The Ultimate Biography of The Bee Gees

by Hector Cook

  Barry’s tender, wistful vocal and the song’s simple but strong arrangement perfectly complement its theme of childhood and lost love. The title came from an unexpected source, according to Barry. “‘First Of May’, that was my dog’s birthday. How that song came about was that I had a Pyrenean mountain dog called Barnaby and his birthday was the first of May.”

  The final song is a third instrumental, ‘The British Opera’, built around a simple organ part that might possibly be Robin, and if so, it could be that each brother took charge of an instrumental section, Barry being the ‘International Anthem’.

  Although Maurice has described it as a “heavy” album, some light relief could be found on Japanese copies of Odessa. Japanese pressings of records have always been much sought after by European collectors for a variety of reasons. The vinyl is of a superior quality, singles appear with lavish picture sleeves, and albums and singles both contain lyrics. More often than not, the lyrics appear not only in native Japanese but also in their original English form. Despite the words often being available from the songbooks which were commonly available in Britain at that time, the English lyrics which appeared on Japanese releases were often transcribed direct from the songs themselves. Consequently, mistakes would occur, often amusingly so. Bee Gees songs were no exception, and fans of the group were often amused by these “alternative” versions. The song ‘Odessa’ perhaps suffered more than most as the following comparison reveals:

  Fourteenth of February, eighteen ninety-nine

  The British ship Veronica was lost without a sign

  Bah bah black sheep you haven’t any wee [wool]

  Captain Odessa [Richardson]

  Kept himself a lonely life enclosed [wife in Hull]

  Cheryl [Cherub], I lost the [a] ship in the Baltic Sea

  I’m on a nice hird [iceberg] running free

  Sitting-filing this bird [berg] to the shape of a ship

  Sailing my way back to your lips

  One passing ship gave word that you have no doubts of your oath

  [moved out of your old flat]

  That you love the victor [vicar] more than words can say

  Tell him to pray that I won’t melt away

  And I’ll see your face one day [again]

  Odessa how strong am I

  Odessa how time does fly

  Trever [Treasure] you know the neighbours that lived next door

  They haven’t got their dog anymore

  Freezing sailing around in the North Atlantic

  Can’t seem to eat [leave] the sea anymore

  I just don’t understand

  Why you just moved to Finland

  You love that victor [vicar] more than words can say

  Ask him to pray that I won’t melt away

  And I’ll see your face again

  Odessa how strong am I

  Odessa how time does fly

  Fourteenth of February eighteen ninety-nine

  The British ship Veronica was lost without a sign

  Lyrics by B., R. & M. Gibb © 1969 Abigail Music Ltd.

  The Odessa album marked the beginning of a period that all the brothers would rather forget. Although Barry had been the first to indicate that he might soon leave the group, it was Robin who quit the group first, thus triggering a sequence of events that led to the entire group disintegrating. For a while all three brothers appeared to be at loggerheads with one another, and although they placed the blame for the bickering firmly on the media, without their own almost daily statements to the press there would have been little to write about.

  “It was a lot nastier in the press than it was in actuality,” Barry has protested. “We were nervous wrecks at the end of the Sixties; touring, recording, promotion. I was living in Eaton Square and my neighbours must have thought I was a bit freaky. I can remember a time when I walked out my front door and there were six cars and they all belonged to me. That’s madness. The break was a traumatic experience. Long after we fought, the press had us fighting and reopened wounds.”

  “I used to be very insecure,” Robin said. “There was a lot of pressure around me, and I had trouble coping with initial stardom and touring. We were very young and we didn’t know how to handle [fame], and that was all it was. It was like a kettle that just had to boil. I think that it was good for us to split up when we did. Groups can split up all the time now and come back together again, and no one bats an eyelid or says anything or even thinks of it as any importance.

  “It was never a hoo-hah in America when we split up, but it was in England. For some unknown reason, it was murder. It was the biggest nightmare that I’ve ever, ever gone through, and it has been for the three of us. I mean, the press, the trade papers and everyone just made our lives hell, and they made it so bad for us when we got back together … Those days left a sort of mark on me. I could never understand why people wrote and said the things they did about us when all we did was break up. It was such a dreadful situation at that time that nobody knew what was going to happen from day to day. I never even enjoyed the success of ‘Saved By The Bell’ even in this country because I was too busy in my lawyer’s office. Everyone was suing each other. It was ridiculous and the only people that were benefiting were the lawyers.”

  “It was more of a spontaneous blast,” Barry added. “It was sort of what we call our first fame. When somebody gets famous for the first time and your ego gets out of control, you start to get too much money. The Bee Gees were a casualty of the pop business. We started arguing in the press. This is a big pitfall for most groups, when you start fighting with each other through the newspapers. Instead of talking to each other, we would actually argue through the newspapers.”

  Robin has described the break as “a clash of personalities. We realised at the time that our personalities were all the same. We all had the same goals. The only difference being that we wanted to do it on our own. When we were on our own, we realised the goal we were trying to make on our own was the same goal we were trying to make together.”

  “We stayed to ourselves, surrounded by hangers-on,” Barry explained. “Each had his own camp of ‘friends’ who said he was the real star, he should go solo. When we became isolated, the problems started. We stopped seeing one another as brothers. We were three stars unto ourselves.

  “The pressure and fame got to Robin the most. He’s a very deep thinker with a serious, sensitive side to him. He gets in moods that last quite a while. I remember when things were coming apart … I went over to his house to talk to him, try to straighten things out. All these people were sitting around him. And every time I said something they’d look at him like, ‘Don’t listen to him.’ This was happening to a family, not just to a rock band. It was terrifying.

  “It’s doubly hard to be brothers in show business because our private life was magnified and made public. Our family squabbles were blown out of proportion. It was harder than ever being apart, for – unlike ex-business colleagues – you never become an ex-brother. We were never brother against brother, face to face. We just went mental about the things we read in the press. We’d read about each of us slandering the other, but we saw one another during the break and it wasn’t anything like that. The press eventually turned us against each other and that’s the main thing I blame them for – provoking it – breaking up a family for the sake of gossip stories,” he concluded.

  Lulu said that at the time, she believed her own career to be much more secure than her husband’s. “There seemed to be strange tensions in the group which I sensed but could not really understand,” she wrote in her autobiography. “Barry was undoubtedly the dominant force, and it may be that the others resented this. I know that Maurice thought that Robert Stigwood favoured Barry, and perhaps this created some undercover problems. Later I came to realise that nearly all the jealous remarks I heard people make about Barry were unjustified. The better I know him, the more convinced I am about this.”

  “I was more or less in the middle,
” Maurice recalled. “It was always between Barry and Robin, and the trades were to say one brother said this one week, and one brother would say something about the other brother the next week. And it was, ‘What’s your opinion about that Maurice?’ ‘Well, I don’t know!’ ”

  “We … have a reputation here [in Britain] as the arguing brothers. I don’t think we mishandled anything at the time of our problems because when our solo records came out, we were friends again. But stories of the arguments were still coming out. The press built it up fifteen times more than it was,” he added.

  “I think we were all a little highly strung as a result of our enormous success,” Robin reflected poignantly. “I said things at the time that were just said in the heat of the moment, and I think that goes for the rest of us too.”

  Even Andy Gibb, only 11 years old at the time, said, “It was a very shaky thing, a bit of a sore point as far as our family went because my brothers weren’t talking to each other, and they all wanted to because they’re so close. They can’t get by a week without talking to each other. They wanted to call, but no one wanted to swallow their pride and do it. So I knew the family was going through a real tight moment because it affected my parents and everything … For families to split up, it’s a really strange thing. I knew they were going to get back together again, and our family knew. There was no doubt in that, but it’s hard for the public to know that.”

  * * *

  The growing signs of disquiet were revealed by Molly Gibb shortly after the release of the Odessa album. “It’s not fair,” she protested. “Robin does 90 per cent of the work on the album, and I bet he doesn’t get the same amount of credit. While the others were leaving the recording studios about eleven at night, I never used to see Robin until four or five in the morning.”

  Barry took up the challenge, retorting, “He has said that he was not getting enough credit, but he never said anything to us. If we had sat down and discussed it …

  “The press are closer to him than we are. I just get abused. But I would remind him that he only wrote four songs on this new LP. That may be a reminder to him. I have been writing for the past nine years. He’s been writing only a few years. Over the past year there were different things, but we never argued about him not getting enough credit. I saw something coming because we were arguing a lot. It is a fact that we’ve grown up together and never been out of each other’s sight. Three brothers are not usually like that because they will have different jobs. That is one of the reasons why this happened.

  “But Robin was very lackadaisical about sessions. He would turn up at the last minute or an hour after we’d finished. So we didn’t get anything from him to put down. I liked ‘Lamplight’ but I liked the other side as well. The next thing is that we read in the papers that Robin has said the ‘First Of May’ shouldn’t have gone out.”

  Indeed, for much of the following year, the only communication the rest of the Gibb family would have with Robin was conducted through the music trade papers.

  On March 19, 1969, Robin announced he was leaving The Bee Gees to pursue a solo career, in breach of the five-year contract he had signed with Robert Stigwood. That same day, Barry, Maurice and Colin were in the studio laying down tracks for ‘Tomorrow, Tomorrow’ and ‘Sun In My Morning’.

  “The last time I slammed out was three months ago when I said I couldn’t work with Robin again,” Barry said. “Since then, he’s had the daggers out for me. I didn’t know he had left until I read it. He didn’t say goodbye or tell our parents he was leaving – that’s what annoyed me. It’s all a bit upsetting and bewildering when none of us really knows what is happening and are unable to reason with Robin, but I think he knows that it would be a mistake to leave the rest of us.”

  The three remaining Bee Gees – Barry, Maurice and Colin – made a scheduled appearance on Lulu’s television variety show on the following Saturday evening, and at the end of the programme, Barry and Maurice waved to the camera and sent get well wishes to their absent brother. Earlier that day Robert Stigwood had received a medical certificate from Robin’s doctor claiming that he was too ill to appear. “The certificate says he is suffering from nervous exhaustion,” Stigwood told the press, “and we hope he will be well soon.”

  Soon the pretence of illness was set aside, when a press officer issued the statement, “Solicitors acting on behalf of the Robert Stigwood Organisation have issued a writ against Robin Gibb and Robin Gibb Ltd claiming a declaration, damages and injunctions. This is now being served. The company’s solicitors – Messrs. Wright and Webb – have retained Mr Quintin Hogg, Q.C., and Mr David Sullivan, Q.C.”

  A month later it was announced that: “The writs were purely an interim measure to prevent Robin and others claiming he had actually left the Bee Gees.”

  “It definitely does look as if there is little hope of Robin staying,” Barry said. “But Robert Stigwood doesn’t give up easily. None of us knows what the outcome will be. But speaking personally, I would have thought he’d have been on the side of the brothers. He may be married but he’s still the same blood.

  “We’ve been recording without him in the past few days in the hope of finding something suitable for a new single, which shows that we’re still determined to keep the group going whatever happened. When he has fully recovered, I think his feelings will change. He’ll realise it would be daft for The Bee Gees to break up – or, at least, for him to leave us.”

  Robin denied that his leaving the group had anything to do either with Molly’s ambitions for him, or with his wanting more credit within the group. “I just could not take The Bee Gees any more,” he said. “Everyone has a point in his life when everything about them gets confusing. I felt like a prisoner, like I was in a whirlpool.

  “We used to be very compatible on everything and then we started to clash. I stayed on the same level. I’m not saying they became big-headed but I found the simple things we used to talk about were not happening. In Australia we used to work till four in the morning for usually six pounds. Barry had one pound; we got ten shillings each.” Although by his own admission, arithmetic was not Robin’s best subject, the balance of four pounds can be explained by the fact that the boys were supporting the family at that time.

  “On the ship over here,” Robin continued, “we were going to try and become the biggest group in the world. Success changes quite a lot of people and I think it left me alone in The Bee Gees. Where it did change others, maybe unfortunately, it didn’t change me. There became this false aura in the recording studios where they were more publicity conscious than work conscious. I found myself working by myself for half the time. It turned slowly to hatred after a while because they didn’t care if I was interested in the work or not. Their heart wasn’t in their work but it is now because I have left.

  “Maurice and I were neglected publicity wise. It had been all Barry. What were Maurice and Colin and I – just Barry’s backing group? When I left they thought I was being selfish and wanted all the credit, but it was the group I was thinking of.”

  Barry was quick to offer his own opinion in the press. “Robin wants to sunbathe in the spotlight while the rest of the group stand in the shadows,” he declared. “The things he has said have been extremely rude, from my own brother, and I would not forgive him for that. I would say that he is unwell. He’s got a very, very big persecution complex. He thinks everybody hates him. But it is a family matter now, and it is getting to the stage where we should be thinking of going in and smashing the door in.

  “I picked up the paper like everybody else and I wondered what it was all about. I phoned him and I was told to bugger off. He wouldn’t speak to me.

  “We don’t know where he is; all we know are the things he has said about us. If he wants us to get together he can contact us. Many attempts have been made to contact him, but he has made no answer. So we have stopped.

  “He has been grasping for freedom. His attitude is, ‘I want to do this and I want to
do that and bugger the guys next door’ – who happen to be his own brothers. His head has become too big for him. The wife should have nothing to do with the husband’s business affairs. I’ve never got on with Molly. I’ve tried very hard, because she is my brother’s wife. He is being pushed around. They are accusing me of all kinds of things I have never heard of. Foul things, well below the belt. You couldn’t print them.

  “He still has one of the greatest voices I have ever heard. He has a far better voice than I have. And he is a great songwriter too. I don’t think he knows what is going on. One day he’s going to find out the truth. He has not only made a mistake, he has ruined his career.”

  Not to be outdone, Robin countered with: “The thing that really hurt, and was the deciding factor on my splitting from The Bee Gees concerned a feature which was conducted between a reporter and my wife. It took things entirely out of context which she had said and slandered both my character and her own. It made it look as though Molly was a bad influence on me instead of the inspiration she is.”

  Rightly or wrongly, Molly seemed destined to become the scapegoat for the split in much the same way that Yoko Ono would be blamed by Beatles’ fans for her part in the break-up of that group. Molly was accused of turning Robin against his family and Robert Stigwood and, more bizarrely, of holding him a virtual prisoner, isolated in their Kensington home.

  According to Tom Kennedy, Molly was “a very down-to-earth, forthright person, and she may have put people’s backs up. She was despised by everybody in the other camps because they thought she had more power over him, and she obviously had his ear, as well. Over their cocoa last thing at night, she was his confidante. She probably had the best at heart for him at the time, but in the long run, his path with his brothers was definitely the best for him.”

  “The game,” as Barry had dubbed it, now came back to haunt Robin. With the well-publicised attacks of “nervous exhaustion” used as excuses for the cancellation of undersold tour dates and his failure to appear on Lulu’s television programme, a few carefully uttered words to the press could cast aspersions on his mental health.