The Bee Gees

by David N. Meyer

  Hugh was a tough taskmaster; he evaded child labor laws and booked the boys for show after show. They had to perform his choreography, do the material he chose, dress just so and smile. Hugh seldom encouraged the boys and never told them whether their performances were objectively good or bad, improving or worsening. Hugh’s only concern, and the only subject of his feedback, was whether the audience liked them. “My father never called me ‘son,’ or ‘lad,’” Maurice said. “It was always ‘Ya sung flat.’”{27}

  They grew up as performers with no real sense of themselves. The person who knew their music best never told them if they were getting better, and perhaps he never knew. The Bee Gees would forever suffer from not being able to tell their best material from their worst. Sincerity and artistic expression were never their concerns. Making an audience like them was their only job. Proper timing, being charming, smiling, singing in tune and harmony, and dancing correctly were all that mattered. Hugh taught the boys early on to be artificial and he taught them well. In films of them at this time, singing old English music hall numbers like “My Father Was a Dustman,” the boys’ robotic movements and fixed facial expressions are heartbreaking. Barry, certainly old enough to know better, seems horribly sincere. The twins sing and move like soulless automatons.

  As they got older and heard the music their contemporaries were listening to, they wanted to grow their hair. Hugh asked them, “Will you sing any better with longer hair?” (Robin later had a specific agreement with Bee Gees manager Robert Stigwood that his hair length was his own business.) It’s hard not to feel compassion for Hugh. His music never made it. His other attempts at earning all failed. His children were his only shot, the only thing he might control, and control them he did. Hugh drove his boys hard, but he was never physical or emotionally abusive, which puts him well above the bar set for parents of child stars. His children never expressed regret.

  “We had a great time,” Maurice said. “Schooling was never any good for us. We grew up with adults, other artists, strippers, jugglers. I got laid when I was nine though I didn’t enjoy it.”{28} “When a kid wants to be a rock star he isn’t thinking how much money he will make,” Barry said. “He’s thinking about being famous, and for us it was the idea of being famous, not the idea of making money. What came along was, ‘Oh, you can make money out of this too.’”{29} The boys dressed like little adults—or monkeys—for their club gigs, in tuxedos with slicked-back hair. In some early TV appearances, they wear tuxes or dress like Theodore Cleaver. Barry looks so much older and sturdier than the twins, who seem tiny and underdeveloped. Barry’s a teen heartthrob and the twins are two of the gooniest-looking kids on the planet. It’s wrenching to see them working their act, being so impenetrable, and still so young and clueless.

  In 1962, Colin Jacobson, better known as Col Joye, a popular Australian singer of the period, began recording and producing singles for the boys, who sang backed by the Joy Boys—Joye’s studio band, comprised in part of Col’s brothers. The Gibbs ascended through the snake pit of the Australian music business, which was isolated from the rest of the world, self-contained and competitive. As their earnings increased, the Gibb family moved to Sydney, and the brothers opened for Chubby Checker at Sydney Stadium. “We went to Sydney, which was like going to London,” Robin said. “It was the biggest break we ever had.”{30}

  They dropped out of school at the minimum legal age to do so. The twins lied about their ages, claiming to be fourteen, and dropped out a year early. In October of 1963, Barry signed a composer’s agreement with Belinda Records and started writing songs for other artists. He was seventeen. The Bee Gees kept recording their own songs, but could not get airplay. The Bee Gees signed an onerous agreement with Festival Records in 1963. While the boys recorded their own material for Festival, they also appeared without credit on the recordings of other Festival artists. Festival owned the rights to the Bee Gees’ Australian music until 2005 and released and rereleased the same music constantly, much to the chagrin of the Bees Gees.{31}

  “The first hit we had in Sydney was ‘Wine and Women,’” Robin said. “But we had to buy out the record shops ourselves to give it a chance. We had the wrong image to sell a record, we were too young. It wasn’t like today when any age is no barrier if the record is a hit. Then, you had to be sort of near enough to 18. We weren’t even in our teens, although Barry was about creeping up there. So we assembled our fan club in Sydney Town Hall, about ten people.” “We found out from the record company when radio stations check the stores to compile the charts,” Barry said. “We got together £200, about $400, and sent our fan club into the most important city shops and department stores and had them buy our record. We told them to go into the record shops that the radio stations used as a guide. It was basic mathematics. How do you get on the charts? Answer: Sell records! How do the radio stations know what’s selling? We figured the radio stations would call the biggest shops and the key department stores to see what was selling. So that’s where we had our fan club do the buying.” “We found out what day,” Robin said, “TUE, which was the biggest Top-40 record station at that time in Sydney, made up their chart. It was done on Tuesday, printed on Tuesday night, and was in the stores on Wednesday. So we got together on Friday because we had to have a good sale on that weekend for them to pick up on Tuesday.” “No one,” Barry said, “was buying our record.” “It went in on the Tuesday after that weekend,” Robin said, “at #30 on the charts. They stepped up the airplay, the airplay got the people to buy the record, and that was it. I guess that was a cheat, but you always spend a bit of money on PR don’t you?”{32}

  The boys were unknowingly following the example of many great rock producers and promoters. Their business savvy—their understanding that music was nothing without promotion—was incredibly advanced for their age. As was their shamelessness and determination to succeed.

  “We were hyper, paranoid, neurotic and wanting to make it,” Barry said. “We followed that with three complete flops,” Robin said. “The first, ‘I Was a Lover, a Leader of Men,’ won an award for the best composition of the year but it wasn’t a hit.” Shortly after “Lover/Leader” flopped, in October of 1965, the Bee Gees released their first LP, The Bee Gee’s [sic] Sing & Play 14 Barry Gibb Songs. The album got decent reviews, but even then, the Bee Gees were accused of writing obscure and confusing lyrics; no one could tell what they meant.

  The Gibbs met another producer, Ossie Byrne, who gave them unlimited time to work on some follow-up songs behind a local butcher’s shop. “We met Bill Shepherd, who [later when he ­reunited with them in England] became our musical director, and Ossie Byrne, our producer. We were on the Spin label [which also belonged to Festival] and used to record until seven in the morning. ‘Monday’s Rain,’ our first for him, was an absolute flop. Our next, ‘Cherry Red’ (1966) again, an absolute flop.” “The producer of Spin records, Ossie Byrne,” Barry said, “gave us a drummer and all the time we needed to experiment. Over six months we recorded an album which included the song ‘Spicks and Specks.’”{33}

  The Bee Gees knew they had exhausted the commercial possibilities of Australia. Barry, with good reason, feared the draft and compulsory military service, which might well have meant being sent to Vietnam. The Gibbs made plans to leave Oz for England.

  On August 22, 1966, Barry married his girlfriend of two years, Maureen Bates. Barry was approaching twenty; Maureen, a year younger. She had assumed the title of Secretary of the Bee Gees Fan Club so she and Barry could be together as he toured and the family moved around. Maureen had been pressuring Barry to marry her. She knew if they were not married, she would be left behind and that the only way her parents would let her travel to England with Barry was as husband and wife.

  The newlyweds were estranged almost from the start. Six months after the wedding, when the Gibbs readied to leave, Maureen was not invited to travel with her husband. She would stay in Australia, at least for a while, and follow on a later boat. It
’s questionable whether Barry gave Maureen much thought during his voyage. She, however, was reminded of him often. “Spicks and Specks” was getting airplay and moving up the Australian charts.

  bee gees’ 1st

  As the Bee Gees worked their way upward in Australia, Robert Stigwood was doing the same in England.

  Stigwood was born in Australia—Adelaide—to a lower–working class household. He escaped at twenty-one, in 1956, shipping out to England. After years of low-end jobs and running a home for delinquents, he opened a talent agency, offering actors for TV commercials. “We found a niche,” said Stigwood’s partner at the time, Stephen Komlosy. “There used to be ‘advertising magazines’ on British television, actors discussing products for fifteen minutes. Advertisers who couldn’t afford to buy their own commercials would take time on the magazines. There were eight presenters and we had them all.”{34} One of Stigwood’s actors was a young heartthrob, Johnny Leyton. Leyton could sing, but every UK label rejected him. Stigwood took Leyton to Joe Meek.

  Meek was a rarity. He could arrange, record and produce a record, an unusual set of skills to be found in one man in England at the time. He had a home studio, which was equally rare. Among Meek’s trademarks was his “futuristic” sound featuring electronic bleeps and tons of reverb. He would later produce and release a huge hit, “Telstar,” by the Tornadoes. Meek worked with Tom Jones, Petula Clark, Gene Vincent and hundreds of others. He’s recognized as a pioneer of audio production for his overdubbing of multiple tracks using only two-track machines, and for his use of compression, which would figure heavily in—to name only one band—the early recordings of the Who. (The Who would later end up briefly on one of Stigwood’s labels, a move that cost them dearly in the litigation that followed.) Meek was a pioneer in his business practices; in his day the major record labels in the UK ran a functional monopoly. If the majors did not sign someone, he or she would never be heard. Meek—and Stigwood—broke that monopoly. Meek would bring a completely finished song to the majors and sell only the record, not the rights to the performer. Meek was unstable and, at times, dangerous. He suffered from depression, and from the legal and social oppression that came with being gay in England when homosexuality was illegal, as it remained until 1967. Gay men were subject not only to harassment by the police, but also to blackmail from lovers and associates. In 1967, Meek suffered a breakdown, murdered his landlady and killed himself.

  Stigwood brought Leyton to Meek as a potential teen idol. Leyton recorded “Johnny Remember Me,” and Stigwood made sure Leyton sang it on the television series that had recently cast him. When the song hit #1, “Stigwood was in business, he claims, as Britain’s first independent record producer.”{35}

  Stigwood established from the start the model he would follow in music, theater and movies. “We conceived the idea that in show business you can monopolize all areas of income by controlling and managing the artist,” Komlosy said. “If you start with the star, you control when and where he appears; if you promote him yourself, you become the record company. If you publish his music, you get the publisher’s cut. The idea was not to let anyone in from the outside.”{36} Stigwood and Komlosy watched the Beatles’ ascent with dismay; by writing their own songs, the Beatles rendered Stigwood’s business model obsolete. The Beatles didn’t need songwriters and they didn’t need someone to tell them how to sound. The Elvis-imitating pop of the “single, hip-swiveling artist was no longer what was wanted,” Komlosy said. “It was all groups—and they really flooded in.”{37}

  Stigwood adapted, as he always would. After a few setbacks, he joined Beatles manager Brian Epstein’s management and promotion company, NEMS. Stigwood was the booking agent for the Who when his big break arrived. Eric Clapton left John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers—whom Stigwood managed—and Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker left the Graham Bond Organization—whom Stigwood managed. Clapton, Bruce and Baker formed Cream, Stigwood became Cream’s manager and Cream blew up huge.

  Brian Epstein was tired of managing the Beatles. He was an overwrought, fragile soul, and was burning out. With the Beatles no longer willing to tour, Epstein understood that managing them would be little more than office work—dealing with contracts and difficult personalities without any of the rock-and-roll fun. The Beatles had matured beyond Epstein’s ideas; they weren’t going to dress alike, they weren’t going to appear in movies, their public pronouncements would be what they really thought, they were going to do drugs without pretending they weren’t and they wanted to be left alone.

  Brian Epstein saw in Stigwood a possible means of escape. “The first night they met at a party at Stigwood’s, a plan was made to go to Paris together for what [Stigwood’s financial backer and partner] Shaw called ‘a dirty weekend.’ In Paris, in a three-bedroom suite at the Lancaster Hotel, Brian told Stigwood he was planning to retire. He wanted to go to Spain and manage bullfighters.” Hanging with bullfighters was Epstein’s oft-stated fantasy retirement goal. “To Brian, Stigwood and Shaw seemed like the perfect choice to take over the daily operation of NEMS. Brian felt that Stigwood had the creative potential and that Shaw had a sharp financial mind. Most important to Brian, Stigwood was intelligent, amusing, and affected an elegance similar to his own.”{38}

  When Epstein told the Beatles he was considering selling his management company, NEMS, to Stigwood, they reacted strongly. McCartney in particular wanted nothing to do with Stigwood. It’s not clear where his dislike originated, but it was formidable. “We told Brian,” Paul McCartney said, “that if he sold us to Stigwood, we would only ever record out-of-tune versions of ‘God Save the Queen’ [for the remaining five years of our contract].”{39} Epstein backed off and in a complex transaction, Stigwood and his partner agreed to acquire 51 percent of NEMS after a twelve-month period of working together. The contract was signed in early January of 1967.

  With that deal, unknowingly, Stigwood and the Bee Gees began to vector toward one another.

  On January 3, 1967, the Gibb family embarked from Australia, bound for England, aboard the SS Fairsky. The boys, frustrated by a ceiling they could not break in Australia, were determined to go to England, even over Hugh and Barbara’s protests. “It doesn’t matter if you become the biggest thing in Australia,” Maurice said. “Because the furthest away you’re known is New Guinea and Tasmania.”{40} When their parents saw that the boys would go without them, they decided that the family would return to their homeland together. Hugh and Barbara had little desire to leave Oz. Once again, the Gibb parental-child structure was overturned as the kids made adult decisions for the whole family. “They wanted to stay in Australia,” Robin said, “but we said no.”{41} “We came back to England because of them,” Hugh said. “I had a good job, but it was me or them. One day they said they wanted to go home so I said: ‘OK, off we go.’”{42}

  “There was no choice,” Robin continued. “The manager of our record company said, ‘Look, you’re out, get out! We don’t want to make another record with you!’ In those days, a record company had its top artists and its nobody artists. We were the nobody artists. The top artist would get all the time in the studio. The most recording time they gave us was an hour to make a two-sided record. Every time we released a record they said (spoken in a weary voice for emphasis), ‘Here they go . . . trying again.’ Those were our reviews! That was all our reviews consisted of: ‘Another Bee Gees record. Phew!’ That’s what they’d write, an exasperated ‘phew,’ like why didn’t the Bee Gees give up the ghost?”{43}

  The Bee Gees reached a certain level, and the structure of the business in Australia meant they could go no higher. “Big artists would come to top the bill there,” Barry said. “But we were young and sweet and killing their acts and doing great! We thought: if we can do this well—why not have a crack at Sydney? We went to Sydney and got a recording contract and made the first of 15 flop singles in a row. People would tap us on the head and say: ‘Go play with your toys.’ They thought we were kids who would never make it.
We got into the Australian Top 10 with ‘Wine and Women’; then ‘I Was a Lover, a Leader of Men’; then ‘Spicks and Specks.’ It was No. 1 when we decided to leave Australia. But we went without one word of Press.”{44}

  “Spicks and Specks” wasn’t #1 when they left, but it was rising. There was no press in part because the Gibbs did not want any. They’d seen groups abandon Oz for the big time, only to return less famous and more broke. The Bee Gees wanted to slip away. The Bee Gees’ official autobiography, published in 1979, claims that Festival records tried to serve them with an injunction to prevent them from leaving the country. Later research makes that seem unlikely.

  “In August 1966,” Robin said, “we went into the studio desperate to get a hit before we left for England. We made ‘Spicks and Specks,’ but Spin didn’t want to release it. They thought we were finished, a financial loss. It was released eventually and went to the top in four weeks. It had been in our minds for the past years to come to England. ‘Spicks and Specks’ gave us the money.”{45} But not quite enough money for the entire family’s passage. Hugh made a deal with the ship: the boys would perform nightly to cover his and their fare.

  The Bee Gees sailed away as “Spicks and Specks” rose on the charts. “The memories I have of Australia,” Barry said, “were that they were unfair to us right to the end. Even on the boat, we’d get reports from friends about ‘Spicks and Specks.’ The record became a hit while we were on the boat and the local papers had stories like: ‘Bee Gees Abandon Australia.’”{46}