The Ultimate Biography of The Bee Gees

by Hector Cook

  Early in 1969, gazing out of their apartment window, both of them recognised a familiar face. Barry Gibb had literally parked his car right outside their door, and the pair dashed out to extend their greetings. Barry explained that he was busy working with The Marbles, and with Robin pursuing his solo career, Maurice was on the lookout for someone he could produce. A reunion with Maurice was arranged, and all went splendidly well. Robert Stigwood bought out their contract with Major Minor, and they signed with the Stigwood Organization, being put under the charge of John and Rick Gunnell.

  Re-christening themselves Tin Tin, the two Steves quickly came to appreciate that working so closely with a Bee Gee brought them several advantages. Like the Gibbs, they both loved using strings on their recordings, so it was a delight for them to be able to introduce Maurice to a young pianist and arranger, with whom they had worked on their Steve and Stevie album. Steve Kipner described Gerry Shury as “a lovely man, very talented,” but his praise was tinged with sorrow as Gerry died in a car crash in the mid-Eighties. Kipner believes that he would have gone on to do great things if he had survived.

  Another benefit, Kipner recalled, was the amount of free studio time they enjoyed. Sometimes Maurice would call them in because “Barry had a sore throat, or something, and the time was already booked and paid for.” Maurice was equally cost conscious when it came to the strings too. Steve Kipner still fondly recalls the way a few of the songs were arranged, because Maurice would wait until an orchestra was hired to do Bee Gees songs, and then he’d have them play on the Tin Tin songs too.

  Polydor released Tin Tin’s début single in Britain in August 1969 and Maurice, as he did on three other tracks on the album, contributed instrumentally, if not vocally on both sides. The songs chosen to launch their new career were ‘Only Ladies Play Croquet’ and ‘He Wants To Be A Star’.

  But it was their second single, their first in the USA, that would focus international attention on the duo. Although issued in Britain in March 1970, it was a year later before the Stateside release of ‘Toast And Marmalade For Tea’ provided Tin Tin with a massive hit where they perhaps least expected it. Americans took them to their hearts and the single peaked at number 20 during its 11 week stay in the Top 100. The song, also a Top 20 entry in Australia, was never properly finished, and featured an unusually distinctive sound as Steve Kipner explained. “‘Toast And Marmalade For Tea’ was an unfinished song with just verses by Steve Groves, and we had been thinking that we would write a chorus for it together,” he said. The first demo had been taped on June 27, 1969, but as was often the case, Maurice called them into the studio at short notice the following month, and had them record it properly because studio time had suddenly become available.

  “We modulated the verses,” Kipner continued, “since it was all that we had.” He and Steve Groves had originally recorded the basic track on guitar and piano. They would usually try using whatever was in the studio, improvising where necessary. “There was a drum kit there that day, but the pedal was broken, so I pushed it by hand to make us a drum track. Then Maurice put bass on it, playing with his broken arm.” The sound effect which made the song so instantly recognisable is a piano played into a tape loop that was manipulated live by hand to distort it. “It was fun,” Kipner concluded.

  The single bombed in Britain, a failure that Steve Groves attributed to technology, more than anything else. “We got some airplay, but I don’t think any Robert Stigwood Organisation people had hits that year. RSO and Polydor were changing to a new computer driven distribution system, and it wasn’t working.” If true, the remark certainly goes some way to explaining why The Bee Gees ‘How Can You Mend A Broken Heart’ fared so badly, when it became their biggest seller in the States, up to that point in their career.

  Tin Tin were also involved in another recording which, for a while, attained a near legendary status. It was called ‘Have You Heard The Word’ by The Fut, and was released in 1970 on the obscure and now defunct Beacon label. There was no promotion or hype but, gradually, it became a massively sought after collector’s item as rumours grew that there was a considerable Beatles involvement. So, were any of The Fab Four really involved? American copyright would have you believe that they were. Under reference number Pau-765-317, can be found the following entry:

  TITLE : Have You Heard The Word? / words & music John Lennon

  PHYS : 4 pages

  CLNA : Lenono Music

  DATE CREATED : 1980 DATE REGISTERED: 20 Sep. 1985

  ECIF : 3/M

  It is interesting to note that the alleged creation date is 10 years after its release, and that the registry date is five years after Lennon’s demise. However, it had originally been filed Stateside in May, 1974 by Abigail Music for Kipner and Groves whilst the British equivalent, PRS, currently list it as Kipner, Groves and Billy Lawrie.

  Many different tales of the now infamous August 6, 1969, recording session abound. Maurice is first to plead his case. “I don’t know how the tape [of ‘Have You Heard The Word’] even got out, I really don’t,” he insists. “The last time I heard of it was on an interview on Capital Radio and the disc jockey asked me, ‘What about this Fut record?’

  “It was me, Steve Kipner, and Steve Groves, Tin Tin guys. [John and Paul] turned up and we were having drinks. We were just jamming, everyone just started jamming, and the tapes were going. John was smashed as usual, and everyone was pissed. It was just a big pisser. We were just getting ready to do some tracks and we were just doing nothing and I was fartin’ around on the bass. I was a big Paul freak. He was a great teacher for me. When I was a young kid, I listened to the early Beatles records, and I could play every bass lick he played. Some of the things like ‘Michelle’, the bass line, really tasteful stuff, and way ahead, way ahead of his time. All of them were. That’s why their records were so different. [Lennon] denied [his involvement in Fut]! Paul didn’t. He didn’t deny it in England. That was many years ago.”

  Billy Lawrie was also heavily involved in the session and can at least solve Maurice’s quandary of how the recording achieved its initial legitimate release.

  Apparently Mark London, manager of Stone The Crows, heard the tape and thought it ripe for a release. Although it took a bit of persuasion, eventually Lionel Conway of Island Records was sufficiently enticed to take a chance with it, via a subsidiary label. It also provided him with the means to “dispose” of an entirely unconnected trumpet-led reggae instrumental, an early Island niche area, onto the B-side which was cunningly retitled ‘Futting Around’. The release was arguably not one of his better business decisions perhaps, but at least it provided the music industry with enough ingredients to create a new myth, which some have been only too glad to perpetuate.

  Given Maurice’s tendency towards embellishment, the search then begins to establish what can be substantiated and what cannot.

  “That was done at Nova Sound,” Tom Kennedy confirmed. “We did lots of sessions with Tin Tin, and they were all very entertaining affairs, which all involved lots of alcohol.”

  Steve Kipner can even remember which brand they enjoyed that particular evening. “Maurice and Billy showed up with a bottle of Jack Daniels, and the engineer must have switched the tape on. They were singing in funny voices, and talking like The Beatles. Maurice does quite a good Lennon, you know.”

  Steve Groves claims that the song began earlier in the day as a nice little composition by himself and Steve Kipner called ‘The Word’. Enter Maurice, released earlier that day from hospital with his broken arm, but “feeling no pain”.

  On hearing ‘The Word’, Maurice had decreed immediately that it had to be “a real John Lennon number” and proceeded to start playing slide guitar using his plaster cast before putting down a vocal track à la Lennon. It would probably be fair to say that things went downhill from that point onwards, and the two Steves abandoned the session in favour of an early night. What happened in their absence is anyone’s guess.

  The record i
tself provides few clues. A thumping bass, effectively combined with rhythm and electric guitars, catches the listener’s attention from the beginning before a familiar piano sound emerges. The opening vocals unquestionably belong to Maurice but, after a mid-song increase in tempo where the piano changes to a saloon sound, it becomes less clear as the lead vocal screeches out the lyrics and is followed by an overlapping repetitious backing vocal which matches the lead word for word. The word of course is the “F” word, heard in all its glory at the end of the record when the music fades out to allow a brief conversation in what purports to be Liverpudlian accents.

  With John Lennon unable to issue any further denials and Paul McCartney presumably disinterested in doing so, Maurice’s claims cannot be completely refuted, but therein lies the beauty of his achievement. For over 30 years, so-called experts have pulled his creation to pieces and yet, for all their unravelling, sufficient doubt remains. Of course it started out as a deliberate attempt to imitate his heroes, and an effective one at that, but could two legends have popped into Nova in those twilight hours just to see “what was happening”?

  The final words on the matter appropriately belong to the two co-originators. Steve Kipner, who himself has also come across a Beatles’ bootleg album that had ‘Have You Heard The Word’ as the opening track, said, “I always wanted to be on a Beatles album, and now I can say I was on one!” Steve Groves was likewise delighted to find out, nearly 30 years after the event, that he had supposedly co-written a song with John Lennon!

  The Tin Tin album finally appeared in Britain in late 1970 – its American release being held over to the following year – and the sleeve notes revealed that Maurice could add organ to his already impressive list of instruments. One name notable by its absence was that of Billy Lawrie, who was very much part of the sessions, albeit in a behind the scenes capacity. His talent would not go unrecognised by Steve Groves in particular, and Billy would soon be rewarded for his endeavours.

  A third British single appeared towards the end of 1970, comprising two non-album tracks. A co-writer on ‘Come On Over Again’ was new band member Geoff Bridgeford, former drummer with Steve & The Board, so he was obviously well known to Steve Kipner. His time with Tin Tin was short-lived, as was that of Carl Groszman who had also been a member of Kipner’s Australian band.

  Recordings for a second album commenced in earnest in May 1971, by which time the first one had been issued in the USA. The group numbered three again following the addition of former Kinetic’s member Johnny Vallins. Steve Kipner announced the signing when he stated, “After four years as Tin Tin, we have decided that it really is time to get a proper working band on the road.”

  Right through June and July, writing and recording was conducted at a hectic pace, and with good reason. They were booked to support The Bee Gees on a 24 date USA tour and Atco were looking to use the tour to promote the album. With Maurice fully committed to working with his brothers, and Geoff Bridgeford for that matter, Tin Tin had put Billy Lawrie in charge of production, and he didn’t let them down, also appearing as co-writer on two tracks. With no disrespect whatsoever intended to Maurice, both founder members of the group were actually glad of the change, as Steve Groves explained. “We preferred Billy, as Maurice’s production was a little too ‘Bee Gee-esque’ at times.” Picking up a favoured Robert Stigwood mantle, Maurice retained an involvement as “Executive Producer”.

  Without any further Gibb association, Tin Tin continued to release singles each year up to and including 1974. At that point the band split and its members went their separate ways to pursue solo writing careers.

  * * *

  Billy Lawrie’s introduction to Tin Tin had come about as the result of his close working relationship with Maurice. Intermingled with the tapes of Tin Tin’s recording sessions are several of Billy’s compositions, and one of these, ‘Come Back Joanna’, found its way onto the B-side of his first single. The song chosen to launch his recording career was Chuck Berry’s ‘Roll Over Beethoven’, perhaps a more suitable choice than one of Billy’s first efforts, ‘Super Duck’, which he attempted at different sessions in August and September 1969. This had been dropped in favour of the Berry song, recorded on October 6 and released the following month. As you might expect from your brother-in-law, Maurice produced the record and helped out with the arranging too. Despite the appearance of a half-page advert in Record Mirror on November 15, the single did not realise the young Scot’s dreams of achieving the levels of success enjoyed by his contemporaries or, for that matter, his sister.

  Another Caledonian export was Pat Fairley. His first band of any note was formed in his native Scotland in 1963, calling themselves Dean Ford and The Gaylords. By 1967, they had signed to CBS and changed their name to Marmalade. They experienced their first success in May of the following year and, within a four year period, had achieved 10 UK chart entries from 11 singles releases, of which seven made it to the Top 10. So what happened to the one single that bombed?

  “ ‘Butterfly’ was the last record we recorded for CBS before our contract expired,” Pat explained. “CBS released it in competition to our first Decca hit and it died.” Pat couldn’t remember how Marmalade had come to receive the song in the first place, but Graham Knight was on hand to live up to his name and come to the rescue.

  “We got it from Robert Stigwood – who was [not only] The Bee Gees’ manager [but also their] music publisher at the time – as a demo, and we just liked the song. It was the usual thing in the Sixties when you didn’t write your own songs. You went to a music publisher and they gave you songs, and this one just cropped up. What used to happen was, you’d go into the publishing company, ask what songs they had, and they knew the band, so they’d root out some tracks that were suitable for us. Stigwood would go into the little cutting room – well, he wouldn’t – but one of his eunuchs would go in and play the tape and cut it straight to an acetate. You’d play it 20 times and it was gone. We thought [‘Butterfly’] was going to do more than it did.

  “[The Bee Gees] had a unique sound. When we heard them first, we thought it was quite funny because they had these unusual voices. They’re good at what they do, it’s as simple as that; there’s no secret to their success. A good song will always come through, they just happen to write particularly good songs.”

  Pat Fairley eventually left Marmalade to work for RSO, which brought him very much into contact with the Gibbs and their associates. Renowned as Scots are for their frugality, it was an Englishman that Pat singled out for a bit of friendly abuse. “One story sticks out about the early days,” he recalled. “When Dick Ashby handed in his receipts, there was always charges for newspapers; e.g. LAX 24th 3 x LA Times 75 cents. Guess it soon mounts up!”

  “Americans love titles,” he continued, shifting up a gear to take on an entire nation. “In the first few weeks, I got a letter signed ‘Bill Oakes, PRESIDENT.’ I wrote back and signed ‘Pat Fairley, PRIME MINISTER.’ ”

  The amount of time that the Gibbs spent writing for and working with other artists during this period was mostly due to the fact that they were no longer working with each other. Robin’s profile in this regard was particularly low because he was spending all his waking hours on his solo career. His manager/producer, Vic Lewis, had ambitions in that direction too, and both took time out from working on Robin’s Reign to collaborate in the writing of ‘No Other Heart’ with Ken Thorne, who was best known as a writer of instrumental music for films including The Beatles’ Help! The song was issued by NEMS on December 12 as the B-side of a single by The Vic Lewis Orchestra & His Singers while, in the USA, it appeared on the Epic label. For both issues, the A-side was McCartney’s ‘Come And Get It’. Also written by Robin and Vic at the same time was ‘Prelude, Beverly Hills’, but this was never released.

  There were several other significant releases, none of them in Britain, during 1969.

  Dutch group Soft Pillow followed Gerry Marsden’s example and recorded ‘Gilbert Gr
een’. Orchestra leader Max Greger, or “Orchester” as he was referred to in Germany, released Barry and Maurice’s ‘The Square Cup’ on a now virtually impossible to find Polydor single. Equally hard to locate, there is a compilation album celebrating Polydor’s anniversary called Eine Runde Polydor. The hidden treasure here is a 1:30 version of ‘Gena’s Theme’ by Bill Shepherd, although it is actually credited on the album to The Bee Gees themselves. The tune resurfaced in 1983 on a bonus album entitled Rarities, which was only issued as part of a German box set which re-issued all The Bee Gees’ albums up to that point. Completing the succession of Continent only releases, a Belgium-based band, The Vipers, became the latest in line to attempt to score a hit with ‘Town Of Tuxley Toymaker (Part One)’ which continued to defy expectations of its worth.

  1970 was a quieter year for cover versions and productions and, P.P. Arnold and Tin Tin excepted, there was very little by way of activity during the first nine months of the year.

  A visitor to the Barry Gibb household during this time was his Australian friend, Ronnie Burns. “I came over to London and Barry and his male assistant picked me up at the airport. Barry always impressed me. I’m into fashion, I like nice clothes, and Barry looked sensational at the airport. Beautiful high collared white shirt.”

  On arrival at Barry’s flat, he gave his host a gift replica gun, as Ronnie was aware of his fondness for them. Barry then took his guest downstairs to show him his gun collection. Handing Ronnie a German Luger, Barry uttered the immortal words, “Careful, it has a hairline trig …” For those familiar with Barry’s history of misfortune with guns, what happened next was no surprise. Before Barry could finish what he was saying, the gun went off and its bullet parted his hair, missing his head by millimetres. It seems almost comical now, but at the time it was no laughing matter. “Barry just went white,” Ronnie recalled.