The Ultimate Biography of The Bee Gees

by Hector Cook

  According to the album notes, this was “the following day” from Eric Clapton’s recording of ‘Fight’, which does not quite match with King’s recollection, but any rate it was probably close to the same date in the summer of 1986. Despite the season, it is a Christmas song, and a beautiful one. Barry has proudly used its lyrics for his Christmas cards in the Nineties. The two women singers take alternating leads with their clear pure voices, and truly “sing like birds” as the notes put it. Even the Gibb brothers’ famous harmony could not top this performance. Although the song seemed a strong possibility for a hit single, lack of promotion caused it to die an untimely death.

  “Barry was very upset that [Polygram] didn’t promote it well enough,” Peter King said. “It was having a lot of radio play, Radio One were playing it and everything, many times a day. I was hearing it all the time, in petrol stations, in the car, it was going out all the time. Steve Wright was the one — he tipped it for a number one! But again, they just weren’t in the shops, Polygram failed, but that’s the way it is. When you’re getting mega Radio One plays, you think, ‘Great, people will want to buy this’ — and they can’t! Barry was upset about that. I know it was his song but he was genuinely concerned; he thought it was a good record and they let everybody down.

  “We were looking forward to maybe doing more, but the record company put the kibosh on it as usual — they just didn’t support it.”

  A news item from 1986 reports that the Bunburys project also included the song ‘Up The Revolution’ sung by Errol Brown and Hot Chocolate, and an unnamed song by Shaking Stevens. Neither of those recordings made it out, but ‘Up The Revolution’ appeared in a recording by Elton John made in 1988.

  “Elton John was … a friend of mine too,” English explained. “We wrote to him, sent him a cassette of the demo, and he came and did ‘Revolution’ in Mayfair studios in Camden Town.” Elton’s rendition of ‘Up The Revolution’ is one of the many highlights of what is a surprisingly — considering its subject matter and the number of years the project took — good collection of songs. Like ‘We’re The Bunburys’, it has a real Caribbean feel and bounces along to an almost honky tonk sounding piano. It would be one of the rare occasion where Elton would record other artist’s material.

  In the same year, George Harrison contributed an original song he wrote with David English. George sings lead vocal, his young son Dhani sings backing vocals, and David English speaks the character voice of the Katman of Katmandu in an excruciating Indian accent. Instrumentally, the song was a reunion after many years between George and sitar master Ravi Shankar. David English recalls, “George we saw through Eric. We saw him at Friar Park [Harrison’s home] and I wrote that with George. So they were really my four contacts, The Bee Gees, Eric and the other two.”

  In 1990 Kelli Hartman was a teenager fresh out of high school and attending the New World School Of The Arts in Miami. At school during the day, in the evenings she was working as a hostess at Dick Clark’s American Bandstand Grill.

  Barry and Maurice were there one evening for dinner with Dick Clark, when the manager of the restaurant told Clark that he had to “hear this kid sing”. Kelli sang ‘Wind Beneath My Wings’, and when she had finished, Clark came down, telling her, “I have to take you to meet somebody.” That somebody was Barry Gibb.

  Although Kelli said that she considered The Bee Gees “an older group,” she added ingenuously, “I knew who they were and I loved their music, and more so, my mom loved their music. He said, ’You’re fantastic, give me your number. Sure enough he called me the very next day, and then he called my parents, and said, ‘I want to talk business. I think Kelli really has what it takes to break into the music business, and I want to work with her.’ … He said, ‘I have a few things that I’ve written.’“ One of the songs he had in mind for her was ‘The Only Love’. Another was a track called ‘Born To Be Loved By You’ which he had written specifically for her, with participation from Maurice in its final stages.

  Kelli continued, “My parents had called the studio to get directions how to get to Bay Road in Miami Beach, but we ended up in some dangerous looking part of Miami. We were scared, but I got out of the car and called Barry from a phone booth and asked, ‘So how do we get there?’ He said, ‘I don’t really know my way around town either,’ and had me talk to Dick Ashby. Meanwhile, my mom was urging me to get back in the car! But Barry said he’d stand outside, because you’d never know it’s a studio and might go right by it. So we pulled off the causeway into Bay Road, and then we see this little figure standing outside a white building waving his arms, and my mom goes, ‘That ain’t him!’ but it was. He’s only five nine, and pretty thin. They’re all tiny. You would never guess from the photographs where they look like these big guys, but they’re not.”

  Over the next few days, Kelli’s parents dropped her off at the studio and picked her up again later. “We recorded ‘Born [To Be Loved By You]’ in a few days, in September 1990. I was there when they did some of the instrumental tracks too, with Stevie [Gibb] playing guitar. Then for a while Barry would call on the phone and speak to me or to my parents about how I was doing, and he’d call at odd hours, in the middle of the night sometimes. But then he stopped calling. There was a 15-month gap in there because he wasn’t speaking with us. Meanwhile I had pulled out of school because I had joined the union and it looked like I was going to work professionally. Finally I called [the studio] and said, ‘What’s going on, are we going to do this or not?’ and then he came out with ‘Eyes’, which we recorded in December 1991. He apologised to me and my mom for the delay. But then after that, again nothing happened for a long time.”

  She chose the professional name Kelli Wolfe, borrowing the surname of the surgeon who had done extensive surgery on her larynx. She explained, “I had developed polyps on my vocal cords. I was told that I may never sing again. He helped me so that I could. I had laser surgery in 1989 and couldn’t speak one word for a month. I had to relearn to talk and sing so that I was not creating callouses on my cords.”

  Kelli was told that the two tracks she had recorded would be released as a single first in Britain, because Barry explained to her that American artists usually do better in Europe. “I don’t know if that’s true or it was just for some reason what Polydor wanted,” she added. “I spoke to John Merchant on the phone the night before, and he was congratulating me on the record coming out. But the next day I get a phone call from Barry and he said, ‘I’m really sorry things didn’t work out,’ I never got to deal with Barry again. I didn’t want to pester, but I did send a letter asking for an explanation, but I never got one. Barry’s solicitor sent me a letter explaining that Barry was a very busy man.

  “I finally called Dick in 1995 and said, ‘You know it’s been two years, and I just want to hear from you guys what happened.’ Barry called me back and said, something about not wanting anyone else to work with me if he couldn’t. Polydor sent me a legal document about breach of contract. Later I was sent the master tapes of the two songs, and I still have them.”

  Although she was completely unaware of it at the time, some CD singles did leak out in Britain, but even more puzzling was the appearance of her version of ‘Eyes’ on The Bunburys’ CD. “I was never told I was on The Bunburys’ album until I saw it on your web site!” she told Joseph Brennan. “That blew me away. I never got a copy of it, or even of my two songs.”

  Whilst Kelli was understandably upset, viewing events from her own perspective, there was more to things than met the eye. When the brothers had re-signed as recording artists with Polydor in 1992, part of the overall negotiations centred around the possibility of their being able to release other artists’ recordings on their own “Brothers Gibb” label. However, very shortly after the agreements were signed, the people who had been most instrumental in signing The Bee Gees, David Munns and Andrew Jenkins, were no longer in charge of Polydor UK. The new Managing Director was Jimmy Devlin, and it would appear that he ha
d other priorities in his new role. As a result, the subject of creating a new label found its way to the bottom of the agenda.

  Additionally, promotional copies of the CD single received a poor response from the radio stations so Devlin “pulled” the release, leaving George McManus in the unfortunate role of messenger, delivering the bad news to Barry. Obviously feeling bad about the situation, Barry instructed his own lawyers to obtain a release for Kelli from Polydor and tried very hard to obtain a new deal for her on both sides of the Atlantic. Unfortunately, although there was initially some favourable response, no one ever followed through with a firm offer, leaving the talented Kelli Wolfe to contemplate what might have been.

  * * *

  On December 27, 1992, Barry and Linda’s two youngest children were christened at St. Mary’s Church in Hendon, North London, along with Amy Rose, the infant daughter of David and Robyn English, followed by a reception for 40 at a nearby hotel. Charlie Burkett was Alexandra’s godfather, and David English stood in for Michael Jackson, Michael’s godfather, who was in Japan. Dwina was chosen as Michael’s godmother.

  “It is a very pretty church and it was a lovely service,” Linda said afterwards. “I couldn’t believe how good Ali was. We had got her up earlier than normal from her nap so she was awake much longer and she hadn’t really been fed properly because we were all rushing around. She was an angel.

  “She gave the vicar a funny look, though, when he poured the water over her. But she didn’t cry — she was wonderful. The only time she cried was when the photos were being taken.”

  Little Ali had made amazing progress during her first year. “She’s catching up more quickly than most premature babies,” said her proud mother. “She can stand and walk around her playpen, so she’s about right for her age.”

  The welfare of children everywhere was a cause close to The Bee Gees’ hearts. On June 5, 1993, they joined Duran Duran, Barry White, The Temptations and The Four Tops, performing in KISS Radio’s concert at Great Woods, Massachusetts. The 11-hour benefit concert raised more than $50,000 for the Genesis Fund for The National Birth Defects Center in Boston.

  The following month, they returned to Britain and raised money on a smaller scale. Taking part in a televised busking contest against a Covent Garden regular called Wally, The Bee Gees sang ‘Massachusetts’, ‘New York Mining Disaster 1941’ and ‘To Love Somebody’ and collected £100 from passers-by who dropped coins into Barry’s open guitar case. The Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital was the chosen recipient.

  The year also saw the first of several ‘tribute’ albums to The Bee Gees or more specifically, the Gibb brothers’ songwriting, that would be released over the next few years. The Bee Gees Songbook — The Gibb Brothers By Others was released on the UK-based Connoisseur Collection label. A compilation of previously released cover versions recorded from 1967 to 1992, it must have sold reasonably well as it has been reissued twice since.

  In August, The Bee Gees announced their intention to play a benefit concert for the children of war-torn Bosnia. “I really am angry that our governments can’t unite in some way and do something to stop this kind of violence when it occurs,” Barry declared. “To stop the conflict that is going on in the former Yugoslavia as well as just be able to stop conflicts that go on all over the world. My greatest fear, personally, is that all of these things are going to start occurring at the same time, and the United Nations is going to become impotent. And, if it isn’t already happening, it’s definitely foreseeable.”

  Although the concert didn’t come off, they dedicated a song from their forthcoming album to the children whose young lives were blighted.

  “At the end of the First World War, there was an enormous amount of spiritualism. This is probably because so many millions of people died in the … war that there was an upheaval of families wanting to contact their lost ones. Now from that came a combined opinion from spiritualists that the other side … what we call heaven … in fact is blue and it’s an island. And from there, for the want of a better word, we’re processed before we move on to our next reality. Good or bad, this is where we all end up. So we [wrote] a song called ‘Blue Island’ and dedicated it for the children of Yugoslavia, because even though they may not survive, the hope is that they, as well as us, are all going to this beautiful place.”

  * * *

  In August, ‘Paying The Price Of Love’ was the first single released after The Bee Gees’ return to Polydor. The song combines the heavy percussion sound characteristic of this album, and modern hip hop rhythm, with some of the old Barry falsetto that had not appeared on a Bee Gees single for a decade.

  The strong B-side was not on the album. ‘My Destiny’ is a great rocker with an Alan Kendall electric guitar lead reminiscent of Barry’s ‘System Of Love’, and some fine harmony vocal.

  ‘Paying The Price Of Love’ reached number 23 on the British charts. The brothers were gratified by the reception of the single.

  “Other artists, the media and deejays are treating us with the type of respect we wish we could have had five or six years ago,” Robin said. “We’ve been getting more respect these past 12 months than we did in the past 10 years.”

  Barry agreed. “A few years ago, my kids would come home and say, ‘Why don’t people like your group, Dad?’ ‘All things pass,’ I’d say, but I’d be disturbed. Now they come home and say, ‘People think your group’s really hip now, what’s going on? How come you’re doing the same thing and sometimes it’s credible and sometimes it’s not?’ ”

  He admitted that he found it as perplexing as his sons. “I’m confused by a culture that invents things, destroys them, only to reinvent them. We’re enjoying a sudden resurgence; in five years time, we won’t be.”

  September saw the release of their latest album in most parts of the world, although its release was delayed until November in the US. The album’s title, Size Isn’t Everything, received nearly as much attention as the music. Maurice explained that it “was more of a fun title. It also means basically, ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover.’ No matter how you perceived us or what we are or what we’ve been or what we’re doing, just listen to the music.”

  Size was the second of the pair of albums featuring the crisp sound of engineer Femi Jiya. The vocal recording is superb: all three brothers can be clearly heard weaving in and out of the harmonies and alternating lead parts. Rarely have the vocal assignments been so well balanced on a Bee Gees album, or the variety of musical styles been so broad. No one dominates the sound on this one. It sounds like three people all bursting with ideas, and many old fans got the same feeling from it as they did from Bee Gees albums of long ago, and yet the sound itself was very contemporary. It’s hard to pull off a union of opposites, crisp but warm, harmonies with each voice heard, memories of the with sounds from the present, but they manage to walk the fine line.

  Many of the same small group of players carry over from High Civilization: Alan Kendall on guitar, Chocolate Perry on bass and Tim Moore on keyboards, are joined here by a musician from some earlier projects, Tim Cansfield on guitar. The drums and percussion are a mix of real playing by Trevor Murrell and Luis Jardim, and programming by Moore and probably Maurice. Ed Calle adds sax and Gustavo Lezcano plays harmonica on one song.

  Released in November, the second single was ‘For Whom The Bell Tolls’, a remarkable combination of old and new Bee Gees style. Somewhat like ‘The Only Love’, it sounds like it is a combination of the twisting verse melodies Barry favours with the big melodic chorus Maurice and Robin tend to come up with, but here Barry and Robin sing lead on their sections, much as they did on older numbers like ‘Run To Me’. But the harmony singing here is more complex than in the old days, and it builds in intensity in a much more subtle way than the old songs where they just piled on more instruments.

  Barry described the song as “a piece of melody that popped up at home.” He explained, “I collared Robin in the studio one day. Maurice hadn’t come
in yet, and we were towards the end of the album … I said, ‘I’ve got a little bit of melody I want to sing to you.’ And we went upstairs and sat in the room upstairs in the writing room, and it was just … [the chorus] and that was it. Then I repeated that line, I thought it seems like it wants to keep repeating itself. And Robin sort of went ‘Yeah, yeah, it seems OK. Have we got enough tracks already, shall we develop it?’ … I said, ‘Well, I feel we ought to be developing it.’ So that’s where we were.” Aimed at the Christmas market, it unfortunately had to compete with novelty records like ‘Mr. Blobby’* for the number one slot. Although it did well in reaching number four in the UK, perhaps with the benefit of hindsight, a release earlier in the year could have seen it top the charts.

  The album included two other singles, depending on the market — but again not in the USA — ‘Kiss Of Life’ and ‘How To Fall In Love, Part One’, two very different songs.

  ‘Kiss Of Life’, an April 1994 single in continental Europe, rocks energetically along behind a Robin lead switching to Barry for the bridges. Above all, the harmony singing on much of the song is incredible, pure Bee Gees magic as they shift effortlessly from one vocal combination to another.

  In contrast the quieter rhythmic ballad ‘How To Fall In Love, Part One’, the simultaneous single release in the UK, sounds like mainly Barry’s idea, and he sings all the lead. The long repeating ending is one of the purest examples of Bee Gees songs being music with words — there’s no reason to concentrate on the lyric, which is just the rhythm section for the instrumental work. As with ‘Town Of Tuxley Toymaker’ back in the mid-Sixties, to date there has been no Part Two for this song either.