The Ultimate Biography of The Bee Gees

by Hector Cook

  Keeping the public informed, he hinted, “Maurice and I have star parts in a big movie that is to be made in three months’ time. It isn’t Hair – that’s all I can say at the moment.”

  Weeks later, he announced that he would play the starring part of Claude in the film version of the rock musical Hair, and that Maurice was set to play the part of Wolf, who falls in love with a picture of Mick Jagger, but he added, “Maurice doesn’t like at all the idea of being seen nude on the screen and may back out of the film because of it.”

  As for Barry himself, he had no such qualms about his role because “in the nude scene, Claude is kept covered up in a white shirt,” he said. “My own first reaction to the offer to appear in Hair was to turn it down as well – because I love stories, and there’s no real story in this show. I also think that the bulk of the public hate hippies, which is what it’s all about. Still, the show has been a huge success and I will do the film. But later on, I’d love to do a film with a real storyline.”

  An RSO spokesman said that any talk of the Gibb brothers starring in Hair was “extremely premature,” adding, “It is true that Robert Stigwood’s company is bidding for the film rights of the show. But we haven’t yet got the rights – and let’s face it – practically every other major company are after them, too.”

  “It was one of those things that were bandied about at the time – I don’t know how serious any of that was,” Tom Kennedy said of the project. As it turned out, it would be years before a film version of Hair was made, with no Gibb participation whatsoever.

  * * *

  On July 12, 1969 Barry, who was said to have spent £1,500 in one week in Carnaby Street and claimed to have a £16,000 a year clothing budget, received the Best Dressed Pop Star award in a competition organised between Radio Luxembourg’s 208 People Club and the John Stephen Organisation. He was presented with a silver statuette worth £500 from actress Tsai Chin at a Carnaby Street party with dozens of other pop stars in attendance, including The Tremeloes, Family Dogg, Billy Fury and Status Quo.

  Accepting his award, Barry said, “It is one of the nicest things that has ever happened to me. I try very hard to dress well, not too loudly or flashily. If you dress like a bum, they don’t want to know. This award will be one that I shall always treasure.” He would later point to the award as a symbol of his useful excess, an acknowledgement of the fact that he had spent more money on clothing in Carnaby Street than anyone else, but in those days, he said, “Money to me is something you swap for something else, and to have lots of it is nice. I always buy in bulk – I have never gone shopping for, say, just one shirt.”

  “Barry spends money crazily,” Lynda added. “It means nothing to him. Cars, flats, clothes … he has to have the best of everything – and as we’re always together, I get the best, too. He’s fantastically generous … It has come to the point that I daren’t say I like anything when we’re out together because he buys it for me.”

  Not to be outdone by his big brother in the sartorial elegance stakes, Robin chipped in with tales of his own extravagance in this area, informing reporters that he had 20 suits from Bailey and Witherall, 50 to 60 shirts, 50 pairs of shoes, and countless ties. “I’m only extravagant up to a point, and then it’s always in connection with work. It’s extremely important to look good. It makes me feel good. I never wanted to be a handsome guy. I love being ugly … In that respect, I think I have a characteristic face. But I do like to look nice.”

  Part of looking nice meant that the hair which had been the bane of Robert Stigwood’s life was shampooed and now neatly trimmed before each television appearance. “I let it go really long that time, didn’t I?” he admitted. “I finally had it cut to make it healthy. I’m growing it again, but I’ll keep it shaped.

  “I bathe as soon as I get up and before I go to bed. It’s so relaxing … And I like to change my aftershave.” His favourite, he said, was Eau De Cologne 4711 Ice, which he had first picked up in East Africa. “Now I fly to Amsterdam for it specially. It’s terribly hard to get. It’s like trying to get drugs. It’s about £10 a bottle but works wonders!”

  When it was reported that Barry cleaned his cars with his cashmere sweaters, Robin claimed to shine his shoes with his suits before sending them to the cleaners. “And why not?” he reasoned. “The suits are dirty anyway – that’s why they’re being cleaned.”

  Maurice, meanwhile, was nursing two black eyes, the result of a car crash just 10 yards from his home in Kinnerton Street, Belgravia. On May 28, 1969, he was driving home in his grey Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud with friends Roberto Bassanini (who later married Cynthia Lennon) and Brian Duffy after a meal at Mr Chow’s restaurant. He said that he saw a car attempting to overtake him at high speed and, swerving to avoid it, he lost control of the car and smashed into a high kerb. “The driver of the other car,” Maurice said, “drove on without stopping.”

  Maurice hit his head on the windscreen, fashion photographer Duffy hit the car’s mirror, breaking his nose, and Bassanini’s face was badly cut.

  Rushing out, Lulu and her close friend Cynthia Lennon found the three men battered and bloody. Lulu recalled in her autobiography that she was almost hysterical, praying that Maurice hadn’t been drinking. They phoned Barry, who lived nearby in Eaton Square and he rushed Maurice and his passengers to St George’s Hospital. Fortunately none were seriously injured; all three were treated and released, and a grim-faced Barry drove them home again.

  “I’m lucky,” Maurice said. “I was the least hurt of the three of us.”

  The Rolls-Royce, however, was not so fortunate. “The chassis was bent, so [my insurance company] wrote it off,” he added. “Now I suppose they’re spending twice as much as it was worth putting it right. Rolls just don’t get written off.”

  It was a sign of his new, sensible lifestyle, he claimed. “I don’t live anywhere near as extravagantly as I used to. At one time, I would buy a new car every week, and if I damaged one I wouldn’t bother to get it repaired – I would just order a new one.”

  This would be the same Maurice Gibb who left IBC’s John Pantry somewhat bemused with his account of that day’s events. “I remember Maurice turning up to say that he had written off his Rolls-Royce and, after it was towed away, [he] went straight down to the showroom and bought another one. He told me his accountant had said he shouldn’t have done that, and [then] he laughed.”

  On August 6, with the discoloration barely faded from his blackened eyes, Maurice took a tumble down the stairs of Robert Stigwood’s Brook Street office, breaking a bone in his arm. Upon his release from hospital later that same day, instead of heading straight home, he made his way to Nova Sound Studios to sit in on a Tin Tin session. By that evening, a couple of drinks, on top of the painkillers taken at the hospital, ensured that he was “feeling no pain”. This unwise combination resulted in some rather interesting recordings, to say the least, and may have contributed heavily to Maurice’s distorted memory of the evening’s events.

  Then, heaping injury upon injury, on August 11 at the start of filming for The Bee Gees’ colour television spectacular Cucumber Castle, Maurice cut his neck on a jagged piece of armour. After refusing a doctor’s advice to get hospital treatment for the injury, he discovered that he couldn’t get the headpiece off when the crew decided to break for lunch. Maurice was spoon-fed through the visor, solving one little difficulty, but he soon discovered that the headpiece was not the only problem with wearing a heavy suit of armour. “It’s these clothes I’m wearing!” he exclaimed. “A major operation when I suddenly want to go to the loo.” A mere 45 minutes after his scene was finished, film crew technicians managed to free a relieved Maurice.

  Maurice and Lulu’s careers had often taken them in very different directions, but Cucumber Castle was a chance for them to work on the same project and Lulu remembered it fondly as a great time.

  Originally conceived as the pilot episode for a 13 week series with such guest stars as Sammy Davis Junior, Ri
chard Harris and Hermione Gingold, the television special was filmed on the 36 acre grounds of Robert Stigwood’s estate at Stanmore with its own authentic Scottish castle, removed brick by brick and rebuilt in its original form. The film co-starred Vincent Price, Eleanor Bron and Spike Milligan, amongst others, and even featured cameo appearances by Stigwood himself and a very young, freckle-faced Andy Gibb.

  “Before we made Cucumber Castle, Barry, Lu and myself went right through it and had it all filmed on my video,” Maurice said. “Then we watched the result and changed anything we didn’t like. So, by the time we went into the actual production, we had tested every little facet of the production.

  “The concept was of a Laugh-In type of show but set roughly in Tudor England,” Barry explained. “The way that a lot of the sketches worked out was that the punch-line was in the sudden contrast between the Tudor times and a confrontation with the 20th century.

  “It was basically very simple … Maurice and I are the princes who quarrel over the division of the kingdom when our dad dies.” Their father, in all his melodramatic glory, was played by their old friend and co-star from The Bee Gees’ first television special, Frankie Howerd.

  Barry continued, “It was when we began to really work on the story that we both realised that the outline of the story contained so many parables relating to reality. So it worked out that several of the sketches, for us anyway, have a meaning above and beyond the obvious joke.

  “We wouldn’t claim to be very profound thinkers, but we have always carefully considered the words of our songs, and we have put many of our deepest beliefs into them. We have done the same in a humorous way with the sketches in the show.”

  “Dressing up in all these period costumes does something to you,” Maurice added. “You feel like the person you’re supposed to be playing simply because of the clothes. Errol Flynn admitted in his autobiography that he couldn’t act. He simply found he could be convincing when he was dressed in period costumes. So we’re quite pleased with our acting, and the whole project is turning out far funnier than we ever thought. Mind you, with people like Frankie Howerd and Spike Milligan in the film, it could hardly be anything else but funny … A lot of what we did … was ad-lib and we had a fabulous time making [it]. Spike and Frankie were always up to something weird every time we went before the cameras.”

  “We are very pleased with the results we have seen so far,” Barry agreed, “but we know that the real art of making a comedy film is in the editing, and we are getting the best professional help that we can in that department.”

  It was during the filming of Cucumber Castle that Barry discovered something that had been missing in the life of a young pop star: mornings!

  “To tell the truth, I think that [Maurice and I] found that the hardest part of all was getting up so early in the morning. After years of working late at night you get into the habit of having a sleep-in in the mornings. To suddenly have to get up at six is a bit shattering. But after three weeks we began to realise what we had been missing. I didn’t even know that there was a six o’clock in the morning – I thought it only happened in the evening,” he quipped.

  One of those early morning treks to Stanmore nearly led to his arrest when a conscientious policeman spotted a sleepy Barry Gibb loading a gun into the boot of his car, parked outside his home near the Irish Embassy. Springing into action, the officer took Barry to the local police station.

  Fortunately for Barry, he had a perfectly reasonable explanation. He was Frederick, the King of Cucumber, and needed the gun to fight a duel with his brother Marmaduke, the King of Jelly. Amazingly enough, he was neither charged nor detained pending psychiatric examination.

  The project was not without other obstacles. A proposed tour of the United States and Canada was cancelled as filming of the show fell behind when heavy rains meant the location set was awash in a sea of mud. According to Maurice, “After only a week, the £50,000 budget had already been spent. But we’ve waited two years to do this film. People never thought it would ever happen, in fact, but we’ve always wanted to do something like this – a period comedy, with breaks for our songs and top-line guests.”

  In another incident it was reported that The Bee Gees lost an estimated £10,000 worth of equipment (including, according to Maurice, his prized 22-year-old Les Paul guitar), when a thief walked into the grounds of Stigwood’s lavish estate and drove off in the group’s Ford Transit van.

  Tom Kennedy, The Bee Gees’ road manager, laughed heartily when reminded of this incident and said, “I’m not so sure about the 22-year-old Les Paul guitar, but the van was stolen, and it was my fault … I was despatched to buy some chamber pots … I came back, left the keys in while I delivered them to the house, came back and it was gone. Whoever was there must have seen me get out and got straight in. Because there was a film crew there, they probably could have wandered up the drive and no one knew who anyone was. The van was found somewhere in the Midlands and we got a couple of the amps back from somewhere else … It probably was just an opportunist thing. It was literally done in five minutes.

  “Everyone just thought, ‘Oh well, these things happen’ – it was a bit like that in those days. At the time, I felt a bit stupid, but you know, everything was insured and there wasn’t anything of great value in there anyway.” Reminded of the legendary Les Paul guitar, Tom added, “It probably belonged to John Lennon at the time as well! Maurice is a colourful person.”

  In the midst of filming came another dramatic turn in the saga of The Bee Gees when it was announced that Colin Petersen had left the group. Scenes involving Colin which had already been filmed were scrapped. There were suggestions that Colin wanted to appear only in the musical scenes – with one wag claiming that perhaps this was because he had seen the script – and had later complained that he wasn’t given enough to do.

  A Robert Stigwood Organisation spokesman pulled no punches, stating: “Colin has been fired. The Gibb brothers will continue to perform and record as The Bee Gees.” Barry was somewhat more diplomatic. “This is all part of the natural progression of The Bee Gees, as we become more and more involved in our separate interests,” he said, implying this was all part of a master plan. “Since our brother Robin went solo, Maurice and I have been working more closely together even than before, while Colin has been spending increasing amounts of time with his own interests. We are naturally sorry that he won’t be with us, but we all have to progress.

  “Colin lost complete interest in the group,” he continued. “During the last recording session he didn’t turn up once. He said, ‘Call me if you need me.’ A dedicated Bee Gee doesn’t do that. He also told some [journalists] that he was only interested in the money. He said The Bee Gees wouldn’t survive when Robin left – I was never under the impression that Colin Petersen was a fortune teller!”

  Colin retorted bitterly, “Why do people keep saying I left The Bee Gees? I was fired! I really cannot see that [remark] about me losing interest. If I had, I would have left on my own accord just as Vince and Robin did. I suppose he was referring to the fact that I was producing records. At the time Maurice was producing two artists and Barry was also producing a couple. In fact, they started before I did. You could take it, if they go out and start producing people, this is how a Bee Gee should act.

  “Naturally, everyone in the pop business is interested in money. You’d be a bird brain if you weren’t. But I never put the money before my work as a Bee Gee. You get to the stage where you are successful and are earning a considerable amount of money, and then money doesn’t matter that much any more.

  “Barry’s reference to the last recording session is unbelievable,” Colin added. “I turned up to every one, although on one occasion I got there and Barry said I wasn’t needed because it was a Cheryl Gray session … I can remember quite clearly speaking to the press and saying Robin was a big loss to The Bee Gees. Now I’m quite sure the public in general was aware of that, and I was only expressing my admirati
on for Robin’s talent. If I thought the group couldn’t continue, I wouldn’t have stayed with them.”

  As when Robin quit, the war of words continued in the press, dragging on to such an extent that fans could be excused for thinking that all The Bee Gees ever seemed to do was criticise one another in public. “The only way to continue as The Bee Gees is to continue as two people,” Barry announced. “A lot of songs on our albums haven’t had a drummer at all. That’s no reflection on Colin; they just haven’t needed a drummer.

  “Maurice and I will make records together. I don’t think we’ll make records individually as far as I can see. The only thing that’s likely to separate us is if I’m living in America where I would like to live for the filming. There’s always pressure there, you suddenly realise that your nerves are bad. Robin’s leaving the group hurt me a lot. It’s a shame he’s not feeling the same ambitions now that we held together as three brothers. He’s left me bewildered, but I think his success is fantastic, and I hope Colin succeeds.”

  Maurice diplomatically said, “Colin has his own business interest while we are spreading into television and films. We have all been aware for some time that our ways were separating. Mr Stigwood has offered to release Colin from his contract so that his career will not be held back.”

  Colin still professed to be stunned by the decision. “After The Bee Gees did Top Of The Pops, everything was fine,” he insisted. “Then I suddenly get this letter delivered by Robert Stigwood’s chauffeur saying I’m out of the group. Just like that. No phone call or anything.