BEE GEES: Children Of The World by Bob Stanley

“The Bee Gees didn’t fit in,” observes Bob Stanley at the start of Children Of The World, his new biography of the Gibb brothers. He’s quite right. In my own dealings with them for Melody Maker in the first half of the seventies I felt they were removed from the mainstream of pop life, in a parallel world but somehow apart, somehow cloistered by their familiarity with one another. This created within them an ‘us against the world’ attitude which, coupled with an adolescent, slightly naïve, arrogance, meant they would never be fashionable, never cool, never given the respect their hit-making track record deserved. “In spite of their great success, they seemed somehow easy to mock,” writes Stanley, drawing attention to a lack of self-awareness that invited cynicism, especially from music press staffers who enjoyed bursting balloons.   

    Bob Stanley knows his pop. A founder member of St Etienne and a dedicated convert to all things indie, he writes about music with the air of someone unafraid to offer judgements unlikely to sit well with accepted theory, ever keen to challenge, ever keen to seek out an undiscovered gem. To write a substantial book about The Bee Gees that analyses their music admiringly, most especially dozens of songs that weren’t hits, might be considered courageous – but for me to say that is to slip into the trap that Stanley identifies early in his book, the back-handed compliment, the suggestion that whatever good reviews the Bee Gees received were “distant”. “No other group has had to consistently defend themselves, their approach and their music,” he writes.

    Children Of The World does its best to rectify this. Stanley is clearly a fan but is unafraid to investigate the fault lines in a musical career that began on a Manchester stage in 1957 when Barry was 11 and twins Robin and Maurice eight, and continued until 2003 when Maurice’s death brought the curtain down. In between times they sold more than 250 million records in all kinds of styles, wrote numerous hits for others, filled the world’s biggest stadia on the road and, until Michael Jackson’s Thriller, were the principal contributors to world’ best-selling LP, the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever.

    In 2001 I commissioned and edited Tales of The Brothers Gibb, a 730-page doorstopper whose three authors investigated every facet of the Gibb family to produce what I thought was the definitive Bee Gees book that couldn’t be bettered. What it lacked, however, was the critical nous that Stanley brings to Children Of The World, and also his literary ability to compress the endlessly fascinating biographical details of the Gibb’s life into a book just over half that length. Furthermore, his understanding of the bigger picture enables him to place The Bee Gees into context, comparing their fate with fellow-travellers, to which end he opens each chapter with the top ten for that particular moment, and to draw judicious comparisons with that other group of three brothers, The Beach Boys. 

    We follow the Gibb family from extreme poverty – Barry, Maurice and Robin really were juvenile delinquents – to unimagined wealth that enabled them to sue manager Robert Stigwood for $200 million in 1980, only to be countersued for $300 million. (It was settled out of court.) We learn about their nomadic early life, from Manchester – where the family often did a midnight flight to avoid the rent man – to the Isle of Man to Australia and back to the UK, to London, thence to LA and finally Miami. We learn about their lack of education – Maurice and Robin left school at 13, as did tragic younger brother Andy – and how this contributed to the slightly disjointed lyrics in their songs, which – as with Abba – did them no harm at all. We learn about their brotherly intuition, how they were able to finish one another’s sentences, and the occasional fall outs, usually instigated by Robin’s stubborn diva tendencies, or Barry’s oppressive ‘big brother’ controlling manner, with Maurice often in the role of calming arbitrator. 

    But most of all we learn about their resilience, how they were able to mould their songs to the times, to pick themselves up and start again after setbacks and, most importantly, to fall back on their skills as songwriters to see them through periods when it looked like we’d seen the last of them. “We’re durable, persistent little buggers,” says Robin. 

    It’s an epic tale of highs and lows well told, not without the odd error but a book those slightly strange, deeply sensitive, immensely talented Gibb Brothers deserve. It contains 27 pages of discography but no photographs, for which I’d dock it one star, but this is no doubt due to financial constraints on the part of the publisher. 

THE BEE GEES, New York, December 1976.

A couple of nights ago I watched The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend A Broken Heart, a two-hour documentary on Sky Atlantic that explores their fascinating, three-act, career. Act 1 takes place in London where, newly arrived from Australia, they became pop stars in 1968; Act 2 switches to New York where they became seventies disco stars – they’d prefer R&B, of course; and Act 3 sees them in Miami, plying their trade as songwriters while simultaneously recording and touring as a group. 

In between times there were ups and downs galore that all feature in the documentary. It reminded me that I interviewed them twice for Melody Maker, once in London and again in New York, and bumped into them occasionally at industry events. I never knew Andy but Maurice was the friendliest, Robin the quirkiest and Barry the most practical. It saddens me that Barry is the last brother standing, a circumstance brought home in the documentary as he gazes sadly across the Miami shoreline and declares that he'd swop all the hits to have his three brothers back with him. 

    The MM story below was published during Act 2, and includes the interview I did in a New York hotel room. 

A casual visitor to New York this month could be excused for thinking that The Bee Gees are currently running for elected office. The faces of the Brothers Gibb, serious and studied in their patriotic poses as World War Two flying aces, peer down from posters that are firmly fixed to the rear of each and every blue bus that traverses the streets and avenues of Manhattan.

        Some two weeks ago, in a flurry of publicity, the threesome was photographed with New York’s mayor, the diminutive Abe Beame, on the occasion of a luncheon at his official residence, Gracie Mansion. The city’s daily press carried the photographs, accompanied by a story that revealed the proceeds from the group’s concert at Madison Square Garden in December would be donated to the Police Athletic League, a charitable organisation that provides sports facilities for under-privileged children.

        Almost simultaneously the group opened a shop on 57th Street which is known as their “international headquarters”, where Bee Gees albums, tickets, posters and other artefacts are available in exchange for a few dollars.

        At the opening celebrations the three brothers stepped through a huge replica of a record album, arriving in the busy street where harassed policemen fought with a crowd of mainly teenage girls.

        To complement all this, The Bee Gees have spent most of the past month in a suite at the Sheraton Hotel on Seventh Avenue dispensing interviews to a constant stream of reporters, who arrive and depart on the hour like the trains at Grand Central Station.

        It has been a campaign worthy of a Presidential candidate, the purpose of which is to trumpet to the nation the news that after a very shaky period at the beginning of this decade, The Bee Gees are currently bigger and more popular than at any time during their career.

        In America, this is certainly true: they are selling albums in vast quantities, and the upcoming US tour takes them into the very largest arenas for the first time ever.

        A graph of The Bee Gees’ fortunes would form a sweeping curve in the shape of a large “U.” With the uppermost point on the left representing their early life as an Australian/British pop group following in the footsteps of The Beatles and the corresponding point on the right depicting their current status as tremendously popular exponents of light, catchy rhythm and blues.

        The low spot in the middle represents a murky period that was sparked off by their internal squabbling which lasted until their meeting with top producer Arif Mardin. It includes an embarrassing year when they were obliged to cancel a British tour because tickets didn’t sell, and a stint at Batley Variety Club which still gives Robin Gibb periodic nightmares.

        But all this is forgotten in the present period of Bee Gees renaissance. This week their Children Of The World album is at number 13 in the Cashbox chart, with a single, ‘Love So Right’, at number five, following a pattern of soul-oriented hits that began with ‘Jive Talking’ and included the marvellously melodic ‘Fanny (Be Tender With My Love)’ and the funkier ‘You Should Be Dancing’.

        It’s not surprising that the Gibb brothers are exuding a confidence these days that hasn’t been apparent since their initial breakthrough.

        Barry Gibb, the best-looking of the three, with his coiffured hair and neatly trimmed beard, is a natural leader, holding down most of the conversation.

        Maurice, now balding slightly, is perhaps more open and honest but is held down by Barry. Robin, of the buck teeth, fly-away hair and intense falsetto voice, limits himself to rather cynical quips, most of which include rather fruity language. Even so, they all tend to talk at once, frequently contradicting each other and indulging in arguments over small details.

        None of them, especially Robin, like to back down which may explain those curious episodes in their early career when the he split from the others and, according to legend, locked himself in a flat, took the phone off the hook and refused to communicate with the outside world for several weeks.

        What’s the reason for the current intense promotion? “The fact that the music is succeeding and our record company wants to promote us,” replied Barry.

        “Publicity is a key factor,” said Robin. “People say that if the music is there, you don’t need publicity, but tasteful publicity, well-done, isn’t harmful. People in America love this kind of thing. They like to have things put smack bang in their faces. They like to be told who and what to see.”

        “We’re enjoying it,” said Barry, always the more serious brother. “We’re enjoying the resurgence we’ve had in the last couple of years and we want to continue it. Our record company just wants to make sure it stays that way.”

        “We’re becoming bigger now than we ever were before,” said Robin. “In fact, we are bigger now than we ever were before. No-one would ever have thought that it would happen.”

        “In fact,” added Barry, “we’ve just been voted number one group in America.” But no sooner had he begun qualifying this remark (the result of a poll in Record World magazine) than Maurice, speaking for the first time, pointed out that this wasn’t to be released yet.

        I suggested that the real reason behind their comeback was their collaboration with legendary producer Arif Mardin, whose track record in the R&B field is second to none.

        “Yes,” agreed Barry. “He pointed us in the right direction and although we love that direction, it mustn’t be the be-all and end-all. We’re going to continue in that direction, but if we keep doing it for another five years, we’ll be back in the wilderness again.

        “This album (Children Of The World) doesn’t just have disco and R&B on it. It has different kinds of songs, even though everyone pointed out the R&B.

        “To us, there are other tracks on the album and on Main Course that could be hits as well. For The Bee Gees it’s not right to put those tracks out as singles yet. We just want to develop as much as we: can in every field and that’s something that we stopped doing a while back.”

        A while back, I said, referred to their low period then?

        “Yes, and that was when we started listening to black music,” said Barry.

        “We’ve always allowed people to influence us. The Beatles influenced us in the early days and before that Neil Sedaka influenced us. Now we let Stevie Wonder influence us. Two years ago we stopped listening to outside influences, people like Arif and others. We started writing songs that went in instead of out.”

ROBERT STIGWOOD - RIP

As I relate in another post here on Just Backdated, the impresario Robert Stigwood, who died yesterday aged 81, had the unusual distinction of being the only man in the world ever to have propositioned me, at least as far as I can remember. New York in the seventies was often a bit of a blur after dark when the work was done and the bottles opened, hedonistic too if you were lucky enough to work in the rock trade. Amongst my friends were two or three gay guys, one a noted music writer, who were usually great company, not least because free-spirited models liked to hang around with unthreatening men. When the night drew to a close, however, such girls were unlikely to be offended if a straight but gay-friendly escort offered to squire them home. These friends knew I wasn’t gay, of course, but Robert Stigwood wasn’t to know this when, in the summer of 1976, I was at a party at his apartment on the West Side, a luxurious duplex which in the 1940s had been occupied by the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

         Chez Robert was a penthouse on the corner of one of those huge mansion blocks on Central Park West, actually the building next to the Dakota where John Lennon lived. I think the party was thrown to celebrate the forthcoming release of Saturday Night Fever, the disco movie for which his clients The Bee Gees had provided the music. The Gibb Brothers were riding on the crest of a wave, with albums and singles everywhere on the charts, either by them or with artists who’d recorded their songs, and earlier the same day they had opened their own shop selling BG merchandise on 57^th Street. Robert was there and he invited me to the party personally. He was famous for throwing good parties, and I’d been to one before, at a massive house in Stanmore in North London, back in 1971.

         The NY apartment was crowded, as I recall. The Gibbs were there, along with many who worked for RSO Records, Robert’s label that was distributed through Atlantic. Champagne corks popped and the pleasing smell of marijuana lingered in the air. Cocaine was being snorted by record company men with open necked shirts and small spoons around their necks. Beautiful girls danced to disco music in a spacious living room furnished with huge leather sofas. It wasn’t long before I was as high as a kite, and in search of a loo I wandered down a long corridor, the walls of which were covered in what seemed to be original artworks by famous painters, Magritte, Matisse and Picasso. It was then that I realised the host had crept up behind me and was being rather too friendly. I explained as nicely as I could that I preferred girls, whereupon he led me into a bedroom where a statuesque redhead from among his staff – or so he said – was sat on a bed, reading a magazine. “This is…,” he said, and though I cannot remember her name, the implication was that she and I might become enjoined while he watched. She didn’t demur and in different circumstances I might have done just that but something in my Yorkshire upbringing told me this was unwise and that was the end of the matter. Robert smiled graciously and the three of us returned to where the action was.

Robert Stigwood – known to one and all as Stiggy – was a massively successful Australian-born music entrepreneur who as well as managing The Bees Gees also managed Eric Clapton and went on to produce several hit musicals. I met him several times between 1970 and 1977 and – aside from the encounter above – found him strangely diffident for a rock manager, slight of build and rather hesitant. Perhaps this was an act to cover up his astuteness in business, for he amassed a fortune that enabled him to buy a yacht that was eventually sold to the Getty family and live in a former royal residence on the Isle of Wight. In later years he lived quietly in the South of France.

         Among his theatrical successes were Hair and the Tim Rice/Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita. As well as Saturday Night Fever, he was behind The Who’s Tommy movie, Grease and – probably his biggest flop – the dreadful Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band movie in 1978. Born in Adelaide, in 1955 Stiggy hitch-hiked to England via India and set up a theatrical agency in the Charing Cross Road supplying actors for TV commercials. One of his clients, John Leyton, wanted to be a pop singer so Stigwood somehow got Joe Meek – the British Phil Spector – to record him singing ‘Johnny Remember Me’, one of the great pre-Beatles UK singles and a number one hit in the summer of 1961. Stigwood was up and running, setting up a booking agency and record label and though he had his ups and downs it was the beginning of a phenomenal career wheeling and dealing behind the scenes in the music business.

         He was pally with Kit Lambert, of course (John Entwistle said he found them in bed together), and became The Who’s agent and, with the Reaction label, offered them a refuge after they fell out with Shel Talmy. When he somehow overstepped the line with regard to The Small Faces it is generally accepted that their manager Don Arden held Stiggy upside down from an office window several floors up. He helped Cream to form and managed them, made an alliance with Brian Epstein but The Beatles declined to be managed by him after Epstein’s death. It didn’t matter. By then he’d discovered The Bee Gees whose career he handled thereafter, simultaneously producing the theatre shows and films as well as running RSO Records. His last real success before he retired was the Evita movie starring Madonna. I’d like to have been a fly on the wall when those two were negotiating percentages.

         RIP Stiggy. I forgive you for that night in New York.

THE CHÂTEAU D’HÉROUVILLE, Robin Gibb & Kinky Ladies Of Bourbon Street

The Château d’Hérouville, in the French Val d’Oise region 30km north of Paris, famously used as a recording studio by Elton John, David Bowie and many more top acts, is for sale – a snip at £1.12 million. Such news would not normally interest Just Backdated but when the item cropped up on Facebook yesterday, I was reminded of a passage in Tales Of The Brothers Gibb, the 700+ page definitive biography of The Bee Gees by Melinda Bilyeu, Hector Cook and Andrew Môn Hughes, edited by yours truly and published by Omnibus Press in 2001.

         It is 1977 and The Bee Gees have decamped to the château in order to record the songs that will appear in the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever, the album that spectacularly rejuvenated their career as champions of disco. Our intrepid authors take up the story:

         Echoing the beginnings of their first international hit ‘New York Mining Disaster 1941’, the writing of ‘Night Fever’ was completed sitting on a staircase, utilising the natural echo. The only difference was that ‘Mining Disaster’ was written in Polydor’s London studios, and ‘Night Fever’ had the more atmospheric setting of a thirteenth century French chateau.  

         That staircase had other claims to fame, according to Robin Gibb. "You know, years ago there were so many pornographic films made at the Château,” he revealed. “The staircase where we wrote ‘How Deep Is Your Love’, ‘Stayin’ Alive’, all those songs, was the same staircase where there’ve been six classic lesbian porno scenes filmed. I was watching a movie one day called Kinky Women Of Bourbon Street, and all of a sudden, there’s this château, and I said, ‘It’s the Château!’ These girls, these dodgy birds, are having a scene on the staircase that leads from the front door up to the studio. There were dildos hanging off the stairs and everything. I thought, ‘Gawd, we wrote ‘Night Fever’ there!’"

         ‘Night Fever’ was the movie’s big dance number, and besides the drums, it is full of rhythms played on guitars and keyboards. ‘Night Fever’ uses two different verses and is so feverishly fast that it runs through verse-chorus pairs four times in only three minutes.

Robin got the location right but the film’s title wrong. It should be Kinky Ladies Of Bourbon Street and if you key this into Google you’ll discover that it’s a minor classic of the genre, given 6.9/10 on the Internet Movie Database website where it is described as a film that “may very well be the best Continental ’core ever” and proving “fertile breeding ground for several of the most intriguing French fornication film-making talents of the ’70s”. My natural reticence on such matters precludes me from offering my own views on the film’s cinematic qualities.

The Château d’Hérouville

Back at the château, other acts that have checked in include Canned Heat, Rick Wakeman, Iggy Pop, Marvin Gaye, Fleetwood Mac, Jethro Tull, Cat Stevens and T Rex. Sadly, it has fallen into neglect and, empty now for the last 28 years, requires a £300,000 refurbishment to make it habitable. Bowie was convinced it was haunted. Perhaps paranormally mindful of what might have been filmed occurring between its sheets, he declined to sleep in the master bedroom. 

THE BEE GEES

Mention of Robert Stigwood in yesterday’s post leads me to the disclosure that alongside Abba, another of my guilty pleasures has always been the music of his blue chip clients The Bee Gees, not so much the era defining disco stuff from the mid-seventies as the melodic Beatles-like pop from the sixties and some songs, occasionally recorded by others, that followed their Saturday Night Fever renaissance. My favourite from their early period is ‘Run To Me’, simply immaculate pop with a hook line to catch a wave, and it was good to see that Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoofs chose to cover this song on the first of their Under The Covers compilations in 2006. Their taste throughout this series has been exquisite.

For a period in New York I was besotted with a model called Lisa, a slip of a thing with beautiful Bambi eyes whose favourite song was ‘Fanny (Be Tender With My Love)’ which she played repeatedly on the juke box at Ashley’s bar on Fifth Avenue and 13th Street where we both hung out after hours. Armed with this knowledge, I asked her to be my date at a swanky reception The Bee Gees hosted at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel to celebrate the success of Fever. She accepted and off we went, dressed to the nines, but at the bar I made the foolish mistake of introducing her to my friend Mick Rock, the photographer, who asked her to dance. She accepted and I never saw either of them again, well not for a few weeks anyway. Turned out they’d moved in together and they stayed that way for about eight years. I’ve since published Mick’s photo books and we laugh about it now. After retiring from modelling Lisa went back to college and is now an English Lit lecturer at a college in her home city of Chicago. She writes great short stories too.

         I interviewed The Bee Gees twice for MM, once in London at a flat they shared in Eaton Square and again in New York, in a hotel room, and both times – hilariously – they simply argued amongst themselves over the answers to my questions. One would say one thing, another would disagree and a heated barney resulted, usually between Robin and Barry with Maurice trying to act as mediator. The biggest argument they had was about the doldrums era in the early seventies when they were reduced to playing chicken-in-a-basket cabaret venues in the north of England. Barry enjoyed the experience. Robin hated it. Maurice could take it or leave it – work was work to him. They always did seem a bit touchy around the media, probably the fallout from iffy reviews along the way, but it saddens me that Barry is now the only Gibb brother left standing.

          I once went to a party at the New York home of Robert Stigwood, an unbelievably luxurious duplex apartment which in the 1940s was occupied by the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. It was a penthouse, on the corner of one of those huge mansion blocks on Central Park West, actually the building next to the Dakota where John Lennon lived. As I was walking down an endless dark corridor admiring the original artworks on the walls – Magritte, Matisse, Picasso etc – Stigwood crept up behind me and propositioned me. I explained as nicely as I could that I preferred girls, whereupon he introduced me to a statuesque redhead from among his staff with the implied suggestion that we get on with it while he watched, which we didn’t.