The Ultimate Biography of The Bee Gees

by Hector Cook

  European copies of the album included an extra cut at the end, ‘Decadance’, which was a “remix” in the new sense of ‘You Should Be Dancing’ — that is, a combination of the original with a great deal of newly recorded and synthesized material.

  The other non-album B-side which came with ‘Kiss Of Life’ or ‘How To Fall In Love’, was called ‘855-7019’, with alternating Barry and Robin verses, a catchy chorus of “eight double five, seven oh one nine,” and a long instrumental ending continuing the bassline and beat into a fade, after which the hapless singer hears an answering machine inform him that the object of his affections is “tied up at the moment”.

  About the same time, Barry, Maurice and Femi Jiya also produced a track for Lulu’s forthcoming Independence LP. ‘Let Me Wake Up In Your Arms’ was written by all three brothers three years earlier, and Barry provided guitar and backing vocals on the song.

  Using some rare spare time, The Bee Gees also collaborated with a Brazilian duo who recorded ‘Words’ in Spanish, ‘Palabras’, as Jose & Durval, and in Portuguese, ‘Palavras’ as Chitaozhino & Xororo.

  In preparation for the upcoming tour to promote Size Isn’t Everything, The Bee Gees played a 16-song concert at the Sunrise Musical Theater as part of the Y-100 Radio Birthday Month.

  Kelli Wolfe attended the concert with her mother, an occasion she found memorable for several reasons. “I had called Dick,” she explained, “because Barry had said to me, if they ever did a concert in Miami that we could come. I don’t think he spoke to Barry, but he got me tickets, my mom and I. So we went up there and stayed in the hotel and went to the show, and we got backstage passes …

  “None of them were speaking to each other. They got off stage, and Maurice went one way, Barry went the other, and Robin went to the far side of the room, and I don’t think they said a word to each other the rest of the night. My mom asked John Merchant what was going on, and he said, ‘They’re fighting as usual.’

  “Right after the show, we went to the party room backstage. At any concert I’ve ever been backstage, they have champagne and wine and food, but you know what they had there? Popcorn,” she announced in disgust. “My mom and I looked at each other. All they had was popcorn, and there were all these people that were all dressed up, and I thought this was really weird! Maurice saw me and waved me over and told me how excited they were that my record was coming out and so on. Barry spoke to me too for a few minutes before Linda pulled him away, and that was the last time I ever saw him in person.”

  The Bee Gees reprised the 16-song set at Rupert’s Nightclub in Atlanta, Georgia on November 5 and again two days later at Orlando for VH1’s Center Stage.

  On November 25, they performed four songs on the Royal Variety Performance before the Queen at London’s Dominion Theatre. Maurice expressed what a privilege they considered the appearance. “I can vividly remember as kids watching The Beatles make their famous appearance on the show,” he said, “when John Lennon came out with his immortal comment about the rattling of jewellery. The Beatles were our heroes, our gods. We had just made our first records in Australia and I remember thinking, ‘I wonder if one day it’ll be us up there.’ Now it’s actually happened, and it’s a treat. We’ve done things for Charles and Diana, but this is the first time we’ve appeared in front of the Queen. We feel greatly honoured.”

  Earlier that month, they had also made an appearance on American “shock jock” Howard Stern’s syndicated radio show. Ostensibly there to talk about their career and the new album, Barry’s discomfort with Stern’s style was audible as he attempted to steer the conversation back to business. He lost any hope of salvaging the interview when Stern asked if they were faithful to their wives, and Robin announced, “My wife cheats on me now, but not with men. Yeah, she’s gay. She’s proud of it.”

  Maurice observed, “I think it’s turned out to be the Robin show,” adding, “I don’t suppose there’s much that we can say now after Robin’s…”

  Howard, interrupted, “No, no one’s interested in you two. You guys just sit back now and relax, all right?”

  Barry responded tersely, “We’ll just sit here and keep our big mouths shut.”

  Urged on by Howard and his female sidekick, Robin Quivers, Robin went on to elaborate, “Everything is confined within the relationship. She only likes women … She’s got a steady girlfriend at the moment, her lover … and I get to join in. It works. It works for us … but there’s a lot of people out there that get threatened by that kind of situation. I see it as completely normal.”

  Howard observed, “Barry, you seem upset by this.”

  Barry’s voice was icy as he replied, “I’m not upset at all. Actually I’m very, very calm. I just don’t talk about my personal life. Whatever I’ve got up to in the past 25 years is not for everybody’s ears.”

  The brothers performed a ribald version of their own ‘To Love Somebody’ with new lyrics provided by Stern. It was certainly a new image for The Bee Gees. They continued the theme the following month on Tribute Entertainment TV with a mock commercial for “The National Addadicktome Foundation Appeal” in which they lampooned the unfortunate Mr Bobbit with yet another set of alternative lyrics to the music of ‘To Love Somebody’. This time, the song was called ‘To Lose Your Penis’!

  Back on the show, Howard continued, “You want my advice, I mean, you guys never need me to tell you how to make an album, but I would dump two of the tracks and just put the lesbian stories on. I would be immediately in the store, I mean I wouldn’t know what to do.”

  The following day, the story was in newspapers around the globe. Robin had flown back to England, while Dwina stayed in Miami. At four o’clock in the morning, she got a phone call. “He called me up from London and said, ‘There’s been an article in The Sun,’ “ she recalled.

  “I said, ‘Well, read it to me,’ but he wouldn’t. A friend read it. Robin was very apologetic, but I was stunned, shocked and hurt. I couldn’t go back to sleep.”

  The immediate reaction by both Robin and Dwina was to treat the entire episode as a joke which got out of hand. “Robin is normally a good practical joker but he went too far this time. I’m going to kill him,” Dwina said. “I have my son Robin John here with me in Miami. He’s only 10 so he doesn’t understand attraction. I am afraid of other children ribbing him at school.

  “And my family in England think it is serious. I have dozens of relatives in Britain and I’m sure I have ancestors turning in their graves. But I am keeping a brave face on it. I haven’t spoken to my mother yet, but she’ll be on his warpath for this.”

  Barbara Gibb wasn’t so easily shocked. “I get on extremely well with my mother-in-law,” Dwina continued. “She’s very broad-minded and never even mentioned you know what.”

  Robin attempted some damage control on Pebble Mill, telling Judi Spiers, “That was basically a radio show in New York called Howard Stern … They don’t have anything like it in England, it just went completely awry because, he just likes to shock. He talks about everybody including his own family.”

  Judi responded, “So, the allusions you were making about sexual activities were a joke?”

  “Absolutely,” Robin agreed, “but it just totally backfired and again it wasn’t a sort of serious statement about my life. It was more of a conversation that sort of rolled on early in the morning, and it happened to have gone to 17 cities, and it was the number one show in the country so, when people hear things like that, even in jest, it just gets picked up.”

  Dwina told The Sun’s Piers Morgan, “It might have been a little dig at me because I am writing a novel in which there are things pertaining to lesbian activities. I suppose he was having a little dig which turned into a very big dig, and almost dug his own grave. If he doesn’t dig it, I am sure my mother will!

  “It will cost him dearly. He’ll pay in his own way. I am going to extract from him one of the biggest diamonds I have ever extracted in my life. The diamond is getting bigge
r by the minute, the more I reflect on it!”

  After all the uproar, most people would agree with Robin Quivers when she said, “I thought he’d keep his mouth shut after he saw what happened.” Indeed, one might have expected Robin to be a little more discreet in the future — but few who know him were surprised that discretion was the last thing on his mind. In an on-air phone call from London to The Howard Stern Show just over a week later, he denied that Dwina had been angry. “She actually loved the whole thing,” he insisted.

  Robin Quivers said, “Well yeah, you could tell it was sort of tongue in cheek because she said she was going to extract a big diamond from you.”

  “That’s right you see, so there’s a little method to her madness here,” he replied.

  Far from denying any of the previous revelations, Robin gave even more details. With Howard urging him on, he went on to describe their three in the bed lifestyle.

  “Not only could I [not] believe that we got Robin Gibb to tell us this story, I can’t believe we’re getting him to tell us it again! It’s great. I love it,” Howard gloated.

  For the next year or so, there was the “Is she or isn’t she?” game being played, with Robin alternately telling interviewers that it was a joke or that it was all true.

  Dwina proudly showed off her new Jaguar XJRS with a number plate reading DRU 1 D, saying, “Robin bought it for me after his … indiscretion. I told him he owed me the biggest diamond ever, so he bought me this car in diamond blue.”

  But in 1995, the couple spoke frankly with OK! magazine. “I was being interviewed by the biggest shock jockey in the US on live radio,” Robin explained. “You have to shock with him, or you become the butt of his treatment so I got in first. It wasn’t until I got on the plane later to go to London that I realised what a can of worms I’d opened … but yes, it’s true, Dwina is bisexual with me.”

  “He was trying to shock — and he certainly shocked my mother! His comments did upset me,” Dwina admitted, “but only because I was worried about how my family, my mother and our son Robin John would take it. I didn’t have any feelings of shame about what Robin said, and I still don’t. No one can hurt me in anything they do or say. I just carry on living my life.”

  Although Barry had sounded distinctly uncomfortable with the revelations at the time, Dwina insisted that neither he nor Maurice had been surprised. “They’re used to Robin,” she explained. “On one radio show, they were asked what past lives they might have lived, and Robin piped up, ‘Barry was probably a rent-boy for Oscar Wilde.’ He tends to throw in these bombshells. Maybe that’s why we’re attracted to each other.”

  Although the couple’s close friends had known about Dwina’s sexuality from the beginning of their relationship, there were still shockwaves when they revealed all.

  According to Robin, they disproved the old axiom that opposites attract. “I couldn’t live with someone who was opposite to me, or who held grudges,” he said. “We never go to bed on an argument.”

  Saying that they had made their “commitments in the eyes of God,” Robin divulged, “I knew Dwina was gay when we married, but that didn’t matter because I was in love with her. I still am very much in love with her. She is the best wife any husband could want.”

  Dwina continued, “We have a spiritual/physical bond whereby we know we’re always going to be together.”

  She insisted that bond wasn’t weakened by the fans who tried to get close to Robin. “I find it flattering that so many women find my husband sexy. Women write to me and tell me they think he’s sexy and how lucky they think I am.

  “Although Robin still has lots of fans from the Seventies, as I get older, the fans seem to get younger,” she laughed. “Often they’re very beautiful, and they can be very nice to me. It’s only the odd one … who oversteps the mark. But that’s probably because things aren’t working in their lives.”

  Robin added, “No disrespect to anyone who likes us, but there are people out there who write in and say the strangest things. We keep a list of them, just in case they show up somewhere.”

  In April, one of Robin’s fans crossed that boundary between fan devotion and obsession when she showed up in a most unexpected place — a wardrobe in the couple’s English home. Robin and Dwina received a phone call at their Miami home from Robin’s personal assistant, Ken Graydon back in England. “Someone’s broken into your house,” Ken said. “We found her in the wardrobe. She seems to be a fan.”

  A 43-year-old housewife and mother of four travelled more than 150 miles from her home to The Prebendal. It was no spur of the moment whim; she had prepared for her mission well, arming herself with a camera, camcorder, tape recorder, rubber gloves, screwdriver and Stanley knife. After strolling through the grounds taking photos, she used her tools to prise open one of the latticed windows and climbed inside, seeking the ultimate fan souvenir, her own video of the medieval mansion’s interior.

  She hadn’t reckoned on the sophisticated security system which alerted the police and tracked her movements through the house. As the deafening alarm sounded, she stowed her bag of burglary gear under a bed. Within minutes, the police and Ken Graydon were on the scene, and found the woman cowering in the wardrobe of the nanny’s bedroom. She was led away in shame.

  “Her only concern seemed to be that she’d be banned from [The Bee Gees] fan club,” Dwina said.

  Robin instructed the fan club not to end her membership and asked the police to drop the charges of criminal damage against the woman. “I’m not so materialistic that I’d feel this was important to me,” he said. “Anyway, it wasn’t a vicious revengeful break-in.” The police declined to drop the charges.

  “I’m not angry about the break-in, and I feel no resentment towards [her],” he explained. “I don’t feel like my house has been violated either.”

  Dwina didn’t fully agree. “It’s a very strange sensation knowing someone’s been in your house rummaging around,” she said. “She wasn’t a thief, however, just a very ardent fan and quite harmless. If she’d just come and asked me if she could take pictures inside the house, I might have been able to sort something out.”

  A psychiatrist testified that she had been suffering from menopausal depression at the time of the break-in, and that she had also been distressed after the death of her dog.

  The defendant claimed she had not intended to steal anything from the house but wanted only to take photos. She stressed that she was shocked by what she had done and offered to pay compensation for the damages. She pleaded guilty to going equipped to burgle and guilty to damaging the window. She was ordered pay £402 compensation — £314 for damage to the window plus £88 to reset the alarm — and £25 costs.

  Robin donated the money to a children’s leukaemia charity. “I still think it would have been better if the police hadn’t charged her,” he said. “There are, I believe, a lot of worse people out there.”

  * * *

  In early 1994, the tabloids in Britain reported that Maurice was “back in booze clinic,” a rumour which he denied.

  “They got it wrong. A lot of people said I’d relapsed and gone back into treatment. But in fact, I’d gone back to do treatment, to facilitate the group, and that’s a different thing,” he explained. “I don’t have to keep going to the meetings, but if it makes me feel good when I do go to them, then there’s no reason why I should stop. Now I also have a wonderful AA support group in England around the Surrey area. It’s a boon.”

  Polydor announced plans, subject to planning permission, to decorate the towers at Battersea Power Station with the Gibbs’ images from the Size Isn’t Everything album. It was also announced that the promotional tour for the album would take The Bee Gees to 18 cities throughout Europe, beginning in April in Toulon.

  But in February, the proposed tour was cancelled due to concerns about Barry’s health. The arthritis in his back, right hand and right knee had become worse, and during tests at Mount Sinai Hospital, the doctors discovered
a problem with his heart. Their solicitor, Michael Eaton, stated, “We don’t think it’s going to stop him doing most things, but it’s one of those things you don’t take liberties with.”

  He added that the group were very disappointed. “They get their greatest thrill playing to live audiences. I can’t remember them ever having to pull out before. They’ll try to reschedule the tour as soon as possible.”

  The group’s agent, Pete Bassett announced, “Barry’s suffering from arthritis, which is why the group called off the tour. But he is soldiering on and is in Britain with the other two brothers for the release of their single.”

  Explaining that the warm climate of Miami was more beneficial, he added, “It could be a long time before the tour is back on. At the moment, Barry has had exploratory surgery to see how bad the trouble is. He even wears a glove on stage when he is playing guitar to keep his hand warm, which helps stop the pain.”

  Robin and Maurice did some promotional appearances, making excuses for their absent brother. “It was pretty hairy for Barry as he’s normally so healthy,” Maurice commented. “He’d been run down for a while, and after a check-up at the doctor’s, he was told he had a viral infection which had affected his heart. We were very concerned for him, but he’s had treatment and is okay now.”

  He later said, “Barry has had back problems but didn’t keep up the physiotherapy. His current heart problem is being taken good care of, and he is looking forward to getting back to England soon, even if he can’t appear live.”

  With the memory of Andy’s death from myocarditis still fresh, rumours spread quickly about the state of Barry’s health. Although initially grateful for the concern shown by the group’s fans, the attention soon grated on Barry. “There’s an abnormality with my heart,” he said. “I didn’t have a heart attack, but everybody goes and talks to the press. It was my feeling that people should mind their own business — and I refer to my brothers in the nicest possible way.”