The Bee Gees

by David N. Meyer

  In mid-1978, the brothers joined Andy at Miami’s Jai-Alai Fronton onstage for the last show of Andy’s US tour. Hugh said: “This was the proudest moment of my life.” Andy began “Words” and Barry Gibb walked onstage already singing. Maurice sat down at the piano. When Robin hit the stage they burned through a ­fifteen-minute version of “Shadow Dancing.” Barbara said: “I never thought I’d be around to see it. I haven’t seen Andy perform since last year when he opened for Neil Sedaka. I told him (then) to move around a little more. Tonight my boy moved around, wouldn’t you say?”{512} The show was a harbinger of what would become Andy’s most profound ambition: to become a Bee Gee.

  On July 10 or 11, 1979, the Bee Gees poured onstage at the Oakland Coliseum on the Spirits Having Flown tour, resplendent in glittering white satin pants and open silver jackets with no shirts. Robin leans into the mike to say: “Ladies and gentlemen, our brother Andy!” as the band tears into “You Should Be Dancing.” Andy shares a mike with Maurice singing backup, and it’s hard to pick out his voice over the three falsettos and the shrieking crowd. But the few close-ups of his face tell a clear story. While Andy at moments seems self-conscious, mostly what he looks is overjoyed.

  In the staged documentary It Might Get Loud, Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, the Edge of U2 and Jack White of the White Stripes get together to play and talk guitars. White and the Edge visit Page’s mansion, and Page slings his famous starburst Les Paul low on his hips and, right there in the amp-filled living room, tears into the signature riff from “Whole Lotta Love.” The Edge and White undergo an instant, shared transformation—they appear for a moment stunned and then ecstatic. These two stars—two virtuosi—who, it can be reasonably argued, have seen a million faces and rocked the vast majority, morph into eighth graders. Both are obviously thinking: “Holy shit! I’m in Jimmy Page’s living room and he’s playing ‘Whole Lotta Love!’” That’s how Andy looks on stage with his brothers.

  In November of 1979, Andy appeared with his brothers on The Bee Gees Special on NBC. Willie Nelson and Glenn Campbell also guested. Andy’s performance did not go well. One critic wrote: “Andy Gibb has to fight for space at the microphone. When he gets there, it is hardly worth the effort. The poor boy is obviously out of his league attempting to compete with the big sound, and that’s not taking into account the adoring, screaming masses.”{513}

  Attempts to record Andy’s third LP, After Dark, proved a shambles. Andy wouldn’t show up, and he only had to show up to sing. Barry and Albhy wrote the songs, created the arrangements and rehearsed the band, and Barry even sang vocal guide tracks.

  The guide tracks are nothing unusual for pop music and much more common today. Today’s pop star’s have producers and hit makers to write lyrics, find beats and riffs, and teach them how to sing word by word. Pop stars sing a bar, or a verse, at a time and their producers construct songs from myriad five-syllable vocal takes. But today’s pop stars live armored within concentric rings of salaried best friends and bodyguards and image protectors and managers who understand how valuable the pop star is and work to preserve the golden goose. Andy had his family nearby, but his brothers were accustomed to functioning addicts. They expected Andy to pull it together when the time came to be a pro, as had they all.

  Top studio musicians came in to play their parts. Barry and Albhy grew increasingly excited about the tracks and the record became a Barry album in all but name. They only needed Andy to come in and sing along, with Barry’s guide vocals in his headphones. But the drugs took a toll on Andy’s voice as well as his will. Complicating the process was that Barry wrote songs that worked for his falsetto, but Andy couldn’t hit the high notes. When Barry and Albhy coaxed Andy into the studio, Andy fought his way through the recording a line at a time. His pitiful performances made him more reluctant to come back and try again.

  Kim Gibb flew to Los Angeles in January of 1980. There had been no contact between her and Andy since she went to Australia; Kim blamed Andy’s parents. Regardless, she brought two-year-old Peta to see her father for the first time. When Kim called RSO to find a way to contact Andy, his lawyers stonewalled her; when she convinced them she didn’t want money, they said Andy would call. She waited in her hotel room, staring at the phone. Andy’s first words were: “Hello, Kim, how much money do you want?” Andy told Kim he didn’t think he could “cope” with seeing his daughter, but Kim persisted. They met at a Beverly Hills Hilton. Of Andy’s appearance, Kim said: “He was clearly not well.”{514} Andy spent a day with his daughter and had a bracelet engraved for Peta with the inscription all my love, a. g. And that was that. Andy later told People of the visit: “It went real well.”

  Kim never saw Andy again. Neither did Peta.

  After Dark was released in February of 1980. It reached #67 in the US and did not chart in the UK. Seven years later, Andy said of that time: “I am sure you heard of my drug problem. I checked myself into a place for it. The kind of drug that I was doing that was big in Florida about that time . . . cocaine. I started not turning up for recording sessions, leaving Barry to cover for me. On a couple of my albums you will hear Barry singing a line and you think it’s me, but it was really him. Me and Barry have an uncanny similarity vocally. We are the closest mentally too, and writing style, everything. He is the first boy born and I am the last boy born and it’s funny. The other two, there is no resemblance.”{515}

  On After Dark it can be hard to tell if the vocalist is Andy or Barry. The weaker performances, like “Warm Ride,” are clearly Andy. “One Love” sounds like Barry attempting an Andy imitation, with dropped-in Andy lines here and there that showcase the vocal problems Andy suffered. The backing tracks are overworked, even for that era, played with machinelike precision and little soul. The most sadly credible track is “Man on Fire,” a Barry version of a Bruce Springsteen–style love anthem with—for After Dark—a spare, dramatic arrangement. Andy describes himself, with conviction, as self-immolating. The brothers—it sure sounds like all the brothers—come together in a moving, almost gospel, chorus. For all the pain in Andy’s voice, moments remain that might be Barry on the vocals.

  Rock critic Bill Holden gave with one hand and took away with the other: “Though the songs here are literally sweet nothings filled with images of teardrops and angels, After Dark surpasses even the Bee Gees’ Spirits Having Flown for consistency of aural beauty. After Dark may have scant appeal to rock fans, but on its own pop terms, it’s a production triumph. There’s no cheap filler. As ice-cream parlor music for Romeo and Juliet, it’s first class.”{516}

  After Dark is a production triumph. But it contains little except pop filler and is not remotely in the same league as Spirits Having Flown. Holden demonstrates that even the most thoughtful critics of the time couldn’t hear what the Bee Gees, or Andy for that matter, were doing.

  Andy performed at an Olympic tribute at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, on July 20, 1980. He told an interviewer: “People forget too quickly. They don’t talk about you much. I see how quiet things can become.” When asked about the wages of fame, he said: “It gets a little chaotic. I carry a pistol and put it next to my bed at night. I carry it in a holster, and I never keep it loaded. I keep the bullets nearby. I’ve left it in motels before, and I have to call back and say, ‘Could you send me my gun, please?’”{517}

  Al Coury, who worked with Gibb at RSO Records in 1977, said of Andy: “He was treated like a superstar from Day 1, paid very well, lived like a king, travel[ing] in private planes. That can be dangerous to even the most mature person. And here was someone still in his teens. You had to worry about him, because you knew some day the hits were going to stop.”{518}

  With After Dark, the hits stopped. And since they stopped, the next logical step, in record company logic, was to release Andy Gibb’s Greatest Hits, in September of 1980. “Time Is Time,” the first single, was written by Andy and, as he tells it, produced with minimal input from Barry. The vocals sound like Andy. They sound like they wer
e recorded on various days when Andy was in various states of mind and voice. The bridge features an overworked, overproduced pure ’80s guitar break that must have sounded as laughable then as it does now. It’s hard to imagine Barry or Albhy countenancing such a solo. The track hit #15 in the US—which, as the Bee Gees’ disco-grip on the radio faded a bit, remains an admirable charting and testimony to the loyalty of Andy’s fans. As per pattern, it did nothing in the UK. “Me Without You,” also an Andy composition, made it to #40 in the US. The record contained three previously unreleased tracks, and even though two of them charted, titling an artist’s fourth record Greatest tells fans, other labels and the artist himself that his recording career is over.

  Andy told People: “There’s a lot to do yet, and I can’t imagine retiring at 23. I’d hate to think that everything that’s happened so far is the high point of my life.” In a nice piece of cross-promotion, as if to prove the truth of his words, on September 27, 1980, Andy co-hosted Solid Gold for the first time.

  As demonstrated by that hosting, Andy had moved to Los Angeles to pursue show business opportunities and to do drugs in peace, away from his nagging family. His new record didn’t sell, but Andy’s popularity remained weirdly undiminished. He was still handsome, boyish, charming, famous, rich and mediagenic. By escaping Miami, and leaving recording for entertainment, Andy shifted his career responsibilities from Barry’s and Stigwood’s shoulders to his own.

  There are many delicious, unsubstantiated, uncorroborated rumors and slanders attached to Victoria Principal and her time with Andy. For many Andy fans, she’s still the source of his ruination. To those fans, the most heinous crime seems to be not so much that she left Andy, but that she got over him. For more or less thirteen months, though, each was the love of the other’s life.

  People wrote of Andy in 1980: “He had two dream girls, he told friends. One was Bo Derek [star of the movie 10], ‘the most beautiful thing on two legs.’ The other was Pam Ewing—‘that girl on Dallas. Every time I see her I kind of tingle all over,’ he said. ‘She’s so beautiful, there’s a kind of haunted look about her that really turns me on.’”{519}

  After The John Davidson Show on January 6, 1981, John Davidson spokesman Paul Nichols said of Andy: “He was acting like a 16-year-old.”{520} Andy said: “It was a great day for me. I’d always wanted to meet her. And two or three days later, I called her up. We had dinner at home.” Victoria said: “He offered to cook, and I ended up doing it. I made BLTs. We didn’t want to go out anywhere, especially since it was our first date. I didn’t want anything written about us.”{521}

  Victoria fell ill and Andy brought her flowers and chicken soup. A few days after that, he moved in.{522}

  Victoria and Andy kept their affair as secret as they could for as long as they could, sneaking in and out of each other’s houses. For their first public outing, they chose the American Music Awards. Principal said: “When we emerged from the limo, photographers were so startled, they forgot to take pictures and we ran right through them. Not one photograph of us going in. But they were waiting for us when we came out.”{523} The couple was tabloid heaven.

  US Magazine interviewed Andy and, like everyone else, got catty about it: “‘I’m tired of being a teen love object,’ Gibb said. ‘I’m twenty-three going on forty-five.’ (Principal, who gives her age as ‘somewhere between Tatum O’Neal and death,’ can certainly meet him on that level, being no spring ‘poulet’ herself). ‘I’ve had a lot of adventures and I’ve already traveled to most countries of the world,’ Gibb says matter-of-factly. ‘I’ve always been around older people and been accepted as an adult equal. My feelings and my outlook on life are adult experiences.’”{524}

  Principal said: “People think I have been cradle-snatching since puberty. That’s not true. I have dated men my own age and men older than me, but these relationships never made headlines. Some people seem to find it immoral that Andy and I should be together, with our age gap. So what?”{525} She told People: “It’s not that I’m attracted to younger men, but to a certain kind of spirit. I love spontaneity, enthusiasm, courage and a positive, unjaded attitude.”{526}

  Maurice, who always seemed to take the most benign view, said: “I think the relationship with Victoria Principal was absolutely beautiful. It was everything he had dreamed of and that’s the important thing, not what I think or everybody else thinks.”{527}

  After teasing the New York producers of the smash revival of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Pirates of Penzance that he might take over one of the two male leads, Andy bailed and flew back to LA. He hated to be away from Victoria, who had to stay in California to shoot Dallas. Andy opened in the LA production, instead, in June of 1981, co-starring with Pam Dawber from Mork & Mindy.

  People pretty much codified the public perception of Andy as over, but tried to be encouraging: “The Pirates of Penzance is a lifeboat for a pair of youthful stars who thought their careers were lost at sea. As Mork’s Mindy, Pam Dawber has watched her once top-rated series nose-dive this season; likewise, teen throb Andy Gibb has languished of late in the professional doldrums. ‘My career’s been going nowhere,’ the 23-year-old kid brother of the Bee Gees admitted before the operetta premiered. ‘Let’s face it, I haven’t had a hit for quite a while.’”{528}

  People quoted Los Angeles Times critic Dan Sullivan as saying that Andy’s and Dawber’s version “‘blows you out of the water.’ Compared to Dawber and Gibb, he sniped, their Broadway counterparts, Linda Ronstadt and Rex Smith, ‘put you in mind of the high school play.’” Andy credits Victoria, saying: “She’s brought a whole new confidence into my life.” People adds: “Pirates was no picnic for Andy. With no formal voice training, he quickly went hoarse tackling Arthur Sullivan’s arias. ‘My voice was so worn out that when I went to blast, it came out like a croak. It scared the life out of me,’ he says. . . . ‘He’s going through all the agonies of “Oh, I can’t act, I can’t dance,” a sympathetic Dawber explains. ‘In fact, he can.’”{529}

  By July 7, Andy couldn’t any longer. Victoria had to take Andy to the emergency room with crippling abdominal pain. After four days of testing he was released. No cause for his pain was found. Andy did not return to the show. A syndicated gossip column said: “Pop singer Gibb didn’t much care for the discipline of the theatre and wanted out almost from the beginning.”{530}

  In August, Victoria and Andy released one of the most embarrassing vanity projects in the history of the music business: their duet of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant’s hit for the Everly Brothers’ “All I Have to Do Is Dream.” Andy speak-sings a single verse repeatedly and in videos of their lip-synching, Victoria does appear to open her mouth and exhale during the choruses, but all that can be heard is a faint feminine whisper. The gooey, shimmering mediocrity of the production, the blatant studio techniques used to enhance Principal’s voice and the conviction with which they perform face to face, noses inches apart, speaks to the depth of their love and to the inescapable Spinal Tap dynamic of what happens when the singer’s girlfriend wants to sing. If the girlfriend is Victoria Principal, then her boyfriend makes a simpering ass of himself and their song hits #52. The upside is that Victoria got Andy into a studio, and made him sing when no one else could. The irony is that while Andy appears more than capable of dreaming his life away, Victoria, even while singing into Andy’s eyes, seems to be calculating her next move.

  Andy and Victoria appeared on the Donahue show, and Phil couldn’t stop kissing their asses. Andy did manage to say: “I was curious, or a little wary at first, what my fans would think of me having a serious relationship, which I haven’t had before. And my fans seem to be very much for our relationship and seem to like us very much.”

  Or at least as much as #52.

  Phil gushed over and over on one topic: Andy and Victoria were one damn attractive couple, wrapped in an almost visible cocoon of infatuation and mutually replenishing sexual energy. They were a pair of happy stars, in love and in lu
st. Donahue asked his audience: “Is there a better looking couple in America?” The short answer was no.{531} Their hair was beautiful, their eyes were beautiful, their skin was beautiful, they had such animal attraction—a pair of Narcissi gazing avidly into their own reflections. Their desire encircled them like halos. In other words, they had glamour.

  But not top of the line glamour, not Cary Grant–Grace Kelly glamour. Their glamour had a taste of kids from working-class circumstances who, through work and luck and grabbing the main chance when it appeared, had ended up together showcasing their love on national TV. Despite their beauty, both retained the common touch and their fans adored them. Again, Andy proved sadly far ahead of his time. If their romance began tomorrow—instead of in 1981—the reality show leading up to their televised bogus wedding would have made them both millions. And their nuclear breakup, millions more.

  Andy commenced what should have been the gig of his life on September 12, 1981, when he became an official co-host of Solid Gold. The job had no downside. There was only one episode a week and the show kept Andy in front of America on network TV. Between his blazing love affair and his perfect job, on his early appearances on Solid Gold, Andy actually looks content. He was still doing copious amounts of cocaine.

  Hugh confronted Andy about his coke use, saying: “What are you taking this rubbish for?” Andy replied: “It’s the only way I can handle her.”{532} Hugh demonstrated his usual helplessness and passivity in the face of his sons’ self-destructive habits as Andy gave him the classic addict’s cop-out: “It’s not my fault.”

  Describing the slowly escalating Andy-Victoria dynamic, Barbara said: “They have been splitting up every other week since the middle of last year. Whenever they have a falling-out, it’s always a big fight and Andy moves back to his Malibu beach house. But this time, he was really rundown and at a low ebb.”{533}

  “It became apparent to me that his behavior was becoming erratic and that he was very, very thin,” Victoria said. “Andy was a kind person, and a gentle person and some of his behavior seemed so the antithesis of what he used to be and I finally realized that it had to be drugs.”{534}