by Hector Cook
Meanwhile, Barry, Robin and Maurice decided to register, along with 2,000 other aspiring “casuals,” at the Automagic Carwash on New South Head Road in Edgecliff, an eastern suburb of Sydney, right next to Abe Saffron’s Lodge 44 motel.
Former carwash Manager Kevin Murphy has many fond memories of the brothers’ time there.
“The three wet fellows seen from the overhead walkway so regularly toiling away on their cars were The Bee Gees! The three elder Gibbs – I never knew Andy – worked for me for over twelve months and were among my most regular casuals at the ’wash. They were unknown to me other than I knew they were doing gigs around Sydney.
“They were out-front most weekday mornings, looking for some hours. They were most amenable to the worst jobs in the place, I can recall. I had them working ‘the mitts’. Now the mitts was the dirtiest, steamiest, wettest, most uncomfortable part of the automated line that made up the carwash and my memory of them is that they put up with that section of work better than most.”
The three boys worked there on and off for the best part of that year but it was their last day working for him that Kevin best recalls. “As demand fell away in the afternoon or when rain threatened, casuals would be stood down. My mistake that day lay in picking one of the three working in the mitts to go home and was I surprised when all three marched out? Not at all. It was the risk you took in letting friends work together.”
Within a few days of the incident, Kevin was walking in Pitt Street, Sydney when he came upon a familiar Volkswagen Kombi van. It was emblazoned with hand-written legends such as ‘BGs’ first tour of England.’ “I knew then that all was okay. They were ready to tour anyway, and I wasn’t really the catalyst for their leaving town.”
It had quickly become apparent that their collaboration with Trevor Gordon was unlikely to trouble the chart compilers so, in February, Festival sold the group on the idea of recording another non-Gibb composition. ‘Every Day I Have To Cry’ was written in 1962 by American rhythm and blues singer-songwriter Arthur Alexander, incidentally one of John Lennon’s favourite composers. Since The Beatles recorded ‘Anna’, and The Rolling Stones covered ‘You’d Better Move On’, Alexander became the only composer to have material recorded by all three groups. ‘Every Day I Have To Cry’ had become a minor hit Stateside for Steve Alaimo, and obviously the hope was that the Gibbs could reprise this and use it as a launching pad for their stuttering career down-under.
Certainly the Bee Gees cover of ‘Every Day I Have To Cry’ was a fine attempt. Both Barry’s lead vocals and the harmonies are well used. It was possibly the best example of their distinctive vocal sound to date. For the first time on record, Robin’s unique voice really asserts itself at the end of the song.
At least this time Festival allowed Barry to write the B-side. ‘You Wouldn’t Know’ is quite a contrast. Barry’s John Lennon style vocal continued and the fast beat to it shows a real R&B influence. Robin and Maurice’s vocals really stand out in this song. The engineer/producer on both of these songs is uncertain as, by about this time, Bill Shepherd – just freshly arrived from England – had replaced Robert Iredale.
Shepherd was a proven studio engineer with great experience from working in England. With more musical training than Iredale, and a sparkling personality, his rapport with the boys and appreciation of their potential had an immediate positive result on their records. By coincidence, Shepherd had previously worked with famed British producer Joe Meek but, more significantly, with an entrepreneur called Robert Stigwood. Fate and good timing would soon bring all three, Shepherd, Stigwood and The Bee Gees, together in another land, with extraordinary results.
The single was released in March, both sides credited to “Barry Gibb and The Bee Gees,” a format which would continue for all their records for the remainder of the year. Once again, sales were dismal and it would be a long time before The Bee Gees would issue another record without their own songwriting credits. As Barry himself put it, “Well, if we’re going to have flops, we may as well have flops with our own songs.”
Back at Belinda Music Publishers, Tony Brady had continued to work hard at promoting Barry’s songs in the USA and his labours were starting to bear fruit. During his first Silver Spade shows in Australia in 1964, popular 22-year-old American singer Carson “Wayne” Newton had agreed to meet with Tony. A native of Virginia, and proud of his Cherokee and Powhatan Indian heritage, Newton had also been something of a child star, having performed since the age of five and having his own radio show just one year later.
Following Wayne’s performances in the Silver Spade Room of Sydney’s Chevron Hilton, the American was persuaded by Brady to visit the Belinda office, where he listened to Barry performing some of his own compositions on acoustic guitar. Newton was so impressed that he took some of Barry’s songs back to the States and gave these to a friend, the singer and actor, Bobby Darin. Darin, uniquely amongst his generation of performers, took an active role in his own management, had his own publishing company and was actively seeking new talent. Wayne and Bobby agreed they would keep a close eye on the young Gibb’s progress over the next few months, agreeing that he would clearly be a considerable asset to Darin’s expansion plans.
One of the batch of songs was ‘They’ll Never Know’ which Wayne himself recorded on November 5 for his American album Red Roses For A Blue Lady. Released by Capitol on April 12, 1965, it became Newton’s best selling LP to date, reaching a respectable 17 in the US charts. Terry Melcher, the album’s arranger who also contributed back-up vocals and happened to be the son of actress Doris Day, particularly liked one of the other songs that Wayne had passed on to Darin and offered it to an actor/vocalist that he was working with at the same time.
Although ‘They’ll Never Know’ earns the distinction of being the first Gibb song to be released outside of Australia and New Zealand, Jimmy Boyd’s ‘That’s What I’ll Give To You’ became the first such composition to appear as a single, being released by the Chicago-based Vee-Jay label in late May, 1965. Boyd had come to prominence in 1952 when, in the last week of the year, he hit number one on the USA pop charts with ‘I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus’. By so doing he became the youngest solo artist to have a number one song, a record that still stands. However by the mid-Sixties, his commercial successes had declined considerably, and he failed with this attempt to rejuvenate his career.
With one eye on the chart progress of Wayne Newton’s LP, Barry unfortunately had a patch over the other at this time. Curious to see the effect, he fired an air gun point blank at a brick wall. The pellet ricocheted off the wall and hit him in his left eye. “The eye was an awful mess at the time,” Barry told TV Week, “but I’m hopeful the sight can be saved. At the moment it is causing splitting headaches, particularly when it is exposed to light.”
The accident couldn’t have come at a worse time as the group was performing every day at Sydney’s Royal Easter Show for its week’s duration, doing as many as 21 shows a day. However, Barry was glad to be kept so busy claiming, “This has helped take my mind off worrying about whether I’ll lose sight in the eye.”
A doctor’s report to determine whether the sight in his injured eye could be saved was anxiously awaited during the last week of April, and Barry was concerned about an additional complication if it couldn’t. “What I’m most afraid of is that, according to the doctors, the loss of sight from my left eye could affect the sight in the right eye in time. Meanwhile, if I do lose the sight from the eye, I will just have to face up to wearing a patch permanently.” He added that he didn’t think this would greatly affect his singing career. “It’ll certainly teach me to be more careful with guns in the future.”
It no doubt came as a great relief to all the family to learn that, given time, the eye would heal of its own accord.
Mid year in Australia is winter, but the boys and their father continued to travel far and wide in search of the audiences that their studio output had clearly not been reaching. The major e
ngagement of that winter, however, was right on their very own doorstep, “The Gala Night of Stars”, with all proceeds going to Torchbearers For Legacy. A crowd of over 5,000 raised more than £1,250 for the locally based charity. The list of performers read like a “Who’s Who” of Sydney pop artists of the time: Johnny O’Keefe, Billy Thorpe & The Aztecs, Col Joye & The Joy Boys, The de Kroo Brothers, The Blue Jays, Judy Stone, Little Pattie, The Showmen, Johnny Devlin & The Devils, The Rajahs, Johnny Reb & The Atlantics, Max Merritt & The Meteors, The Easybeats and various comedy acts. Barry was sufficiently moved by the occasion to say, later that evening, “We’ve never enjoyed a show more.”
The following month, one booking took them to Goulburn, about 130 miles south west of Sydney. The concert passed without incident and the family set out for home as normal. “It was a nice straight road,” recalls Robin, “we were in a good mood, and dad pushed the car up to 80 [miles per hour]. Suddenly it overturned and we were flying through the air. None of us had time to do anything except close our eyes and put our hands together.
“Eventually the car stopped. When we climbed out we had a good look at each other and were so surprised that we still had all our limbs, that we burst out laughing. Later we discovered the car had skidded into a fence and ripped it right away from the posts.
“Somehow, and to this day I don’t know how, the word got back to Sydney that The Bee Gees had been killed. The radio stations started playing all our records and reading out messages of sympathy. When we got home safe and sound, it was almost as if they were annoyed to see us after crying their eyes out for nothing.”
It had been a narrow escape but not without injury after all. Troubled by a pain in his side for some weeks, Barry eventually went to see the doctor who advised the startled teenager that he had sustained a broken rib in the crash but that it had just about healed itself by now. Commented Barry, “I reckon I’m better than Tarzan.” Maintaining his fitness was a worry for him, spending as much time as he did on less active pursuits. “Sometimes I feel I should take up some sort of sport to keep fit, but working the strange hours that I do, it’s hard to organise,” he admitted.
Festival Records were now fully utilising the skills of new house producer/arranger Bill Shepherd, who greeted the brothers on their next return to the studio. While Barry continued to write for other artists, Robin and Maurice had spent the six months since their visit developing their instrumental skills. Using Shepherd’s expert musical direction, the new Bee Gees sound was first heard on the A-side, ‘Wine And Women’.
For the first time Robin Gibb shared lead vocals with Barry and their alternating, yet contrasting, styles added a new dimension to their vocals. Musically too there were changes. Barry’s rhythm guitar sound was more prominent as were Maurice’s McCartney-inspired bass playing. Robin Gibb also appears for the first time playing organ.
By contrast, ‘Follow The Wind’, also written by Barry, had quite a folk sound to it. A song quite obviously influenced by Australian band The Seekers, who had just achieved the first of many successes in the UK, it remains one of the most underrated songs of the period. Ironically, The New Seekers would go on to record this song in 1970.
From time to time, particularly on slow news days, completely unfounded stories appear in the press as if by magic with nobody quite sure from where they emanate. It came as something of a surprise, therefore, for Hugh to read in the paper one morning that his boys would be opening a record shop in the Sydney suburb of Kogarah that summer.
There were also murmurs that Festival was close to dropping the boys and that this might have been their last single with the label had sales not picked up. That the figures did show a marked improvement owes little to Festival, who barely raised a finger to promote it, and more to the Gibbs own ingenuity as they resorted to desperate measures to ensure that their best record to date would at least be heard.
“ ‘Wine and Women’ went to number 19,” Barry explained, “mainly because we went out and bought it! You could do that in those days.”
Their new record entered the radio 2UE sponsored local chart thanks to some very precise market research which the brothers had discreetly conducted themselves. As Robin tells it, “First of all, we found out the shops of the radio station’s survey … Walton’s, Woolworths, about six in all. That’s all [the information] we needed. You didn’t have to sell very many records to get on the actual Sydney charts. We arranged for our fan club to meet us on the steps of Sydney Town Hall. It wasn’t hard to rendezvous with them ’cause there were only six of them.”
Barry elaborates further. “We knew if we could sell 400 records on that [September’s] Saturday afternoon, by the next Wednesday chart, we’d be at number 35. We only had £200 so it could be no higher than 35. Sure enough, the next week, the record was 35 with a bullet. We were going to get there eventually, but we had to find a way to make it happen and we did.”
Once in the Top 40, the disc began to receive airplay and, while there was no guarantee of subsequent sales, at least the record buying public had the chance to decide for themselves. The gamble paid off and the brothers were able to recoup their investment although the money wasn’t the main issue according to Barry. “It did an enormous amount for us. It made momentum for us in the country. Even if it was just one hit, it was something.” There was also a lesson to be learned for Festival’s marketing department, as they were about to miss a wonderful opportunity by failing to adequately promote the next Barry Gibb song, which would shortly attract the attention of the Australian music industry.
It had taken The Bee Gees eight singles to achieve their first goal. Now that they had tasted chart success, they wanted more of the same and rushed back into the studio in search of it.
At 3.35, ‘I Was A Lover, A Leader Of Men’ was easily their longest recording to date at more than double the length of their shortest song. Having found a successful formula with ‘Wine And Women’, Barry had obviously decided that more of the same was required. Again built around a strong rhythm guitar sound much like that on its predecessor, ‘I Was A Lover …’ was their strongest vocal performance yet. With a neat piece of guitar work in the middle, it was also their “rockiest” sounding release to date.
For the B-side, Barry would break what would become the golden rule of his songwriting technique. In 1997 he confirmed, “At some point we establish exactly what the melody is, note for note, and then when we do our lyrics, we don’t detract from that melody. We don’t change the melody to go with certain words we may like, we really make the words fit the melody we have pre-established.” His latest song, ‘And The Children Laughing’ was lyrically deserving of being the exception.
Obviously a song influenced by current world events of the time, ‘And The Children Laughing’ also has elements of the protest song style of Bob Dylan and particularly Barry McGuire’s ‘Eve Of Destruction’. While today’s poets could say that it’s lyrically naïve, it’s in essence a very thoughtful, if somewhat wishful, song from a very observant eighteen year old.
Sadly, though deserving of better, this October release failed to build on the limited achievement of its predecessor. It did, however, win Barry his first award, Adelaide radio 5KA’s “Top Talent Award” (Composer Of The Year) for ‘I Was A Lover, A Leader Of Men’, proving that the music industry thought more of him than did his own label. This did not diminish his pride in accepting it. “That was a very big moment for us. That told us we were going somewhere. We knew not where, but we were going somewhere.”
Now formally recognised as one of Australia’s leading songwriters, Barry conceded that one aspect of his composing set him apart from the rest. “The words come fairly easily. Whenever I think of a tune, I record it on tape and pay someone to write it down for me. It would probably make things a lot easier if I did learn how to write music. Anyway, I’ve still managed to write hundreds of songs one way or another.”
By now, Festival had quite a few Bee Gees recordings in their vaults,
sufficient for them to issue the first real Bee Gees LP. It contained 14 tracks, all written by Barry and all performed by The Bee Gees. If it needed a snappy title to catch the public’s imagination, they certainly didn’t get it from Festival’s marketing department who, in a rush of creativity, decided on the ultra bland Barry Gibb & The Bee Gees Sing And Play 14 Barry Gibb Songs. This first ever Bee Gees album found its way into all good record shops that November. Anyone in possession of all nine Bee Gees singles to date, and there were precious few, if any, would have been pleasantly surprised to learn that the compilation included three new songs specially written for it.
‘I Don’t Think It’s Funny’ is notable for being the first Barry Gibb composed Bee Gees song on which he did not sing lead, this being Robin’s first chance on record to showcase his unique vocal style. ‘How Love Was True’, one of the most mature songs from their Australian recordings, is often cited as an example of how similar The Bee Gees sound could be to The Beatles. The last of the trio, ‘To Be Or Not Be’, is a raucous piano pounding rocker sounding very much as if Jerry Lee Lewis was in the studio with them at the time.
The other 11 songs comprised the Gibb compositions to be found on the singles with the exception of both sides of their first single and their collaborations with Trevor Gordon. The album’s lack of sales mean that Sing And Play is today arguably the most sought after and expensive Bee Gees album to buy in its original form. Curiously, the rear sleeve of the LP cover shows a photo of a Farfisa portable electronic organ and states “which is featured on this album”.
It would have been simple for the brothers to record an album of entirely new material had Festival allowed them sufficient studio time. Certainly there were sufficient suitable Barry Gibb originals as, by now, other artists had recorded and released 25 of his songs, none of which had been recorded by The Bee Gees themselves. By looking at the list of unrecorded songs that Barry had registered during that period, there were obviously still many more lying unused on the shelves.