The Ultimate Biography of The Bee Gees

by Hector Cook

  The signalman at Hither Green, Albert Norman, observed a flash from the direction of the Hastings train. “All the wheels appeared to be red-hot and then they became white-hot. Then, as one of the coaches went straight up on its end, there was a big flash,” he said.

  Donald Purvis, the driver of the train, later told the inquiry into the accident that, “The ride up to Hither Green was no different from on any other day. At Hither Green I experienced dragging, then snatching. This became far more violent. I didn’t know what had happened. Everything happened so fast. I could not get an impression which part of the train the drag was coming from. The whole thing seemed to rear up and there was a terrific bang. We broke away and the brake pressure shot up. The brakes were hard on because the pipes were severed.”

  The leading pair of wheels of the third coach became derailed and the second, third, fourth and fifth coaches turned on their sides. Passengers were tossed like rag dolls as the coaches overturned. The leading coach broke away and came to a stop some 640 yards further on. Survivors mentioned a strange silence before the screams of the injured and dying split the night air.

  Robin recalled, “When the train finally stopped, there was just a hissing sound, then finally the gut-wrenching screams. We were fortunate to have been in a first-class compartment near the front of the train.

  “I may owe my life to … ‘Massachusetts’ … If our hits were not making so much money, I would not have been able to buy first-class tickets. Most of the people who died in the train wreck were in the second-class compartments, which had no corridor to protect them. Our compartment window was broken. I tried to push Molly out first but she panicked. So I got out first and then lifted Molly out.”

  The compartment doors in their carriage were jammed, so Robin and Molly walked along the top of the train, which by then was lying on its side, opening doors and asking if anyone was badly hurt. Such was the shock that they didn’t realise they themselves had been injured until they saw blood.

  Five minutes after the first emergency calls, the first ambulance arrived. In all 33 ambulances and 28 London Fire Brigade appliances and vehicles came to the scene. Firemen put up ladders and helped the victims down from the top of the train.

  “They pulled 24 people from the second-class carriage with railway lines through their bodies,” Robin remembered. “Some were unconscious; some had no legs. I was lifting very badly injured people about three times my weight out of the compartments.”

  There was nothing anyone could do for one young man, hopelessly trapped in the twisted wreckage, whose screams of “don’t let me die” eventually trailed off into silence.

  “We were all put into ambulances and taken off to the local hospital … People were brought in badly cut, dying and suffering badly from shock. The three hours until my father arrived to collect us was a nightmare,” Robin recalled.

  Molly said, “I had this vision of the whole of the train being engulfed in flames. I was petrified.” Her most vivid memory was pulling a young boy from the wreckage, “a real little Billy Bunter, and he started shouting, ‘The driver’s dead! The driver’s dead!’ ”

  Surrounded by all the carnage, that was the very last thing that Molly needed to hear at that particular moment. She probably regrets it now but, at the time she had admitted thinking, “I wanted to push him back in again.”

  Molly also remembered that Robin managed to stay calm until ambulances arrived, adding, “Robin has the knack of being able to cheer people up. The night of the train disaster was typical of that. There we were, sitting on top of an upturned carriage and like the others about us … badly shaken and aware of a complete shambles, when Robin suddenly remarked, ‘All this, just to get to Battersea Funfair.’ It eased the tension for everybody.

  “But when we got to hospital,” she continued, “he just broke up. When Mr Gibb was driving home from hospital, Rob could not stop crying from shock.”

  Hugh Gibb took the shaken young couple home with him to Buckinghamshire.

  Years later, Maurice Gibb cited the incident as an example of what he calls “a twin thing” empathy with his brother, explaining to Timothy White in Record Mirror, “I definitely have a kind of ESP with him. When Robin was in the Hither Green train disaster, I said, ‘There is something wrong. Something has happened to Robin.’ And Barry said, ‘What do you mean?’ And then we found out. We watched the news, saw the train disaster and I said, ‘Robin was on it.’ We went to Hither Green Hospital and there was Robin – Molly was having X-rays – sitting there going, ‘I didn’t think I was going to see you guys again.’ ”

  A gifted storyteller, Maurice turned Robin’s realistic account of events into a tale of epic proportions. “He pulled six people out of a carriage, and he said, ‘I never knew I had that much strength.’ He laid them on the lawn, and they were all dead. I knew he had been through a strenuous thing – my arms were aching.”

  The next morning the NEMS offices issued a press statement: “Robin, after getting Molly and himself clear from the train, spent a lot of time helping with the rescue of other people, sustaining cuts and bruises. Molly had to have her shoulder X-rayed, and today she and Robin were put under sedation, suffering from shock.”

  Julie Barrett was ideally placed to assess the effect the incident had on Molly. “I knew Robin’s wife Molly ’cause she was a receptionist with NEMS at the time,” she confirmed. “I really got on well with her, but she was quite a forceful character, even though she was very young at the time. She was a nice girl, always bubbly except for the morning after that awful train crash. She came into the office the very next day. She was a big strong girl anyway, it took a lot to ruffle her feathers, but she was shaking, she didn’t know what she was doing.” Little wonder that Molly was sent home, though why she had gone to work in such a state in the first place is a mystery. Perhaps her boyfriend had some influence.

  “I had been told to spend three days in bed,” Robin said later, “but that is the worst thing you can do. You should get straight back into reality.”

  Reality, for him, meant expressing his emotions through songwriting, with ‘Really And Sincerely’ the result. “I wrote that song on the first day and recorded it on the second,” he explained. “It doesn’t mention anything about a train crash but it does reflect the mood I was in.”

  The already sensitive 17-year-old became even more introspective in the weeks after the crash. “When that train crashed, the first thought which came into my mind was God … It’s a very strange thing – that my first thought was of God. And that, more than anything else as far as I’m concerned, proves the existence of God – just something up there that’s watching over us all the time. I’ve never been tremendously religious, going to church and all, but this crash has certainly made me think,” he mused. “I mean, we’ve travelled on that line so many times and noticed the tremendous jolt just where we crashed before but it wasn’t until that train went off the rails that I discovered things about myself I’d never been aware of before. I’d always thought that if I was involved in that sort of horrible situation, I’d just run from it all, but no, my first impulse on finding that I was safe except for scratches, was to run back to help the others. I just had to.”

  There were 550 passengers on the Hastings to London express that night and the death toll eventually reached 53, with 78 severely injured, making it at that time the fourth worst rail accident in British history.

  Neither Robin nor Molly gave evidence at the official inquiry into what became known as the Hither Green Train Disaster, conducted by Colonel Denis McMullen, but other passengers mentioned the swaying of the train just before the derailment and the noise. The inquiry ruled that the cause of the derailment was a broken rail and neither the driver nor the guard was in any way responsible, but the events of that night would haunt survivors for years to come.

  After the Paddington train crash on October 5, 1999, counsellors were called in to help the crash victims, their relatives, train company staf
f and rescue workers come to terms with the scale of the tragedy. Great Western wrote to all those taken to hospital offering individual or group counselling if requested. Its staff was also offered the sort of help which was widely taken up after the 1997 Southall tragedy, which occurred on the same stretch of track.

  But for the survivors of Hither Green, there was no organised counselling; in the late Sixties, this sort of psychological care was unheard of. Those crash victims who were injured were treated; those with minor injuries might be sedated to help them recover from the shock, but were then left to get on with their lives.

  Robin seemed to adopt a rather fatalistic resignation, telling Flip magazine, “Since the crash I’ve stopped worrying too much about petty little things. Being brought close to death like that has made me realise how pointless it is to get too hung up on trifling matters. Things which seemed so important to me before have lost their significance.

  “And another thing – there have been people I’ve considered friends and looked up to but even when they knew I’d been in this awful crash in which I could so easily have been killed, they never even asked after me, how I was, or anything. I’m certainly reassessing them now.”

  More than 30 years after the crash, Robin still has horrifying memories. “People had to be amputated on the railway line and I was talking to them as they were being injected. All I wanted to do was escape … I was covered in blood, had glass in my eyes and mouth. But when I got to the hospital, it was like a scene from World War I. I felt so guilty being there … Later, I got a delayed shock, didn’t sleep for a long, long time afterwards …

  “I went through a guilt trip of feeling people were hurt, so why wasn’t I? I’ve travelled in trains since but I don’t like it, always keep listening for a change in the sounds … I’ve learned to appreciate the little things in life. I still remember that train crash and thinking that I was going to die. I don’t have nightmares about the accidents, but when I do think of them, a cold shiver runs up my spine.”

  Barry noticed the changes in his younger brother after the crash, but seemed almost dismissive when approached to comment. “Robin is very deep,” he explained. “ … It seems to have marked his character somewhat, because he hasn’t been the same since. He’s twice as serious about everything – he can’t take life as a joke any more. And he’s very quick to criticise everybody at every moment – he’s usually right, but he’s too fast to jump. Being his brother, I worry about him because he gets into terrible tempers and sometimes terrible moods … but that’s Robin. He’s a very nervous person now, but he writes better music!”

  It was perhaps an attempt to make light of a sensitive subject, but there’s a ring of authenticity there as well. There can be no doubt that an experience of the magnitude of Hither Green leaves its mark on all its victims.

  * * *

  On the evening of November 17 The Bee Gees switched on the specially designed Christmas illuminations in Carnaby Street, London’s fashion centre, and dancing to other groups followed. As a mark of those less health-conscious times, New Musical Express announced that free soft drinks and cigarettes would be provided for the young fans in attendance.

  The date also marked the announcement of their plans to film a Christmas television special, and the release of their latest single, ‘World’, which reached number nine on the British charts and gave them their first number one in both Holland and Switzerland.

  Barry explained their new song by contrasting The Bee Gees’ philosophy to that of the Fab Four. “I’m afraid that I can’t agree with The Beatles recording of ‘I Am The Walrus’,” he said. “They never had to use dirty words before but they are using them now. What’s the point? I didn’t altogether agree with their flower-power scene either – it wasn’t realistic. They were only escaping from reality which doesn’t work. That’s what our record ‘World’ is about. It goes, ‘Now I’ve found that the world is round, and of course it rains everyday.’ What we are saying is that you can’t live in your own little world, because somewhere there is trouble – rain – and you must face up to it. It may be sun, flowers and beauty in England today, but it’s rain and misery somewhere else. It’s always raining somewhere in the world for somebody.

  “I think that The Beatles did themselves a lot of harm by admitting they took LSD. I think they were living in a fool’s paradise. You don’t need drugs if you’re happy, and you’re happy if you’re working hard at something you love. I love my work, every aspect of it, and therefore I don’t need drugs. I don’t mind doing picture sessions and interviews, I enjoy them and pop stars who complain or don’t turn up for them are fools, they are only hurting themselves. We’ve got a long way to go and I won’t be content until we’re there, which means I’ll have to work day and night.”

  Maurice added that they try to avoid flower power and prefer “fantasy clothes”. “We’ll be wearing that type of thing when we play at the Saville Theatre on November 19. We’re having a 30-piece orchestra and a hundred extras …”

  “We’re all very excited about the Saville show,” Barry declared. “It’s now beginning to take shape and it’s really going to be something that people have never seen before.”

  The following day it was announced in Melody Maker that The Bee Gees would perform a special concert to benefit victims of the Hither Green train crash but, in spite of genuine intent on the brothers’ part, this never took place.

  Just one day later, The Bee Gees made their triumphant return to the Saville Theatre, this time as headliners, with support acts Tony Rivers & The Castaways, The Flowerpot Men and The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. They played two shows that night, with compere Tony Hall announcing to the audience at the second that the crowd from the first house were so knocked out they were still dancing in the street outside.

  “The Bee Gees put on one of the most exciting stage shows I’ve seen,” Robert Stigwood said. “They have a tremendous versatility, an unbelievable professionalism. It’s impossible to overstate their international potential both as performers and composers.”

  Barbara Gibb remembers watching the show in rather exclusive company. “We sat in the box with Paul McCartney and Jane Asher,” she said. “He was raving about The Bee Gees. When we came out after the show, all the girls were outside, and they all pushed past Paul to get to the boys. And Paul said to me, ‘Oh well. It’s their turn now, we’ve had our day.’ ”

  The very next day the group was off to Paris for three days filming of five television shows, followed by a trip to Bremen to appear on Beat Club. It was also announced that negotiations were nearly completed for Spike

  Milligan to write the screenplay for the Lord Kitchener’s Little Drummer Boys film, replacing Mike Pratt.

  The storyline of the film was beginning to take shape, as Barry revealed. “We’re playing five little lads who get caught up in the Boer War … We get sort of shipped out from London to the war. I play a bank clerk who gets chased around by a lot of birds and eventually has to leave the country. Colin is a pickpocket, which figures! Robin and Maurice are street photographers – real sharp characters. And Vince is a diamond miner, already working in South Africa when the rest of us turn up there to fight the good fight. We try to get out of the army – actually, we desert the army at the front. Then we run into the enemy, but we don’t know it’s the enemy. We’re trying to make this film as farcical as possible.”

  Barry said that the movie was all to be filmed on location in either Africa or Spain. Filming was scheduled to begin the following May, but in the meantime, the group planned to rectify their apparent neglect of Britain. “We’ve been filming TV shows and travelling abroad so much, it’s just been impossible to do much here,” Barry said. “The dates we have played have all been great. We found that all types of people were coming to see us. From teenyboppers right up to adults – and this is exactly what we want. We want everyone to come and see us – not just one particular age group.

  “I think the visual impression give
n by a group on stage is perhaps more important in some ways than the sound they are laying down. The glamour started to go out of pop when groups began wearing jeans and any old clothes on stage. We believe a pop group is essentially an entertainment. We have to project something that’s entertaining visually and musically. We spend a lot of time before a gig deciding what to wear. We want to give a good show for an audience who have paid, so we can go back there again.”

  By the beginning of December plans to release ‘Swan Song’ as their next single had been dropped. However, the change of decision didn’t influence the producers of an Austrian TV special who commissioned an out of doors film where the group just about managed to convince viewers that they were as insulated by their coats as the swans were by their feathers and down.

  In the pop music business, there is an unwritten rule that the latest teen heart-throb should appear to fans to be available, so when the news broke weeks later that Barry Gibb was married, young hearts were broken. The problem wasn’t just that Barry was married and had kept it a secret; he had specifically denied being married.

  To be fair, Barry had given broad hints about the end of “a long and deep relationship” in earlier interviews, adding, “The reason we split up was, I suppose, 50-50 between us … I can’t see it being patched up. The kind of person I am – obsessed with my career – it runs my whole life.” Once the news was out, he seemed relieved to unburden himself.

  “I admit I kept the marriage a secret because I didn’t want to spoil my image,” Barry confessed. “It seemed the best way. Since the group became a success, the pressure has been enormous. I’m glad it is now out in the open. I could not have taken her with me as a girlfriend because if we had split up over here, she would have been on her own, so we got married three months before we left and that was the biggest mistake I ever made in my life.

  “Everything was fine for a while. We thought we were in love but these things never last unless you are really solid … There is such a thing as loving someone and being in love. You can love another person but that doesn’t mean you are lovers.