by Hector Cook
Although bright, Andy was an indifferent student at best and said that he felt singled out in school when he was in England because of his famous brothers. “I have never had a good day at school ever in my life,” he said. “I mean there were kids there that I would do anything to get on normally with … If I would do something outstanding in the game or sport, it was, ‘You think you’re great, don’t you?’ ‘Because you’re The Bee Gees brother, you think you can do that fabulously.’ To have that for quite a few years thrown at you, I mean, it just got to me so bad in the end, I just couldn’t handle it anymore. I had to leave it. Everyone said that most people in that position would say, ‘God, my brothers are responsible for all this, damn them’ … but not for one second did I ever think that. I always decided to take everything myself and not consider it as their fault. Naturally, I was always going to be related to them in any conversation or anything, so that has never bugged me really.”
His brothers weren’t the only famous faces in the family. Following the holiday commercial featuring both Barbara and Hugh, Hugh could be seen on television advertising for Clarksons.
Unable to fit in with his peers at school, Andy became involved with a rougher crowd and acquired a less than desirable circle of new friends. “I was moving about with my own gang, the skinheads, wearing steel-toed army boots and kicking in shop windows,” he admitted. “With the skinheads, the main thing was football matches. You take a hammer into the stadium and throw it as high as you can into a capacity crowd of 30,000. And wherever it lands, it lands. We were really very nasty.”
It’s tempting to blame Andy’s new mates, and they may have played a small part in his parents’ decision to relocate, but the Gibb family had never stayed in one place long enough to put down roots.
“As far back as I can remember, we always moved,” Andy said. “We never even stayed in a house more than eight or nine months. We never lasted a year at any one house, I don’t know what it was, we would have to get up and move somewhere else … I didn’t have permanent friends in many places for long. All my friends were older than me, I never had friends my own age. I left school at 13, so I’ve always been surrounded by people in the business.”
Because they were a British family living in Spain, it was easier to persuade the authorities to turn a blind eye, and the move to Ibiza basically spelled the end to Andy’s formal education. “I never got round to going back to school because I knew I wanted to be a singer,” he said in 1977. “My brothers left school when they were thirteen, and they were doing all right. Everybody said that I would regret leaving school but I haven’t so far and I don’t think I ever will now.”
Hugh Gibb said that, “Andy was later starting [in the music business]. Andy is the oddball of the brothers; he is a real sports freak. He tackles everything and, once he masters it, he starts on something else. First it was show jumping in England – he was the youngest member of the team, only 11. He had two horses. Then we go to Spain and he got interested in scuba diving, still a kid, you know, about 12.”
Shortly after arriving, Andy met a young man named Tony Messina, manager of a local night spot called Debbie’s Bar. “He had a bar on the island at the time,” Andy recalled. “He invited me down to the bar for St Patrick’s Day. The bar had a big cavern cut into the rock underneath. It was cool in summer, warm in winter. The party was down there, and I sang for the patrons. It was a big crowd.
“Tony passed the word to other friends with clubs. One club handled package tours from Sweden, Germany, Denmark and such. They’d come in once a week, stay a week, and the next week a new party would arrive. They like entertainers to meet them and I started to sing to them as they arrived – a little acoustic guitar, a couple of songs. I did that for a couple of years and played piano bars.”
One of the tourists whom he serenaded caught his eye. “There’s something about those Swedish girls,” he laughed. “I was 13, and there was this Swedish girl who was sixteen. I was head over heels in love, but she seemed like an adult. I wrote this song. I told Barry about it one night when just the two of us were together. He asked me to play it for him, but I said, ‘No, no, not for you of all people. You’ve written good songs – you know what good songs are.’ He insisted and when I finished, he said that he was amazed, that I’d proven to him that I could write. Then he told me the important thing was to keep writing.”
Andy took his brother’s advice to heart. “I was writing material,” he said, “but not particularly from an artist’s standpoint because the customers in the club were on vacation and they wanted to hear Spanish love songs or songs they knew from the radio.”
He was rarely without a gig in those days. “I know I was only 13, but I handled it well,” he said. “I was playing the hits of the day for the tourists, and there was never any trouble getting work because I wasn’t being paid then. I started to take more of an interest in music, and my brothers began to take notice of it and we started to get together more musically.”
Later on, Andy said, “My brothers, Barry, Robin and Maurice, would come down to the club and get up and sing with me. We’d have a four part harmony going that sounded absolutely amazing, although we hadn’t had a chance to do it in front of a large audience.”
Andy was underage so rather than being paid for his club work, he was given free beer. Ibiza’s beaches and holiday atmosphere provided ample entertainment for a youngster barely into his teens, and his indulgent parents even allowed him to drive on the island. As Tom Kennedy put it, “Young Andy was leading the life of Riley.”
Ibiza’s sunny weather and sandy beaches attracted more of the Gibb family. Maurice and Lulu and Barry and Lynda bought holiday villas near to where their parents lived, and Barry and Lynda even planned to make it their home.
“Hughie and Barbara moved out there,” Tom Kennedy explained, “and then Hughie came back – Barry was living at Gerard’s Cross at the time – and invited Barry and Lynda along. I helped Hughie move and they said, ‘Why don’t you come along?’ so off we went to Ibiza. We went back and rented a villa – Alan Kendall came out as well – so it was Barry and Lynda, Alan Kendall and myself. They quite liked it, and they decided they would move over there.
“So [Barry and Lynda] sold their house in Gerard’s Cross and bought a house in Ibiza. It was off the beaten track. All their stuff was shipped over and when it arrived – under Spanish law, if you ship 100 pieces and 99 arrive, they impound it. I actually did go … and I got the stuff cleared, but by that point, Barry had decided he didn’t like it because the power would go off, the TV was in Spanish …
“It looks like an idyllic lifestyle but everything is mañana … The lights have gone off – ‘They’ll be back on tomorrow’ – or the water … It’s one of those places where nothing is hurried.”
Barry and Lynda returned to Britain without ever unpacking any of their furnishings. “Their belongings never actually left the airport,” Tom said, “and I came home on the flight with their dogs.” After their brief holiday abroad, the dogs, Barnaby, Kim and Snoopy, had to go into the required six months of quarantine on their return to Britain.
It was the worst part of the whole affair, having to visit the dogs in quarantine. According to Tom, “Lynda probably hated it even more [than Barry] because she’s a softie for dogs. That’s why their house is filled with dogs today – she’s always been a softie for waifs and strays.”
*Maurice was incorrect. Though Dylan concerts were a rarity at this time, it was possible to see him in America for less than $10 in 1974. Maurice may have been referring to the cost of a three-day ticket for the Isle of Wight Festival on which upwards of 20 ‘name’ groups and performers were appearing. John Lennon and Yoko Ono rarely performed concerts anyway. When they did it was usually for charity.
*It must have been Suharto – Sukarno died in 1970, and at any rate, was under house arrest from 1966 until his death. The names are similar so it would be an easy mistake to make.
22
LIFE IN A TIN CAN was released January 19, 1973 in the United States and March 1 in the UK, officially launching Robert Stigwood’s new RSO record label.
RSO, whose logo was a red cow, was what is known as a vanity label, since there was no manufacturing and distribution company behind it. Instead RSO’s discs continued to be handled as they had been before, by Polydor in most of the world and Atlantic in the United States and Canada.
By the end of October 1972, The Bee Gees had recorded 20 tracks in Los Angeles, which had been sequenced into two albums by November 5. The second album was not released. Of the personnel they used, only Alan Kendall was kept on, and as usual he appeared on only a few songs. It was meant to be a change of pace to set them off in new directions. The credits for Life In A Tin Can list six top session players, most notably Jim Keltner on drums for all eight songs; for two songs each, Sneaky Pete Kleinow on steel guitar, Tommy Morgan on harmonica; and for one each, Jerome Richardson on flute, Rik Grech (formerly of the RSO act Blind Faith) on bass and violin, and Jane Getz on piano. The strings were arranged by Johnny Pate, and production is credited solely to “The Bee Gees”.
Life In A Tin Can was issued only months after To Whom It May Concern, and it seemed odd that writers known for voluminous output had come up with only eight songs, four by Barry solo. Robin would be more prominent on the second of the albums, but Maurice has almost no lead vocals and begins here his gradual slump that lasted until about 1980.
Sometimes it is hard to figure why a single would not be a hit. ‘Saw A New Morning’ was the best Bee Gees lead-off A-side in years, musically inventive yet catchy enough to attract attention. The soft/loud dynamic card had been played before on ‘Lonely Days’ with great success, and ‘Saw A New Morning’ glides even more effortlessly between the extremes. Maybe the punch of the loud parts didn’t come across in compressed radio sound, or maybe this wasn’t what people expected from The Bee Gees.
Unfortunately, Life In A Tin Can also did not do well in the marketplace, selling especially poorly in the States where the hit singles since 1970 had been keeping modest album sales going. The new musical direction did not seem to be working commercially. It would have depended on album orientated radio, which was overtaking Top 40 by 1973, but The Bee Gees had never been popular in that format with their Seventies albums. It never moved above the lower portion of Billboard magazine’s Top 100, but Maurice protested indifference, cheerfully adding, “Don’t worry, we’ll have a lot more flops!”
On February 19, The Bee Gees played their first British concert since 1968, a single performance with The London Symphony Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall. Explaining the decision to make it a one-off performance before leaving for their North American tour, Barry said, “Basically it’s down to finance. Most people in England have no conception at all of how expensive it is for a band to tour here. If the whole thing is going to be done properly there’s hardly any way that the group can make money. By the time you’ve paid for the expenses, the promoter and the other ‘inbetweeners’, you’re left with almost nothing …
“In the States the whole financial end of affairs is far more worthwhile. Your salary is higher because the cost of living is higher. They charge more for the kids to get into the concerts but then again the kids earn a lot more money — so it’s fair. In England you have the situation where the kids are charged too much to get into the gig in the first place, and yet the group of ten seem to end up losing as well.”
The Bee Gees had added a new drummer to their line-up. Dennis Bryon was born March 14, 1948 in Cardiff, Wales. His first group was Brother John & The Witnesses, but he enjoyed great success in Britain in the late Sixties as the drummer for Amen Corner, with four Top 10 hits in less than two years, including their 1969 number one, ‘(If Paradise Is) Half As Nice’. Dennis did a two-year non-playing stint as a truck driver following the break-up of Amen Corner, before a neighbour in his apartment building, Alan Kendall, suggested that he should audition for The Bee Gees. The Festival Hall concert with The London Symphony Orchestra was his first appearance with the group.
Colin Blunstone opened the show that night and remembered it as “a very interesting evening, and obviously, I think it was an important concert for them … They had a full orchestra and … from a personal point of view, I mean I really enjoyed their show. I’m a big fan of theirs, I think they’re wonderful. They’re wonderful writers; they’re amongst the best in the world … They were lovely guys — I didn’t have a chance to talk to them that much, but when we did talk they were lovely.
“I remember having a beer and talking to Robin Gibb and saying, ‘I feel quite apprehensive about this. How do you feel?’ and he said, ‘Yeah, I feel quite apprehensive about this as well.’ I don’t like to use the word ‘nervous’ — it’s not a word you want to use before a show — and I thought that was quite nice that he was open and honest enough to say.
“It was very nice to share that moment with Robin Gibb. I remember it because it was very nice, ’cause it was their show. Sometimes people don’t even talk backstage, but he was very friendly and open, and I appreciated that.”
As it had for Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich in the Sixties, The Bee Gees playing with an orchestra played havoc with the support act’s sound check. “We ran into a slight problem in that they had so much to rehearse, that most of the day was taken up with the orchestra and everything,” Colin recalled. “We were doing a half hour set before them, and the problem is trying to work out what half an hour’s set is. We didn’t get a chance to play until the actual show.
“I think we did slightly over-run. I think some of the road crew and stage managers were getting a bit fraught because they were worrying about how they were going to get this orchestra on and get the main part of the evening going. From our point of view, we were just getting towards our big songs at the end of the show, and desperate signs were coming from the road crew, ‘Wind it up! Wind it up!’ I was going, ’No way! I’m not going without doing ‘She’s Not There’; it’s the only one I know the words to!’
“It did get a bit frantic towards the end, our keyboard player Pete Wingfield, he was practically being pulled off stage by the stage manager -he wanted us gone, and I was saying, ‘No, we’re staying!’ ”
For Elaine Blatt, a fan then and now, the concert holds very special memories because it was the first time she had ever seen the group perform live. “The venue was perfect because the RFH is not that big, and it has a very intimate atmosphere, with wonderful acoustics and excellent views of the stage from just about every seat.”
To great anticipation, eventually The Bee Gees came on stage to a huge cheer and, even after all this time, Elaine can recall many little details of the performance. “Barry was wearing a light coloured shirt and dark trousers, Robin was all in black, but I seem to remember that Maurice had on something a bit more sparkly and glittery. The new songs they performed were from Life In A Tin Can, which was just about to be released. I still remember how ‘Saw A New Morning’ knocked me out, but all the old favourites were there too.”
One of the Gibb family’s closest friends was sitting in the row in front of Elaine and she recalls that he admitted to being just as caught up in the wonderful atmosphere as any that were present that evening. “At the end of the show Neil Sedaka was up on his feet, applauding and cheering as enthusiastically as all of us. My sister and I asked him if he had enjoyed the concert, and he said he had and that he was a big Bee Gees fan. A small number of fans, myself among them, ran down to the stage to try and meet the band: I managed to shake hands with Barry and Maurice. Meanwhile my sister, who was and still is a fan of Neil Sedaka, had persuaded him to autograph and give her his concert ticket, which she still has to this day!”
After the concert, Robin’s earlier feelings of apprehension had disappeared. “Things have never been better,” he said. “The show was sold out and everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves.”
Dismissing the media speculation that the group had declined in popularity in Britain as rubbish, he countered, “Three years ago the critics said the same thing, and we proved them wrong with more records. Eventually we’ll do it again because that’s what we are if you come right down to it — songwriters.
“We’ve become very anti-press. I think anyone would if they’d been treated the way we have since the split. People still want to talk about it. Can’t they realise that thing happened well over two years ago? The Bee Gees aren’t interested in the past, only in the future.”
Their disenchantment with the press spilled over to the trend in British music. “The kids here just don’t wanna be interested in the music, just the faces,” Maurice declared. “Take Marc Bolan, for example. He’ll last as long as his face” — a somewhat unfortunate if apt choice of words.
“England is now far behind the rest of the world’s music scene, whereas it used to lead,” Robin claimed. “The kids here are spoiled and it’s sad … We can’t understand why we’re treated like we are in this country. In America our music has become an institution. The music business in general respects us, yet the people don’t. The break-up lost us a lot of fans but they’re gradually coming back … The American people understand what we’re about. They appreciate what we do, whereas in England people tend to disregard us. For some reason, they don’t accept that we progress.”
“Basically we are songwriters who perform our own music. Many people have covered our songs. But our versions, being the originals, are always the best,” Maurice insisted. “ ‘To Love Somebody’, for example, has been covered well over two hundred times. Yet strangely, it wasn’t a particularly large hit for the group. Why?”