No popular music act of the '60s, '70s, '80s, or '90s has experienced
more ups and downs in its popularity, or attracted a more varied
audience across the decades than the Bee
Gees.
Beginning in the mid- to late '60s as a Beatlesque ensemble, they
quickly developed as songwriters in their own right and style,
perfecting in the process a progressive pop sound all their own. Then,
after hitting a trough in their popularity in the early '70s, they
reinvented themselves as perhaps the most successful white soul act of
all time during the disco era. Their popularity faded with the passing
of disco's appeal, but the Bee Gees have since made a successful
comeback in virtually every corner of the globe. What has remained a
constant through their history is their extraordinary singing, rooted
in three voices that are appealing individually and comprise so
perfectly and naturally by melding together that they make such acts as
the Beatles, the Everly Brothers, and Simon & Garfunkel -- all
noted for their harmonies -- almost seem arch and artificial.
The group was also rock's most successful brother act. Barry Gibb, born on September 1,
1946, in Manchester, England, and his fraternal twin brothers Robin Gibb and Maurice Gibb,
born on December 22, 1949, on the Isle of Man, were three of five
children of Hugh Gibb, a bandleader, and Barbara Gibb, a former singer.
The three of them gravitated toward music very early on, encouraged by
their father, who reportedly saw his sons at first as a diminutive
version of the Mills Brothers, a '30s and '40s black American harmony
group. The three Gibb brothers made their earliest performances between
shows at local movie theaters in Manchester in 1955. Though they had
been singing together at home, their intention had been merely to mime
to records as a novelty entertainment act, but when the records got
broken, they went on, really sang, and got a rousing response from the
delighted audience. They performed under a variety of names, including
the Blue Cats and (reportedly) the Rattlesnakes, and for a time, fell
under the influence of England's skiffle king, Lonnie Donegan, and
proto-rock & roller Tommy Steele.
Their early lives were interrupted when the family moved to Australia
in 1958, resettling in Brisbane. The trio, known as the Brothers Gibb
-- with Barry writing songs by then -- continued performing at talent
shows and attracted the attention of a local DJ, Bill Gates, which led
to an extended engagement at the Beachcomber Nightclub. They eventually
got their own local television show in Brisbane and it was around this
time that they took on the name the Bee Gees (for Brothers Gibb). In
1962, they landed their first recording contract with the Festival
Records label in Australia, debuting with the single "Three Kisses of
Love." The trio was astoundingly popular among the press and on
television, and performed to very enthusiastic audience response. They
eventually released an LP, The Bee Gees Sing and Play 14 Barry Gibb
Songs, but actual hit records eluded them in Australia. They were
witness during 1963 and 1964 to the explosion of British beat music
half a world away with the success of the Beatles, whose harmony-based
approach to rock & roll and reliance on original songs only
encouraged the three Gibb brothers to keep pushing in those directions.
By late 1966, however, they'd decided to stop trying to conquer the
Australian music world, or to reach the rest of the world from
Australia, and return to England, which, thanks to the Beatles was now
the center of rock and popular music for the whole world. It was while
on the boat, in mid-ocean, that the Gibb family learned that the Bee
Gees had finally topped the charts back in Australia with their final
release, "Spicks and Specks." Just as the Seekers before them had done
on leaving Australia, the group had sent demo recordings to England
ahead of them and "Spicks and Specks" had attracted the interest of
Robert Stigwood, an associate of Brian Epstein. The trio was signed by
Stigwood to a five-year contract upon their arrival, and they began
shaping their sound anew in the environment of Swinging London in 1967.
Barry Gibb and Robin Gibb alternated the lead vocal spot, harmonizing
together and with Maurice Gibb. Barry played rhythm guitar as well
while Maurice, in addition to his backing vocal spot, was the
triple-threat musician in the core lineup, playing bass, piano, organ,
and Mellotron, among other instruments. The brothers soon expanded the
group with the addition of guitarist Vince Melouney and drummer Colin
Petersen, whose presence turned them into a fully functional performing
group. Their first English recording, "New York Mining Disaster 1941,"
released in mid-1967, made the Top 20 in England and America and
established a pattern for the group's work for the next two years. As
an original by the group, it had a haunting melody and a strange lyric;
it wasn't so much psychedelic (though it could pass for psychedelia in
a pop vein) as it was surreal. They had successful follow-ups with
"Holiday" and "To Love Somebody."
Robert Stigwood arranged for Polydor to release the Bee Gees' records
in England and Europe, and for Atlantic Records to issue their work in
America. Atlantic had missed out on the entire British Invasion and now
they had a group whose music resembled that of the Beatles at their
most accessible. The Bee Gees' records had gorgeous melodies and
arrangements and were steeped in romantic yet complex lyrics, many of
them containing a strangely downbeat mood that no one seemed to mind.
One curious offshoot of their appeal was that Stigwood was able to
convince Atlantic Records, as part of the deal for the Bee Gees, to
accept and release the recordings of a relatively unknown trio called
Cream. At the time, Eric Clapton was not much more than a cult figure
in the United States, more "rumor" than star (his recordings with the
Yardbirds had never even appeared in America with his name mentioned on
them), but Atlantic -- which recorded Disraeli Gears -- helped change
that, selling millions of records in the bargain.
The Bee Gees single "Massachusetts" was a chart-topper in England and
launched the group on their first wave of stardom. Their music was made
even more attractive by the fact that their albums were unusually well
put together. Reflecting the influence of the Beatles, a lot of
attention was lavished on the group's LP tracks rather than relying on
the presence of a hit or two to justify their existence. Bee Gees 1st,
cut in early 1967, had its weaker spots, but not a throwaway track on
it, while Horizontal and Idea were strong LPs filled with beautiful and
unusual songs and lush arrangements (courtesy of conductor Bill
Shepherd), all carefully recorded, mixing electric instruments and
orchestra. What made their work even more impressive was that after Bee
Gees 1st, which was produced by their Australian friend Ossie Byrne,
the three Gibb brothers took over producing their own records; even
more surprising, as is now known from various bootleg releases of live
performances of the period, the group -- with Melouney and Petersen in
the lineup -- was also able to do their music note-perfect, with
spot-on vocals while on-stage, something that the Beatles had never
even attempted seriously with their post-1965 efforts.
The group enjoyed two major hits in 1968, "I Started a Joke" and "I've
Gotta Get a Message to You," both from Idea. During this period, it was
easy, in listening to (and luxuriating in) the group's singles, with
their lush singing and production. Whatever they out seemed to work,
including the delightful psychedelic pop ode "Barker of the UFO," a
B-side that is a spot-on perfect example of late '60s English
"freak-beat," hardly a genre on which the Bee Gees are commonly thought
to have contributed. It was easy, amid the sheer beauty of their
records, to overlook the range of their influences that went into their
sound -- the Bee Gees may have been making pop/rock, but their
underlying sounds came from a multitude of sources, including American
country music and soul music. Indeed, one of the group's biggest hits,
"To Love Somebody," had been written for Otis Redding to record, but
the Stax/Volt singing legend didn't live long enough to record it
himself. At this point in their history, they were most comfortable
deconstructing elements in the singing and harmonies of black American
music and rebuilding them in their style, as the Beatles had done with
the music of the Shirelles and various Motown acts.
It was in 1969 when the trio lost all the momentum they'd built up,
ironically over a dispute involving their most ambitious recording to
date. They'd just finished a double-LP set, called Odessa, a lushly
orchestrated, heavily overdubbed, and thoroughly haunting body of
music. The seven-minute-long title track was filled with eerie images
and ideas and gorgeous choruses around a haunting lead performance and
it was only the jumping-off point for the album. The brothers, however,
were unable to agree on which song was to be the single and in the
resulting dispute, Robin decided to part company with Barry and
Maurice. They held on to the Bee Gees name for one LP, Cucumber Castle,
while Robin released the album Robin's Reign, on which he was producer,
arranger, and songwriter, and sang all of the parts himself.
Eventually, even Barry and Maurice Gibb parted company. Melouney had
left at the outset of the Odessa sessions and Petersen left the two-man
group behind a few days into Cucumber Castle, though not without a good
deal of legal squabbling. The drummer, in a bizarre twist, at one point
filed a lawsuit claiming that he owned the Bee Gees name. Without a
group to tour behind or even make television appearances promoting it,
the Odessa album never sold the way it might have, even with a hit
coming off of it in the form of "First of May." Cucumber Castle was at
least peripherally connected to a British television special of the
same name -- sort of the Bee Gees' better (and funnier) answer to the
Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour movie -- and generated several singles
that were successful in England and/or Germany, including the
reggae-influenced "I.O.I.O." and "Don't Forget to Remember."
Ironically, even during a period with their music partnership in
tatters, the Gibb brothers were writing and recording profoundly
beautiful songs -- Robin Gibb's "Saved By the Bell," with its lush,
ornate multi-layered vocals, justifiably topped the British charts; and
the two-man Bee Gees B-side "Sun in My Morning" was one of the
prettiest songs ever issued by the group.
In 1970, they finally decided to try and re-form. Almost two years
older and a good deal wiser, they related to each other better and had
also evolved musically out of pop-psychedelia and into a kind of
pop-progressive rock sound, similar to the Moody Blues of the same era
but with better singing and more attractive songs. They came back on a
high note with two dazzling songs: "Lonely Days," the group's first
number one hit in America and their first gold record in the United
States. The other was "Morning of My Life," a song originally known as
"In the Morning," originally authored by Barry Gibb; included on the
soundtrack to the movie Melody, it proved so popular with fans that the
group was still doing it in concert several years later.
They enjoyed another huge international success with "How Can You Mend
a Broken Heart" in 1971, but the accompanying album, Trafalgar, was
lacking some of the variety of sounds that had made their earlier LPs
so interesting. Moreover, it and the 2 Years On LP that preceded it
never reached higher than the mid-30s on the American charts (and never
charted in England at all), a considerable fall off from their '60s
albums' sales. In 1972, the group had another Top 20 hit with "Run to
Me," but their album that year, To Whom It May Concern, was forgotten
almost instantly after a brief run to number 35.
There was a sense that they were losing ground, particularly as the
music world was increasingly defined by albums and driven by album
sales. Pop/rock was developing around them in new and harder directions
and the trio's Beatlesque harmonies and Paul McCartney-like melodies
were starting to run a little thin at the source. Their 1973 album Life
in a Tin Can and the accompanying single, "Saw a New Morning," which
were used to launch the new RSO Records label, marked a change in the
group's base of operations from England to America. Despite a heavy
promotional tour, however, the single never made the Top 40 and the
album stalled after climbing to the mid-60s.
When their proposed next album, tentatively titled A Kick in the Head
(Is Worth Eight in the Pants), was rejected by Stigwood, the trio knew
they were in a deep creative and commercial hole. Rescue came in the
form of a suggestion by their RSO labelmate, Eric Clapton, that they
try recording at the studio where he'd just cut 461 Ocean Boulevard, at
Criteria Studios in Miami, FL. Stigwood agreed and the Bee Gees came
back in 1974 with Mr. Natural, produced by Arif Mardin. This record was
a departure for them with its heavily Americanized, R&B-flavored
sound. The album didn't even sell as well as Life in a Tin Can and it
yielded no hits, but it got better reviews and it pointed in a
direction that seemed promising. It also seemed to free up the
brothers' thinking about the kinds of songs they could do.
The next year, with Mardin again producing, they plunged head-first
into the new sound with Main Course. This was the beginning of the Bee
Gees' second (or third, if you count their Australian period) era. The
emphasis was now on dance rhythms, high harmonies, and a funk beat.
They had a new band in place, with Alan Kendall on lead guitar, Dennis
Byron at the drums, and Blue Weaver on keyboards, but spearheading the
new sound was Barry Gibb who, for the first time, sang falsetto and
discovered that he could delight audiences in that register. "Jive
Talkin'," the first single off the album, became their second American
number one single, but it was a long way from {"Lonely Days"} in style.
It was followed up with the hit "Nights on Broadway" and then the album
Children of the World, which yielded the hits "You Should Be Dancing"
and "Love So Right." In the midst of this string of new hits, the group
released their first concert LP, Bee Gees Live, which gingerly walked a
line between their old and new hits.
Suddenly, they were outstripping the sales that the Beatles had enjoyed
with their records in the 1960s, and were even eclipsing Paul
McCartney's multi-platinum '70s-era popularity. It was a profound
moment, joining the ranks of their one-time idols in the highest
reaches of music success, if not musical or social significance. They
could (and did) fill arenas across the country with their new fans,
although some of their older admirers -- who were admittedly a minority
in the context of the tens of millions of record sales they were
enjoying in the mid-'70s -- resented the group's new sound and the
disco era that it embodied.
Ironically, there wasn't that much difference in the group between the
two eras. Apart from Barry Gibb's falsetto, the voices were the same
and as good as ever, and they had a superb band and all of the
production resources that a recording act could want. And amid the
dance numbers, the group still did a healthy portion of romantic
ballads that each offered a high "haunt" count and memorable hooks.
They'd simply decided, at Arif Mardin's urging, to forget the fact that
they were white Englishmen -- or the reticence that went with it -- and
plunged head-first into soul music, emulating, in their own terms, the
funkier Philadelphia soul sounds that all three brothers knew and
loved. Luckily for them, they had the voices, the band, and the
songwriting skills to do it convincingly, so much so that by 1977, the
Bee Gees were getting played on black radio stations that were normally
unwilling to run any white acts. What's more, "Nights on Broadway" or
"Love So Right" were no less beautiful songs or records than, say,
"Melody Fair" or "First of May," and if one accepted Dennis Byron's and
Maurice Gibb's driving beat on "You Should Be Dancing," it was
impossible not to be impressed with the vocal acrobatics and the sheer
panache of the song. In one fell swoop, the group had managed to meld
every influence they'd ever embraced, from the Mills Brothers and the
Beatles and early-'70s soul, into something of their own that was
virtually irresistible. The worldwide sales of the 1979 Spirits Having
Flown album topped 30 million and was accompanied by three more number
one singles in "Tragedy," "Too Much Heaven," and "Love You Inside Out."
As a side-light to the group's success, a fourth Gibb brother, Andy
Gibb, was enjoying massive chart success during this same period as a
singer, working in a slightly lighter-textured dance vein.
By the end of the '70s, however, the disco era was on the wane, from a
combination of the bad economy, political chaos domestically and around
the world (leading to the election of Ronald Reagan), and a general
burn-out of the participants from too many drugs and profligate sex
(which would precipitate an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases
and herald the outbreak of AIDS in the United States). There had
already been an ad-hoc reaction against the group's dominance of the
airwaves with mass burnings of Bee Gees posters and albums at public
forums spurred on by DJs and ordinary listeners weary of the dance hits
by the group that seemed to soar effortlessly to the top of the charts;
meanwhile, some radio stations began looking askance at new releases by
the group after 1979. The group itself helped contribute to the end of
the party with their own excesses, in particular their participation
(at Stigwood's insistence) in the film Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts
Club Band, "inspired" (if that's the word) by the Beatles' album and
songs. The movie was a box office and critical disaster and an
embarrassment to all concerned; the accompanying soundtrack LP was a
$1.99 cut-out only six months after its 1978 release, lingering in
bargain bins and warehouses for years afterward.
In 1981, the group's new LP, Living Eyes, was recorded after an
extended lay-off in the wake of four years of hard work, but didn't
even make the Top 40. Suddenly, with the disco era over and out of
favor, the Bee Gees couldn't even get arrested and were being shunned
for the excesses that it represented. The most tragic of all was the
fate of Andy Gibb. The older Gibb brothers had, at various times,
struggled with personal demons such as alcohol and drug use, but the
youngest sibling fell very hard when the '70s ended, eventually losing
his life in 1988, five days after his 30th birthday at the end of a
horrendous downward personal spiral. In America, the Bee Gees were
virtually invisible as recording artists for most of the '80s. Instead,
Barry Gibb pursued work as a producer for other artists, creating hits
for Barbra Streisand and Diana Ross, among others; the Bee Gees had
songs on the soundtrack to Stayin' Alive, the tepid sequel to Saturday
Night Fever, but they were no longer taken seriously by the music press.
They made their first attempt at a comeback in 1987 with E.S.P., an
album that got favorable reviews and sold well in every corner of the
globe except the United States, yielding a number one single (outside
of the U.S.) in "You Win Again." A new album in 1989, One, got a good
reception around the world and even generated a Top Ten U.S. single in
the form of its title track. Polygram Records, which had bought out the
RSO Records catalog, struggled long and hard over the release of Tales
From the Brothers Gibb, a boxed set anthology that was really aimed
more at the international market rather than the United States,
although it has sold well enough to remain in print in America. High
Civilization (1991) and Size Isn't Everything (1993) attracted somewhat
less attention, but their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
in 1997 led to the release of Still Waters. In 1998, they issued the
second live album in their history, One Night Only, cut at their first
concert appearance in America in almost a decade, at the MGM Grand
Hotel. In 2000, they participated in the making of the biographical
video, This Is Where I Came In, which covered their whole history, and
an accompanying album of the same name.
The Bee Gees remained active until the death of Maurice in January
2003. While receiving treatment for an intestinal blockage he suffered
cardiac arrest and died at the age of 53. Following his death, Robin
and Barry decided to cease performing as the Bee Gees.
