The Ultimate Biography of The Bee Gees

by Hector Cook

  Geoff now looks back fondly on his time with the group. “The Bee Gees are one of the most popular bands of our time, and back then in 1970, ’71, ’72 it was a great experience to be a part of it. There were some magical moments in the studio and performing live. It was a high creative transitional period for The Bee Gees and myself and some great songs came out of that time.”

  When The Bee Gees’ tour of Japan began in Tokyo on March 23, 1972, Chris Karon had replaced Bridgeford on drums. After four successful concerts, the entourage moved on to Kuala Lumpur for two shows and then a further two gigs in Singapore. These latter two performances were under threat of cancellation due to a strict government’s policy on men’s hair styles.

  “It was against the law to have long hair,” Tom Kennedy explained, “so, to play there, we had to have permission from the authorities … We did have to carry passports with our photographs wearing long hair.”

  Dick Ashby confirms that the government conceded ground by granting special 48 hour passes which allowed the group just enough time to fulfil their commitments and leave.

  Ask anyone in The Bee Gees entourage what show sticks out most in their minds, and you’re likely to get the same answer: April 2, 1972 in Jakarta, the show which concluded their Far East tour. Although everyone’s recollections vary, with attendance estimated at anywhere between 15,000 by Hugh Gibb’s reckoning to 80,000 by Tom Kennedy’s and nearly every figure in between, everyone agrees on one thing – it was a most memorable concert.

  Dick Ashby recalled, “The weirdest [concert] of all was Jakarta in Indonesia. We did a tour of Australia and one promoter in London who bought the whole tour asked if we’d like to do a few gigs in the Far East on the way home. I thought it would break up the flight so I called them and they seemed quite excited about visiting Indonesia, Hong Kong and all these places. The only particular details I had about this was that it was under cover and had 10,000 seats, so we set the fee accordingly.

  “I got in a taxi with the road manager to go and look at the venue before the band came down to get the stage and everything together, and the taxi driver takes us to a most enormous place … So I said, ‘Oh no, this can’t be right,’ but sure enough, there was a stage there, and it turned out that somehow the venue had been switched on us, and there was a Seneghan inside stadium and a Seneghan outside stadium, and it appeared that we were playing in the latter.”

  “We were supposed to play 10,000 seats indoors and we arrived at this Wembley sized stadium outdoors,” Tom Kennedy added. “I actually did ask the promoter if they should have a roof on it, and he said, ‘I’m a Catholic and I’ve prayed for eight days – it’s not going to rain!’ ”

  Apparently, it was a task requiring more than eight days of prayer. “We got everything out of the cases and laid the cables out, and the heavens opened,” Tom said, “and we just abandoned the idea.”

  “Obviously, there was a lot of tension going on through the day with me trying to get the fee up,” Dick Ashby continued, “and equipment and staging is very difficult out there, so we had a very hard day at the gig. Then about an hour before the show was due to start there was a torrential downpour of rain so all the equipment had to be bunged under the stage … total disaster.

  “By this time all the people were coming in, including the Prime Minister of Indonesia, who was in the royal box. I worked it out in the end that the final call was 38,000 people in the stadium. Anyway, [Tom Kennedy] came to me and said, ‘Look, I’m scared of the group going on – it’s wet. A guitar’s only got to touch something and someone will get electrocuted.’ So I went back to the hotel with this in mind and said we’re not going on. The promoter’s wife burst into tears saying, ‘You must go on, the Royal family is there …’

  “So in the end the promoter says to me, ‘Right, well if the support group goes on and they don’t get killed, will you go on?’ What could I say to that?”

  “The thing was actually said, ‘If the support band go on and they don’t die, will you go on?’ ” Tom said incredulously, “and that’s what happened.”

  “All our people told us we would be electrocuted,” confirmed Maurice. “The system was really bad, so we were a bit worried about that. We thought we might do an acoustic set, but no, they didn’t want that. Eventually … it calmed down, and we did go on, but it was crazy. That was the wildest place I think I’ve ever worked.”

  As Robin put it, “We were doing this show, and Sukarno* was there and there were about 60,000 people. And … just before we went on, a monsoon hit … dreadful … and the makeshift stage, of course because they didn’t have permanent stages at that particular time, completely got washed out. There was … at least 3 feet of water up to … or past the amplifiers. And the audience got pretty angry, and Sukarno ordered that soldiers should go in front of the stage to stop the audience attacking us …

  “We said we wouldn’t go on you see because we didn’t want to get electrocuted. So the promoter came backstage – well, backstage, he came into this shed where we were. And he said to us, ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘we know it’s pretty bad, the water and everything on stage and you could get electrocuted, but there’s 60,000 people out there and it could be worse if you don’t go on. However,’ he said, ‘I do have a remedy,’ and we said, ‘What’s that?’ And he said, ‘We have this little supporting act that have come up from Bali. If they go on first and they live, will you go on?’ ”

  “I think the reason we went on was because the promoter sent his wife round to see Hughie. I believed it at the time, and it probably was true,” Tom Kennedy insisted. “The promoter and his wife were Australian, and they persuaded them, against everyone’s best judgement, to go on.”

  The support group went on and lived, impressing Dick Ashby with the bravado of their performance. “I can’t remember the [band’s] name now, but Mick Jagger had nothing on this cat. He was throwing the microphone stand up in the air, and they were rubbing guitars against the mike stands and all sorts of things, and they didn’t get blown up, so we agreed to go on.”

  At various times the brothers have changed the story so that the soldiers were facing The Bee Gees with machine guns to keep them from leaving the stage, but Tom Kennedy refutes this. There were guns, he said, but for crowd control rather than Bee Gees’ control. Concerts in Indonesia were always an event, as he recalled. “We had a four star general driving us around – they always took you around in a car to show the people you were there because in the past, the promoters had advertised Tom Jones, and there’s a little speck on the stage pretending to be Tom Jones, some local lad who got lynched when the crowd figured out what was going on. Meanwhile, the promoter was on his way to the airport with his ill-gotten gains,” he laughed.

  The Bee Gees finally took the stage. “By this time the concert was running hours late,” Dick Ashby recounted, “and half the orchestra we’d rehearsed with in the afternoon had gone home, as they thought the concert wasn’t going on. Even some of The Bee Gees’ band, who shall remain nameless, didn’t think they were going on either, so they got pissed because they were fed up with the whole thing anyway. I think when the concert went out we had three live mikes on, and though I didn’t let the orchestra leader know, nobody could hear what was going on. Every time that Maurice moved from his stand-up mike where he was playing bass, to play the piano, someone had to go on stage and take his vocal mike across to him and put it on the piano. It was an amazingly good sound and it was quite a good show. We just did one show and got out the next day.”

  Tom Kennedy disagreed with Dick’s memories of good sound quality. “They weren’t allowed to touch the microphone – we had one live mike … The fact is, we went on, and there were 80,000 people all screaming and shouting. You couldn’t hear anything, anyway. They were there in the spotlight, and that was all that mattered.”

  It was a show reminiscent of the early days of Beatlemania, he recalled. The performance was immaterial to the event; the crowd wanted The Bee Gees, an
d the fact that they were there was all important.

  * * *

  In early 1972, tragedy struck when Molly Gibb’s young brother, David Hullis, was killed in a fire on board a ship returning to London from South America. Robin flew back from LA to be with Molly for the funeral.

  The group had begun recording sessions for their new album, as usual doing most, but this time not all, of their composing on the spot. Maurice provided some details. “We recorded for, like, two weeks and I got a bit of sunshine, thank God. [We] recorded from eight o’clock in the evening onwards …. and recorded eight tracks that have really turned out nice. It’s called To Whom It May Concern … which means if anyone wants to buy it, they can buy it. It’s a multitude of tracks which have been cut during the years of breaking up and getting together, and rewriting songs that we wrote years ago. I mean … they’re all new tracks really, as far as the public is concerned but to us they’ve been written quite a while ago. I mean, there’s about seven tracks on the whole LP which are new. We did them hoping that people will say, ‘Oh yes, they’re back together again.’ We are definitely together and I doubt very much we will separate again.”

  The group met up again in London’s IBC Studios in April to finish off the recordings, which marked the end of an era in The Bee Gees’ recording career: the last sessions with Bill Shepherd, the last album produced by Robert Stigwood and the last album in which Geoff was involved.

  The gatefold sleeve of the album opened to reveal pop-up figures of the three brothers, with a backdrop of many of the people with whom they had worked through the years depicted as members of the orchestra. The LP package gives “special thanks to those pictured on the inside liner for their contributions over the years”. Unfortunately, the identities of those featured was never revealed, leaving many a frustrated purchaser, unable to work out who was who … until now. Although a good few of the original buyers will now have replaced their vinyl copy with the compact disc, for those still in possession of the original album, here are the names that fit the faces on the inner of the gatefold. Going from left to right in the back row are Chris Cooke (Maurice & Lulu’s Assistant), John Davidson (RSO head of publishing), Ahmet Ertegun (head of Atlantic Records), Peter Brown (director of RSO in New York), Beryl Vertue (Frankie Howerd’s manager), Frankie Howerd, Robert Stigwood and Rik & John Gunnell (RSO – USA). In the front row are Lynda Gibb, Lulu, Molly Gibb, Ruby Bard (RSO booking agent), Mike Housego (RSO press officer), Tom Kennedy, Ray Washbourne (Robin’s personal assistant), David Shaw (Stigwood’s partner) and John Taylor (RSO office manager). Lurking behind the speakers and mixer is Dick Ashby himself, while the man behind the speaker stack in the bottom right of the sleeve is Ray Cane (RSO). The conductor, naturally, is Bill Shepherd, new boy Chris Karon is on drums, and the guitarist, who has been with the group longer than they have, is none other than Alan Kendall. Hugh Gibb completes the picture, literally, as he is manning the movie camera and lights.

  The back cover of the LP (and of the CD booklet) has a 1963 Bee Gees photo and insets of Barry, Robin and Maurice from 1972. The “album idea” is credited to their longtime personal manager, Dick Ashby.

  Alan Kendall stayed on but again was needed on only a few songs, as Maurice played much of the additional guitar as well as unusual items like mandolin and harpsichord and even a then avant-garde Moog synthesizer on one song. Geoff Bridgeford played on ‘We Lost the Road’ “as a result of that song being carried forward from the Trafalgar sessions,” he explained, and on ‘Paper Mache, Cabbages And Kings’, ‘You Know It’s For You’, and ‘Alive’ (although when the album was released on CD, the booklet missed out the asterisk credit for the last three), which dated from around October, 1971. Session drummer Clem Cattini played on the other songs but did not tour with the group; Chris Karon did, and is the drummer shown in the inner sleeve, though much to Clattini’s chagrin. “On the album, it’s got a photograph of Chris Karon which is ridiculous really,” he bemoaned, “because it wasn’t Chris playing on the album, it was me!”

  Although he would cease working with the band the following year, even today, Clem remains one of their greatest admirers. “As far as I’m concerned,” he states emphatically, “I think they have an unbelievable talent – I’d give anything just to have written one of the songs that they’ve written, especially the latter stuff.”

  Musically, To Whom It May Concern is a much more diverse offering than Trafalgar. Bill’s arrangements are relatively toned down, and the backing vocals sometimes seem to take the place of what could have been string sections. In fact, the ratio of musical parts played and sung by the Gibb brothers personally is at an all-time high here, aside from the more simply arranged recordings of 1966. Many of these songs, like ‘Paper Maché, Cabbages And Kings’, do not appear in any way to be calculated for commercial motives; this is purely The Bee Gees being The Bee Gees and doing much of it themselves.

  For these reasons, many fans find the album very personal and appealing, while others are put off by the somewhat less polished and definitely less consistent sound. The great importance of the album sessions is that the brothers were finally really working together again. The fine backing vocals echo the close personal harmony that Barry, Robin and Maurice had rediscovered.

  ‘Run To Me’ was the first single, released three months before the album. The B-side was the sort of up-tempo throwaway song usually associated with Maurice but ‘Road To Alaska’ is a group number, with Robin singing what sounds like Robin’s lyrics, and Alan Kendall’s lead guitar duetting along with Maurice’s bass in the break.

  Like Trafalgar, the album opens with the obvious: the single, although inexplicably, the early British pressings lacked ‘Run To Me’ and had a sticker stating “Track One Side One is omitted from this album”.

  The final track is one of the most unusual selections ever to appear on a Bee Gees album. Titled ‘Sweet Song Of Summer’, one reviewer unkindly described it as “abuse of a Moog synthesizer”.

  Maurice commented more than a year later, “We used the moog synthesizer once, and most groups really can’t afford to get such an instrument in to do a whole album with, because it’s such an expensive instrument to rent or buy or get made up or whatever,” while that same year, Robin dismissed “electronic music” as a “very limited field because people today haven’t really got the access to the equipment that people are using to record in the electronic field.” In hindsight the song is of course an early outlying entry in what would be a long list of Bee Gees songs with synthesizer; the instrument had to undergo technical improvement for a few years more before becoming practical for regular work.

  There’s nothing subtle about the synthesizer part on ‘Sweet Song Of Summer’ but Maurice keeps it musical, and it is somewhat reminiscent of a Seventies style guitar solo in the way it varies from the melody and bursts into odd sounds here and there. Closing songs on albums often look forward, and the idea here probably was that they were about to move forward to new things, having said goodbye with this album.

  * * *

  The Bee Gees’ American tour, in which they performed with a 40-piece orchestra, came to a close, and the brothers began work on their next project at the Record Plant in Los Angeles. “It’s been a pretty hectic ’72 for us,” Barry said. “We’ve been working on a new album due out next spring called Life In A Tin Can. We’ve been experimenting with lots of new sounds; we’ve tried an entirely different approach. The best thing we’ve ever done, we think, and everyone who has heard it agrees.”

  According to Robin, the timing of this was crucial as he had planned to be back in Britain by October to be with Molly for the birth of their first child. “Everything had been arranged months in advance so that I could be near when the baby was born,” he recalled. The baby had other ideas, though. “I went off to America, and the next thing I knew there was a call to say I was a dad.”

  Their son arrived on September 21, 1972, nearly four weeks early, weighing four pounds and two
ounces, and was given the name Spencer (in honour of Robin’s hero Winston Churchill) with the middle name David as a tribute to Molly’s late brother.

  Tom Kennedy recalled that the band and crew were staying in a rented house in Los Angeles while recording. After a late session, he returned to the house with the others. “Robin was at home and when we came in, he was asleep on the floor,” Tom said. “He’d been waiting up just to tell us about Spencer. He woke up and he was really excited.”

  The proud new father rushed home to meet his son. “Molly and I have been longing for a baby,” he said. “I feel as though I’m living on cloud nine.”

  Robin returned to the States where The Bee Gees performed in the “Woodstock Of The West” festival organised by a Los Angeles radio station. Other participants included The Eagles, Stevie Wonder, Mott The Hoople and Sly & The Family Stone.

  Early in the year, the New Musical Express announced that The Bee Gees were said to be set to star in an American TV series, a Western spoof based on the film Zachariah. The theme song was to be a Gibb composition, but the series itself was not intended to be a musical.

  Later it was revealed that the brothers were scheduled to fly to Yugoslavia to begin work on a horror movie called Castle. “As well as acting, we’ll be writing the music for the film,” Barry said. “We finish the movie by the end of the year, then we start planning our US trip.”

  Neither of these potential cinematic masterpieces would ever see the cameras roll.

  * * *

  Early in 1971, Barry and Lynda had moved to a new home in Gerard’s Cross, Buckinghamshire, near the home where Hugh and Barbara Gibb were living with young Andy and Beri. They were pleased with the new proximity, although the touring schedule of The Bee Gees meant that they were away for much of the year, but in November of 1971, the Gibb parents decided to take the two youngest members of the family to live on the Spanish island of Ibiza.