The Ultimate Biography of The Bee Gees

by Hector Cook

  “We just discussed it and re-formed,” Maurice said. “We want to apologise publicly to Robin for the things that have been said. We just want to stop boring the public without squabbles and do the music.”

  “All that ‘Robin said this’ and ‘Barry said that’ and ‘Maurice did this’ stuff was written by the press anyway,” Barry contended. “We didn’t say most of it at all. When we broke up, we each found that we were going pretty much the same way as each other, but it was taking us all more time to get things done.”

  “The [British] public didn’t take kindly to the break-up because of the press,” said Stigwood. “They really had a field day with it. So there were lots of unpleasant quotes from one brother about the other one. That didn’t win any sympathy from anyone because from the public’s point of view, they were sort of riding high, earning a lot of money. And then to see that go on, we decided the best thing was to focus on their recording and not worry about publicity.”

  Robin acknowledged the harm that their very public battles had done. “We hope we haven’t lost the public’s confidence with all this,” he told Melody Maker’s Chris Charlesworth, who interviewed the brothers at Barry’s Eaton Square flat. “I think we were afraid of losing each other as brothers. When brothers fight, it’s worse than friends. The fighting is more violent. It’s far worse than friends fighting, and anyway we were making mountains out of molehills.”

  More recently, Robin looked back on the split as a natural progression of growing up. “I think a lot of people that remember [the break-up] don’t remember that we were very young at the time, a lot younger than people realise. And that we were also very green to the kind of success that we had initially. And I don’t think each of us individually knew how to handle it. We had a lot of egos that young people develop very fast and very quickly, and a lot of things that are of value to a young person are very superficial. Relationships don’t mean a thing for instance, or how close someone is, or whether the fact you are brothers don’t mean anything.”

  “When you were hurt at that age, you’re hurt forever as opposed to when you get older, when you mellow out, and you realise that there are situations, you can get around these situations,” Barry added. “I think individually when you get depressed now and again you think, ‘God, I think I’ll toss it in, this is ridiculous,’ you know, ‘It doesn’t work.’ But I’m glad we didn’t. We never did. We remind ourselves of, maybe it’s a bit radical but sort of a Three Musketeers type situation. It is pretty radical … Oh, all right, The Three Stooges is probably closer!” he laughed.

  The brothers were full of plans for the future. “I’d like the three of us to write a feature film,” Robin revealed, “ideally within the next three years. There’s a multitude of things to do,” and prophetically he added, “The Bee Gees have scarcely begun.”

  In fact, as far back as June 13, The Bee Gees, albeit unofficially, had begun, but without the eldest brother. Robin and Maurice recorded nine songs in June and a dozen more in August, before Barry joined them, of which only ‘Sincere Relation’ and ‘Lay It On Me’ ever appeared. Barry had revealed his intention to remain solo despite the fact that his brothers had “just completed a recording session under the name of The Bee Gees, and I guess that it will be released within the next six weeks”. While many would regard it as a moot point, perhaps the truth of the matter is that it was Barry who had rejoined The Bee Gees.

  There were still unfulfilled plans to publish On The Other Hand, the book of short stories that Barry and Robin started in Australia. “They sometimes sit up until four in the morning writing stories,” Maurice said. “When we’re at a hotel, they share a room and sit and scribble until all hours.”

  The enforced togetherness of their past schedule had been one of the major causes of the split, according to Maurice. “We’d toured for two years without a break. We were with each other every day and every night. You couldn’t say goodbye and go home to the wife … it was like two years solid. That’s why we stopped touring.

  “Now we’re more mature. Now we’re honest with each other. But before, there were things we wouldn’t bring out and say to each other … We’ve been working now for about three months and in that time, we’ve got together an LP and a single and the music for a film and even some solo stuff.”

  The brothers all agreed that the major drawback of being on your own is having no one to share your successes with. “You could turn around and say, ‘Guess what, love,’ you know, to the wife, ‘the record’s number one.’ She goes, ‘Oh that’s nice, dear, what do you want me to do?’ you know, but when you can share it between the three of us, we missed all that,” Maurice said.

  But Robin, as usual, had the final word on individual accomplishments. They had achieved success apart when ‘Saved By The Bell’ and ‘Don’t Forget To Remember’ both reached number two on the charts, but there was no one there to help commiserate over “the fact that some bastard was keeping us out of number one!”

  * * *

  The group promised that their new album would contain no dramatic changes or shocks for their old fans. “The Bee Gees sound will be pretty much the same as it always was,” Barry explained. “We are not going progressive or anything like that. I think the change while we have been away has been good for musicians because before people were successful if they had the glitter and gimmickry. Now the underground [movement] is taking over, and the majority of people are buying their records.”

  “I think we appeal to these people,” Robin added, “and they will buy our records … because of the words we use in the music. The words mean things, and I think the underground people will realise that.”

  Maurice said that he considered his solo career to be a good experience. “I suppose it was a good thing to get it out of my system,” he added, “but at the same time, I never thought we would never sing together again. I started off intending to make a go of it, but I soon found something was missing. I’d write songs and want desperately to play them to my brothers, but because of all the squabbles I didn’t feel I could. Then our record company unintentionally seemed to be trying to sabotage our solo careers. Distribution problems hit my solo single, Barry’s first single and Robin’s second single.

  “Then I found I was rehearsing in Eaton Square, just round the corner from Barry’s flat, and the temptation was too great. So the two of us would get together just to talk – and one day I arrived and found Robin there too. We looked at each other and said, ‘What are we doing? Why have we been so silly? Why don’t we get together again?’ ”

  Although the most important matter was to re-establish themselves as The Bee Gees, Maurice revealed that the brothers were reluctant to give up entirely on seeking individual glory. “We intend carrying on with our solo careers,” he said, “but we want to start things as a group again. There will just be the three of us, and we will use a session drummer. Now that we have resolved it, we will go into the studio and record a new single and an album in the near future.”

  Robin insisted that the split had never been based on any sort of musical incompatibility. “It was just a matter of politics within ourselves,” he explained. “It might be that one of us was planning to have a recording session tonight somewhere, and the rest of us hadn’t heard about it. It was a lack of communication. I might think … or Barry or Maurice might think … ‘Somebody is keeping me out of something.’ You start to ask yourself, ‘Why aren’t I there?’ and you say, ‘Well, it won’t happen again,’ and suddenly everyone is getting different messages and you’re in trouble.”

  * * *

  With his divorce made final the previous month, on August 27, 1970, Barry and Lynda decided to get married. Lynda chose the date, September 1 – Barry’s birthday – reasoning that this would ensure that he would never forget their anniversary. It didn’t allow them much time for planning the wedding, especially since Barry had a scheduled television appearance in Zurich, Switzerland, on Monday, August 31. Lynda, as usual, acco
mpanied him.

  Their flight from Zurich was scheduled for 7.00 on the morning of the wedding, which meant that they should have been up before 5.00 to get to the airport in time. They should have been, but they overslept.

  Fortunately for them, also appearing on the programme the night before was their old friend, Dave Dee. “Believe me, if it wasn’t for me, he wouldn’t have made his wedding!” Dave recalled. “It was the typical things, we’d done a show, I think it was a telly show, and we were all staying in the same hotel … It was the usual heavy night, and we’d sort of partied the night away. We had to make a flight because they were getting married. And anyway, I’m about to go out and they’re not there! Barry’s not there, [Lynda’s] not there, and I thought, ‘I’d better check their room.’ So I checked their room, and the buggers are still in bed! And I said, ‘Hey! It’s your [wedding day] – c’mon, you’d better [hurry up]!’

  “So I waited and held a taxi, because everything in London was all organised. Everything in London was all buzzing, and we were all going to the wedding, except there wouldn’t have been one without the bride and the groom.”

  The wedding took place at Caxton Hall at 2.00 p.m., where a crowd of more than 300 had gathered. Barry arrived in his maroon Rolls-Royce with John Stephens (owner of the Carnaby Street boutique where Barry bought most of his clothing), who was the best man, and Lynda’s mother, May Gray. Living up to his fashion icon image, Barry wore a blue and aqua check suit with matching waistcoat, white shirt, white raw silk tie and high heeled red and black boots.

  Minutes later, Lynda and her father, George Gray, along with her sister-in-law Shirley Gray, who was to be matron of honour, arrived in Barry’s white Bentley convertible. Lynda wore a white floor length gown with a heavy guipere lace overslip, which she had bought just three days before the wedding, and carried pink roses. A family friend recalled that Barry remained perfectly calm during the ceremony, but his blushing bride was more nervous and mixed up the words of her wedding vows, even getting Barry’s name wrong. The wedding guests included Barbara and Hugh, Andy, Beri, Lynda’s parents George and May Gray, Tommy and Shirley Gray, Robert Stigwood, Vince and Christina Melouney, scriptwriters Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, Barry Ryan, Dave Dee, Peter Wyngarde and reporter David Wigg of the Daily Express.

  Maurice, Lulu and Robin avoided the crush of fans and reporters outside Caxton Hall and chose instead to wait at Barry’s flat for the reception. As it turned out, it was a wise decision, as after the wedding, when the photos were being taken outside the hall, a fight broke out between a reporter and policeman.

  “Lynda and I have been together for nearly three years now, and we’re very happy and very much in love,” Barry told the waiting pressmen.

  The new Mr and Mrs. Barry Alan Crompton Gibb and their guests returned to their flat at Eaton Square for the reception. The guests even included the couple’s Pyrenean mountain dog Barnaby and Afghan hound Snoopy.

  They postponed a honeymoon, but since Lynda’s family were spending the night in the flat, Barry and Lynda had planned to spend their wedding night in a London hotel. Unfortunately, after driving around for what seemed like hours in an unsuccessful attempt to find it, they abandoned the search and went home. Instead of reclining in the bridal suite at a posh hotel, their wedding night was spent in the somewhat less romantic surroundings of their small spare bedroom, in single beds.

  * * *

  The response to the sale of shares in the Robert Stigwood Organisation was disappointing – in fact, it was deemed “the biggest flop in recent years” by a top finance writer of the time. The newly public company needed a quick promotion, and The Bee Gees were up for the task. “This is a real challenge,” Barry said. “One hit from us could change the whole situation. Shareholders and speculators apparently need some confidence. Well, they are going to get it.”

  The manager who had dubbed them “the most significant new musical talent of 1967” was no less effusive at their return to the fold. “Individually The Bee Gees are creative people,” Robert Stigwood said. “Collectively they are, for my money, the best pop group in the world.”

  When The Bee Gees made the decision to put their differences aside, each of the brothers had been working on new solo recordings for about nine months. In fact, two of Barry’s solo efforts were touted for single release around this time. ‘The Day Your Eyes Meet Mine’ was withdrawn at the last minute in the USA, while Polydor planned to release ‘One Bad Thing’ on October 2. Despite Barry’s longing to prove himself as a solo artist, it was decided instead that the next single should be a group effort. The solo works of all three were set aside in favour of quickly recording a new Bee Gees album together and getting it to the market by the end of the year. Incredibly they used none of the songs they’d completed, but all new ones. The song total for this period encompasses over a dozen each from the solo albums, and the sessions together had yielded over a dozen more, amounting to over 70 total recordings of which only 13 were released. Atlantic’s master tape list shows the songs for the album arriving in two groups, with the tape for Barry’s single arriving between them. Most of the songs recorded for the solo albums and the duo album were not sent out to the record companies.

  ‘Man For All Seasons’ was the early favourite for the lead-off single, but in the end, it was relegated to the B-side in favour of ‘Lonely Days’ as the A-side. “It’s like a spiritual thing when we write,” Robin explained. “We know what the other one is thinking, as if we have a language between us. ‘Lonely Days’ was written in 10 minutes. It was that quick. I was at the piano 10 minutes.”

  “Robin came to my place,” continued Barry, “and that afternoon we wrote ‘How Can You Mend A Broken Heart’, and that obviously was a link to us coming back together. We called Maurice, finished the song, went to the studio and once again, with only ‘Broken Heart’ as a basic structure, we went in to the studio with that and an idea for ‘Lonely Days.’ And those two songs were recorded that night.”

  In 1998, Barry also revealed, “A manager we had about five years back heard ‘Lonely Days’ in a restaurant and he said to a friend, ‘That’s one of my favourite Beatles songs.’ And he was managing us!” he added incredulously.

  The single was rush released as soon as possible after the reunion, hitting the shops on November 6. Both sides are quality songs, written by all three brothers. It was their first such created in almost two years – thus the album’s title, 2 Years On which also became available to impatient fans, only three weeks after the issue of ‘Lonely Days’.

  The A-side of the single has no solo vocal apart from lines called out in the concluding chorus, and the B-side features the trademark alternation of Barry and Robin solo parts. This contrasts with what is on most of the album, but politically – within the group – it would have been difficult to feature anything on the single that highlighted one brother. That aside, ‘Lonely Days’ is clearly the catchiest song for a single, and ‘Man For All Seasons’ makes a good case for their genius when working together. Another reason for the selection of these two songs, both pointedly credited to B., R. & M. Gibb, was to emphasise that The Bee Gees were back together as the success of RSO shares was likely to be heavily influenced by sales of the single.

  The songwriting was done separately for just over half the songs, and while Maurice is playing on all songs, the vocals seem to be restricted to the writers, and it’s not clear that Barry and Robin are present on songs they did not write. Although The Bee Gees in general do their best work together, it’s interesting for once to have their separate creative approaches on one disc.

  Maurice brought in the two musician partners from his solo work, drummer Geoff Bridgeford and arranger Gerry Shury, but the latter was replaced by the returning Bill Shepherd for most of the songs.

  ‘Lonely Days’, with its combination of sweet melodic verse and a great big stomping chorus, raced up the charts in the United States. Much of its initial momentum was due to the innovative thin
king of Atlantic’s then head of promotion. Jerry Greenberg had joined the label in 1967, promoting their product in Hartford, Connecticut. Had he been based just 25 miles further north, he would have been able to promote ‘Massachusetts’ in Massachusetts, that being the first Bee Gees record he handled. However, it is the events of the month of November, 1970 that he prefers to remember.

  “I heard that song [‘Lonely Days’] and I went crazy. I thought it was going to be an amazing number one record. In those days we had our own recording studio, right down the hall from the main offices. Now the record was pressed and ready to go, but what I did was, I made up about 30 tape copies, just put the song on a tape on a regular plastic reel, and I called up a bunch of my promotions department friends.

  “I said, ‘The Bee Gees just came out of the studio and they cut this record, and I don’t even have time to press it up yet, but I wanted you guys to hear it, and I’m going to send you, you’re the only one I’m sending, this tape, right from the studio.’ I mailed it out special delivery and I have to tell you, within a week, thirty radio stations were all over ‘Lonely Days’, and it busted the record wide open. I was very proud of that. Ahmet [Ertegun] and Jerry [Wexler] were both talking about it. In those days, you had to come up with some creative ideas, how to promote a record. That record took off!” he exclaimed with justifiable pride.

  The song sequence on the album seems to balance contributions as much as anything else: side one has two by all three, two by Robin and Maurice, and two by Barry; while side two, after ‘Lonely Days’, has two Robin songs bracketing two Barry songs bracketing Maurice’s one song.

  The remaining song by all three – not on the single – is ‘Back Home’; short, fun, with three-as-one vocals and a sparse arrangement of just guitar, bass, and drums. The dated reference to Lyndon B. Johnson (President of the United States from 1963 through 1969) makes it sound like an old song. “We wrote this one at the time of the hijacks,” Barry explained, “and it’s all about that particular time. We more or less did it in the studio.”