his ingenuity with the limited capabilities of the equipment on hand. The late Rajahs’ guitarist Jon Hayton recalled from sessions in 1959-60 that Robert was “a very clever engineer, probably the best in Sydney at that time, but unfortunately he had the attitude of most engineers that musicians and singers are total ignoramuses who have to be pushed and prodded throughout the session to get anything artistic out of them at all. At that time in Australia, we were all just learning recording techniques; not only musicians and singers but also producers, engineers and the record sales department. Hampered by inadequate, outdated equipment, we plodded on, always behind the Americans, desperately trying to catch up.”
Leon Isackson, drummer of The Rajahs who were another Festival act, goes even further, describing Iredale as “bossy, used to getting his own way”. Apparently, the only guy who stood up to him was Johnny O’Keefe and tapes still exist of the following conversation from an O’Keefe recording session:
O’Keefe : “What do you think Robert?”
Iredale : “Sounds a bit noisy, John.”
O’Keefe : “It’s rock’n’roll, Robert. It’s supposed to be fucking noisy!”
The product of the Gibbs’ initial session, their first single, was released on March 22, 1963, under the banner of “The Bee-Gees”. This name, reminiscent of nomenclatures being given to new American groups like The Lettermen and The Four Seasons, perhaps reflected Lee Gordon’s desire to market them to the teenage audience which was becoming increasingly responsible for a record’s ability to make the charts. A fact sheet proclaiming “two great sides with definite Top 10 potential” accompanied sample copies of the disc, issued in advance to disc jockeys. It also provided brief biographical details of the brothers and advised that the group “have really hit the top since their arrival in Australia, with many TV appearances to their credit and several triumphant personal appearance tours”. Barry’s age was noted as 17, a year older than he actually was, this probably being a deliberate ploy on Festival’s part to lose any schoolboy comparisons and thereby make him more appealing to teenage girls.
While the song failed to turn out to be the hit that their record company had hoped for, it wasn’t the abject failure that Robin later made it out to be. “We recorded our first flop which was a record called ‘The Battle Of The Blue And The Grey’ based on the old story [of the American Civil War]. Now this record was very hot with one guy at 2SM in Sydney. He was playing this all the time and, of course, it didn’t do anything.” In fact, although not making any noticeable impact, it did creep into the top 20 of the local Sydney chart, a national chart being some years away.
Barry’s first person narrative, from the perspective of a Confederate veteran recalling his youth, is a remarkable account considering that he was still only 16 when he wrote it.
The song featured Barry on lead vocal and guitar with the twins providing the harmony and backing vocals, and its subject matter made it an unusual choice for a first single. In retrospect, it sounds very much like a tribute to Johnny Horton who had a hit record with the similarly themed ‘Battle Of New Orleans’ four years earlier in 1959. Though short in its length (2.05) like most of their Australian releases, it’s a cleverly crafted song full of interest, albeit somewhat violent for the time with references to shooting people “full of lead” as part of its war theme. In an attempt to promote the single, stories appeared in Sydney newspapers about the new “singing group” and its young songwriter. Indeed, footage of its television début on Bandstand still exists.
While their début release achieved a reasonable amount of publicity, the music press also made mention of one other member of the household. Tucked away in the small print, was news that sister Lesley had also embarked on a show business career in Surfer’s Paradise … as a snake-dancer! In an unfortunate accident, Helene The Snake Dancer had been bitten and the club’s owner asked Lesley to fill in. “I said, ‘Okay, but you’ll have to clamp the snake’s jaws with sticky tape. I don’t want to end up in hospital, too.’ Everything went fine, and I started to keep snakes as pets after that.” However, by 1980, Lesley had decided that she would just stick to breeding dogs, claiming, “[Snakes] have such short life spans, and I get quite upset when they die.”
The flip side to ‘The Battle Of The Blue And The Grey’ was a pretty enough little ditty entitled ‘The Three Kisses Of Love’. Bearing favourable comparison with Herman’s Hermits’ ‘Silhouettes’, it is also similar to the unreleased ‘Let Me Love You’ and provided Robin and Maurice with a better opportunity to demonstrate their vocal ranges than its companion. This was even shorter at 1.46 but a catchy song nonetheless and The Bee Gees have been known to do brief renditions of it during radio and television interviews, even as late as 1990. At the time, according to Barry, “It got more plays [than the A-side]!”
Both sides sound as if they have some orchestral backing, but the absence of session records means this cannot be confirmed. Aural evidence suggests that the arrangements comprise only violin, string bass and drums with the violin (or possibly damped guitar) played pizzicato, plucking strings instead of bowing. If this is the case, then Robert Iredale and/or Col Joye deserve full credit for the clever use of an echo chamber, a favourite trick of Iredale’s which probably featured on some of the boys’ next few singles too. By placing a speaker and a microphone in a small side room adjacent to the recording booth, Iredale could make a solitary violin sound more like a string section and fool all but those in the profession who knew what to listen for.
Having a recording contract most certainly did not mean that they had hit the big time, and live per
formances at strange venues were still the order of the day. A fine example was the show they performed that year at the Oval Showgrounds in Wollongong, about 50 miles south of Sydney. Situated in a predominantly industrial area Wollongong is itself attached to the steelmaking town of Port Kembla whose two largest employers were BHP and John Lysaght.
The latter company had sponsored a day out at the Wollongong Oval for its thousands of workers and their families and, according to John Macbeth, appropriately now returned to his native Scotland, “Lysaght’s, the company my father worked for, paid for the whole day. There was free admission, free candyfloss, ice cream … everything. It was like the kids’ Christmas day out type of thing,” he remembered with all the enthusiasm of the 10-year-old schoolboy he was at the time.
“There were all sorts of side-shows, and on one stage was a young singing group. I was with a bunch of people and there was a girl saying, ‘I’d love to have their autographs.’ She was 12, ready to go to High School, and she promised me a kiss if I got them for her. I can remember running up the side of the stage during one of their breaks, there wasn’t any security or anything like that, and one of the smaller singers said, ‘Yep, okay.’ So off he went taking the leaflet that the lassie had given me and got the other ones to sign it, and then I brought it back down and got my kiss off the girl. I can’t remember much about their performance, but I noticed the influence that having a guitar had over all the girls. I can remember afterwards going and looking in all the music shops and thinking I should learn how to play a guitar. Never mind the music, it was the being adored by all those girls that I wanted!”
The remainder of the Macbeth family was there that day too. At just seven and three years of age respectively, John’s younger sisters Ray and Annette were too young to remember this landmark Bee Gees concert, but Mum Ella recalls the trio only too well. “Was that those skinny boys with the long hair?” she queried, displaying her preference for “a short back and sides,” before adding emphatically, “They were awful!”