The Bee Gees

by David N. Meyer

  The Bee Gees would not tour together again for ten years.

  andy gibb

  March 5, 1958–March 10, 1988

  Andy was not a genius like his eldest brother. He was a talented, sweet soul and his young death was a great waste. Andy’s sweetness proved no defense against his melancholy and his melancholy was no defense against drink or drugs. Drugs and melancholy consumed Andy and—despite three #1 singles, two platinum albums and all the riches and fans they brought—swept him away. Still, Andy never possessed the gravitas for tragedy. His curse was being a good-looking lightweight.

  Even Andy’s obituary in the grave London Times praised his handsomeness: “His immense success could hardly have been founded on vocal qualities alone. What sent the young fans wild was his pretty face, flowing blond locks and his lithe figure, which radiated the healthy, tanned sex-appeal of a male Farah Fawcett-Majors.”{464}

  The passing decades have proven the Times obit author to be the only person who ever claimed that Andy evoked Farah ­Fawcett-Majors, the echt-University of Texas cheerleader turned pinup girl turned Charlie’s Angel (the first go-around, on TV), turned quote serious actress close quote who walked around beneath a single unchanging hairstyle for forty years. The obit writer’s surprising reference speaks more to his own obsessions than it does to Andy Gibb. It does underscore one of Andy’s several small tragedies: grown men found it difficult to take him seriously. Including, apparently, his three older brothers.

  Andy did have a great head of hair. For most of his career he wore it shaped away from his boyishly handsome face, shoulder length and feathered, more of a Peter Frampton cut, without the bangs or bottom flips of, say, a Greg Allman. Unlike his siblings, Andy—the only conventionally attractive Gibb brother—­possessed truly stellar teeth: a perfectly scaled movie-star blaze of white. And then there were his piercing, sparkling blue eyes

  On various television shows during his drug addiction, rehab, drinking, drug relapse and more rehab days, Andy would aim those eyes at whichever professional blonde was interviewing him about his heartache over his goddess former girlfriend, actress Victoria Principal. Under Andy’s gaze, that professional blonde would melt, right there on camera. Armored, overcoiffed morning network stars went all empathetic and motherly lustful when Andy spoke wistfully about how Victoria turned her back on his sweet innocent love. It speaks to a more naïve age to see a TV reporter manifest a genuine emotion, and these reporters and hostesses were genuinely moved. They, like so many of Andy’s fans, were moved to a primal emotion: desire. Desire fueled by the need to nurture. Ladies loved Andy Gibb. They all wanted to mother him before, during and after they took off his clothes. While he sang.

  The one lady who didn’t quite love or mother Andy sufficiently, according to Andy, was Ms. Principal. When she spoke about their time together, which she did reluctantly, she offered a brief, unsentimental version: “Our breakup was preceded and precipitated by Andy’s use of drugs,” she said. “I did everything I could to help him. But then I told him he would have to choose between me and his problem.”{465} Andy, in her view, chose his problem.

  Andy chose his problem, mostly cocaine, sometimes Quaa­ludes, sometimes alcohol, in many situations. His problems included drug use or drunkenness or the depression of staying clean or the stress of appearing in public when his cripplingly low self-esteem or his paralyzing, incongruous shyness took him over. Hangovers or ennui or lack of self-discipline or sheer laziness got him fired from what had to be the easiest gig in show business at the time, or perhaps of all time: co-hosting the unintentionally hilarious variety music and dance show, the 1980s incarnate, Solid Gold.

  Solid Gold aired on Saturday nights, mostly, and featured paired hit makers from widely disparate demographics, for example, Irene Cara (Fame) and Dionne Warwick, lip-synching either their latest or best known material. Even for the 1980s, the sets, lighting and artist presentation were cheesy and cheap. The real viewer-lure was the Solid Gold dancers, mega-buff men and women who writhed suggestively to the week’s top 10, usually clad in shoulderless leotards and lamé leggings over their golden ankle boots. Their elaborate camp routines combined Las Vegas showgirl review moves with ersatz Bob Fosse hip jerks and knee-up toe points. Both genders wore lots of hair gel. This is not to downplay Solid Gold’s audience share or its influence. Its raw tackiness and graphically sexual dance numbers brought in tweeners by the millions. Solid Gold was Andy’s demographic. He was perfect for it.

  It’s hard to find Andy on TV with his shirt buttoned or singing live. His golden chest hair seems as much a part of his wardrobe as his pressed jeans. It was an era of open shirts and gold medallions, and Andy was a man of his era.

  Andy provided a unthreatening whitebread sweetness and co-host Marilyn McCoo, of the Mamas and the Papas–lite black harmony act, the 5th Dimension, the equally unthreatening black showbiz polish. Andy came across as sincere and without artifice, chatting as if the god-awful showbiz banter between him and McCoo were his natural tongue. Andy could make his eyes glow while lip-synching with the most detached uninterest in the whole proceeding. He always seemed most natural in the most artificial situations, whether lip-synching with Olivia Newton-John or meeting, for the first time, Victoria Principal live on the set of The John Davidson Show.

  Which is another of his tragedies. If Andy were thirty today, instead of in 1988, his star would be on the ascent in a way he could never have imagined. Because Andy was the perfect 2000s and 2010s celebrity—the adorable, world-famous walking train wreck with yet unrealized potential. He lived out his emotional life on talk shows and sought publicity for his addiction and sojourns in rehab, as damn few did in 1985. He dated or crushed out on other celebrities. There was a brief public infatuation with Marie ­Osmond, with whom he actually sang live on a south Florida telethon.

  Andy went public with his love, but soon learned that Marie did not fool around and would never marry outside her Mormon faith. Andy had an undefined relationship with Olivia Newton-John, which lasted little longer than Andy’s stint as the leading man in Broadway’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. The Dreamcoat producers fired Andy barely a week’s run into the show. Broadway was hard work, harder than Andy could bear.

  On the day that Andy met Victoria on The John Davidson Show—the day, Andy insisted, that all his troubles began—he was, naturally, exposing his chest to his navel. Andy wore sharply creased light blue jeans, an unzipped blue Fila athletic jersey and what appear to be golden boots. Victoria Principal walked onto the set supposedly unannounced, and Andy’s surprise seems genuine.

  Andy tells Davidson that he told People magazine that he watched the hit nighttime soap Dallas only for Victoria Principal, and that he’d sent her a note. Davidson says: “So if there’s one person you’d like to meet, it’s Victoria Principal?” And behind Davidson, already onstage in advance of her cue, appears the woman herself.

  Victoria Principal became a household name as Pamela Barnes Ewing in Dallas, a role she played from 1978 to 1987. Dallas dominated television and all the concomitant industries—gossip, fashion, fitness, talk shows—as few shows ever did and none could today. During Principal’s reign on Dallas, it was impossible to turn on prime-time television and not see her face.

  Davidson—a genial third-tier daytime talk-show host—­becomes a spectator to history on his own show. Victoria moves slowly, approaching Andy from behind, and he turns on the couch to follow her entrance. Her helmet of Jheri-curled black hair gleaming under the lights, Principal glides onto the set in an ankle-length embroidered white lace dress that evokes satanic weddings in heavy metal videos. In front of her left ear she wears a gargantuan white flower that obscures a quarter of her face.

  Victoria Principal is really something, a force of nature. She has had a singular, cross-media career that overturns numerous firmly held Los Angeles showbiz truisms. Foremost among them was that starlets who strip for Playboy never amount to anything. As, indeed, most of them
don’t. Ms. Principal posed for the magazine in 1973. Her career was launched by a small role in John Huston’s farce of a western, 1972’s The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, starring Paul Newman; for that she earned a Most Promising Newcomer Golden Globe. In 1975 she quit acting to become an agent.

  That shift speaks volumes. Ms. Principal was an Air Force brat, and manifested the hard shell and adaptive social dexterity associated with a rootless upbringing. Her sideways move into agenting demonstrates a cold-blooded insight into where the power lay in Hollywood and into her own chances at viable stardom. She was an agent from 1975 to 1977. Her agenting career stood her in good stead when she later moved into producing TV movies, all of which did well.

  When Victoria met Andy on air in 1981 she was, despite his worldwide #1s, a far bigger star, less naïve and more adept at living the star’s life. When she sits down on that couch beside him and hands Andy a sealed letter, he’s gobsmacked. Andy’s shyness and lack of worldliness was no act. At times he seemed to forget his status and what it meant. All Andy had to do was ask his agent for an introduction and Victoria would have had lunch that day; instead, he wrote a letter to a TV star like an eighth grader. And like an eighth-grader’s fantasy, she answered. Andy reads Victoria’s letter on air and tells the world, happily, that Victoria signed it with a happy face. Andy and Davidson recount—with Victoria on the couch next to Andy—that Andy had a crush on Victoria from the first moment he saw her. Andy blushes like a schoolboy and Victoria seems self-conscious. It’s a touching, human moment.

  Victoria sits as she always did, with her back ramrod straight, posing like a good girl with her ankles crossed. When Davidson presses him to say what he likes about Victoria, Andy says: “I’m a very shy person basically,” turning red from his forehead to the top of his chest hair. He’s tongue-tied and she’s charmed.

  That charm and what it camouflaged was the core of Victoria Principal’s appeal. With her dancer’s carriage, feral-innocent face and unshakeable goody two-shoes vocal style, Principal incarnated the dirty/sweet southern sorority girl, the girl from across the tracks determined to be above reproach, to act so “nicely” that none of the more highborn homecoming queens could ever censor her behavior. But no matter how civilized she pretends to be, it’s clear that if you ever got Victoria into the backseat after a game, she would learn you a thing or two. Victoria Principal was formidable; a self-contained, self-motivated handful to say the least, and yet there she was, appearing on live daytime TV to hand a sweet note to a man she’d never met.

  When she gave Andy her letter, Victoria Principal was thirty-one and Andy Gibb, twenty-three.

  Andy Gibb was the first solo artist ever to have his or her first three singles hit #1 on the Billboard top 100 charts. Andy’s debut album—Flowing Rivers—released when he was nineteen, sold over a million copies in 1977, and cracked the Billboard top 20. Andy’s “I Just Want to Be Your Everything” is touted as “the most played song of 1977” and peaked at #7 on the UK charts. Along with his albums and singles, Andy’s fans bought myriad Andy posters and other merchandise. He was a money-making machine, a household name before he achieved his majority, an idolized tween idol in the footsteps of David Cassidy of The Partridge Family or Leif Garrett.

  That niche, and the sort of fame associated with it, did little for Andy’s self-esteem, which was always low. “Andy never saw anything in the mirror,” a family friend said. “He saw an empty ­vision.”

  Andy, like many before him in other fields, joined the family business. His mentor, co-songwriter and producer—Barry—­happened to be the greatest pop hit maker in the world at the absolute top of his game. In an inversion of the usual formula, Andy’s hits and worldwide fame came first, then he paid his dues.

  Andy Roy Gibb was born at the Stretford Memorial Hospital in Manchester on the cusp of his family leaving England for Australia, on March 5, 1958. Andy was five months old when his family took ship for Oz. When Andy was four, he loved to sing along with his brothers. He and Barry shared a special bond; Barry said of Andy: “My parents had two sets of twins, one [set] separated by 12 years.”

  When the Gibbs moved back to England, Andy claimed to have taken the Bee Gees’ success in stride. He’d stroll through the five or six hundred kids who routinely crowded outside the family house waiting for a glimpse of the famous brothers and hang with his kin, who were inside watching themselves on TV. Andy told Co-Ed magazine: “When you’re ten years old, you don’t really think about show business, with the glitter and stardom . . . I just accepted it.”{466} When the older brothers went through their acrimonious spilt, Andy was eleven. He could hardly choose a side, but his natural connection to Barry made the feud all the more uncomfortable for him.

  In April of 1969, when Andy was nine, he told an interviewer from Fabulous 208 magazine: “I think [Barry’s] my favorite brother, he’s so kind and generous, and when he comes to visit us he plays with me. I’ve only got to ask for something and he’ll buy it for me. I think he’s too softhearted, people can talk him into things and he hates hurting anyone. For my eleventh birthday he bought me a horse, which I’ve called Gala. He has just bought the saddle for it and he also paid for the delivery from Sussex. I hope when I grow up I’m like him.”{467}

  When Andy was twelve, Barry gave him his first guitar. At the time, Andy was obsessed with show jumping. According to Hugh, Andy was a champion rider who liked to sleep in the stalls with his horses. Andy also liked to rent limousines and take his friends for joyrides to London.

  In 1971, Hugh and Barbara moved with Andy to the Spanish resort island of Ibiza. The Bee Gees were gone touring most of the year and Manchester had grown too small for the little brother of superstars. In a 1978 interview with enduring Los Angeles radio personality Robert W. Morgan, Andy said: “I have never had a good day at school in my life. That’s why I left school on my 13th birthday. There were kids there that I would do anything to get along with them, [but] any game of sport was ‘you think you’re great, don’cha, cause you’re the Bee Gees’ brother, you think you can do that fabulously.’ To have that for quite a few years thrown at you, it got to me so bad in the end I just couldn’t handle it any more. I had to leave it.”{468}

  It speaks to the bottomless provincialism and complacency of Hugh and Barbara that they could have lived anywhere in the UK and chose to return to Manchester. Maybe they wanted to lord success over their old neighbors, maybe they thought London was above them. Maybe they liked it there.

  Andy didn’t care for school any more than his brothers, though he stayed all the way to eighth grade. One story that pops up regularly is that Andy caught shit from his classmates because his mum and dad dropped him off and picked him up from school in their Rolls-Royce. This story gets applied to Andy in both Manchester, where it makes sense, and in Ibiza, where it makes none. Being picked up in a Rolls might drive other Manchester twelve-year-olds to want to murder Andy, but in Ibiza a Rolls would be no big deal.

  Andy didn’t suffer any greater a yoke of parental supervision than had his brothers. He had plenty of the hellion genes that had seen his brothers run out of the UK a decade earlier. In a 1978 conversation with the Philadelphia Daily News, Andy claimed to have been “a skinhead in a skinhead gang. With the skinheads, the main thing was football matches. You take a hammer into the stadium and throw it as high as you can into a capacity crowd of thirty thousand. And wherever it lands, it lands. We were really very nasty.”{469}

  Any photograph of Andy makes it difficult to picture him in the skinhead mufti of suspenders and steel-toed combat boots. The skinhead ranks were filled with the picked upon, but Andy’s tales of hammer throwing sound like wistful thinking; being bullied by classmates seems more his speed. Andy was a child of privilege already working hard to present himself as somehow a victim. Or perhaps tales of youthful skinheaddom were Andy’s grabbing after gravitas, making himself into someone who took a journey, who overcame something to become a star, rather than a scion of th
e most successful family in music.

  Ibiza suited Andy and his new guitar. When Circus magazine interviewed him in 1978, Andy discussed his first gig. “I started singing in a tavern on Ibiza called Debbie’s Bar on St. Patrick’s Day when I was thirteen. I sang Paul Simon’s ‘The Only Living Boy In New York’ and ‘Feelin’ Groovy’ and the Bee Gees’ ‘Words.’” Andy played a round of clubs on the island and, smitten with a tourist girl, wrote his first song. He played it for Barry, and Barry encouraged him to keep writing.{470}

  Andy told Co-Ed magazine: “When my mother and father and I moved to Ibiza, and I got work in nightclubs playing to Swedish tourists.” Andy smiled at the memory of those Swedish tourists—90 percent female and between the ages of 18 and 24. “That was really fun,” said Andy. “But it was then that I got a feeling for what I was suited to do—sing and play music! That was it!”{471}

  No fourteen-year-old ever had it better than Andy Gibb. He spent his eighth and ninth grade years singing covers to clubs packed with Swedish, Dutch and German tourist girls, a new crop every week. At that age his big brothers had been touring the shitholes of Australia in ill-fitting tuxedos singing lounge material that was twenty years out of date. Adolescent Andy’s musical apprenticeship consisted of a sea of blond, sunburned, drunken faces falling in love with him. “We’d start playing at about 8 at a piano bar,” Andy said. “There’d be about 300 to 400 people sitting around the bar. I’d finish at midnight and start at another club at 1 AM and work pretty late. We’d occasionally have a week off and I’d go to England.” Andy slept late, lay on the beach, water-skied and sang for free—because English citizens were not allowed to work for pay in Spain.{472}