by Hector Cook
“I get the feeling that I was born in the wrong century, but I’m a hypochondriac really, and they wouldn’t have had the apparatus and equipment to deal with me a hundred years ago,” he added.
Robin was reported to be rehearsing at the London Palladium for an upcoming 22-country tour and a concert to be broadcast on ITV.
* * *
In March 1970, the youngest member of the Gibb family was given a gentle nudge towards a musical career. For Andy’s 12th birthday, Barry presented him with his first guitar. Up to this point, Andy had shown little interest in music, most of his attention having been lavished on sport and horses. Barry also gave his youngest brother his first horse, which Andy named Gala.
“[Andy] was a little devil,” Barbara said fondly. “A little monster. I’d send him off to school but he’d sneak off to the stable and sleep with his two horses all day. He’d wander back home around lunchtime smelling of horse manure, yet he’d swear he had been at school. Oh, he was a little monkey!” “Andy was always around – he was this cheeky little lad,” said Tom Kennedy. “Hugh and Barbara doted on him, so he would have a limo to go around London with his pals and twenty quid to go to the cinema. It was unheard of in those days! But he was just a cheeky little lad with a heart of gold … He used to try to get me to buy him beer when he was underage – he would only have been about 11 or 12. He was always there, a lot of fun. He was good as gold. Very talented little lad, Andy … He always had a lot of freedom. I suppose if he had had a little more discipline in his life, he might still be with us today.”
Armed with his new guitar, the small, freckled-faced boy began to emulate his hero, his big brother Barry. Despite more than a decade’s difference in their ages, the youngest and eldest of the Gibb brothers had formed a strong bond. “I think he’s my favourite brother,” Andy said. “He’s so kind and generous, and when he comes to visit us, he plays with me. I’ve only got to ask for something, and he’ll buy it for me. I think he’s too soft-hearted, people can talk him into things, and he hates hurting anyone. I see him about twice a week. He takes me out for rides in his Bentley, but he doesn’t let me have a go at driving it, though! I go up to his flat sometimes, and we play together. He’s very kind and generous, and when I grow up, I hope I’m like him.”
For his part, Barry described Andy as his “consolation prize”. During those years when he felt excluded by the closeness of the twins, he had Andy to turn to, an adoring but equally adored youngest brother.
* * *
In July 1970, Barry and Maureen’s divorce decree was made absolute. It had been a particularly acrimonious divorce, as Maureen had blamed Robert Stigwood and The Bee Gees’ busy professional schedule for the break-up of their marriage, and saw herself very much as the injured party. Barry chose not to contest the divorce, as there could have been bitter courtroom battles, with the press turning the whole dispute into a media circus.
Barry therefore agreed to Maureen’s demands which were settled “amicably”. The financial cost was perhaps greater in the long run, but Barry was desperate to get out of a marriage he considered a youthful mistake. He was also eager for everything to be done with a minimum of publicity.
“I don’t think divorces should be put in the public eye,” he said. “It is nothing to do with the newspapers.” As Maureen and her legal representatives probably knew all along, it was the only sensible option and to the benefit of all three parties.
Although everyone connected with the group (himself included) describes Barry as reclusive in those days, he continued to be in demand. He appeared on the panel of judges and performed for the Miss Teen Princess Of The World pageant in Germany.
“I’ve not appeared on stage for at least a year and three months,” Barry said, “and I really miss people, seeing an audience in front of me. You know, without that crowd, I’m lonely. As it is, I know I’m going to get back to doing stage work, but if the time came when I couldn’t, then I’d take twenty sleeping tablets! Believe me, I know just how guys, who can’t get out on stage when they need to, feel.”
The Australian pop singer Ronnie Burns accompanied Barry when he and Lynda went to Germany for the pageant. Ronnie, it would seem, was a little star-struck by his old friend. “It was fantastic,” he recalled. “We were treated like kings. I remember him warming up and singing a few songs, and being in awe of the guy … Beautifully dressed, magnificent voice – he had the lot … We became, I thought, very close …”
When the time came for Ronnie to return to Australia, he remembered, “On my way home, the plane stopped in Amsterdam, and I wrote him a letter thanking him for his hospitality and the time we had spent together.
“When I got home, there was a letter from Lynda with some negatives of some photos of Barry and me taken together. The letter just asked me to choose which ones I wanted and send it back to them and that was it. After that, nothing!”
Maurice had taken advantage of a gap in his schedules to have a quiet holiday visiting his sister, Lesley, who had by now returned with her family to set up home in Sydney. On landing at Melbourne, however, Maurice found himself stranded at the airport by strikes affecting internal flights. Eventually, when the press discovered a celebrity in their midst, he was persuaded to emerge from the VIP lounge and give an impromptu conference.
“[The Australian pop scene] is absolutely fantastic,” he declared. “I used to say anyone in Australia, who wanted to get big, had to go overseas. Now I don’t agree with that. In a few years, I hope people will be coming to Australia to get big.”
In July it was Barry’s turn, and he travelled to Australia to act as compere for Go-Set magazine’s pop poll awards. While there, he gave an exclusive interview for the magazine which revealed that some 16 months after the initial split, he was still not ready to make peace with his brothers.
“Obviously we’re still brothers, but we are no longer one as a group. Over the last year, there’s been a lot written about the Gibb family and The Bee Gees. In fact, at one stage, I was beginning to think that the English public knew more about our family and our personal problems than they did about the Coronation Street* crew. Every week, the music papers in England report splits between major groups. It’s reported as news and it’s treated as such. But when it comes to The Bee Gees, they want to see something insidious or vindictive because of the family relationships within the group.
“Regardless of what publicity comes out in the future about The Bee Gees, I can assure you that I am going to stick to my solo career regardless of what Robin and Maurice do,” he insisted. “I’ve yet to have the big hit as a solo artist. I was disappointed that Robin’s ‘Million Years’ and Maurice’s ‘Railroad’ failed to make the charts in England, but perhaps they were too much like the old Bee Gees sound. I think I have fallen into the same trap. There are so many records released, and it’s so hard to get a single off the ground [in Australia] because of the limited airplay.”
A royalties war was being fought out at the time. UK record companies wanted big royalty payments from Australian radio stations to play their records. The radio stations then retaliated by refusing to play UK record companies’ records. US releases were unaffected as were the majority of Australian record companies; but not, for example, EMI Australia whose head office was in the UK. The ban lasted about a year until a compromise agreement was reached.
Barry claimed that not only had he been concentrating on his songwriting and recording, but he still also hoped to branch into films. “I have already had offers to play different parts but without appearing swell headed, I haven’t found the right part yet.”
In the meantime, his first love, music, occupied much of his time. “There is nothing that I like more than to while away my time in a recording studio putting down songs that I have written. Writing by myself, it becomes easier to fit into a pattern, and in the long run, it has been more rewarding,” Barry claimed. Conversely, he admitted that he did miss the cross flow of ideas which came from workin
g with Maurice and Robin; the interaction “which converted a couple of lines or the beginning of a melody into a big hit record”.
He added, “Ever since I can remember, I have written songs with Maurice and Robin, and it has been hard over the last year writing songs without the help of the Gibb team.
“After going through the mill of the international pop scene, one does tend to become a little silly,” he confessed to Go-Set’s readers. “The pressure of competition is all go and non stop. It affects everybody – pop singers, record producers and even pop journalists. Perhaps your own writer Ian [‘Molly’] Meldrum could recommend a good psychiatrist for Robin – or myself for that matter!”
*Britain’s longest running soap opera.
20
REUNITED
BY THE SUMMER of 1970, the word was out: the battling Bee Gees had buried the hatchet … fortunately not in each other.
Just as he had been the first to leave the group, it was Robin who made the first move towards patching things up, phoning Barry – although, being Robin, he gives the story his own twist, claiming that Barry told him to, “Piss off!”
Barry, being Barry, offered a more thoughtful account. “Robin rang me in Spain where I was on holiday,” he recalled, “and he gave me his views on being alone. When I got back … Robin came to see me … and we sat down and we talked and he said, ‘Let’s do it again,’ because he had had some success himself. He had had ‘Saved By The Bell’ which was a really big hit record for him, but it was not the same as the three of us. As Robin coined it then, ‘It’s not nice when you have success on your own’ … We realised we had forgotten our original arguments which started the whole splitting thing off. When Robin came round that day, both of us had a bit of a strum and then Maurice joined in …
“The most important thing to me is that we’re all friends again, but with my solo single only just having been released, I feel I’d like to see how it goes before committing myself to anything. When The Bee Gees do reform, we’ll still be free to work on our solo plans, but for me particularly, joining the group again would look like I can’t make it alone. Robin has had a big hit, and Maurice has been successful with his stage work, but I’ve just been waiting for what I thought was the right time,” Barry said wistfully.
“All I know is this time it will be better than before. There’s a much better feeling now. Oh no, it wasn’t all publicity; it was true. Have you ever seen a boxing ring? It was that bad. Every family will have arguments but because we were a group, and it got in the press, it became an incident.”
Robert Stigwood was credited with instigating the actual reunion, although he was quick to point out that an end to the quarrels did not necessarily mean that The Bee Gees were back together. “There are definitely no plans at the moment for the boys to reform,” he announced. “However, they are meeting, have patched up their differences and are very good friends again. We regard this as more important than anything.”
Stigwood’s statement sounds somewhat hollow if Barry is to be believed. “Robert, our manager, was also included in the break-up, and that’s something that nobody ever mentions, and I think he has to be honest about it these days, you know. He played favourites too, and that can be disruptive within the group. It was like a popularity contest and I’m sure it happened with a lot of groups.”
Robin was still under contract as a solo artist to NEMS, and his manager Vic Lewis was less than eager to release him. “They all want to get together again,” Lewis said, “but there are still some technicalities to sort out. I’ve had discussions with Robert Stigwood, who manages Maurice and Barry, and there is a suggestion of making an LP and single together again.” Lewis proposed that a possible solution might be for Robin to continue as both a solo performer and a group member.
The brothers’ initial business meeting came about when shares in Robert Stigwood Group Ltd, RSO’s parent company, were offered for sale to the public. “We didn’t get together in a burst of brotherliness,” Barry admitted. “Instead, there was a great roomful of lawyers present. It was terrible. The coming back together was conducted in about as silly a fashion as when we broke up. When you have a split like that, the ‘brother thing’ goes out the window. Because you’re brothers, it becomes more of an issue and you can become dire enemies, and this is what happened to our heads. The way we treated each other was terrible.”
“It was pretty nasty in the boardroom,” Dick Ashby recalled, “but it wasn’t really the boys so much … NEMS lawyers and RSO lawyers were having pretty hefty meetings on Robin’s behalf, splitting his wares, as it were. Barry was unavailable in his apartment in London. But as far as the three brothers were concerned, it wasn’t heavy because they weren’t seeing each other. There was some obviously hairy business going on, but at the time, the boys weren’t too business-minded. So it was more or less left to lawyers. History has shown it was whether they had a good or bad lawyer in those days as to how they came out of it, with what slice of the pie they got.
“At the time RSO was going public, and with their shares in the company, they were very much involved financially. Robert had to get them in one at a time to sign papers, discuss their new share deal and their new parts in the company. I think, once again, Stiggy’s got to be credited with it. He said to them, ‘Look, we’re going public … What a great thing it would be to launch the public company press-wise if you all came back together.’ ”
It was not to be that easy. “The three of us were sitting in the office in London,” Maurice recalled. “We had split up, and the lawyers and accountants were all there, trying to sort out all our affairs with Robert. We all looked at each other like, ‘What the bloody hell are we doing here?’ All these people are trying to fight over who owns what, and who gets this and that, and our manager is sitting there trying to sort them all out. We’re sitting there together on the couch going, ‘What’s going on?’ We wanted to get back together again, and all of a sudden, the four of us, Robert as well, realised these guys were trying to break us up, not keep us together. And when we got to Barry’s part, I broke up and cried because I couldn’t believe how stupid we’d been … My first wife [Lulu] just sat there going, ‘Take it easy.’ I said, ‘I just don’t believe all the rubbish we’re going through …’ ”
“There were all these people giving us this, ‘Don’t speak to anybody until you speak to me’ business,” Robin added.
Although at the time, they presented a united front to the press, Barry said later that, “Spiritually, our heads weren’t in it. We were still upset with each other. Things hadn’t been resolved. And Robert was putting us back together in his way, meaning well, of course, but really to the end of seeing the company going on the market united. Everything we did was for the corporation. I honestly think the will was there for us to come back together. I don’t think the time was right for us. It was all done legally. Everybody had his lawyer in the room, and nothing was resolved … At that point there was a battle going on over who could get the most amount of shares before the company went public.”
According to Barry, some major players in the financial world began to put pressure on the brothers in an effort to persuade them to sell out. “None of us were left alone night and day,” he recalled. “Other people, other major people, other important people were trying to buy our shares. They were harassing us and persecuting us. All kinds of death threats, threats to our families. Things like that.
“It got to be where we were in danger of being physically injured. Heavies would appear late at night, banging on the door, saying, ‘Sell … your … shares.’ One night I was lying in the hallway with a gun, pointing at the front door …
“We always seemed to have enough money so that during the time the pressure was on, we were all right. Providing we didn’t give way to those people who threatened physical violence. They didn’t actually commit physical violence but sent heavies to our door, just to bang on the door. Not to get in, not to do anything but frighten t
he lives out of us. I can’t say who sent them … various major concerns.”
It was worse for Robin, following on the heels of Hugh’s suit to make him a ward of the court. “I think it hit us hardest,” Molly revealed, “because there were times when there was no money at all around, and Robin wasn’t working. It was like, ‘What are we going to pawn this week?’ ”
According to Robert Stigwood, “Robin had the crucial one per cent controlling share, and he was threatened by some heavies to give it up.”
Lynda recalled that the sale of the company had a sobering effect for another reason. The day of reckoning came for the extravagant lifestyle that the brothers had been leading. As she said, they “did a lot of spending when they didn’t actually have it in liquid cash. It was advances and loans, and one day, the office goes public and they say, ‘Well, you have this debt with us,’ and all of a sudden, you’re asked to pay it. I think that brought them all back down to earth.”
Apart from Polygram/Polydor, the major financiers of RSO, Robert Stigwood and David Shaw, had the greatest number of shares in the company. “Then me, Maurice and Robin and Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker and Frankie Howerd, down the line,” Barry added. “What was going on was a major corporate battle. The Bee Gees couldn’t survive during that. No one was looking after The Bee Gees. It was a total financial struggle. Except you couldn’t have put that in magazines. Nobody would have listened to you.”
What you could put in magazines were the Gibb brothers’ efforts to explain the break-up and reunion and to plead their case to the public. On August 21, 1970, weeks after they had got back together again, it was finally made official. “The Bee Gees are there and they will never, ever part again,” Barry announced. “If a solo record comes out, it will be with the enthusiasm and great support of each of us. We are a musical establishment.”
