by Hector Cook
“Everything went wrong after I left The Bee Gees. My whole scene started to crumble. I tried to form a new group [Ashton, Gardner & Dyke] and negotiated a recording deal with The Beatles’ company, Apple Records. But first we were stopped from recording because of my contract with The Bee Gees. Then, when that was sorted out, our first record was scrapped before it was released.
“I knew I had already spent a lot of money keeping the group in hotels, food and wages. But suddenly I found I’d got through £15,000 in under four months. I reckon another £5,000 had gone on entertaining and buying clothes.
“Then I found I had a number of unpaid bills. Nearly all had been incurred by one of my companies and the reason they hadn’t been paid is that one of my business associates owes me a lot of money. Everyone will be paid as soon as I get things sorted out.”
“Vince was a hell of a nice guy, I have to say, and I got on with him very well,” said Tom Kennedy. “I did some bits and pieces with him after he left the band, just to help him out, when he went to Ashton, Gardner & Dyke. He managed them, but it was a half-hearted thing really. Although he was a very good guitarist, management skills are another thing altogether.
“Management expertise is knowing how best to use the money. There’s a lovely story, and I’m sure it is true, that he gave Ashton, Gardner & Dyke £500 to go out and buy stage clothes. They were party animals, and they came back with a jumper each for £500. They were quite a talented trio of musicians and probably given the right management they would have done very well.”
Vince’s wife had left him, and was sharing a basement flat in Chelsea with four other girls. “I’m still very much in love with Vince and I hope we can get together again,” Dianne Melouney told reporters.
Despite living in a cheap hotel in Guildford with a Swedish model, Vince said that he still cherished hopes that his marriage could be saved, but added sadly, “I don’t know whether there can be any reconciliation with Dianne now.”
He had quit The Bee Gees to pursue his first love, the blues. In a bitter twist of irony, his very existence now reflected the mood of the music which inspired him most.
* * *
Looking back on those days, Vince is quite philosophical about the impression he gave, to some outside observers at any rate, that his decision to leave was the wrong one. “I had a feeling it was all coming to a close,” he explained. “Musically, I was so frustrated and there were tensions in the band, Barry getting all the lead vocals etc. Mo all of a sudden had a driver, and all of these other people started having their say. You know, Vince should be doing this and shouldn’t do that.
“Robert also presented us with a new second and very wordy contract,” he continued. “While the boys signed it, Colin and I got some legal advice and that caused some problems too. We never signed the contract. Lots of tension started to appear. I wasn’t getting on with Robin because he didn’t like the blues, and their father always made Colin and I feel like outsiders.”
Vince is the first to admit that he didn’t get on with Hugh. “I thought he was a troublemaker. Overbearing. At times [Colin and I] would tell the boys, ‘He’s your dad, not ours. Tell him to stop telling us to do things.’ I think they had a word with him at some point to back off. [He was] very forthright in his opinion. Colin and I were always made to feel like outsiders. He dictated things to us … drove us crazy. Barbara, on the other hand, was lovely.”
His memories of those times remain good ones nonetheless. “Fantastic, [we had a] wonderful time travelling in first class [and staying in] great hotels, and we had a lot of fun initially and had a good rapport.
“Robert Stigwood was a good guy [who] treated people with respect. A very polite man [who] put a lot of time and effort into The Bee Gees. When I said [that] I wanted to leave, he asked me to complete a German tour they were about to do, and if I did then he would relieve me from my contractual obligations. So I did and he did. When I left he made the comment, but not in a nasty way, that he never wanted me in the band at the beginning but I never asked what he meant by that.”
It is clear that Vince still regards all four of his former fellow band members with great affection and has maintained some kind of contact with them since his departure. Ever affable, he prefers to look at the positive side of people’s characters as his retrospective appraisal of the brothers demonstrates.
“Barry was the driving force behind the band. He was always working. I visited him in 1976 and stayed with him at the Isle of Man for a couple of days, and he was always doing things. We co-wrote a couple of songs ‘Morning Rain’ and ‘Let It Ride’, but they were never published. [He’s a] nice guy, very gentle, thoughtful, extremely diplomatic. Barry was always on my side. When I first joined the band, because I joined after Colin, for the first five months I was on a wage. It was Barry who went in to bat for me. It was on his instigation to Robert that it wasn’t fair, that I was an equal part of the band, [that] I should be getting equal money.”
Vince never socialised with either Barry or Robin at all. In the case of Robin, whom Vince can best describe as “extremely eccentric and introverted,” this was probably due mostly to their differing musical taste. Ask him about Maurice though, and you get a different response altogether.
“Flamboyant, extremely extroverted, prone to exaggerate things. If you bought a Rolls [Royce], he’d buy a bigger one. I think he had issues to deal with Barry and Robin with their voices and where he stood in the band. Mo, Colin and I would socialise quite a lot and would have these great blues jams, just the three of us.”
Of the four, he was closest to Colin whom he described as “introverted, very intelligent, [but] would go out of his way to get publicity.”
Vince Melouney no longer receives royalties from Bee Gees’ recordings, having sold his interest in them around 1981, apparently because he was short of money at the time.
17
AND THEN THERE WERE NONE
“SINCE ROBIN LEFT … Barry and I are a lot closer,” Maurice claimed, “we’re working much more together. We’re having a ball, we can bring anyone we like into things.
“I did the majority of the backings anyway, even when Robin was with us, but there’s more work for me now. It’s bringing me out more – I do six leads on the next album; before I think I only sang three all told. I write soft, and Barry keeps telling me to write harder music. I’m progressing more to the arranging side and Barry is getting more ideas-wise – he’s freer with his words.
“At the moment, we’ll go on as a three-piece [group], and if we find someone suitable to take Robin’s place, we’ll take him in … We’ve only seen two people. We’re getting tapes from Wapping and Nottingham and Stoke and all over, but … we want to get someone who can sing nice. We can take care of the hair and the clothes and all that. We’re not looking for a copy of Robin though.”
Dave Dee was instrumental in finding a possible stand-in for Robin. “[Barry] was looking for a replacement – and I found him one,” he recalled. “A guy called Peter Mason … He was a Scouser, but he lived in Salisbury where we lived. Barry was looking for somebody who had a similar voice sound but also wrote.
“So Pete Mason went up to London and Barry really liked him. Barry actually took him out and bought him a couple of suits ’cause he wasn’t quite as trendy as they were. I’ll always remember, he took him to Carnaby Street and bought him some suits and got him all decked out before he met Robert Stigwood … Anyway, it was all on, and he was going to go into the band as Robin’s replacement – and Robert Stigwood blocked it.
“Never really got to the bottom of it, but it all just fell apart, because, I think, as far as Robert Stigwood was concerned, and quite rightly so, he wanted to get Robin back.”
“It all started because people said my voice was very much … like a Bee Gees’ voice,” said Peter, “probably because it was a high nasally sound – coming from the north … I suppose … There was a thing in one of the musical papers, the Melody Maker or N
ew Musical Express, that Robin Gibb had left [The Bee Gees], and Barry was looking for a replacement. It didn’t matter who it was as long as they could do it! It didn’t have to be a name or anything like that. So basically anybody could apply.
“I mentioned it to Dave – I don’t know whether I said it in joking or whether it was in earnest, and he spoke to Barry Gibb. Dave reckoned that I could do that kind of thing. I always remember when we went in to meet Barry, he’d got into The Band (the Bob Dylan band), and they were playing, laying tracks down in that kind of way, because I always liked that sort of stuff, it led on to Little Feat and things like that, but The Band were a very rootsy type of band, which is what I was into, even now.
“He was very, very nice, Barry Gibb; he’s a real gentleman. We ran through some songs there and then, things like ‘Massachusetts’ and ‘New York Mining Disaster’ which is my all-time favourite. He said, there and then, ‘Well, as far as I’m concerned, you’re in. Obviously, I want you to meet Maurice.’
“I can’t remember whether I met Maurice before I went into the studio with them. I remember spending one night with Maurice; he introduced me to some people as Robin’s replacement. Barry had taken me shopping and wanted me to meet Robert Stigwood. He said, ‘I’ve just got to sort everything out with Robert, so you’ve got to look good for him; let’s go and get you some clothes.’ He took me into the West End, to Soho, bought me some clothes, fitted me out from top to bottom and then we sort of hung around.
“It was one of those very ‘in’ shops at the time. He just pulled his Rolls-Royce Corniche onto the sidewalk and we walked in. Everybody just bowed to him, and he said, ‘This is Peter, I’d like you to fit him out real nice!’ and they did! I’ve still got that suit hung up in my wardrobe.”
Peter recalled going to the studio with Barry and spending time at his home with Lynda. “[Barry] had two servants who, when I was at his home, they fussed around me; he made sure that they looked after me. He was actually charming, I was very impressed, and Maurice was very nice too.
“I always remember being in the studio with Maurice one time because he was on the phone to Lulu, and he was saying that he’d just written a song for her. I did speak to Lulu on the phone when I was at Barry’s. The phone went, and Barry said, ‘Could you answer that for me?’ I didn’t know who it was – this lady said, ‘Can I speak to Barry?’ ‘Yes, just a minute,’ I said. ‘There’s a lady wants to speak to you,’ I said to Barry, and he said, ‘Can you ask who it is?’ So I said, ‘Can I have your name, please?’ and she said, ‘Tell him it’s Marie Lawrie!’ so she was a little bit irate I think!”
Barry took Pete to IBC Studios and during July they worked on some of the tracks for the Cucumber Castle album. “I did some harmonies, I remember doing three songs … There was ‘Don’t Forget To Remember’ and I put the harmony down on that and two other songs. [I don’t know] whether it was a tryout, although he’d said before that he wanted me, because we sat and sang together.
“When I sit and listen to ‘Don’t Forget To Remember’ I can’t really tell whether it’s me or not. He ran the tracks and said, ‘Can you put a harmony to that?’ They already had backing tracks, and Barry had put his vocal down. Obviously, because it was the hit, ‘Don’t Forget To Remember’ sticks out in my memory.
“Barry played this track for me a few times, and it sounds to me like it could have been ‘Bury Me Down By The River’.” The third song is likely to have been ‘Who Knows What A Room Is’, which was demoed at the same time as ‘Don’t Forget To Remember’ on May 7.
“I was hanging around, and hanging around and I think there was talk going on with Robert Stigwood who was trying to arrange a meeting, and I think that Robert Stigwood was still hoping that he’d get them all back together again … It went on a few weeks and I was kind of hanging around then.
“It came to a point where [Barry] said to me, ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen, but one thing’s for sure, I’ll make an album with you if this doesn’t work out.’ This was further down the line, two or three weeks maybe, because we just didn’t seem to be getting this meeting together and I was hanging around; I wasn’t getting fed up, but I was starting to think, ‘What is [happening]?’ I said, ‘Well look, I think I’ll go on back to Salisbury, you sort it out,’ and he said, ‘Whatever happens, I’ll make an album with you and we’ll do something.’
“In a way I didn’t really expect it. I don’t know why, I just didn’t. I was there, it was taken seriously, we weren’t playing games or anything. I always felt that, okay, I was very flattered to be asked but I always felt that it was the brothers, and I always think deep down that they would get back together … I think I was right about that, because I think that’s why [Stigwood] was holding off not meeting me and so I wasn’t surprised. It was a big thrill, it was just nice being with them, they made me feel so welcome, I think that as much as anything impressed me. I think that in the end it wasn’t such a big shock … I went back to Salisbury, and then I never heard anything.”
It was the end of Peter Mason’s brief career as a wannabe Bee Gee, and no more was ever mentioned of the album Barry promised to make, although, ever the optimist, even to this day, Pete says, “I’m still ready and waiting, Barry.”
Around that time, Dave Dee decided to leave Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich and, knowing that Peter was still waiting and available, Dave offered him a job. He wanted a guitarist and harmony singer and also asked him to be his personal assistant. “So I was involved with him all the way down the line in that way when he went solo,” Peter said.
Meanwhile The Bee Gees had decided that they could carry on on their own. “We did at first think we should replace Robin,” Barry admitted, “and we even considered asking Jack Bruce to join us, but after working in the studios we’ve decided we don’t need an outsider.”
Completely unaware and unconcerned that his brothers were attempting to replace him, Robin jetted off to the United States, keeping busy with a round of scheduled appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, Kraft Music Hall, The Glen Campbell Show and The Andy Williams Show.
The Bee Gees released a single from the soundtrack of the forthcoming Cucumber Castle film called ‘Don’t Forget To Remember’. This release, a song Robin would never have recorded, was probably to keep The Bee Gees in the public eye after Robin hit big with ‘Saved By The Bell’. It was the first real country number from The Bee Gees, with Barry singing down in Maurice’s natural range, very smooth and full. This wasn’t exactly what the public expected, but it did very well in Europe, and in Britain it matched Robin’s achievement of reaching the number two spot on the charts.
“The thing is,” said Maurice, “that it is Jim Reeves-ish, it’s rather like ‘Oh Lonesome Me’ and that sort of song, and you’ll never forget the melody. It wasn’t a deliberate dedication to Jim Reeves – it just worked out that way.”
It’s not clear how close to an album they were in August when this was released, since there are several song titles from this year that have never come out. The B-side was originally planned as ‘I Lay Down And Die’, but it was changed to ‘The Lord’ days after tape of the former had been sent out to the record companies. For some reason Atco of Canada put out copies with the original B-side, a different mix with much more backing vocal than what was finally heard on the album in 1970.
At the time of its release Maurice was promoting group unity amongst the remaining three, saying, “We know we don’t want to split up … maybe Colin will want to leave sometime in the future, but we all have different things we’re involved in …”
Barry and Maurice were involved in their own individual production companies and a proposal to launch their own Bee Gees record label. Maurice revealed they had planned this out in every detail except for the fundamental problem of what to call it. “We thought of all sorts of names … We thought of ‘BG’ and even ‘Lemon’. We had decided a long time before then that the label colours would be blue and white –
just because we like blue and white – but we couldn’t think of a good commercial name.
“Years ago we had a record about apples and lemons and at the time we thought what a good label ‘Lemon’ would be. But we scrapped the idea because everyone would have thought we had only chosen ‘Lemon’ because of The Beatles and ‘Apple’.
“We don’t want our company to be another Apple. While they have produced a lot of hit records, I also feel they have lost their way a little. They employed too many of the old school friends in the beginning, even though they weren’t doing a proper job. Our company has no room for people unless they know what they are doing.”
P.P. Arnold, Samantha Sang and The Marbles were among artists proposed for the new label. “Maurice and I plan to record The Marbles solo,” Barry revealed. “Maurice will record Trevor [Gordon] – who has a voice exactly like Cliff Richard though he’s never been able to use it before – and I’ll produce Graham [Bonnet], whose voice is phenomenal.”
Maurice advised any up-and-coming performers that one of the most important ingredients for success was a strong ego. “They should have complete faith in themselves and be a little big-headed. It does help if you really believe you have something worthwhile.
“Anyone who thinks he could make a go of the business can write to Barry and myself at our office and if we think they are good we will sign them up. Once we have signed them to our label we will do the production ourselves. We have done quite a lot of production, not only on records but also for television films.”
Colin and Joanne Petersen had joined forces with another friend, Slim Miller, to launch no less than five companies, with Joanne handling management, Colin production and Miller looking after the variety subsidiary. “Obviously, The Bee Gees won’t last forever,” Colin said, “and whenever they do finish, I want to have this as a backbone to carry me on.”
Plans for the long delayed Lord Kitchener’s Little Drummer Boys film had finally officially been dropped, but Barry still harboured fantasies of making his début on the big screen. “It’s something I’ve always dreamed of – to be more free within yourself,” he said. “I pulled out of Lord Kitchener’s Little Drummer Boys because I thought it would be a catastrophe. I’d like to do a Western, but it takes a long time to arrange everything. I know I shouldn’t say it because I’ve never appeared in a film, but I wasn’t keen on the story for a start. It was a much too colourful film and reminded me too much of The Beatles’ Help!”