DON’T FORGET TO REMEMBER
Tributes pouring in for Bee Gees member
Bee Gees singer Robin Gibb, who with brothers Barry and Maurice helped define the disco era with their falsetto harmonies and funky beats on hits like ‘Stayin’ Alive’ and ‘Jive Talkin’, has died after a long fight with cancer. He was 62.
PETALING JAYA: Malaysians joined the world to mourn the passing of Robin Gibb, a member of worldrenowned pop trio Bee Gees, who died on Sunday at the age of 62 in London.
The singer endured a lengthy battle with liver and colon cancer and slipped into a coma after intestinal surgery before waking up to his latest album, The Titanic Requiem, a few weeks ago.
Fans around the globe may see it as the day the music died, but the Bee Gees legacy continues to endure.
Tributes have been pouring in from all over the world, and likewise in Malaysia.
Alleycats singer Datuk David Arumugam and his band built their career on the music of The Beatles and Bee Gees.
He attributes Alleycats’ knack for writing catchy melodies to the Gibb brothers.
“We used to listen to Bee Gees’ music through the RAAF (Royal Australian Air Force) radio station in Butterworth in the 1970s and learned to play many of their songs,” said Arumugam, who first learned of them through the song Spicks and Specks.
The Alleycats mostly performed the songs sung specifically by Robin like I Started a Joke, Saved By the Bell and First of May.
Arumugam said he was fortunate enough to interview the Bee Gees in Hong Kong with his late brother Datuk Loganathan Arumugam in 2002 for a programme titled Brothers in Music, which was shown on Malaysian television then.
“Wespoke about music and shared our thoughts. It was a real honour to meet them,” said the frontman.
The Bee Gees first rose to prominence in the 1960s with Spicks and Specks. The Gibbs brothers returned to their home nation of England after emigrating to Australia in the 1950s.
Their producer Robert Stigwood moulded them from a talented songwriting team into a hit-making machine.
The band’s finest hour would come in the late 1970s with the disco classic soundtrack Saturday Night Fever.
Songs like Stayin’ Alive and Night Fever became staples in discotheques around the world, making them a worldwide phenomenon.
The Bee Gees have sold in excess of 200 million records worldwide, coming only after Elvis Presley, The Beatles and Michael Jackson and at least 2,500 artistes have recorded their songs.
The Bee Gees performed in Kuala Lumpur in 1972. More recently, Robin performed at the Arena of Stars in Genting Highlands on Aug 20 for his Magnetic tour.
Diehard fan associate editor Rozaid A. Rahman, 47, recalled memories of saving weeks worth of pocket money to be the first in line to buy Bee Gees albums because he was “too deep in love and there was no way out”.
Rozaid, who owns 21 albums and a limited edition box set, said the music of the Bee Gees and the voice of Robin had the ability to lift the spirit and inspire.
The death of Robin is expected to set higher sales for albums of the band.
“We already sold eight copies today and have ordered more for the next few days,” Speedy Video Store supervisor Zul Azmi, 42, said yesterday.
He predicted that sales would soar this week just as it did when Michael Jackson and whitney houston passed away.