by Hector Cook
“He spent every cent he had on the guitar,” Trevor added. “Every bit of money that he made on the trip, he’d spent on this guitar.”
The days on the road with Andy were memorable for other reasons. Trevor recalled, “There was one amazing thing about Andy … When we were away on tour and the show was over … back at the hotel, he would love to sing with his acoustic guitar. He could sing any song — anything — from the Twenties, right up to that time. It was amazing — he knew every word and every chord. He would play and sing for a couple of hours, and we would all be sitting around on the floor listening to him. We loved it and so did he.”
In those days, Andy was living in West Ryde near Sydney. Trevor Norton lived just five minutes away in Dundas, so the two got together frequently even when the band wasn’t working. In the autumn of 1975, Barbara Gibb had moved to Australia to be closer to Andy, while Hugh remained at their home in the Isle of Man. She settled in Gladsville, just down the road from Andy. “I always remember him with his mum,” Trevor said. “He totally adored his mum. I know there was a guy around called Tony Messina, who was sort of his protector, but he thought more of his mum than anybody else, I think.”
Also living nearby, in Rydalmere, was a petite, pretty blonde named Kim Reeder. Andy had first met her at a dog show. The Reeder family bred Staffordshire Bull Terriers, as did Andy’s sister Lesley and her husband Keith Evans, so Lesley introduced the teenagers.
It seems Andy was immediately smitten, and as for Kim, she thought, “He was a very plain, ordinary, good person. He was nice,” she added simply.
It was an assessment that Glen and Trevor are quick to verify. For Trevor, just a year older than Andy, he was his best mate, “Terrific bloke, great to get along with.”
“The thing is when we were with him, he was like one of us … we saw the other side of Andy, where the people on TV and all that saw the star side of Andy, we saw the other side of him,” Glen said. “He was just like a little boy playing in a marble pit — he was just an incredible little guy. And everybody in the band, from me down, and I was the oldest, everybody could talk to him … He was just a very, very funny little bloke at times, he loved a joke.”
Trevor added, “Andy never drank back then — he only drank cans of Coke. I only ever saw Andy drink one beer the whole time we were with him.”
“We started going out together,” Kim continued. “I was working as a secretary in a doctor’s office in Parramatta. He used to pick me up and take me to work, pick me up and take me out to lunch, pick me up after work. He was so good to me. He wouldn’t let me out of his sight. If we were walking across the road, he’d take my hand … Of all the people in the world, he would look after me.”
Kim’s mother, Yvonne Reeder, remembered Andy playing with the kids in the street while Kim was working, turning up at their house so of ten that her husband feigned exasperation. “He was lovely then — he was just a big kid. He was so young. He used to be here all the time. Kim’s father used to come in and say, ‘Are you here again?’
“One day he got fed up and threw him out. Andy went round the back over the fences and when Ron went into the kitchen, there was Andy sitting at the table. He gave up then!” she added.
Kim said that the couple had a simple courtship, taking pleasure in doing little things together. They enjoyed going to dog shows, taking in a film, even going fishing at 4 o’clock in the morning.
The Reeders’ normal family life seemed to hold a great attraction for Andy after years of the Gibbs’ nomadic lifestyle. They were a solid, middle-class family, breeding dogs as a sideline whilst Kim’s father Ron worked as a bricklayer and Mrs Reeder worked four days a week as a machinist. With Kim and her twin sister Kerrie, they formed an exceptionally close-knit family. It was a normality that appealed to a teenager who had wistfully commented that he’d never lived in one place for a whole year.
Andy celebrated his eighteenth birthday with Kim’s family, and the Reeders fondly remember him opening the present they gave him and declaring it to be the best birthday of his life. That is “the old Andy” that they like to think of today. “I don’t want to talk about the bad times,” Kim said. “There were some good times …
“He sort of latched on to our family in those early days like a lifeline,” she added. “None of us were impressed with his brothers or his background … It’s hard to impress people like us, so we loved Andy for what he was — a bright, enthusiastic and considerate person.”
Kim did remain remarkably unfazed by Andy’s career choice or his family background. “I had no interest in pop groups. I used to call them The Gee Bees!” she said.
In May, 1976, Andy was playing “Buttons” in a production of Cinderella in Newcastle, about 90 miles from Sydney, so the couple saw each other less of ten. When Andy and Zenta were playing in the metropolitan Sydney area, Kim would go along to watch them perform; otherwise she didn’t follow him. “I never stuck my nose into his business. That was his work, his area, and I never involved myself in it,” she explained.
The young couple could have continued quite happily dating for several more years. “We were always going to get married, but I wanted to wait until we were older,” Kim said — but in June, 1976, a call from his brother Barry changed those plans. Barry believed that Andy was ready to start his career on an international level, and Robert Stigwood agreed. They wanted him to come to America immediately.
“The first call came from Barry in Anchorage, Alaska on tour,” Andy said. “He said he’d just been sitting there after the show, and he said, ‘I want to produce your records and Robert wants to manage you.’ I thought, ‘Manage, oh that’s incredible!’ ‘Plus he wants to sign you up for the label.’ So, what could I say? ‘Two weeks.’ So a date was arranged and Barry instigated it.”
The phone call really had come as a surprise to Andy. “In a way, he didn’t really want to go, but he knew he had to go,” Trevor said.
It was obviously the next step in his career, something that his mates in Zenta had always half expected. “He told us all that he knew what he was going to do, and we all knew before he left us that he was gonna be number one because he knew that. He was totally professional — the most professional person I’ve ever met in my life. Very much so,” Trevor added.
“We were supposed to play a surf club that night, and then we got a phone call that Saturday afternoon saying that Andy had gone,” Glen added. “We knew and we didn’t. It was one of those things that we knew he was gonna go eventually.”
Kim recalled Andy phoning her at work and telling her, “We’ve got to get married. I’ve got to go to America, and I won’t go if you don’t come.”
She said later she didn’t recall ever saying yes — “I said I’d have to think about it, and I’d ring him back. But he rang every two minutes … He gave me two dates to choose from, and two weeks notice. I could have July 4 or July 11. I chose July 11.” Andy’s brothers and parents all tried to convince him that at 18 years old, they were too young for marriage, with Barry’s and Maurice’s early marriages held up as examples. But just as none of his older brothers would listen to reason, Andy remained headstrong and determined.
Kim recalled, “He gave me the money from his Christmas club account to buy a wedding dress. I’d shown him how to work those accounts the year before and taught him to save money for the first time in his life.”
Ron and Yvonne Reeder were also afraid that the couple were too young, but Mrs Reeder said, “They loved each other. They really did.”
The wedding was held on July 11,1976 at the Wayside Chapel in Potts Point, a suburb of Sydney, with a reception for 60 guests following at the Chevron Hilton Hotel in Sydney.
After the reception, the new Mr and Mrs Andrew Roy Gibb left for a honeymoon in Bermuda at Robert Stigwood’s lavish home there. Barry and Robert Stigwood were there to meet them and to begin making plans for turning “The Bee Gees’ Baby Brother” into the teen idol, Andy Gibb.
Andy an
d Kim found plenty of time to themselves to enjoy their honeymoon. They rode motorbikes all over the island, went shopping and took sightseeing trips. They went swimming in the crystal clear water and went out in catamarans. An entire day was spent out on a big game fishing boat.
Kim enjoyed Bermuda and loved Stigwood’s house and its garden with a huge pond with a map of Bermuda in it. Stigwood’s culinary skills also impressed her. “We ate five course dinners,” she remembered. “Robert Stigwood imported nothing but the best and he cooked the food himself. He’s a pretty good chef.”
While there, Andy signed a recording and management contract with RSO. Kim was excited and happy for Andy, but she stresses that this was because it was so important to him. “I always wanted him to be successful because he wanted to be successful so much, and I wanted him to be happy,” she said. “I never wanted to change him.”
*Not to be confused with Jigsaw, who came to fame around the same time with their hit, ‘Sky High’.
25
THERE AT LAST
WITH THE MEMORY OF their discouraging British club dates fresh in their minds, The Bee Gees went into 1975 with a new determination and drive to succeed. “We went into the studio determined to make a strong album,” Maurice said. “It was more important to us than touring. We tried to come up with a different sound, a more disco sounding style, yet incorporating pop and rock. It seemed to work.”
“We had a conversation with Eric Clapton about making a comeback because he was trying to make a comeback,” Barry recalled, “and we were always trying to make a comeback. Eric said, ‘I’ve just made this album called 461 Ocean Boulevard in Miami. Why don’t you guys go to America and do the same and maybe the change of environment will do something for you?’ I think it was really good advice …”
Maurice’s version of events cites Robert Stigwood as suggesting Miami. “He showed us the picture on the cover [of 461 Ocean Boulevard] and said, ’You can rent that place and live there and record and get a sun tan. We decided that it was our big chance to get serious about our music again so we went out there and did Main Course.”
Before they thought about recording, the group did some serious re-evaluation. The first tentative steps they had taken towards a more R&B orientated sound with Mr. Natural had felt right, and they began to think of themselves as more of a band, with Alan Kendall and Dennis Bryon now part of the picture. They were also using the services of musical director Geoff Westley, a classically trained conductor and arranger, who listed his instruments played as keyboards, flute and “short white stick with cork handle”. Geoff was the conductor for another Stigwood project, Jesus Christ, Superstar so his time for the group activities was more limited. The idea was broached to tour without the crutch of an orchestra behind them, but something was still missing.
Late in 1974, Dennis Bryon suggested an old friend, Derek “Blue” Weaver. Blue was born on March 11, 1947 in Cardiff, Wales and had played with Dennis in both Brother John & The Witnesses and Amen Corner, with whom he acquired the distinctive nickname. He left Amen Corner, and in 1971 joined The Strawbs, replacing Rick Wakeman, who had moved on to Yes. From The Strawbs, Blue went on to join Mott The Hoople and toured the US with Queen as the support band. By 1974 he had built up a fine reputation as a session player and was reluctant to give that up.
Blue Weaver recalled, “Ever since Dennis was with The Bee Gees, he would always say to me, ‘Let me have a word with them and see if we can get you in as a keyboard player.’ It was Dennis who was always contacting me … [He] was saying, ‘Oh, come on, let’s get a band together.’ I think they all most probably said, ‘Let’s get a band together, let’s get rid of the orchestra, let’s try to do something a bit different.’ So Dennis kept phoning me and saying, ‘Let’s do something.’ Well, at that time I was playing with … Mott The Hoople and also doing a lot of sessions with Dennis … playing with lots of different people.”
But Dennis was persistent, and Blue was persuaded to meet with the group. “I went over to the Isle of Man,” he recalled, “and stayed with Barry for the weekend — went over on Friday night and came back on the Sunday night.”
Blue’s personality gelled with the rest of the group and the weekend turned into more a social gathering than an audition. Barry played and sang, they discussed songs and arrangements. “As I’m leaving, Hughie and Barbara, everybody’s around, and George and May, they’re all there, and we’d all had a good drink and a meal and a laugh, I’m walking out the door, and Barry says, ‘Here! I haven’t heard you play piano yet!’ I was actually putting my bags in the car, and I said, ‘Oh, do you have a piano?’ They had this old thing in the back — it was all out of tune — I can’t even remember what I played. I mean, they knew I could play, I suppose. I rattled out a quick tune on the piano and they said, ‘Fine, can you come to Miami next month?’ “ he recalled. Easy as that, Blue Weaver was in.
Looking back, it was an easy decision for him to make, although he admitted, “When I joined, I think it was the lowest ebb that the three brothers had been. I’d actually heard Mr. Natural as well, and I thought that was great, and there were elements in that that I obviously felt we could take further.”
Despite the relative lack of success of the previous album, Blue said, “I think we were all optimistic. We were going off to Miami to make an album in the winter, we were going to stay at 461 Ocean Boulevard, you know, Eric had had a massive hit from that, we were going with Arif — you know, it was all looking positive. There had never really been any problem with The Bee Gees — I mean, they were always capable of writing songs.”
The fact that Eric Clapton had named his successful album after the house where they were staying brought its own little inconveniences. “The drag is that everybody who bought 461 used to start coming into the grounds, because by the beach, there was access,” Robin explained.
Maurice picked up the tale, “So all the fans of Eric would come past this house and go …”
“ ‘Is Eric in?’ “ they said in unison.
“ ‘Can Eric come out to play?’ “ Robin added, laughing.
The combination of all the new elements was coming together, as Barry recalled, “And so here we were in this new environment and at the same time falling in love with Miami.”
“We didn’t sit down and decide to make any radical departures,” Robin insisted. “Something happened one night; we booked Criteria Studios … and went in there and it started happening. The change wasn’t immediate, but as the group worked together, they became a more cohesive unit.”
The other musicians in the group were never made to feel like session musicians to the Gibb brothers. “I think it most probably started off like that, but I never thought of it like that,” Blue said. “Even though we were only being paid a wage on Main Course, it didn’t matter — we were there, we were all working. I didn’t feel as if it was them and us at that time. I mean, there always has been [a division], but I always felt that we were more with them than anyone else was, if you like. There was no one closer to them musically than we were at that time.”
Blue admitted that it wasn’t easy in the beginning. “I got a little bit worried at first … we all have personal problems, but sometimes the personal problems overrun into — well, we were all living in one house so there was no way that you could hide anything that goes on. If one person drinks a little too much, everybody else is gonna know about it.
“There were a few things to overcome, and obviously politics as well, if you’re going to change something. If Maurice, for instance, had been playing the piano, and suddenly you decide that I’m going to play the piano or something like that, then you have to be a little diplomatic and break things in gently. As soon as they could see the potential, as soon as we started doing things, there was no problem.”
“We wanted to move into an area of better, tighter rhythms and become more of a band than just three brothers,” Barry added.
“We wanted it to change” Blue added, �
�that was the whole brief… the whole thing was to change it, to do something that was different than ever they’d done before, but we didn’t really know what.”
The very first track recorded on January 6, the first day of the Main Course sessions, was a ballad called ‘Was It All In Vain’. “I always remember the first line,” said Blue, “because in the house where we were staying, in 461 Ocean Boulevard, the dining table, above it was a chandelier, and I think Barry must have got the opening lyric … he must have been sitting there, looked up, and the first line was, ‘As I gaze into the chandelier’ — or ‘my chandelier’ or something, which I think a day or two later, I read and changed it to, ‘As I gaze into my can of beer.’ It was actually put onto tape… but I haven’t got a copy of it. They’ll think it wasn’t important because it wasn’t worthy — it was important to me, though, because it was my introduction to The Bee Gees.
“Nobody’s ever heard that — so obviously, it was a bit all in vain. We knew after a couple of days, because then we started getting better ideas.”
‘Country Lanes’ came out of day two of the sessions, but it was on day three that the band had their first real breakthrough with ‘Wind Of Change’. It would need to be re-recorded at a later session though, before it had the feel of the new Bee Gees’ sound.
Blue was directly responsible for a serious attempt at reviving an old Gibb classic that The Bee Gees had never themselves released. “We re-did ‘Only One Woman’ when we were recording the Main Course album,” he later confirmed. “I just said, ‘Barry, I’ve never heard you sing this.’ We did a fair bit of work, but it was never released. I love that song with Graham Bonnet singing it.”