The Ultimate Biography of The Bee Gees

by Hector Cook

  The songs he referred to in this instance were ‘One Minute Woman’ by Fury, but it was the one by former Manfred Mann vocalist and harmonica player, Paul Jones, that must have thrilled him most. Barry’s hero then, and probably still today, was Paul McCartney, and although uncredited on the Columbia single release of ‘And The Sun Will Shine’, the appearance of Macca on drums, and Jeff Beck on guitar for that matter, must have been a source of pride to the eldest Gibb brother.

  Barry and Robin had spent their first Christmas after leaving Australia … in Australia! They had travelled there at the invitation of Robert Stigwood who was keen to introduce them to his mother and, indeed, his mother to them. The brothers also took the opportunity to ingratiate themselves with the Australian music press in Sydney and, while there, met up again with the Balmer family. Lori, by now just 10, had maintained a close contact with Andy and they wrote to each other regularly. She still wanted to pursue a musical career, and Barry did nothing to discourage her, promising to help if her parents ever returned to Britain. Less than a month had elapsed before Barry’s word was put to the test.

  “We arrived in the UK in January ’68, and I signed to the Robert Stigwood Organisation.” Lori reminisced. “We stayed with the Gibb family on arrival and it was a very exciting time. I worked on all the TV shows, radio – for example, BBC 1 Club – regularly. Kids love to see other kids sing, and I was dubbed the ‘bush baby’ by the British press.” Sometimes, she even appeared on the same shows as The Bee Gees.

  On July 23, she was given more assistance from Barry than she could possibly have imagined. Taken into a recording studio, she was given the complete Bee Gees treatment. First off, she was presented with two songs, ‘Treacle Brown’ and ‘Four Faces West’, both of which were composed by all three brothers. Although originally written for the abandoned Pippi Longstocking film, they were given to Lori as her own and, apart from an Italian language version of ‘Treacle Brown’ released the same year by Anna Marchetti, neither were recorded by anyone else. Not only were the Gibbs there to provide encouragement, guidance and vocal backing, they were joined by Colin and Vince on drums and guitar respectively. Barry played rhythm guitar whilst Maurice tickled the ivories. To complete the family atmosphere, Bill Shepherd took control of musical arrangements while Barry tried his hand at producing, although the subsequent Polydor single release credits his brothers as well.

  The downside to all this could have been that she might have been dominated by the large Bee Gees presence, but if anything the opposite is true as young Lori steals the show. It is only recently that those fortunate enough to have heard both songs have been able to establish that the powerful voice belongs to an 11 year old, and not a teenager as had previously been suspected. Little wonder, therefore, that a bright future was predicted. It wasn’t to be.

  “My contract came unstuck,” she revealed, “as often happens when lawyers, parents and a child are involved. But, for my part, my affection and gratitude to the whole Gibb family is far-reaching and unwaning. Andy and I remained in contact by letters and phone for quite some time.”

  Back in her parents’ Sydney home, Lori discovered another means of keeping up with the latest news from England. “Lesley, the boys’ sister, and [her husband] Keith had kennels in Sydney breeding bull terriers for many years, and so I stayed in contact with the family’s goings-on.”

  Her experiences in England would appear to have served her in good stead as her career is one many would envy. She toured or recorded – under pseudonyms – with the likes of Cliff Richard, Tina Turner, Brian Ferry, Joe Cocker, Lionel Ritchie, U2, George Harrison, Van Halen and Johnny Rotten. She continues to perform on Australia’s Gold Coast, appearing with Johnny Vallins as the duo Short Notice. She first met Johnny back in England in 1968 when he was a member of Tin Tin and, 13 years later, they were married and now have a four year old son called Sam who appears to have inherited his parents’ and, indeed, his maternal grandparents’ talent.

  The high hopes that the brothers, and Polydor for that matter, had shared for Lori, had been dashed by some legal rigmarole. There would be no such problems for their next protégés, and again another collaborator from their Australian recordings would be involved.

  15

  LET THERE BE LOVE

  “I WAS MARRIED, and I’ve owned up that it all went very flat, and that was the end of it,” Barry told Rave’s Chris Webb. “I’d not recommend getting married early … because you make a mistake, and it’s something that you’ve got to live with for the rest of your life. If they are in love, there is only one thing to do and that is to get married. Neither I nor anyone else would stop them. They have to learn from their mistakes.”

  Barry was speaking in general terms about couples marrying too young, but it’s also likely he had two very specific young people in mind. But neither Robin nor Maurice was willing to concede that their elder brother might have a valid point, or that they might even learn from his mistake.

  Maurice’s off-again-on-again romance with Lulu was definitely back on, with Davy Jones and Sarolta completely out of the picture and Maurice trying to play down the extent of Lulu’s relationship with the Monkees’ vocalist.

  “Davy Jones was a good friend of mine,” said Maurice. “I broke it off with Lulu over the phone and Davy called me up and said, ‘I am going to ask Lu to dinner with some friends, is that all right?’ I said, ‘Yes, I am not going out with her any more, have a ball,’ and threw the phone down. They then took so many photos of them and made it look like a six-month romance, but she had only been out with him that one night – she did not even want to go out. She phoned me the next day and she was crying, saying she was sorry.”

  Maurice later regretted not accepting her apology. “We just grew up, that’s all,” he admitted. “We were miserable apart and when we started going out again, it got so that I didn’t want to be with anyone else. I used to phone her up from Los Angeles about twice a day. Then she’d call me back. We used to make about 90 minute calls …”

  Maurice recalled the first meeting with his future in-laws. “I went up to Glasgow to meet Lu’s parents, and I was told that Billy, who is younger than Lu, would be at the station to meet me. I got off the train and was walking along the platform when I saw him. I didn’t need to speak – I knew it was Billy and I went up to him and said, ‘You’re Billy, aren’t you?’ He said, ‘You must be Maurice,’ and we had met.”

  For Billy Lawrie, his first meeting with Maurice stood out in his mind for quite a different reason: the yellow jacket imprinted with yellow and grey giraffes that his future brother-in-law was wearing.

  In the other corner, Robin and Molly had been engaged for a year when Robin set the wedding date. They had lived together for a while in a tiny flat in Paddington. “That was to prove Molly wasn’t only after my money,” Robin joked, but Molly said they deliberately took plenty of time before getting married.

  “I was determined that getting married would not harm Robin or the group,” she explained. “I didn’t want to risk it having a disastrous effect on the group’s popularity, although I think kids today grow up at a much earlier age and have a more adult outlook at their pop favourites getting married. They accept it much more readily than in the past.

  “Mind you, we still talked about whether to marry for three months before Robin finally named the day. It was December 4 and that was that. Typical of him,” she added.

  Molly had envisaged a quiet wedding, hoping to keep their plans out of the press. “Only my family and Robin’s knew initially,” she said. “Then the papers got hold of the news and, of course, there was no peace after that.”

  “We got married in a registry office because I do not believe in any particular religion,” Robin explained. “I would have felt very hypocritical getting married in a church. I do believe in God but in my own God, not anybody else’s.”

  So the new Mr and Mrs. Robin Gibb stepped out of London’s Caxton Hall to a barrage of camera flashes be
fore leaving for the reception at their new home in exclusive Montpelier Square in Knightsbridge.

  “I don’t know how many people were there,” Robin said of the reception. “Judging by the cigarette ash they trod into the carpets, it must have been thousands. We put ashtrays all round the room but nobody used them. They stubbed all their cigarettes straight into the carpets; it was incredible. I suppose there must have been about 150 people there – and we knew 10 of them. The others had all been invited by Robert Stigwood. There were a lot of journalists.”

  With the benefit of hindsight, Robin said, “I was married at 18, but that didn’t have anything to do with my unhappiness. I wasn’t happy before and I wasn’t happy later. Still it was probably one of the several mistakes I made of the time. I wish I knew at 18 what a responsible state marriage was. I met my wife … after we arrived in England, and she was working with The Beatles and Brian Epstein and all those people. We were married in the way people did things in those days – without thinking about it. We didn’t have any children until I was 22, and until then we lived a strange yo-yo kind of life. We were living on our nerves. I tended to be a bit of a recluse and a bit wayward, so I probably wasn’t suitable to be married to anybody. I certainly didn’t give my wife an easy time.”

  Later in December, Robin and Molly left for a Swiss honeymoon which, according to Robin, might well have spelled the end of their marriage. “We had booked a chalet near Geneva,” he explained, “but it just so happened that the travel agent had forgotten to tell me it was right in the middle of the landslide season. The chalet was nothing more than a wooden hut, stuck on the side of a mountain miles from anywhere. One night, the snow came down in a solid sheet. With it came half the mountain, right outside our little hut … We had no telephone … one tiny stove and a little fuel. There was no central heating in the chalet, and we had to make home in the kitchen. A blizzard was blowing, but I went out and got trapped in the snow. I almost suffocated until this French guy saw me with his torch and shouted to hold still while he threw a rope. He couldn’t pull on the ice, and by now the snow was almost up to my neck and they had to get a truck and a chain to pull me clear. I nearly died that night.”

  No stranger to brushes with death – his childhood bicycle accident, the car accident in Australia, Hither Green – Robin quipped, “I don’t know why I’ve been picked out, but I hope whoever is responsible for almost killing me off has realised that I’m not quite ready for it yet.”

  Suddenly serious, he added, “Because I’ve had these narrow escapes, I’ve learned to appreciate the little things in life. I still remember that train crash and thinking 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.”

  It was a cold and hungry Robin who finally made his way back to the chalet, where the only food was one egg and a piece of cheese. “I had that egg raw. There was nothing to cook with – and I tell you it was the nicest thing in my life. Molly was ill and I was very sick the following day – New Year’s Day,” he continued. “It wasn’t a very happy start to the New Year …

  “[Then] a taxi drew up outside the front door … It was a friend I had invited up and forgotten about. He produced a bottle of Scotch from his pocket, and we set about welcoming in the New Year right away. Then we all jumped back in the taxi and flew on to Paris for a real honeymoon.”

  Back in Britain Molly revealed that the couple had no immediate plans for any little Gibblets. “I come from a big family – there are seven of us – and although we obviously won’t have the hardships that my parents suffered in struggling to bring us up, Robin and I don’t want to be involved with lots of children because we couldn’t then lead our own lives together. We do want two or three children, but not for a few years yet.”

  Nor did she intend to accompany Robin when The Bee Gees toured. “I went on the German tour … with him,” she said, “but it’s not much fun for a woman travelling around all the time. I don’t like being with Robin when he’s working. If I go abroad with him, or to a television studio, I’m always left on my own. He’s much too busy to spend time with me so I just feel as though I’m in the way. You don’t really get much time to see each other so I shall stay home.”

  ”I know just how Molly feels,” Robin agreed. “I know she would rather stay at home, so that’s the way it is. But she knows that if she ever wanted to come with me, she could.”

  While Robin was battling snowdrifts in the Swiss Alps, Maurice and Lulu announced their engagement on the first show of her new two-part Saturday night BBCTV special, Happening For Lulu, which followed her hugely popular series for the Corporation, Lulu’s Back In Town. Broadcast live on December 28 at 6.15 p.m., the 43-minute show featured Lulu’s performances of tracks like ‘Cry Like A Baby’, ‘Why Did I Choose You’, ‘My ’Ain Folk’, The Bee Gees’ ‘To Love Somebody’ and Stevie Wonder’s ‘For Once In My Life’, before reappearing to sing with Maurice.

  Although Maurice confessed to a bad case of pre-show jitters in his first television appearance without the rest of the group, his nervousness wasn’t evident as the couple performed a romantic duet of Donovan’s ‘What A Beautiful Creature You Are’. A delighted Lulu declared it “the best thing in the show – but then I’m biased! I was thrilled that we did a bit in the show together. Maurice wants to concentrate more on his piano playing. He really is terribly serious about becoming a well-known pianist. Maybe we will go on writing some songs together.”

  The show provided Maurice with the opportunity to demonstrate his keyboard prowess when the 32-piece Johnny Harris Orchestra backed him on ‘Seven Seas Symphony’. Other guests included The Cartoons who performed ‘Penny For The Sun’ before dueting with their host on ‘Toby Jug’. Also present were The Tremeloes with ‘Nothing But A House Party’ and, backed by Harris’ orchestra, a version of Bob Dylan’s ‘I Shall Be Released’. Throughout the show, Pan’s People, aided by two male dancers, provided additional visual entertainment. The highlight, of course, was the announcement of Lulu’s forthcoming wedding.

  “About four months ago, I decided I wanted to [propose] and a week before Christmas I said, ‘Let’s get married,’ ” Maurice revealed to NME’s Richard Green. “But Lulu said, ‘Let’s get engaged first,’ and I said okay. It wasn’t a rush, it just happened. Nobody pushed us into anything. I can’t honestly say when we’re going to get married. When we get time, I suppose.”

  If finding time for the wedding was problematical, a honeymoon seemed out of the question. “I don’t honestly know if there will be time,” Lulu said. “We may just have time for a few days’ holiday somewhere. I can cut down on work if I want, but Maurice has got three other guys to think about. I expect we’ll have a holiday together sometime, but at the moment I’ve got my TV series, then they’re off filming and when they finish I begin mine, so we will keep missing each other.”

  “I hope Lu can come to Spain during the filming [of Lord Kitchener’s Little Drummer Boys],” implored her future husband. “Even if it’s only for weekends, it’ll be worth it. It’s going to be very hard for us when we’re married being apart so much.”

  Perhaps sensing troubled waters ahead, Lulu agreed. “Yeah, it’s something we’re gonna’ have to work out. Maybe it can be arranged so that we’re working near each other, but I don’t think that’ll happen often. I suppose the phone bills will start going up again!”

  Maurice remained optimistic about the couple’s future, although it was apparent that friends did not share his confidence. “Everyone says you should not marry anybody in the business, but it’s great because she understands when you have to go away, say for a week on tour.”

  Lulu showed off her engagement ring, saying, “Maurice loves driving, and I love window shopping. We went round a lot of Kent villages, and I saw it in a little shop. It’s a sapphire with diamonds round it. It’s Edwardian and in cabochon style, which means the stone hasn’t been cut. I like it because it looks just like
a mountain.”

  She disclosed that her manager Marian Massey had been wonderful about the news. “She was as excited as I am about it, and she suggested that I give up the business in about a year. She’s not like the image of a manager that is usually built up. She didn’t worry about herself, she just wanted to be sure that I’d be happy.

  “At first, I couldn’t agree with her, but the more I thought about it, the more I saw her point of view and saw what she was thinking. I won’t stop yet, maybe later when we start having babies. Can you imagine me with my hair in curlers, and a pinny on sweeping the house? What a gas!”

  “When she has her first baby will do,” Maurice added. “She wants five and so do I. We’re agreed on that. It’s a good thing to agree on, isn’t it?” They also agreed on the timing of their first born, which Maurice confirmed would be planned for “about two year’s time”. Continuing, he revealed, “If we had one now, it would be by accident. We want to get to know one another first. Once the child comes, the attention goes away from the wife or husband to the child and that is why a lot of marriages split up by having children too young.”

  Meantime, Barry continued to muse over the changes taking place in the group. “I thought the time had come when we should make some kind of move … not leaving pop entirely but by going into films. That way you can stay with the kids but be seen by more people …

  “Instead of us doing this, we have found a more sensible way. We have found that we can get to the kids in different ways and still stay together. Like Maurice was on Lulu’s show playing the piano with an orchestra. None of the kids would have expected to see him there without The Bee Gees. Another time it may be Robin on his own. Maurice is with Lulu now most of the time. If he hadn’t fallen in love with Lulu, we would be together more. And Robin is now married so it cannot be like it was.”