BARRY GIBB
The last Bee Gee reflects on delinquency, disco and belated solo flight. Plus, the steel in the soul of the Brothers Grin: “We knew that we were not going to give up until we became famous.”
FROM THE ISLE OF MAN TO MANCHESTER to Australia and back, the Bee Gees took a picaresque route to fame, mostly at the heels of their restive father, Hugh Gibb, a drummer and bandleader by inclination, a baker, photographer or salesman by necessity, doing anything he could to feed a wife – Barbara, who often worked too – five kids (in order of appearance, Lesley, Barry, twins Robin & Maurice, and Andy) and their far-fetched dreams of stardom.
Hardscrabble days of truancy, petty theft, arson and jam sandwiches in Whalley Range and Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester – what Barry calls “a very typical post-war childhood in the ruins” – were memorable but not ideal. When the family left for Australia in 1958, Barry had a suspended sentence hanging over him for “borrowing” a pedal car. He was 12. Yet, this promising hoodlum loved music and was glued to his acoustic guitar, a present for his ninth Christmas – tuned to open D, Hawaiian tuning, which he uses to this day. The boys disembarked in Australia eager to entertain their new nation, which applauded their singing and tomfoolery at frequent showstealing TV, radio and stage appearances.
Transfixed by Roy Orbison in 1961, Barry’s dreams turned towards dramatic pop and his writing exploded. But hits eluded the Bee Gees in Australia: “We were too young for the girls to be interested,” he says, so in January 1967 the family decided to return to England to see if fame came any easier there.
It did. Hugh Gibb had sent an advance package of discs and demos to Australian Robert Stigwood, then deputising for Brian Epstein at NEMS. Soon, Bee Gees were hanging out at the Speakeasy, buying cars they couldn’t drive, scoring hits like autumn ’67’s lushly layered Massachusetts, recording eclectic albums including 1969’s conceptual Odessa, and enjoying their dream come true.
But the dream faded. Facing commercial decline in the mid-’70s, Barry asked RSO label-mate Eric Clapton for advice. “Try Miami,” he said, having recently returned from there with a hit album, 461 Ocean Boulevard. The Bee Gees went, rented the same address, “fell in love with the light” and made their own pivotal album, 1975’s Main Course, with the great Arif Mardin behind the glass.
A second, even wilder dose of fame came with their contributions to 1977 disco blockbuster Saturday Night Fever – success shared by little brother Andy until addictions sped his death in 1988, aged just 30. Subsequently, the Bee Gees’ standing waxed and waned: their Still Waters album was a hit everywhere in 1997, the year the trio notoriously walked off Clive Anderson’s irreverent BBC chat show. Maurice died suddenly in 2003. Robin and Barry retired the band name, before Robin also passed in 2012. Barry took a while to re-emerge, a triumphant appearance at Glastonbury in 2017 reminding everyone, including himself, how much he was loved.
In 2021, he’s promoting Greenfields –a
new album of his songs sung in conjunction with some of country music’s prime movers – and a new Bee Gees documentary, How Can You Mend A Broken Heart, from lockdown in his Miami home. MOJO reaches out over the internet. “I’m not wearing any trousers,” Barry jokes, as we begin. “It’s all the rage here.” You moved around a lot when you were young, didn’t you?
Absolutely. The gypsy in our souls, constantly on the move our entire lives, three different cultures without ever not being British.
Australia had a thing called ‘The New Life’, it was 10 years after the war, there was no great economy to speak of. In England, it was freezing and foggy and we were always in trouble with the law. A policeman came to the door and said to my mum, “It might be a good idea to emigrate to Australia, because your kids might end up in prison if you don’t.”
You already had dreams of stardom then? Yes, after falling in love with Elvis, Tommy Steele and Lonnie Donegan. That just triggered something in me. I wanted to be a pop star, and Maurice and Robin, being about six said, “Can we be that too?” and I said, “Sure, let’s be that together.” We called ourselves The Rattlesnakes, then we became Wee Johnny Hayes And The Bluecats (laughs).
Your dad was a drummer and a bandleader. He played the drums with a 13-piece band during World War II, on the Mecca circuit, which played for American troops. Glenn Miller, Dorsey Brothers, Harry James, pretty mind-blowing when you see that kind of thing close up. There’s really nothing like it. He brought those kinds of records home and my sister started bringing home The Everly Brothers and rock’n’roll, around 1957. We all freaked out. This was going to be our future. This is what we were going to do, hell or high water.
On the ship on the way to Australia we became Barry And The Twins. We didn’t know we’d be the Bee Gees until we met a man called Bill Gates, who came to our house and said we had a great future of some kind. He was Brisbane’s leading DJ, Bill ‘Swinging’ Gates, with a show called Platter Chatter. We went on air and recorded five songs there. That was our first time in front of a microphone.
What was the music business like there?
It consisted of two major stars: Col Joye And The Joy Boys and Johnny O’Keefe, or J.O.K. They were the biggest rock’n’roll singers in Australia. You didn’t hear them anywhere else in the world. And there were many other artists, females like Judy Stone and Noeleen Batley.
We were living and working in Surfers Paradise and Col Joye and his brother Kevin Jacobson were passing through. I chased them down and got to meet Col and he recorded the first song any artist ever recorded of mine, Starlight Of Love, and got us signed to Festival Records. That’s what happened. We had to go to Sydney.
What was your act like in those days?
We were a comedy trio. It wasn’t just us singing, we were acting up and making fun of each other. We were beating them down everywhere we went because you can’t follow a bunch of kids.
What precedent did you have for wanting to be a songwriter? Singers weren’t usually seen as writers then, were they?
I really fell for Roy Orbison. If you listen to Crying or In Dreams, or Blue Bayou there’s a sense of growth. He made records that just kept building and building. There was almost an Italian operatic element to them. For me, it’s always been about what’s beautiful. I don’t think in terms of categories; I ask,
“Is it beautiful?” I miss the romance and the nostalgia that we found in great songs. Very important to me.
I read an interview with an Australian artist from that period called John Blanchfield who stayed with you for a while and remembered a very particular atmosphere in the Gibb household. He said, “You got the impression you couldn’t get close to them. They had a very ‘us against the world’ attitude.” Do you think that’s true?
I wouldn’t know if that’s true. I mean, everyone’s got a different truth. I don’t deny that impression was probably easy to attain. But I don’t think we were ever closed off from anyone. People may have felt that they couldn’t get close to us, as opposed to us pushing anyone away, you know?
But did you feel embattled, trying to get your point across, as an act, back then?
I think we always did. I don’t know that we’d ever have done it any other way. When we left Australia for England, many, many people, including reporters, told us we didn’t have a chance and that we shouldn’t go back to England, because the beat boom was over. And it really wasn’t. But that’s what we were being told.
You met some resistance when you landed too, didn’t you?
Yeah. Let me just paint the scene. It was early morning. It was dark. We could still see the ocean liner that we’d just stepped off, the lights coming from it. And this pop group that looked exactly like The Beatles was standing nearby on the dock. I don’t know why. I don’t know what they were doing there. It was about five in the morning and we were going looking for a chip shop. We weren’t gonna find one, but we didn’t know that. And they said, “Who are you?” or words to that effect. And we said, “We’re a band and we’ve come to try and make
it.” And then they all said, like in unison, “No, no, no, go back to Australia. It’s all over here. Nobody’s signing groups up any more.” It took us five weeks to get here, you know, and we just felt very confident. We were inspired by The Beatles, of course, like everybody, but also The Hollies and The Fortunes and the great harmony groups. We felt we could compete with them. We were still young. But, Swinging London in 1967, the boom was still going. It was like an Austin Powers movie, I promise you.
Did you meet The Beatles?
There was a club in London called the Speakeasy. It was underground. It had a coffin in front of the door, you had to show your membership and then the wall would turn around and you were in this club. The Stones, The Beatles, The Who and anyone who wanted to have some privacy and be together and have things in common went there. I met Pete Townshend, the first rock star I’d ever met, you know? And he said, “Would you like to meet John?” Are you kidding? “He’s just sitting over there.” John was sitting there in like a fur waistcoat with his hair teased up at the back, which had become the thing at that point for them. Pete said, “Oh, John, I’d like you to meet one of the new kids. Barry Gibb.” And John without getting up or turning around, put his hand out behind him and said, “Pleased to meet you.” And I never saw his face. So I’ve always said, “I met the back of John Lennon.” Never saw him again. I got to know Paul quite well. He came to our first concert at the Saville Theatre [supporting Fats Domino]. He was there with Jane Asher. And he was very encouraging. Robert Stigwood invited him, which was probably not a good idea, because we were terrified that night. I don’t think we were very good.
So in a few days you graduated from being fans of The Beatles to hanging out with them?
Ridiculous! Maurice was really good at that. He ended up living next door to Ringo in Hampstead and they became really good friends. It was very surreal. Because to us, they were gods who changed the world entirely. And suddenly, we were signed to the same company, with the same staff, same publicists.
What were the pros and cons of being managed by Robert Stigwood?
Well, first of all, you’ve got to remember, this was a gay world, you know. We were heterosexual boys in a homosexual business, or at least that part of the business. Larry Parnes, Billy Fury’s manager, Robert Stigwood, Brian Epstein. It was a gay scene, you know, and so we had to always be on the lookout. There was always somebody that wanted to jump all over you. We were very naive. But we soon learned.
But Stigwood was a good manager?
He was fantastic, yeah. Robert was one of the last great managers. A manager is someone who creates an opportunity for you. And then says, “OK, now go live up to that.” And he did that. He did it so many times. He was just brilliant at creating the right opportunity for a group like us.
Bee Gees 1st is a fascinating record. Psychedelic on one side, and then it turns into a country-soul record on side two.
It’s what I said earlier about categories. We never thought we should only write this type of song. Robin was coming up with his type of song, I was coming up with mine. Maurice was a brilliant musician who could play several instruments, and his contribution was priceless. But between Robin and I it was always a bit of a battle – we were in competition. Once we started having hits, we became more and more competitive.
We liked songs that had depth, we liked to know what a song was about. We were on the hunt for something that belonged to us. Maybe rock’n’roll was never that thing for us. Pop music is and always was. We knew we were on a journey somewhere, we just didn’t know where, but we knew that we were not going to give up until we became famous.
Maurice told a story of bumping into Brian Epstein who said, “That Massachusetts is a worldwide Number 1,” and 48 hours later he’d died. So one of his last acts was to correctly predict you’d have a smash.
Yes. When it was Number 1 in England, I remember saying to Robert, “Have we made it?” And he said, “No. I’ll tell you when you’ve made it.” So our feet were always on the ground because of that. He knew what he was doing.
Am I right that you met your [second] wife, Linda, at Top Of The Pops…?
Yes, that’s correct.
“I wanted to be a pop star, and Maurice and Robin, being about six said, ‘Can we be that too?’”
…and she was being chaperoned by every parent’s first choice, Jimmy Savile?
Well, I don’t mention that person. She’d become the hostess, because Samantha
Juste had just left and married Mickey Dolenz. She was the hostess for one week, the week Massachusetts was Number 1. And she’d never heard of it. We just saw each other across the room and something happened. And, um, we had bit of a cuddle in Doctor Who’s Tardis, surrounded by Daleks!
“Fame was like a drug, you know, that made us feel like we had to compete with each other.Ó
Time travel 50-odd years in the future, you’re still together…
Yeah, and Doctor Who’s still on!
Didn’t Jimi Hendrix come to your 21st birthday party?
Yes. (Laughs) It was at a place of ill-repute in Hamburg! I was sitting in the audience and Jimi was sat behind me and that’s how we got chatting. Nothing more sleazy than that.
Who else was there?
Dave Dee. I was very close to him. And Paul and Barry Ryan – we were all close.
Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich… You must feel fortunate you didn’t wind up in that lane.
Groups that are not brothers have a much higher risk factor. If you’re brothers, it’s much harder to break up. We always loved The Mills Brothers – Paper Doll, You Always Hurt The One You Love – our father would always make sure that we heard these songs, and that meant something. “This is what brothers do.”
I wanted to ask about the brief period when you split in 1969.
No. I don’t want to talk about that. You’re talking about 50 years ago, mate. Come on.
I ask because I read about Robin being caught up in the 1967 Hither Green train crash and it occurred to me how big an impact that experience must have had upon him.
All I know is it was a great shock. (pause) These are not subjects for me. I don’t really want to discuss anything that’s got a negative factor to it. It’s just that, you know, the loss of my brothers… I think I owe them that respect now. A year ago, two years ago, I might have emptied on a whole bunch of things about how I lost them. I can’t do that now. I don’t know what it’s like to be in a train crash, you know. I don’t know an answer to those kinds of inquiries. I just want to live in the present.
I just wondered if that might have been one of the reasons the relationship came unglued for a while.
There were a lot of reasons why it came unglued. The business itself. The business kept changing then and is changing now. I love making records and I love singing but don’t ask me if I understand the record industry because I don’t.
How much did you enjoy the second explosion of fame, post Main Course, when you started having hits again? Did it feel vindicating?
It felt great to me. It was that moment in time, the mid to late ’70s. It was exactly what everybody wanted. There was no war. Nobody was mad at each other. It was a period where people were happy and wanted to get out. Arnold Schwarzenegger said that Saturday Night Fever got kids back into the gym, because they wanted to dance and get fit.
I remember watching the preview at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, from the back of the audience, standing with John Travolta. And we both had the same feeling: that the dancing, the noise of people’s feet on the floor, was too loud. If you go to a club, you can’t hear people’s feet, you can only hear the music. And so we went to Robert and said, “You’ve got to silence the feet and turn the music up.” And that’s what he did.
They actually shot the movie to the music, didn’t they?
Yes, they did. John loved Stayin’ Alive, but he didn’t feel that he could dance to it. You Should Be Dancing became the favourite for
him. He never felt Stayin’ Alive was a dance record. He said to Robert, “I don’t know if I can dance to that, but I can walk to it.” And that’s what happened.
On the charts in the spring of 1978 there was Stayin’ Alive, Night Fever, Samantha Sang’s Emotions, Yvonne Elliman’s If I Can’t Have You, your brother Andy’s Shadow Dancing. Eventually you had six consecutive Number 1s in the US. Did it become weird or daunting at any point? Does it start to feel pressurised when the success is that huge?
I don’t think so. When something goes wrong there’s always disappointment. But failure builds strength. Every time that something didn’t go right, it would not put us off from trying again. We’d been dumped on so many times that it wasn’t something we didn’t expect. We became over-exposed to a certain extent, because there had been so much success. But you can’t knock it, mate! It was wonderful. I never went to Studio 54. Never could dance. But I had the time of my life.
Another one of those must have been Glastonbury in 2017?
It was just the most incredible experience, to play to 230,000 people, or something. And so many young people wearing those jackets that we wore on the cover of …Fever. Yeah, hard to understand.
It’s an experience that’s never going to be surpassed for me. Every positive thing I can think of saying, I could say about that day. Perfect. After the response to To Love Somebody, I was on a cloud. I’d never heard that before, where the applause just didn’t stop. I don’t understand that. But it’s wonderful.
You wrote that song for Otis Redding.
That’s right. I met him in New York, towards the end of 1967. Robert said, “Would you write a song for Otis? He’ll come and see you about seven o’clock this evening and you can talk about it.” And To Love Somebody was embryonic on that night – it came to mind after meeting him. Unfortunately, he didn’t live long enough to record it.
How did the new duets album, Greenfields, come to be?
Stephen, my eldest son, played me Chris Stapleton. And it just blew me away. Fantastic. Not only is it fresh, it’s people playing, not programmed. I’ve been desperate to get back to that. It was done by a producer named Dave Cobb. I love country music, bluegrass, love that world. So I thought, “Let’s make an album like this.” And Dave Cobb agreed to do it.
This was the legendary RCA studio; the Everlys, Elvis, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison all made records in this room, and the one next to it, studio B. I spent a lot of time taking pictures because it’s such a rush. The room is huge. The ceiling’s like 50 or 60 foot high. Like a soundstage. And that will do some things to your voice. I really would have been happy if every artist had just sung the song themselves, and not worried about using me. Because I’m a fan. But I just got sucked into it. Alison Krauss, Too Much Heaven. Keith Urban who grew up 100 miles from us [in Queensland, Australia], and Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings. Dave plays guitar like nobody else. Words Of A Fool with Jason Isbell. That’s one of my favourite tracks.
Think of those little kids in Manchester, setting fire to billboards, and then appearing on billboards on Sunset Boulevard…
Yes, it’s quite a circle isn’t it? I know. I know.
I love that Robin and Maurice called each other Woggie and Bodding. Did they have a nickname for you?
I don’t think so. In Australia of course I was always Bazza. And when we got back to England I had a friend who called me Skippy, after Skippy the Bush Kangaroo. My favourite now is Barry Effing Gibb. I’m quite proud of that.
Were you kind of looking over your shoulder when you restarted making music after your brothers’ deaths?
I just keep moving until I won’t any more. Obviously, it’s not the same without my brothers. But I no longer have to do everything by committee, you don’t have to agree on everything. So, after a good few years, which it has been now, I’m able to spread my wings, do what I want to do.
There’s a very moving moment in the new documentary where you talk about how you’d rather have your brothers back and not have had any hits.
Of course, of course; there’s nothing more important than your family. That was the basis of everything else. It would never have mattered if we’d never had a hit – we’d have had more fun. We were much more sharing in our love for each other before we ever became famous. Fame was like a drug, you know, that made us feel like we had to compete with each other. I guess that’s what happens, especially ultra fame, which I never had, I’ll never get and I don’t want it. That’s the kind of fame that destroys you.
I got to know Michael Jackson pretty well. I noticed how lonely he was. He’d lost the ability to trust anybody. That’s what that kind of fame does. You don’t believe that anybody wants to be your friend without a reason. You look for the unconditional love, but it’s not there at that level of fame. So Michael travelled around visiting people who were famous like him, just to be able to relate to somebody else. I know he used to go and see Marlon Brando quite a bit. He would just walk into famous people’s houses, and he felt comfortable doing that.
We spent weeks together, I got to know him pretty well, and he was very lonely and isolated. He would sit in my lounge dressed as if he was going on stage. It had basically taken over his whole life. He didn’t know how to be a normal person any more. He wished he was somewhere else, or someone else.
I never had that kind of fame. I managed to keep my distance, love and raise my kids and basically keep my sanity, to some extent. That’s probably my best achievement.
Greenfields: The Gibb Brothers Songbook Vol. 1 by Barry Gibb & Friends is out now on Universal Music.