The Ultimate Biography of The Bee Gees

by Hector Cook

  “There will be songs in it, but we don’t know how yet,” Barry said. “We’re writing both the background score and one or two songs for us to sing. We want everything to be authentic so you really couldn’t use electric guitars and still be in keeping with the time.”

  Colin appeared his usual laid-back self. “I take things as they come. It won’t worry me at all if the others all come off better than me. It’s a completely new concept for me, anyway. As there will be songs in it, and a story line that fits our pop image, I’ll be working in a completely new field.

  “When I first joined the brothers, they used to send me up … mainly about the film bit. They don’t now. I think they’ve said all there was to say. I couldn’t make the most of my contribution to the group if I didn’t get on with the other people in it. I don’t see how you can create anything nice together if you’re not nice in others’ eyes.”

  The demands on up-and-coming pop performers were far more strenuous then than now, and no sooner had their feet touched the ground after the American trip than they were off to Scandinavia for a three-day promotional jaunt. A weary but elated Maurice barely had time to tell waiting journalists, “America is great. We were all treated like gods over there. It really was a knockout. Funny, when American groups come here, the kids seem to respect them. But, when British groups go to the States, the kids go real wild! We liked America very much.”

  The young group had begun to move in exalted social circles, with nights out at exclusive clubs in impressive company. In Swinging Sixties London there were numerous clubs where the pop stars of the day could relax after hours in congenial company. One of the best known was The Speakeasy near Oxford Circus.

  “I met John and George down at The Speakeasy,” Maurice related. “I walked in and John Lennon said, ‘Bee Gees!’ like this. And I said, ‘Hi.’ Paul had just walked out then. He’d gone with Jane Asher somewhere. And I just sat and talked to John and he said, ‘I dig your act,’ and so forth, which I thought was very nice of him to say. Then I went and joined my other table. I thought the best thing to do was not just to sit there and say, ‘Gee, I think you’re the greatest,’ because I really didn’t want to do that. It’s just best to say, ‘Okay, nice to have met you; I must go now; cheers,’ and that’s all. Because if I would have sat there all night talking to them, they would have thought, ‘Oh, he’s a real rave-on,’ so I just walked away and that was the end of it.”

  “It was strange,” he reflected later. “One moment I was in Australia poring over The Beatles’ fan club books and two months later I was in The Speakeasy Club in London getting drunk with them. Or Lennon was showing me how to use the mellotron he played on ‘Strawberry Fields’. The first time we met them at The Speakeasy, they’d just come back from doing the Sgt. Pepper album cover and they were wearing those brilliant clothes. That was a fantastic night – Keith Moon, Otis Redding, Pete Townshend, all drinking scotch and coke, which was the drink then.”

  “I remember that night,” Barry added. “That was the first night I met Lennon. He was sitting with his back to me in the Pepper gear talking to someone, and Pete Townshend said, ‘Do you want to meet John?’ So he took me over and went, ‘John, this is Barry Gibb from the group The Bee Gees’ and – I’ll never forget it – he never turned round, didn’t look at me at all, just reached over his shoulder and shook hands with me and said, ‘Howyadoin?’ and then continued his conversation. I felt like digging a hole and burying myself.”

  Those feelings of embarrassment didn’t last long, though. An exuberant Barry Gibb told Norrie Drummond of New Musical Express, “When we arrived in London, we had nothing. We were unknown. We had no recording contract and no work. We could have been sleeping on park benches now but fortunately everything turned out well – much better than we had ever hoped.”

  * * *

  But by August dark clouds were gathering.

  The first blow came when Roy Jenkins, the Home Secretary, declared that, as native Australians on temporary work permits, Colin Petersen and Vince Melouney would have to leave Britain by September 17 when their visas would expire.

  “The Bee Gees’ solicitors received the instructions from the Home Office on Tuesday evening,” Robert Stigwood announced. “It is absolutely scandalous! The Government is continually asking for help in the export drive, and this group is potentially one of the biggest foreign currency earners for years.”

  “In the last 12 weeks, we estimate we’ve brought into this country or earned from foreign royalties around $250,000,” Robin said. “Others who earn dollars are awarded the MBE or invited to a nosh at Buckingham Palace. Not us. They hit us with a stupid rule and treat us like criminals.”

  “Before I left Australia I went to the British Embassy and asked if I needed a permit to work in Britain,” Colin said. “They said I didn’t. All I had to do, they told me, was to get a visitor’s visa. ‘When you get to England,’ this official said, ‘just take it into the Home Office and they’ll stamp it.’ Unfortunately I found out there was a lot more to it than that.”

  Meanwhile Maurice, already the proud owner of a Rolls-Royce and an orange Morris Cooper S with blacked out ‘celebrity’ windows, failed his driving test for the first time. In the middle of that first test, the examiner suddenly recognised him and said, “You’re one of The Bee Gees, aren’t you – the ones getting deported?”

  “I was just about to say this applied to only two of the members,” Maurice recalled, “when this bloke says, ‘Then why the hell are you taking your test?’

  “That got me. My blood really boiled and I thought, ‘Right, mate.’ I gave it to him at 80. We were going along like there was no tomorrow.

  “When he got out, he said, ‘Mr Gibb, I’m happy to say you’ve failed.’ ” Unfortunately for Maurice, it would take three more attempts before he got that coveted driver’s licence.

  In a show of solidarity, Barry, Robin and Maurice discussed plans for the entire group to relocate to the United States, Spain or Germany rather than see two of their members deported. Vince and Colin even toyed with the idea of becoming Spanish or Italian citizens as this would mean that they would then be able to work in Britain almost immediately.

  “It is a ridiculous state of affairs,” Stigwood said. “But it is one we are having to consider seriously. Another possibility is that The Bee Gees may settle in Germany, as it would be easier to commute to and from Britain than if they were living in the States.”

  Finally, it was left to Robert Stigwood to take on the British government. He appealed to the Home Office and was turned down, although he did manage to get the boys’ visas extended until the end of October. It was a temporary reprieve which bought Colin and Vince a little more time.

  The death of Brian Epstein during the last week of August had a marked effect on one Bee Gee in particular. Poignantly, Maurice Gibb says that he remembers the last time he saw Brian Epstein. “It was on the Saturday – no, the Friday, because on the Sunday he was found dead. He came out and he was supposed to join us in Cannes the next day, he came out of his office and said, ’That ‘Massachusetts’ is going to be the world’s number one. It’s beautiful,’ and walked away. That’s the last words he ever said to me.”

  *Not to be confused with the better known California-based group, The Byrds, who had hits with ‘Eight Miles High’, ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’, ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’, etc.

  *Teddy Boys was the name given to British rock’n’roll-fans who were easily recognised by their uniform of drainpipe trousers, a long drape jacket, winkle-picker shoes, black shirt and bootlace tie.

  **A well-known Sydney bandleader of whom it was said, “If the Queen were to visit, and they were having a gala performance, it would be Tommy who would conduct the band.”

  *On October 21, 1966 a waste tip slid down the mountainside into the village of Aberfan in South Wales. It first destroyed a farm cottage, killing all its occupants, and continued on to engulf the Pantglas Junior School and about 20 houses
in the village before coming to a halt. Almost half of the children at the school and five of their teachers were killed. In all, the death toll was 144; 116 of them were children.

  *Otis Redding and his backing band, The Bar-Keys, died on December 10, 1967 when his twin-engine Beechcraft plane crashed into Lake Monona near Madison, Wisconsin.

  10

  FIRST FAME

  “FIRST FAME IS a very dangerous thing,” explained Barry. “You believe what you read about yourself, you believe what people say about you. You believe that you have something very special to say and that God’s talking through you and the public need to know. This happens to you when you become famous for the first time, especially on an international level.”

  The Bee Gees had just begun to get a crash course in the dangers of international success at a major level.

  ‘Massachusetts’ was released just six days after Brian Epstein’s prophetic words, giving The Bee Gees their biggest hit to date. In Britain it held the number one slot in the singles chart for four weeks; in Germany three weeks, and Japan an incredible six weeks. In addition, it reached number one in Malaysia, South Africa, New Zealand, Singapore and Australia. In America, where ‘Holiday’ was released as the third single without the group’s knowledge, ‘Massachusetts’ just missed entering the Top 10, rising only to number 11.

  According to Athol Guy of The Seekers, The Bee Gees didn’t even originally plan to record ‘Massachusetts’ themselves. He told Richard Saunders, “[‘Massachusetts’] was offered to our manager by The Bee Gees for the group to record, before they did it. There was some discussion about publishing rights which I think got in the way of us ever finding out about it. While they made a huge hit song of it, I don’t know if it would have meant a great deal for us. I love The Bee Gees – they’re a fantastic band – but the lyrics in some of their earlier songs … er … what does it mean?”

  Maurice confirms Athol’s story, implying that the attempt to offload ‘Massachusetts’ had been without their own manager’s knowledge. “We sat on the demo … and actually never wanted really to record the song but then Robert, our manager, said it was the disc for us and we must record it. He was right.”

  By the time the single came out, ‘flower power’ and its attendant culture was in decline. “It’s a business!” declared Maurice somewhat cynically. “Of course the idea is good, but there is so much commercialisation happening that the movement is dying a sad death. Bells being sold in Carnaby Street … urgh! When we went to the States in July, flower power hadn’t really begun here, but when we came back the flowers had started to grow. Naturally, there was nothing like this hitting the Australian scene when we left, but I guess flower power is there as well.”

  How The Bee Gees came to write their answer to the movement, immortalised by Scott McKenzie’s pop classic, ‘San Francisco’, varies according to which brother is telling the story.

  “The first time the group went to New York and stayed at the St Regis Hotel, and while our luggage was being moved into the suite, we were writing ‘Massachusetts’, sitting on a sofa, the three of us. It came from our first exposure to America, our first thoughts of writing a song about flower power, which the song is about. Or it’s basically anti-flower power … because we were getting tired of it long before everybody else did. ‘Don’t go to San Francisco, come home, for Christ’s sake,’” Barry laughed. “We wanted to write the opposite of what it’s like to lose somebody who went to San Francisco … Well, we thought, ‘Why not write a song about everybody going home?’ The lights all went out in Massachusetts because everyone went to San Francisco, because they left. There was something very special about that thought.”

  According to Robin, “Ninety per cent of it was mental telepathy. I had had this line in my head all day, ‘The lights all went out in Massachusetts.’ Later that night I mentioned it to Barry and he said, ‘Yes, I know. I’ve already got the tune for it.’ So we wrote the rest of it together, and Maurice did the arrangement. ‘Massachusetts’, in fact, is not talking about people going back to Massachusetts. It represents all the people who want to go back to somewhere or something. It is all about people who want to escape.”

  However, as Maurice remembered it, “We worked out the basic melody in about five minutes when we were in New York. Robin and I began, then Barry started throwing in ideas. We wrote ‘Massachusetts’ in 15 minutes and recorded it in three takes. I’m not quite sure why we thought of ‘Massachusetts’ in the first place because we weren’t even sure how to spell it. It’s untrue that ‘Massachusetts’ was geared for the [American] market. We were just fooling about, and we thought that it would be fun to record a number like Engelbert or Tom Jones. After all, they do get the number ones.”

  The memory of how the song was written may have faded, but one moment remains crystal clear for Maurice. The Bee Gees were standing on a revolving stage, waiting to perform. “The Merseybeats were performing,” he recounts, “and Dick Ashby, who was our road manager at that time, came rushing up just as the stage was about to turn around and said, ’ ‘Massachusetts’ just went to number one’ … We were so high from that news because that was the first number one we had in England. All that time we were in Australia, dreaming of that, it was such a kick for us that I couldn’t stop crying. We did the lousiest show you ever saw, we were so excited. That moment of being told – that stands out like it was this morning.”

  In fact, Maurice had received similar news a week earlier, but an error resulted in the charts being immediately recalled and, within 12 hours, they were demoted to number three. Perhaps preparing himself for disappointment, he told Music Makers that it actually wasn’t the kind of music they liked, and he wouldn’t have bought it himself. “The disc was meant to be a commercial proposition and it paid off,” he explained, “but we are much more thrilled about ‘World’, which isn’t released yet. Now that is great. A lot more work went into it than into ‘Massachusetts’.” Number one status was finally achieved on 11th November.

  These were heady days indeed for the young group, but Robert Stigwood ensured that they remained focused and grounded. “Robert was very good with us, he was almost like a parent,” Barry recalled. “He wouldn’t let us get big-headed about it and he would always bring us down to earth and say ‘One hit does not a career make.’ He was always there to tell us that, ‘Two hits does not a career make,’ and even on our third hit he would say, ‘Stay calm.’ ”

  The success of ‘Massachusetts’ further elevated The Bee Gees’ status among London’s social elite, and the boys became part of the social scene that had grown up within London’s pop industry. They began to spend more of their nights in the central London clubs, mixing freely with the premier division of rock superstars.

  One of the most unlikely friendships to spring up came on the heels of an insult in the press. “When we first came out, Jimi Hendrix said we were two-year-old Beatles,” Barry said. “He was just giving an opinion at the time. People just like to have a go at other artists. But we are very good friends with Jimi now.

  “He was a great mate of mine,” he recalled years later. “He came to my twenty-first birthday party. He was an extremely polite bloke. I never knew about the drugs then. I thought he was acting a bit weird and saying kind of remote things, but I was too naïve to even consider that it might be drugs … I never cottoned on with Jimi and the drugs. I saw him drunk a few times because I remember thinking he was always really quiet until he had a few drinks.”

  “I’ll tell you how naïve we were,” said Maurice. “I went out drinking with Lennon once when he was on LSD, and I never even noticed! He covered it very well, and he was much funnier. He wasn’t sarcastic, but he was very witty. He also got very creative. He’d keep running off into a room to draw or write things down. We were that green. I was at a party one night … and someone passed me a joint, and I got my fags out and said, ‘It’s all right, I’ve got plenty! There’s no need to share one!’ ”

  “The
pressures on us at that age were incredible,” Barry said. “The guys were about 17 when all this happened, when we first started making hit records from England, ‘Mining Disaster’ and those things. We didn’t really know where we were at because we never had hits all over the world before and it all happened so fast for us. There were so many people around us talking to us, filling our ears with nonsense.”

  Robin agreed that the sudden burst of fame turned his head, adding that if he met the young Robin Gibb walking down the street now, “I think I’d grab him by the collar, belt him around the head and tell him to learn something … I was very selfish then. I was arrogant and condescending to a degree.

  “When I think back to myself at [that time], I see a young boy who didn’t want to know about anything and who was all wrapped up in all the little things … like ego problems … I kept wanting to know what somebody was really thinking about me, or what they really meant by what they were saying. If we had a new record out, it was important to get it mentioned in a music paper …”

  To nine-year-old Andy Gibb it all seemed very strange but, to his credit, he didn’t allow his brothers’ success to affect him. “It didn’t change my life that much. I knew they were in the business and I had always known they were in the business. Not being anything extra special to me, and at [that age] you don’t think about show business, you don’t think glitter, you don’t think that you have 400 or 500 kids outside the front door because your brothers are big stars. I just walk in after school, pass the 500 kids at the front door, go in the back door, my brothers would all be sitting, watching television with the curtains drawn, girls banging on the windows and that was their whole life, you know.”