The Ultimate Biography of The Bee Gees

by Hector Cook

  Even Lynda Gibb admitted that she had her own doubts about the living arrangements in the first place, but she explained, “To Barry, family is everything. His parents live five minutes from us. His brother Maurice lives six blocks away with his in-laws and their kids. And Barry moved my family here from Scotland. Quite honestly, I couldn’t see it. I love them and all, but I’m a 28-year-old married woman; living with my parents seemed a bit odd. But Barry really wanted it and he’s been right. For him, having family around is vital.”

  *Frampton is exaggerating. Six people died in the Lynyrd Skynyrd plane crash in Mississippi on October 20, 1977: singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, his sister Cassie Gaines, personal roadie Dean Kilpatrick, and two pilots.

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  TOO MUCH HEAVEN?

  “POWER IS FLEETING; so is ego,” Barry noted. “When you start putting religion or whatever into it and tell the world how it can be saved, it just rubs against people. Politicians have no idea how to save the world, so why should pop stars? Instead you can do things like the UNICEF thing, which is just a positive move to help children.”

  The Bee Gees arrived in New York at the start of the new year with a flurry of publicity. On January 8, 1979, they were the guests of honour at the Police Athletic League’s dinner at the Americana Hotel, the first musical group ever to receive the PAL’s Superstars Of The Year Award.

  The following evening, all eyes were on the group as they topped the bill as the founder-organisers of the Music For UNICEF concert, held at the General Assembly Hall of the United Nations. Andy Gibb, Olivia Newton-John, John Denver, Donna Summer, ABBA, Rita Coolidge, Kris Kristofferson, Rod Stewart and Earth, Wind & Fire all performed live and donated songs to the project, while The Bee Gees lip-synched their way through ‘Too Much Heaven’. The event, which raised $100 million, was televised in 70 countries worldwide as a television special and recorded for release as an album. A Gift Of Song - The MUSIC FOR UNICEF Concert was the official recording of the concert and continued to raise funds to provide food, health care, shelter and education for the children in greatest need in 100 developing countries.

  Robin reported that they were “very happy with the results,” but he added, “The television show was secondary. More important is that all the copyrights from all those songs were donated to UNICEF, and hopefully other songwriters will follow. And we are willing to take every measure to make sure the money reaches the kids it’s intended for.”

  “We started by talking about wanting to give something back,” said Barry. “We’d all been in sympathy with disadvantaged children and with starvation in the world. And starving children all over the world really haven’t been thought about on this scale before. I know that so far ‘Too Much Heaven’ has probably made close to one million dollars, just in publishing royalties. If we can get 20 artists to contribute one song, and five of them become top three records, that’s five million dollars.”

  While The Bee Gees were in New York for the UNICEF concert, they stayed at the posh Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Blue Weaver recalled that Robin, always the Gibb brother most careful with his money, got quite a shock when he saw the prices for the rooms. “I think Robin said he had the Cole Porter suite and saw the price was $1,500 a night or something,” Blue said. It was a revelation that horrified his thrifty soul, but Dick Ashby put it all into perspective for him, saying, “Look, you make more than that every hour, so go and put your head on that pillow tonight and think that by the time you’ve thought of that, you’ve made what you’re paying for that room!”

  “It’s hard — it’s not living in the real world because you haven’t got to give up anything,” Blue admitted. “I think [The Bee Gees] do try as hard as they possibly can to be approachable and to be normal … The trouble is when you’re pop stars, you … don’t want to be normal, you always think of yourself as being different than other people because you’re fortunate enough to make money and do something that you enjoy, where most other people have to go out and work. This is how managers can exploit you as well, because they know they can keep you happy giving you five or 10 pounds a week in your pocket and paying for your cleaning and your rent and everything because they know you love what you’re doing.”

  Just three days after their UNICEF triumph, The Bee Gees received a star on Hollywood’s Walk Of Fame, which was officially unveiled in March. The group flew to Los Angeles for the unveiling and caused a near riot. “There were about five thousand people there, the largest crowd they’ve ever had for one of those ceremonies,” Robin recalled.

  What began as a moment of glory rapidly turned to something of a mob scene. “Before I knew it, I barely had room to breathe,” he continued. “Strangers were sweating all over me, and I was scared to death because I had my kids, four-year-old Melissa and six-year-old Spencer, with me. When we finally got back in the limousines, fans were climbing all over them, and they followed our cars for miles. We almost didn’t get away.”

  At the beginning of the year, The Bee Gees rented a warehouse in Miami initially for the storage of their equipment, but they would later purchase the building, which became Middle Ear Studio. “It was owned by an accountancy company,” Tom Kennedy recalled. “They were accountants for KC & The Sunshine Band and their record company, which is now defunct, and this warehouse was brimming with their returns … We emptied it out — it took us about two weeks to burn all the records, because you couldn’t give them away. Then we had the studio built and the offices, and I was there for the next ten years.”

  Nominations for the twenty-first Annual Grammy Awards were announced by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, with The Bee Gees receiving nominations in six major categories. Saturday Night Fever was nominated for album of the year and best pop vocal performance by a group. ‘Stayin’ Alive’ was nominated in the record of the year, song of the year and best arrangement for voices categories.

  On January 26, the Spirits Having Flown album was rush-released by RSO, after a few disc jockeys began playing illicitly obtained tapes of the album before the promotional copies were distributed to radio stations. The record company served cease-and-desist orders against those radio stations that participated in the advance previews, as Robin professed, “Playing a record too early can spoil sales.” Later, a limited edition picture disc was also released, but only in the United States. The album’s front cover shows tight shots of the three brothers on the front and gatefold, with a silhouette of them on the beach on the rear. The inner sleeve, not reproduced in the CD version, has pictures of the brothers and the other band members.

  Being in the public eye more at this time than at any in their career, the brothers had been determined to create an album worthy of the attention it was guaranteed to get. They remained true to their ideal of making each song different by ranging widely in style, but Barry’s falsetto vocal on almost all the songs tends to minimise the differences.

  Spirits Having Flown is not a disco album as only a few tracks are dance numbers although the second single certainly was. ‘Tragedy’ followed its predecessor’s meteoric rise to top the charts in the USA, the UK, Australia and New Zealand. It was also a Top Five single in Germany, Norway and Holland.

  “They use the word and the word becomes the chorus almost and just that one word almost sums it up,” George Martin said of the song. “They keep coming back to that word time and time again. They spit it out, and as it comes out, it kind of takes you back a bit. Then they go into the other words that pad it out and rhythmically, beautifully but always leads back, always leads back to those words. ‘Tragedy’ keeps pointing at you and it’s so effective.”

  On February 15, The Bee Gees came out the winners in four of the six categories in which they were nominated at the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, scooping up the awards for Best Single for ‘Stayin’ Alive’ and also Best Production, Best Pop Vocal Performance By A Duo, Group or Chorus and Best Album for the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, losing out in the Record and So
ngwriter Of The Year to Billy Joel for ‘Just The Way You Are’.

  After the ceremony, Barry enthused, “This is unbelievable! We have worked long and hard for this and we have had our disappointments along the way.”

  “We are pleased not only for ourselves but also for Britain, where we were born,” Maurice added.

  For Robin, the awards ceremony was most memorable for host John Denver’s performance of the Best Song candidates. “When he started singing the nominations, I thought, ’Oh, no, he’s not gonna sing ‘Stayin’ Alive’! He was all right singing the ballads, but Denver didn’t exactly have the same moves as John Revolting, did he? But he did go for two hours without saying, ‘Far-out’,” he added.

  Although their spare time was becoming more and more curtailed, The Bee Gees continued to make their own bizarre films. “We used to do a lot of home movies,” David English said. “Maurice was good at that, always the one on the camera, Barry was kind of the director type and Robin was always very kind of off the wall, very zany … extremely funny lads. They were like The Goons, Monty Python, the three of them together were just as funny and, of course, a lot of people never saw that side of them.

  “David Frost was doing a special for NBC on The Bee Gees and we were always doing home movies together, and I always did the daft parts in there, and we did a thing called The Amateurville Horror and NBC sent down a film unit to actually film this. It’s quite extraordinary, just like The Beatles with A Hard Days Night, and that was the only time really they were ever seen clowning about and being barmy, apart from being The Bee Gees.”

  There was also a serious side to Barry’s and David English’s creativity, as David English recounted. “Whenever I get together with BG, we always come up with some ideas, and I went to Miami in 1979 for a few weeks and stayed there six months! This was before Miami Vice had come out and we started writing this thing every day called Whirlpool about the dope dealing and whatever, you know the boats coming out of Miami and it was terrific. We sent it to Robert who said, ‘We’re going to make a feature film on this,’ which didn’t come off, but very mysteriously only a matter of a few months later, Miami Vice came on which was exactly our story. It was an extraordinary coincidence. It’s a shame that because we’d got all the Cubans, all the characters, but of course the drug business in Miami was prevalent then anyway and so it was just a time when somebody must have got the same idea.”

  This was not their only good idea that failed to come to fruition. “Barry is fascinated by ghost stories and haunted stories,” said David, “and we actually wrote an idea and we gave it to a man called Barney Broom to see if he could place it and it never came off. But he was definitely commissioned to actually push that story around about the haunted houses of Europe, all famous true stories.”

  The Bee Gees third single from the Spirits LP, ‘Love You Inside Out’, was released in April, giving the group their sixth consecutive American number one, a feat matched only by The Beatles at their peak. According to Billboard magazine, ‘Love You Inside Out’ was the ninth number one single for The Bee Gees, tying them for fourth place on the list of artists with the most American number ones. The top three were The Beatles with 20, Elvis Presley with 17, and Michael Jackson and The Supremes tied for third place with 12 each. In Britain, the single stalled at number 13.

  With so much success, it was perhaps inevitable that stories were printed about internal problems within the group that might lead to another split. People magazine quoted an unnamed source as saying, “Everyone is jealous of Barry. He writes the stuff, he produces the albums, he’s the big lead vocalist, all the girls think he’s the sexiest one. It’s really too much for Robin and Maurice.” The rumours were hotly denied by The Bee Gees’ camp.

  “Rapport within the Bee Gees has never been better,” Stigwood proclaimed. “They’re working together better than they’ve ever done. The current ‘story’ has no foundation whatsoever.”

  “I know there are rumours that Barry does more on our records than Robin and I,” Maurice said. “I don’t know how that rot got started, but I hate it and resent it. It’s a load of shit. People get that impression because Barry’s out front a lot and gets quite a bit of attention for his work with Karl and Albhy on other people’s songs and for his work with Andy. But as far as our records are concerned, we all contribute equally and all produce equally.”

  Barry, meanwhile, emphasised the group’s outside projects, as well as the immediate future for The Bee Gees. “I am currently finishing Andy’s album and will start work on Barbra Streisand’s next record in January,” he announced. “Robin and Blue Weaver are producing a record for Jimmy Ruffin, and Maurice is writing the music for Robert Stigwood’s film called The Fan.” As it turned out, Maurice’s music for The Fan was abandoned in favour of original music by Pino Donaggio and Marvin Hamlisch, with lyrics by Tim Rice.

  * * *

  Although both denied that it affected their marriage, the hectic lifestyle was beginning to take its toll on Robin and Molly’s relationship. Molly revealed, “I think you have to be very level-headed to survive in this business. If a woman is to survive, there is no time for being helpless or jealous — that’s what causes so many break-ups.” She also admitted that when, “Robin came home for a month in April, the first time for a year, I’d spent so long without him that I was quite nervous just wondering what it was going to be like to have him home. Suddenly I had to change my habits and routine and fit back into being a married person again.

  “We always have such a lovely time together when he’s home — we go out to our favourite restaurants and to see movies at the local cinema — we generally relax. Then, for a couple of days before his departure date, I find myself getting very tense — I’ve become so used to having him back that it’s as if he’s never been away.”

  She explained that being on her own with the children so much meant that, “If something goes wrong, there’s invariably no one here to put an arm around me and tell me it’ll be all right. I suppose it does tend to make you a bit … not so much hard as independent. For example, once when I was away, friends rang to say there’d been a burglary at our house. I had to go back and face it alone — that was one time I really wished Robin could have been with me.”

  It was difficult for Spencer and Melissa, as well. One family friend observed that whenever Robin was at home, little Melissa used to follow him around like a puppy, afraid to let him out of her sight. It was up to Molly to be the disciplinarian, as Robin was so rarely there that when he was, he wanted to spoil the children.

  “Of course, the children miss their father,” Molly conceded, “but they have grown up with the situation. It’s not a sudden thing, and they have a very secure and happy home life here. And there’s always Concorde — I pop over to the States fairly frequently. Sometimes I leave the children with my mother, but I usually try to make my visits coincide with their school holidays.”

  Molly said that she planned to “pop over” to the States soon, to look for a house. “Then at least we’ll have a home to go to when we stay for the holidays,” she explained. “It’ll be better for the kids … it’ll be better for me.

  “I never go to the airport to see him off— we both get so emotional. It’s better if he just walks out the front door.”

  In May, Robin walked out the front door to return to the States, and the group began preparations for their most ambitious American tour to date. They didn’t even take time out from rehearsals to attend the Billboard Awards Banquet in Los Angeles. Instead, they sent their mother, Barbara, and 13-year-old Beri Gibb to collect 11 awards on the group’s behalf.

  The Bee Gees’ absence added fuel to the rumours of another break-up, but Blue explained that the complex staging and special effects of the Spirits tour simply required more rehearsal time than any of the previous tours. “I actually found some tapes the other day of rehearsals of the tours and was listening to them,” he said. “I think on all these tapes, I was the stubborn
one … It was only years afterwards that Dennis told me I was very bossy, and I think musically I was probably very bossy as well.”

  “I’ve never seen them as nervous as they were before the tour started,” Dick Ashby recalled. “They’re at the pinnacle of their careers, and people will try to tear them down. If they hadn’t been up and down before, they’d be going haywire now. They can handle anything thrown at them.”

  As usual, Lynda and Yvonne Gibb accompanied their husbands on tour, and as usual, Molly Gibb stayed behind in England. “The greatest thing … is that my wife and I can go anywhere together,” Maurice said. “We can always go touring. Eventually, as our son grows up, he’ll be able to come too if he wants to. The same goes for Barry’s wife. Robin’s wife doesn’t particularly like travelling that much. She has two older children, so it’s more of a responsibility for her, and she’s not really hot on touring. But in our case — mine and Barry’s — our wives love it and they get on together like a house on fire.”

  “I went on tour once and that was enough for me,” Molly said. “It was so regimented — everyone had to meet in the foyer at the same time. I’m far too independent to be pushed and shoved around. I vowed I’d never go again and I haven’t.”

  With the popularity of the group at its highest, extraordinarily stringent security precautions were taken for the 41-date North American tour. The Bee Gees based themselves out of hotels in only five cities in the USA. Instead of the usual flying into the city on the day of the concert, checking into a hotel, playing the show, and going back to the hotel, then travelling to the next concert the following day, the group would fly out of the home city to the venue on the day, returning to their home base immediately after the concert. This eliminated the need to set up security each day in hotels in all of the individual cities.