by Hector Cook
Beri Gibb was Andy’s confidante in those days, and she claimed, “Andy was in love with Marie and marriage was discussed. But during all the time Andy and Marie went out together, they were never on a date alone. Sometimes it was Marie’s unmarried brothers, sometimes her mother and father but always a chaperone or guardian. Religion was always a factor in the relationship. Marie said she would only marry someone who was a Mormon.”
Lesley Evans also said that she believed that her youngest brother would like to marry Marie, but she too felt that there was little chance of that ever happening. “The point is that Marie has been raised a Mormon and her greatest desire is to marry in the Mormon Temple,” she said. “So Andy would have to become a Mormon, and that would mean him having to do two years in the field, as they say. Well, you know, I can’t ever see Andy doing that.”
Andy began a week of rehearsals in Baltimore for his upcoming American tour on May 19, and the 44-city tour opened in Richmond on May 28. On his first tour, he looked like the boy next door. He played guitar, clinging to it almost like a security blanket, and remained with feet planted firmly in front of his microphone.
But it was a very different Andy Gibb who took to the stage this time around. “Before, I was terrified on stage,” he confessed. “I never moved, just stood there with my guitar. Now I’m running and jumping and I only play guitar during the acoustic songs. After a while, you can elicit certain responses from the crowd, like Elvis. The more I do body-wise, the more they react. I hope as I go along, the fans will realise I’ve got a good, hot band that can really play. Now I hear the screams ringing in my ears hours after the show is over.”
Dressed in skin-tight satin trousers which he admitted were “verging on obscene,” he pranced, gyrated and strutted his way through the concert to the screams of his adoring fans. “I definitely have a sexual ego thing,” he confessed. “But if I’m suggestive, it’s in a nice way. Luckily, no one’s ever been hurt — a few girls have passed out, that’s all. I’ll worry when they stop.”
Three very special guests joined Andy on stage for his concert at the Jai Alai Fronton in Miami. A crowd of 6,000 thrilled to the sight and sound of Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb joining their little brother for ‘Shadow Dancing’.
Barbara Gibb was as excited as any teenager in the audience. “I haven’t seen Andy perform since last year when he opened for Neil Sedaka,” she said. “I told him then to move around a little more. Tonight my boy moved around, wouldn’t you say? Andy is basically very shy off stage, but he’s learned how to make the audience respond and in such a short time.”
“I don’t know where Andy got those moves,” Barry added. “Certainly not from me!”
But Hugh Gibb took it all in his stride. “I’m not all that surprised,” he asserted. “I taught Andy and The Bee Gees their stage technique: how to walk on, smile, bow, dress. And I arrange Andy’s stage programme and lighting. Once he walks out there, he almost never stops moving. The sweat pours out — he shakes his head and sprays the first four rows.”
In early June, Andy participated in the March of Dimes Superwalk in Detroit and took time out to attend the West Coast premiere of Grease in Los Angeles.
Between the first and second legs of the tour, he flew to Honolulu for a short holiday, before resuming his tour with a concert at the Honolulu NBC Arena. As it happened, Donny and Marie Osmond were also in Honolulu filming their movie, Goin’ Coconuts, which only fuelled the rumours about a relationship between Andy and Marie. There were news reports that the Osmond family asked that Andy leave Hawaii, and when pressed for comment, The Bee Gees’ personal manager, Dick Ashby, replied, “Yes, there was a phone call of this nature, but it’s such a personal matter I don’t feel at liberty to discuss it.”
Marie herself denied any rumours of a romance, saying, “That’s really funny. You just have to laugh at that. Andy came up to our studio complex in Utah to do the Donny And Marie Show, and our families are friends. That’s all.”
Andy’s fourth single, ‘An Everlasting Love’ was released in July, just as Shadow Dancing achieved platinum status. It reached number five on the American charts and number 10 in the UK. The following month, Flowing Rivers also went platinum.
The Shadow Dancing Tour came to its conclusion at the Omni in Atlanta, Georgia, on September 1, coinciding with the release of the LP and his fifth single, the Barry Gibb and Blue Weaver ballad, ‘Our Love (Don’t Throw It All Away)’ in the United States. In Britain, the single’s release was delayed until January, and was released with ‘Shadow Dancing’ as the B-side. It was also released in a special edition blue vinyl 12-inch format, with the A-side incorrectly credited to B., R. & M. Gibb. The song reached number nine on the American charts but failed to break into the British charts.
The year had been a hectic one for Andy, and with the benefit of hindsight, a radio interview from 1978 seems eerily prophetic. Andy jokes, “They’re going to bury me tomorrow,” and then in a more serious vein, he continued, “I still feel pretty much … the same about it as I did before. Because though everything has happened in a short time and so as much as, you know, I get tired sometimes and have done quite a few things, I can handle it. And yet, it is weird as I suppose I must really remember ’cause 20 years old and three number one’s is a lot, and I’m just worried about 10 years or all those years until I’m 30.
“Sometimes it is a strange thought, thinking if all this can happen … Some days you get depressed and think that it’s been a long year. What is it going to be like having to fight through 10 years? I know that success and everything that is happening now is great, and it seems like it’s gonna last forever, as it’s happening to you now, but it’s amazing how short that space in time was when you look back on it and how quick things can all turn around.”
29
IF AT FIRST YOU DON’T SUCCEED…
THE BEE GEES have never let failure overly discourage them, always maintaining that if they just kept doing what they did long enough, success would eventually come their way. During the remainder of the Seventies, perseverance became a watchword for many others too, as several attempts were made to achieve a hit with songs that had failed to chart previously, sometimes on more than one occasion.
‘One Bad Thing’ was a case in point. Following on from Ronnie Burns’ Australian release, in March 1970, New Horizon were next to pin their hopes on it. The main men behind the group were Tony Burrows and Bob Saker.
Burrows is best known by many for his involvement in The Flowerpot Men, the group who made number four in the UK charts in 1967 with ‘Let’s Go To San Francisco’, a hit that earned them a support act billing on The Bee Gees’ Saville Theatre shows in November of that year.
The other main protagonist behind the group was a character called Bob Saker who would have much to do with Maurice Gibb and Billy Lawrie over the coming months. Like Burrows, Saker was a session musician, albeit with a less varied history behind him. “ ‘One Bad Thing Leads To Another’ [sic] was one of their songs, and I recorded that,” said Bob. “I used to do fake groups; I was in a lot of these Seventies groups. I was in New Horizon. That one, we made up a group of sessions guys; the singers on it are Tony Burrows and I.”
Bob is very much one for plain speaking, even if it involves an element of self deprecation. “I probably wrote the B-side, so it was shit. I think it might have been ‘Cider Rosey’. You always put duff B-sides on in case they flip the bugger. You put a good record on the B-side and they’ll split your plays.” Bob would probably happily debate his theory with you until the cows came home; whether it’s better to have the radio play one song only, against the other belief that by having two good songs, you double your chances of gaining a hit.
In this instance, it was something of an academic argument. New Horizon’s version of ‘One Bad Thing’ fared as badly in the charts as Ronnie Burns’ version had.
Not in the slightest put off by this failure were The Freshmen. Although low on profile, they were hig
h in output, ‘One Bad Thing’ this being their seventh and penultimate single release. None of their releases had provided any indication of a bright future for the band, and this CBS single was certainly no exception.
The final attempt of the four was probably the most obscure. Wildwood were a little known band from New Zealand, and in 1972 they too issued ‘One Bad Thing’ as an A-side, this time on Festival’s Interfusion subsidiary. Somewhat predictably, it suffered the same fate as all the others.
* * *
The Bell label released a second Gibb composition on April 16, 1971. Originally from Adelaide, Bev Harrell is best known in Australia for her 1967 hit with her début release, ‘What Am I Doing Here With You’, on the EMI’s HMV label. She was voted Australia’s top female vocalist in 1968 but, despite the Australian connection, she had never met Maurice Gibb before travelling to England, following visits to South Africa and Germany. Her recording of ‘Back To The People’, came mainly through the urgings of the music publishing company who were pushing it.
Maurice, who wrote the song with Billy Lawrie, played piano and bass, and Lulu provided back-up vocals. Bev still recalls Richard Harris recording in the studio next door. She also has memories of Maurice having a red open top Rolls-Royce and of enjoying riding around London in such luxury.
This was the second occasion that Bev had sung a Gibb composition. In the mid to late Sixties, she had also recorded Robin’s ‘I Am The World’ back in Australia under the careful eye of producer David Mackay who would himself work directly with The Bee Gees in the future. Bev remains in show business, and lives in Melbourne.
In May 1971, introduced by Tony Blackburn, Lulu performed her new single ‘Everybody Clap’ on Top of the Pops. The song had come from Maurice’s blossoming songwriting partnership with Billy Lawrie and is the only known occasion where Maurice and Lulu appeared together on one of her records, although there were probably several other such instances, which remain unreleased. Amongst others, Lulu’s band for the night included Maurice, Billy Lawrie and Zoot Money.
Maurice and Billy had offered Lulu several titles from which to choose, but this was the number she liked best. A fairly impressive line-up of studio musicians was assembled for the January 11 session, as she herself explained proudly. “It was recorded with John Bonham of Led Zeppelin on drums, Jack Bruce of Cream on bass, and Leslie Harvey of Stone The Crows on guitar, not forgetting Maurice on piano. The result was a lovely, very pleasant record, but it did nothing very much and never hit the charts.” Maggie Bell, another Stone The Crows member, was also said to have had an involvement, probably on backing vocals.
In spite of the lack of commercial success for Atlantic, it was still a good experience for Maurice. After all, there can be few who can rightfully claim to have produced a record with members of Led Zeppelin and Cream on it!
Buoyed up by the occasion, Maurice and Billy had stayed on at the studios after the others had gone to continue work on some other projects. One was ‘Take It Easy Greasy’, first demoed by them on December 9. Another was their jingle for Ultrabrite, but for which they required the services of another vocalist, little realising that they would be launching the career of an anonymous legend. If that seems a contradiction in terms, Bob Saker can be relied on for clarification.
“We used to be both signed to Robert Stigwood at the same time, we used the same pubs as it were and all that. I was signed as a writer, and so was [Maurice] of course, and I was signed as an artist too.” In fact, Bob released five singles between 1968 and 1971 either under his own name, or as plain Saker.
“What was strange was that I started picking up doing sessions and things, and Maurice was given a job writing jingles. He wrote a jingle but couldn’t sing it himself for contractual reasons, so I sang the jingle, it was for Ultrabrite, the first one he did, and it was really peculiar, because since then I really took off. He was the first guy to record me doing a jingle and I became the biggest jingle guy in the country within about six months. There were articles in the papers and stuff about me.
“I was doing four or five sessions a day,” he continued. “I remember turning the TV on once, and I had a whole commercial break to myself! It was ridiculous, but it was all different voices, that’s how you can get away with it.
“Remember the Hofmeister[Beer] Bear? ‘Hey, hey,’ that was me. The [Sugar Puffs] Honey Monster, that’s me! Isn’t it great to be famous … gets me tables in restaurants! I say, ‘Do you know who I am?’ ‘No not really!’ ‘I’m the talking lavatory’ [Domestos — Big Bad Dom]. I get a good table then!” Another product to benefit from Bob’s exuberant persona was Wagon Wheels biscuits. The list is virtually endless.
Barry’s unreleased solo album still continued to be a source of potential new material, and Genaro Louis Vitaliano, a native of New York City’s Bronx borough, became the latest to plunder from it. Better known by his stage name of Jerry Vale, the American crooner chose to record what is arguably the best of the bunch. ‘Moonlight’ is right up there with ‘Words’ as one of Barry’s finest compositions and, even 30 years after its creation, it remains a hit in waiting. Perhaps “The Ambassador of Song for contemporary romantic music,” as Jerry was once described, can persuade someone else to take a chance on ‘Moonlight’, even though his own version failed to take off in the manner it deserved to.
Katja Ebstein was next to record one of Barry’s solo efforts. Originally titled ‘Peace In My Mind’, her German language version appeared on her Freunde album for United Artists as ‘Frieden In Mir’, its literal translation being ‘Peace In Me’.
Barry’s publishers were obviously hard at work because his songs continued to turn up on obscure albums. Although an impromptu acoustic version of ‘Summer Ends’ was included on his 1970 Fan Cub single, its first official airing was discovered on the 1972 album by Company, of the same name. Released solely in the USA on the Playboy Music label—a brand name not immediately connected with record production — this was Company’s début album and the trio, who comprised David Stuart, Jack Moran and Joe Croyle, could best be described as belonging to the easy listening category. Barry’s song may have looked out of place beside some standards like ‘I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing’ and ‘Without You’, but the group knew the rarity value of the song and plugged it on the reverse cover by promoting it as “surprise! — a previously unreleased Bee Gees gem,” which they had performed on their own original audition tape.
Another LP released Stateside that year was Paid My Dues by Atlantic solo artist Jimmy Stevens. Born in Liverpool’s dockland area during the Second World War, the bookmaker’s son was no angel as a child, and soon had a natty collection of leather jackets, none of them his! Thinking of his long-term gain, his mother decided on short-term pain and reported him to the police which led to him spending a while in Borstal at Her Majesty’s pleasure.*
After “paying his dues,” he found work in a variety of trades such as digging roads and mining coal. But he needed a means of escape, and as he wasn’t built for football, he followed the other route open to him and worked hard on his songwriting. Offered the chance of appearing in some of the city’s less salubrious nightspots, he earned the nickname of Jimmy Sometime. “Sometimes I turned up, and sometimes I didn’t,” he put it succinctly.
The Daily Mirror once unkindly referred to him as “a fat John Lennon [who] writes like a broken-down poet and sings like he chews gravel for breakfast”. Years before, Brian Epstein had seen something in him, and offered him the chance to make a record. Jimmy didn’t believe him, and the opportunity was gone. Maurice’s intervention offered him the option of making up for lost time
In his native Britain, the album went by the name of Don’t Freak Me Out, but it didn’t contain any Gibb compositions. It was the first of two LPs to be released that year in which Maurice was heavily involved, and in Stevens’ case, Maurice contributed bass, organ and backing vocals; being joined in the singing by Billy Lawrie and Peter Frampton. Alan Kendall was
on guitar, as indeed was Frampton, while Bill Shepherd and Gerry Shury shared the arrangements. It was also another credit for Moby productions with Maurice taking the producer’s chair, and Billy Lawrie getting an additional name-check in the associate capacity. Maurice, naturally, appeared by arrangement with The Robert Stigwood Organisation, a standard footnote whenever he was involved outside The Bee Gees.
Atlantic had given Billy and Maurice a budget of £4,000 to complete the album and, by the time they had done all they originally intended to do, the bill stood at £2,200. It never occurred to them to keep the money for themselves, but neither had they any intention of giving the money back either. If certain parts of the album sound as if they have a preponderance of strings on them, it doesn’t require too much imagination to work out why.
Jimmy was a very down-to-earth character who enjoyed his music for its own sake, rather than for the rich rewards that a successful career could bring. In that sense, he was regarded by some as an under-achiever, who could have made a greater name for himself in the industry than he ultimately did. His motivation came from wanting to provide for his family. His wife and four children lived in a Liverpool council house while he recorded in London, and he would go back each week with money to pay the rent. As he said, “You’ve got to keep the kids in shoes.” Jimmy was scheduled to support The Bee Gees on their 1973 UK tour but, like the headlining act themselves, only ended up playing the one concert on June 24 at the London Palladium. Still, he had enjoyed opening for The Bee Gees on their 16-date tour of the States in March, so at least he had those memories to look back on.
The other male performer to enjoy Maurice’s participation on vinyl that year was the man of a thousand jingles, Bob Saker. Encouraged by his success on the advertising front, Bob was persuaded to record a solo album entitled They’ve Taken Back My Number, but it didn’t exactly set the heather on fire. However, that was more down to administrative and distribution problems than any lack of quality on the LP itself, an aspect that Bob was quick to highlight.