by Hector Cook
Most of the songs on Robin’s Reign feature a large orchestra as on Odessa, and many overdubbed vocals and, artistically, there are some inspired moments.
The album credits Robin as the sole producer, but his manager, bandleader Vic Lewis, must have been more involved than he gets credit for. Arrangements are by Kenny Clayton and Zack Lawrence. Robin has said he plays numerous instruments on the songs, including organ and guitar, and Maurice probably also contributes piano and bass.
Arguably the highlight of the set, ‘Lord Bless All’ is completely solo. Robin’s double-tracked lead vocal and organ are accompanied by a choir of Robin’s multi-tracked voice, a real tour de force of vocal overdubbing with a good supporting arrangement. Robin himself described it as “a kind of carol with a Christmas flavour”. He then went on to say, “It’s got a 40-piece choir behind it consisting of 40 Robin Gibbs. In the end, I’d put about 28 tracks down.” The closing song, ‘Most Of My Life’, is a return to earth, its repetitious length running to a fade-out ending.
Under extreme pressure to release the album as quickly as possible, Robin’s Reign could have benefited from being delayed to allow Robin more time to polish off some of its rough edges. Nonetheless, while it disappointed some fans who had been brought up on a diet of group releases, it served its purpose as a showcase for Robin’s individuality.
Other Robin solo songs have circulated on tape among fans but it is hard to say which are from the Robin’s Reign sessions and which are from his incomplete 1970 album. Dozens more song titles are known from the many interviews conducted during the split period, and must have remained unfinished.
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Despite the demise of the group the previous December, March saw the release of three Bee Gees’ singles. ‘Let There Be Love’ was released in Belgium and also in Holland, where it reached number 14. In the United States ‘If I Only Had My Mind On Something Else’ was released, while in Britain ‘I.O.I.O.’ was the latest single, a month before its American release.
Barry and Maurice had split up just as the last Cucumber Castle recording sessions were underway between July and October, and Maurice has said that ‘I.O.I.O.’ was not even quite finished, but it still had Barry’s guide vocal on it. It has a very sparse arrangement indeed, mainly guitar and drums, and it’s not obvious how Barry would have bettered the lead. The “I.O.” chant is, to date, Maurice’s most vocal part on a Bee Gees’ A-side. The song managed to make number six on the German charts and reached the Top 20 in both Australia and New Zealand. It even got a little airplay in the United States, and Barry and Maurice were on good enough terms to make a few promotional appearances for the album, but no follow-up single was issued after the album came out.
The film songs and others were intermixed freely, which mattered little since no one could see the film yet anyway, but they did mark with an asterisk which ones were in it. The album package was again a gatefold, with photos of Barry and Maurice in costume for the film.
Several other songs from this period were copyrighted as by Barry and Maurice but never appeared. One that received a mention from them in an interview in 1969 was ‘Who Knows What A Room Is’, a bluesy wail with electric guitar that must have come close to being included on the album.
With the future of the group uncertain, there seemed to be an effort by the record company to cash in on past success by releasing the first half of the Odessa album under the title Sound Of Love as part of the budget Polydor 99 series. The second LP, Marley Purt Drive, followed in October.
Also in 1970, Inception/Nostalgia, a two LP set of previously unreleased recordings from The Bee Gees’ early days in Australia, mysteriously appeared on the German Karussell label and the French Triumph label. Described since as a collection of song demos, warm-ups and vocal tests, the songs all seem to be re-mixed into mock stereo. What is particularly intriguing about this set of songs is that while some are quite obviously demos, many of the tracks seem well supported by an orchestra and even background chorus. While it is extremely unlikely that Ossie Byrne’s small studio could accommodate such support, it would also be most out of character for Festival to fund such support for a band which at that date had not tasted chart success. The orchestra and chorus has never been adequately explained, and the general belief is that The Bee Gees sang over pre-recorded tracks of some of the established hits of the time. Whether these songs were recorded in any serious attempt to cross into a more mainstream audience or just some ‘fun’ recordings made with no intention of their eventual release is not known.
What is known is that when they were released, some three years after The Bee Gees achieved international success, it was not with the group or their management’s sanction.
Maurice only discovered about the album when he and Ringo Starr and their wives had gone on a skiing trip to Switzerland, and Ringo chanced upon the album in a shop. Pointing it out to Maurice, he commented that he had never seen that one before; nor had Maurice until that moment!
Inception/Nostalgia was withdrawn within a few months, popping up again later as a Japanese release. It quickly became the most sought-after of all The Bee Gees’ albums since the songs were unavailable anywhere else until the
1998 Australian CD set, Brilliant From Birth.
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Following the dissolution of the group, all three Gibb brothers opened the year working on solo albums. None of the three albums was ever released, but enough songs for each were written and recorded, and two singles were issued in the spring.
By the time the Cucumber Castle album was released in April, Maurice had launched his first solo single, ‘Railroad’. Written for a Bee Gees’ album but never used, the song featured a big sing-along chorus like Robin’s three singles, and resembled ‘Don’t Forget To Remember’, with its similar country feel. The least familiar ingredient was the voice, since Maurice had never sung lead on a Bee Gees A-side, and he needed to establish an identity more than Barry or Robin. Part of the problem was that his creative work had been hidden inside songs identified with them.
“People have said that my single sounds like The Bee Gees. I sang the higher parts usually, and the other vocal parts I’ve added to ‘Railroad’ could be the others,” Maurice explained. “It’s hardly surprising there could be a similarity because I used to work out the back tracks for The Bee Gees, and I’d play piano, bass and rhythm acoustic guitars, and sometimes even drums. It’s my piano on ‘Words’, you know – it gave it that distinctive sound.”
Lulu offered critical input to the recording, according to Maurice. “I couldn’t stand the type of wife who said everything I did was beautiful,” he said. “Lulu first said the piano was too loud, then something else was wrong. Would you believe it? I mixed it six times just to please her!”
‘Railroad’ is structurally more complex than usual for The Bee Gees, though the lyric – about going home – is less interesting. The B-side song, ‘I’ve Come Back’, drifted in a looser presentation than Bee Gees fans would expect but is wonderfully understated.
“Billy and I have written a lot of album material,” Maurice revealed. “I will probably be forming a group to work with me. There is something in the air. There will be a few lost friends, but I can’t say too much about it.”
Although Maurice’s plans for his solo career were accelerating, he remained nostalgic for the old days. “I’d seriously love to get back to the old Bee Gees again,” he said wistfully. “I really loved the group, and I miss the unit a lot. It’s things like sitting in hotel rooms together after a show and taking people off that made working in a group such fun. I miss all that being solo.”
Tom Kennedy was present for the recording at Nova Sound Studios of The Loner, which ran from December 9, 1969, following immediately on from the last Bee Gees sessions, to March 23. “Billy Lawrie was involved in it, of course, and the various members of Tin Tin,” Tom revealed. “It was just a good, fun time, really – working in the studio with Maurice always was. It’s quite a n
ice piece of work for someone who … no one really sees as a singer, really. He’s more of a musician, really, than a singer, although he can sing harmonies.”
Also present were drummer Geoff Bridgeford, who had replaced Colin Petersen for the last Bee Gees sessions, Stone The Crows guitarist Les Harvey, pianist Johnny Coleman and arranger Gerry Shury, who had done songs on the Tin Tin album Maurice produced in 1969. As usual, Maurice played various instruments, and sang all the vocals.
Interviewed by Nicky Horne on Radio 1 two years later, Maurice appeared to have less than happy memories of the project. “My solo LP is one thing that, well, to tell you the truth, I don’t think it should be worth releasing because I did it a while ago … and I was under a great depression at the time when I did it, because I missed the boys very much. I just did it because I thought I had to do it.”
Maurice announced that he would be writing and performing the soundtrack to Richard Harris’ latest film, Bloomfield, prompting an immediate denial from musical director Johnny Harris, who stated, “I am contracted to score the picture and write two songs for it. There will be four other songs in the film – one by Maurice Gibb, one by Glen Mason, one by the Tony Colton & Ray Smith team and one by Bill Wheelan and Niall Connery.”
But an RSO spokesman defended the claim, saying, “Maurice has a contract from the producers John Heyman and Wolf Mankowitz to write five songs, including the title number. As far as we are concerned, that adds up to the entire score, although admittedly someone else may be adapting them to the needs of the film.” One such song was ‘Danny’, again co-written with Billy Lawrie while another might have been ‘Till I Try’, an instrumental located on the reverse side of a ‘Danny’ acetate. Eventually a whole album’s worth of material was recorded with Richard Harris, but the master tapes still languish in The Bee Gees’ studio in Miami, and the material will probably never see the light of day. Bob Saker recalled being present for one of those sessions at London’s Nova Studios in Bryanston Street. “I remember going to a session with Richard Harris, and I remember being there, and he was pissed out of his head and he knocked a pint all over the [mixing] desk. Gone! Goodnight!”
Bob can recall just one of these unreleased recordings. “ ‘Half of every dream is Mary, Half of every dream is she’. I remember the song.”
In July, Billy Lawrie and Maurice re-recorded ‘The Loner’, and the song, credited to The Bloomfields, was released on the soundtrack of the Richard Harris film. The film was called The Hero in the USA, after the Joseph Gross novel of the same name. It was also the recipient of a Golden Globe nomination.
The first Barry Gibb single followed a month after Maurice but was not issued in the United States. ‘I’ll Kiss Your Memory’ was a country weepie in the mould of Bobby Goldsboro’s hit single, ‘Honey’, a widower recalling his happier days. As a simple song with verse and chorus of essentially the same melody, it is disappointing both lyrically and musically, from the man considered The Bee Gees’ main songwriter.
“It’s not the same orchestra as we used with The Bee Gees,” Barry explained. “But Bill Shepherd is the only arranger I’ll ever work with. On the single I double-tracked my voice seven times, because I knew exactly how I wanted everything done. Now I want to make one mark on my own, before I get too involved in anything else. I don’t think my past associations with The Bee Gees are a bad thing to have as far as it affects my solo efforts, because people already know me. And also in this business, it’s who you know!”
‘This Time’ on the B-side was a little more hopeful, another country style ballad, as are many of the songs considered for the album. “I love country music and I probably allowed a little more than I should have to influence me,” Barry admitted. “But I do music that I enjoy and hope that everyone else will enjoy it too. If you try to work for whatever everyone else wants, I think that you get lost. I think you’ve got to be in love with what you’ve done and then see what happens. That’s what helps for me anyway.”
A second Barry Gibb single, ‘The Day Your Eyes Meet Mine’/‘One Bad Thing’, came very close to release around August 1970. Barry performed the latter song on German television, and in the United States an initial batch of Atco singles were pressed but destroyed. Needless to say, at least one copy escaped unscathed, and was offered up for auction during the Eighties.
Barry’s album may have been near completion by August, but no definite song selection or sequence is known. Recording began using eight-track facilities on February 15, but in less than a week, master tapes were being submitted in 16-track. The title The Kid’s No Good was rumoured, but no song by that name is known. Tapes leaked out to fans since show predominantly the country-with-strings style of the first single. An exception is ‘One Bad Thing’, an upbeat pop number which, according to a US copyright filing, was written with Maurice in September, 1969. Some are story songs, such as ‘Clyde O’Reilly’, and others are mood pieces, such as ‘Mando Bay’, possibly the best of them. Another, ‘Victim’, sounds as if it could have been written for Gene Pitney, perhaps inspired by ‘Something’s Gotten Hold Of My Heart’ as Barry’s vocal delivery is virtually identical to the American singer in several portions of the song.
Fan reaction to the tracks is generally lukewarm. Something seemed to be missing. Many of these songs were at least published, and most of those were recorded by other artists, but none were hits.
Robin’s work during this time is not even represented by a single officially, but again many tapes have since been passed around fans. One song that seems an obvious choice for a single was the very commercial sounding ‘Engines Aeroplanes’, the only one received by Atlantic. A few are clearly identifiable as outtakes from either Robin’s Reign, or from his second album said to be called Sing Slowly Sisters, although it is not clear which. The song, ‘Sing Slowly Sisters’, has an unusually good melody and a strong vocal performance, and it may have been the planned single.
There are a few songs, best exemplified by the six-minute ‘Cold Be My Days’, in which he touches upon his Isle of Man origins with the words, “You can see Snaefell from Peel Castle Tower”. The song features Robin singing to orchestra alone, and with no rhythm section he is free to vary the tempo on different lines, something he started to do in 1969 on ‘Lord Bless All’.
Two effective songs with no orchestra also seem to be from 1970, ‘Very Special Day’ with piano and a war theme seemingly related to ‘Sing Slowly Sisters’, and ‘Sky West And Crooked’ with guitar and Robin’s most inscrutable lyrics. In many cases, the arrangements are far superior to those on the Robin’s Reign album, and great care appears to have been taken in the recording. On the other hand, the available tapes also include numerous very strained songs of questionable worth, and what he was going to make of all this is unknown. Many of the songs, including good ones, were never even published, and few of those were recorded by anyone.
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Robin and Molly had settled into their new home in the Surrey countryside with their basset hound puppy, Hedgehog. “I don’t think he liked London very much – too much concrete and not enough mud,” Robin said. “He finds life much more exciting chasing rabbits, squirrels and an assortment of other creatures found at the bottom of the garden. Mind you, he hasn’t caught up with anything yet. His new-found playmates are all much too fast for him – and they certainly lead him a merry dance. He comes in exhausted at the end of the day, trots off to his bed-basket and we don’t hear a woof out of him all night.”
Robin had begun writing a column for FAB 208 magazine, in which he detailed his views on anything and everything: patriotism (“Britain and all its glory! Our beloved Union Jack soiled and tattered. A flag that can only be seen in one piece on people’s carrier bags.”), life in Australia, Hedgehog’s exploits and eating habits, travel advice – nothing was safe from Robin’s running commentary.
Britain’s change to decimal coinage particularly worried him. “My arithmetic never was above average at the best of times,�
�� he wrote, “and as for decimal points, they always did make me a bit dizzy. I can see now that I will easily be ‘done’, and even when I’m given the right change, it’s going to be hard to convince me it is correct. I do hope they don’t do away with the sixpenny bits too quickly. Whatever are we going to put into our fruit machines? I hope they don’t make us use those horrid little metal discs. For a start it’s a nuisance having to change them back into money and the game is just not as exciting.
“I’ve already acquired nostalgic thoughts about the now redundant half-crowns – I seem to need 2/6 change quite frequently, and I don’t like messing around with the two bob bit and a sixpence. Of course, I shouldn’t be thinking of shillings – it’s all going to be new pence, isn’t it?”
It was reported that Robin would release ‘Great Caesar’s Ghost’ as his next single; this was then dropped in favour of ‘The Statesman (Sir Winston Churchill)’, Robin’s tribute to his “greatest hero” which was to be recorded with a 100-piece orchestra. Once again, it was not to be.
Next he planned to release ‘The Ghost Of Christmas Past’, from his original musical based on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. “I’m an ardent admirer of Charles Dickens. I read this piece in one of Dickens’ books where he was trying to get published an article condemning the spectacle of public hangings. The laws of the day slapped a writ on him for interfering with public entertainment.”
Robin’s musical, entitled Scrooge, suffered the same fate as his earlier Family Tree (or Family Circle), but undaunted, he wrote yet another, Henry VII. Somewhat predictably this, too, would never materialise. “I’d like to write lots of musical scores and appear in serious and happy-go-lucky films,” he revealed. “I’d like to write music where I can use my imagination to the full and also act in a typical British type of film, preferably of the last century.
