The Ultimate Biography of The Bee Gees

by Hector Cook

  Unrecorded, published titles from 1965 like ‘Boy With A Broken Heart’, ‘My Love Won’t Take The Time’, ‘Run Right Back’ and ‘When A Girl Cries’ all seem to capture the mood of the period and would have been more representative of the group at that time. The decision to plunder their back catalogue and reissue material from up to two years before suggests that Festival had simply taken the easy option and missed another opportunity to promote the Gibbs properly.

  Domestically, the last 11 months had seen the family move house again not once but twice. They were now residing in Fenton Street, Maroubra, south of Bronte, to the east of Sydney Airport, having briefly stayed in Strathfield, just north of Lakemba, in between times. Barry did not have fond memories of their interim dwelling. “Was I glad to get out of there. The house itself was okay, but it was what was inside that worried me. It was haunted! All the family at some stage or other heard weird sounds.”

  Wherever they happened to be living in or around Sydney, their real ambitions lay outside of Australia. They knew all too well that America and Great Britain offered the best prospects. There was even an offer on the table from Wayne Newton to sponsor the entire family’s removal to America, so impressed were both he and Bobby Darin by Barry’s writing. It was talked about at length within the family but eventually Hugh gracefully declined the invitation on the grounds that such a move might involve too many complications. In reality, he was concerned about conscription – “the draft” as it was known in the United States – and that his sons might end up as US soldiers sent to fight in Vietnam.

  There remained the possibility of a short-term visit to the US, but Barry was at pains to tell reporters that they had no intentions of leaving Australia for good. “Don’t think that we will be going there to hit the big time or anything like that,” he said. “It’s more for the experience than anything else. I’ve seen a few kids set off for overseas with great hopes and ambitions, not realising that it’s much more difficult over there.”

  Also up for discussion was a trip to Japan. Australian artists were very much in demand in the Far East at that time and papers announced that negotiations were being finalised to take the group to the Land of the Rising Sun in February, as part of a group of entertainers selected by Kevin Jacobsen. Barry enthused over the possibility. “After hearing of the fabulous times other performers have had there, I’m really looking forward to it.”

  The talks must have been extremely protracted as the press made a similar announcement in March, mentioning also that the Far East tour was going to wind up in England.

  January of 1966 saw the group entertain their new “home” crowd at Maroubra Surf Life-Saving Club with a new segment to their act. They had always impressed their friends with their ability to do imitations, everyone from Rudy Vallee to Elvis, but were reticent to do so in public. It was all change now though and they pledged to “send-up” some of the biggest names in the business including Billy Thorpe and Col Joye. The highlight, however, was when one of the twins donned a blonde wig and became … Little Pattie! Presumably their targets, on the surface at least, just smiled and took it all in good humour; something the boys would have done well to remember when the shoe was on the other foot some 15 years later.

  While the brothers were out polishing their new act, Festival were refurbishing their studios and upgrading their equipment from two-track to four-track. If Barry’s memory serves him correctly, they apparently also had an eight-track recording machine, “but they didn’t have anyone who knew how to use it”. The label needed some guinea-pigs to test their new gear and in February The Bee Gees were afforded “the honour” of inaugurating Festival’s new recording facilities. The label also made a half-hearted effort to squeeze a little more income from their only hit to date by issuing their second picture sleeve EP, Wine And Women which comprised both sides of that single and their February 1964 release, ‘Peace Of Mind’/‘Don’t Say Goodbye’.

  After the booming up-tempo feel of their last two singles, which had at least made some impact, it seems as if Barry made a conscious decision to go as far as possible in the other direction with his latest offerings. The mournful ‘Cherry Red’ was probably aimed at the same market that had bought Roy Orbison’s ‘Crying’, a song that much impressed Barry. A pretty ballad, it again featured the now familiar and unique Gibb harmonies. In contrast the B-side ‘I Want Home’ was a real rocker, with a distinct R&B feel. Released as their new single that March, both recordings were mixed only to mono, even though Festival had the ability to produce stereo records.

  A number of other recordings were made around this time but nobody is really sure what their purpose was as they were never intended for release. Almost by way of contradiction, these seven songs – all “standards” from the mid–late Fifties – benefited from full orchestral backing and chorus. Whatever the original intent of the label or the Gibbs, these demos would resurface further down the line.

  Although ‘Cherry Red’ was destined to become another notch on Robin’s “flop belt” that he would wear with such pride once he was rich and famous, times were not all bad for the trio. For a start, they now joined the long list of celebrities who had appeared at the celebrated Silver Spade Room in the Sydney Hilton, then widely regarded as Australia’s most prestigious venue. It must have been particularly thrilling for the brothers, as it was at this same venue that they had first met their idols, The Mills Brothers, three years previously. Now here they were on that very same stage.

  An entirely different stage altogether, but nonetheless enjoyed, was that provided by Six O’Clock Rock, a new TV show fronted by Aussie wildman Johnny O’Keefe. Variously described as raw, unpolished and unconventional, their new environment became a haven for their offbeat humour and cheek. Whereas the conservative attitude of Bandstand meant that they always had to work within the confines of strictly enforced parameters, this new environment allowed them behave as they chose. There would be no going back to the show which has often since claimed to have launched them. Six O’Clock Rock welcomed them with open arms and booked them often. Perhaps Australia couldn’t have its own Beatles but, to the show’s growing band of regular teenage viewers, The Bee Gees were a more than acceptable compromise and the Gibbs took full advantage.

  It must have been like a dream come true for Maurice, in particular, who was used to having his father maintain a watchful eye over his electric guitar playing. Their first appearance on the show also marked the point when their trips to the local barbers would become less and less frequent.

  They had also attended a séance, a peculiar thing for boys of that age to be doing but, nonetheless, “Ian” (or “Noel” depending on which brother’s version you take) contacted them and forecast great success in a new venture overseas. “England” would become an increasingly used word in the entire Gibb family’s domestic vocabulary during the winter months that lay ahead.

  Whatever the temperature outside, at Festival Records offices the atmosphere was decidedly chilly. By now, Hugh’s sons had 10 flops to their name and the growing antagonism between their father and Fred Marks now rose to the surface. With Barry at his side, Hugh descended on Marks’ office one day, and the sound of their ensuing argument grew to such a level that it could be heard throughout the entire building. Interestingly, Fred Marks has no memory whatsoever of there being any such argument.

  The basis of Hugh’s discontent was the apparent lack of interest being shown by Festival in furthering his sons’ careers. Both RCA and EMI had tabled lucrative offers, promising to properly promote the group into the bargain, so Hugh questioned the legality of what he termed a “stranglehold” contract. However, this was one of those few occasions that the senior Gibb wouldn’t get his own way, encountering a determined Marks who was prepared to be equally resolute.

  Fred countered that there were unpaid bills for record stock that had been supplied for tour sales and claimed that Hugh was generally belligerent to work with. He also pointed out that he was p
robably one of the most travelled men in the world at that point, regularly circumnavigating the globe to promote Festival Records and its artists. Indeed, he was probably the best-known record company executive anywhere in the world, such was the extent of his travels. Each time he left the country, he would take a parcel of Festival releases and, as he reminded the Gibbs, every single one of their singles since ‘The Battle Of The Blue And The Grey’ had been personally promoted by him way beyond Australia’s shores. Eventually a compromise was reached.

  Ambitious Frank Baron, sometimes described as a “press baron” in the great Australian tradition of the likes of Rupert Murdoch, published a semi-pop magazine called Everybody’s. Always on the look-out for new ways to expand his empire and increase his media presence, he decided to launch a record label of the same name. However, he lacked an understanding of the fickle nature of the marketplace in which he was investing so heavily, and the label released but a handful of singles before his conservatively minded backers, Consolidated Press, pulled the plug on the whole project.

  A casualty of his over-optimism could have been the Everybody’s house producer, Nat Kipner. However, the alert Kipner, loosely in charge of the day-to-day running of the label, had seen the writing on the wall and bailed out before the end to set up his own record company and booking agency, which he named Spin. When Everybody’s went belly-up, Nat quickly moved in to sign most of his previous company’s roster and arranged a distribution deal with Festival, the label who looked after three lads he had worked with just two years before.

  While all this was going on, Bill Shepherd was packing his bags and booking passage back to his native England. There were murmurs from within the company’s walls that his departure from Festival was not entirely of his own choosing, one even going so far as to connect his exit to a romantic entanglement with one of the label’s secretaries, although this remains unsubstantiated. With Kevin Jacobsen now on his back about his protégés in addition to Hugh, and with the Gibbs having lost their producer, it looked as if Fred Marks had more than enough problems on his plate with The Bee Gees alone. It was at that point that the wily campaigner pulled off his master stroke. Not only did he get rid of all his Bee Gees related problems in one go, but he also, quite literally, negotiated the deal of a lifetime.

  Realising their potential to a far greater extent than Festival, Nat Kipner was more than happy to take The Bee Gees off Fred’s hands but there was a catch. Kipner had to agree to extend the current distribution deal between the labels, thereby granting Festival the exclusive distribution rights for all Spin releases in perpetuity.

  Marks was equally skilled when it came to The Bee Gees’ contract. Although the group’s original obligation now had less than two years to run, the Festival boss demanded his pound of flesh in return for his agreement to sub-contract them to Spin. In a deal brokered by Kevin Jacobsen, Marks secured an extension into the mid-Seventies, thereby ensuring that, no matter where they might be at the time, revenue from the Australian release of future Bee Gees material would still filter through to Festival’s coffers. Fred’s shrewdness, or obstinacy – take your pick – would secure his company millions. The Gibbs, on the other hand, were simply glad to be free.

  There remained the problem of how to find another Bill Shepherd. Bill had been a great influence on the brothers and they wanted to work with him again at some stage. At this point fate played its trump card when a saviour walked into their lives. Robin explains. “We met a man in 1966 called Ossie Bryne, and he owned his own studio just outside Sydney.

  “He’d always been a fan of ours but thought that we should have been handled a bit better, so he said, ‘Come to my studio, you can have all the time you want.’ We used to record all night till seven in the morning. We could experiment for the first time. We felt great, we wrote all our own music, and it was like a whole new door had been opened.”

  Byrne, an occasional associate of Nat Kipner, had created his own recording studio next to a butcher’s shop in the St Clair strip mall just off Queen’s Road in Hurstville, another of Sydney’s sprawling suburbs. Commercially available for £5 per hour, Ossie magnanimously offered to allow the trio unrestricted recording time there for free. It was an offer that may have inspired some lyrics written in the following year, “all our Christmases came at once”. The boys gratefully accepted their new friend’s hospitality which, in time, they would repay with interest.

  Another group who recorded at Ossie’s studio were Steve & The Board, a band formed by Nat Kipner’s son, Steve. “Ossie just ran the tape equipment,” said Steve Kipner. “The Bee Gees really directed themselves and they always knew just what they wanted to do. It was just a couple of mono tape decks, not even two-track. You might make an instrumental track and then bounce it to the other tape while singing to it. You could do it again to add something else but there was a limit because you’d start to lose sound.”

  As Barry would explain years later, “You just kept balancing things until you had enough things on the track that you wanted, but every time that you did balance something, what you already had on the record was fading away because in those days you couldn’t bring everything up to the same volume on all the instruments. So it was difficult.”

  Ossie would soon upgrade his facilities though. Singer Jon Blanchfield recalled that at the back of the butcher shop, “the old Coolroom was the control room with the two track player.”

  The remainder of March, the whole of April and the early part of May was spent in their new “home” – they spent more time there than they did at their own house. They were often joined in their lengthy sessions by a fellow classmate from Barry’s old school, who had met up with the brothers again by way of an unusual coincidence.

  Colin Petersen was now a drummer in Steve & The Board. One evening when chatting to Maurice in a local discotheque, the youngest Bee Gee invited Colin to sit in on one of their sessions. “[Shortly after] I moved to Melbourne with my group, but I used to fly to Sydney for sessions with them,” he says. “That’s quite a distance – over 600 miles. I used to be out of pocket, but I did it out of friendship.” Colin’s choice of words cleverly disguised part of his motivation for going to such lengths to participate. He and Lesley Gibb were more than “just good friends”. He was treated more like a member of the family than a musician, and often stayed at the Gibbs’ house. He remains very appreciative of all the times that Barbara made him a cup of tea, or cooked meals for him. In all, he reckons he played on about 12 tracks during this period, ‘Coalman’, ‘Lonely Winter’, ‘Exit Stage Right’, ‘I Want Home’ and ‘Cherry Red’ being the ones which spring most immediately to mind.

  Another musician, guitarist Vince Melouney, also popped in and out of these sessions. Robin dabbled with the harmonica on occasion as well as continuing his piano development while Maurice had added mandolin to his existing repertoire. Eleven songs are known to have originated during this period with three, in particular, deserving of special mention. ‘Where Are You’ by Maurice and ‘I Don’t Know Why I Bother With Myself’ by Robin were the first recorded instances that Barry’s younger brothers had song-writing ambitions of their own. The third, ‘Tint Of Blue’ also marked the first occasion that two Gibbs, in this case Barry and Robin, would share credits.

  The songs were jointly produced by Nat Kipner and Ossie Byrne, and the two selected for their first Spin release at the end of May were ‘Monday’s Rain’ backed with ‘Playdown’. In truth this was a false start because the single was quickly reissued in early June with a new catalogue number and a new B-side, the newly submitted ‘All Of My Life’ now deemed to be the more appropriate supporting number.

  As Festival had done with their initial Bee Gees release, an information sheet accompanied promotional copies of the re-pressed version. This told deejays that, “There’s no doubt at all these boys have top talent, and past record releases such as ‘Wine And Women’, ‘Turn Around Look At Me’ and ‘And The Children Laughing’ all serve
d to place the boys several steps higher up the ladder of success.”

  In case that wasn’t sufficient to have radio jocks drooling, there was an additional message at the bottom, “It’s a beauty! Spins please. It will make your programmes sparkle like candle light on crystal!” They don’t write ’em like that any more!

  ‘Monday’s Rain’ was possibly the most soulful and musically adventurous song they had recorded to date. It was an interesting choice for a single. Barry’s breathy vocal, which was to become a Bee Gees trademark, gets its first hearing on this song. In contrast, ‘All Of My Life’ is a very commercial song containing some very Beatles-like vocal inflections.

  The 12 new songs were lined up for their second album, Monday’s Rain. However, sales of the single had been disappointing and its release was put on hold while they went back into the studio to see what else they could come up with.

  ‘Where Are You’ had drawn Nat Kipner’s attention to Maurice’s potential as a more than competent songwriter although, by his own admission, he felt more comfortable writing the music than the words. Kipner spent much of the Australian winter collaborating with him and four of their songs were given to other artists for release on his other label, Downunder. Something or someone had obviously motivated Maurice to come out of his shell and make a name for himself in his own right … her name was Kathy.

  Lesley Gibb recalls her as a singer with long fair hair and an innocent look that belied her real demeanour. “Maurice was terribly fond of her and got the craziest ideas. One was to kidnap her and take her to a deserted island so that he could be alone with her but, like most of the time, Kathy only laughed at his suggestion. Eventually, Maurice realised that he was just being made fun of by her and remained terribly disappointed for the remainder of his stay in Australia.” Thankfully, for his sake, he wouldn’t have to endure his torment much longer.