The Ultimate Biography of The Bee Gees

by Hector Cook

  During the Seventies Maurice began collecting police uniforms. “He used to bag these uniforms from policemen in the States, badges and everything -I don’t know how he would do it — they would walk out in their underwear, he was so persuasive,” Tom Kennedy marvelled. “He had a whole collection of these bits and pieces and used to dress up as a State Trooper and drive around in his Rolls-Royce while inebriated.

  “He was arrested in his Rolls-Royce, dressed as an American policeman, by a [real] policeman on a push bike. I think he was driving on the pavement — that’s why the policeman got suspicious,” Tom added.

  Tom’s account of the incident was accurate. Maurice left the Casino in Douglas at about 1.00 a.m. on June 20. A suspicious policeman followed him until he stopped his car in the middle of the road near his house. Maurice was charged with driving while his ability was impaired by drink or drugs. He was fined £80 and banned from driving for the next two years.

  When Maurice was not busy marshalling TT races or getting arrested, the brothers spent much of their time making absurd home movies to alleviate the monotony. Their interest in home movies had started back in Australia, and has never waned. They enlisted the services of nearly everyone they knew; friends, family, in-laws, all were drafted into co-starring in the epic Day Of The Kipper, a play on the film, The Day Of The Jackal.

  “We made a lot of home movies,” said Maurice, “and we had some smuggling of kippers in, so Barry played the chief sergeant type of thing … We had to check it out, and there was someone smuggling kippers out of the Isle of Man, and that was the whole story. We went around the whole island, filming everywhere and interviewing different people about the Manx Kippers. It was like a big send-up.”

  Day of the Kipper was not the end of their movie-making. “We had another one called The Million Dollar Cop which was this guy, ’cause I had a flashy blue Rolls, and I drove around the island a lot in it. I know a lot of the police knew me from the pubs anyway. I know one sergeant in particular did!” Maurice laughed. “Anyway, I would just drive around in it and we filmed it, and we called it The Million Dollar Cop, and we had police uniforms and all sorts of crazy stuff.”

  David English recalled those daft days of film-making. “Maurice said, ‘Come over.’ So I went to the Isle of Man,” he recounted, “and as my plane touched on the tarmac, this blue Rolls-Royce roared up to the plane with a red light flashing, out gets Maurice, dressed entirely as an American cop, and escorts me off the plane into the Rolls-Royce. So we went back … and we made a film called Million Dollar Cop. Hughie Gibb was on camera, George and May Gray were in it, Herbie Spenceley was in it. It’s a good little 8mm film, we had all the props and all the costumes, and then when Yvonne came out with Adam, she was straight in the film. We were always making little films together, all of us, always a lot of fun. Whenever we went on tour, particularly the promotional tours, we always had a camera and we all made films with Lynda there, Yvonne was in there, all going on, you know. Then the kids came along and we did a wonderful thing [based] on The Sound Of Music, lots and lots of little films.”

  Tom Kennedy recalled that any visitors would be subjected to private screenings of these their cinematic masterpieces. “It’s just something that was never meant to be commercial — just one of those things that was done because there was nothing better to do,” he added.

  * * *

  ‘You Should Be Dancing’ was released on June 21, 1976 in the UK and the following month in the US, and rapidly began its ascent up the charts. Maurice explained how the singles were chosen. “We don’t really release anything just for the commercial sake of it, like it would be good just because it’s a dancing number — we don’t think of things like that. We release songs that mean something to us. The three of us sit down with Robert Stigwood and we listen to the tracks we’ve done and usually Robert picks out the right one. He always has a good valid reason for releasing.

  “It was great to do the ballads and so forth, there were all those strings. But we could have stayed in that groove all the time, we wouldn’t have advanced any further. We would have just ended up staying there and doing the same old thing.”

  Robin told Record World magazine that the release of the album was delayed because, “When the president of our record company heard the album, he said it was not to be released until the single got to number one in the United States. This week, it shot up to number five, and only Elton [John] and Kiki [Dee] look like keeping it off the top spot!

  “We’ll be back on the road touring the States, Canada and Japan by the end of the year. It’s a pity we can’t work in Britain, but the tax situation is such that when we did a recent BBC radio programme, we had to waive the fee or the tax man would have clobbered us!”

  ‘You Should Be Dancing’ did reach number one in the US, and like ‘Jive Talkin’ ’, achieved another very respectable number five in Britain. It was also a Top 20 success in many other countries. There was never any doubt this was going to be the lead-off single, with its insistent dance floor beat and the first whiff of Barry’s amazing falsetto lead. ‘You Should Be Dancing’ is one of those songs that could never be performed any other way, a striking example of the pop music ideal of “writing a record”.

  Children of the World was ultimately released on September 1, 1976, although in Australia, record company altercations would delay its release until the following April. On the album, Robin had moved somewhat out of the spotlight which was now solidly on Barry, while Maurice was less involved with the recordings than at any time before or since.

  Blue Weaver played synthesizer in place of the strings The Bee Gees had used for years but the new technology was not yet up to the task, especially on the ballads, and sometimes this sounded closer to a cheap organ, unlike the touch of class Arif’s arrangements had given them. The real problem was that instrumentally, this album was ahead of its time and can be seen as a worthy experiment. The synthesizer backing, the horn section, and Barry’s ubiquitous falsetto give the whole album a lot of high end sound.

  In America, some of their new releases featured an interesting addition to the credits. Blue Weaver explains: “Dick Ashby put a blackboard up to put all the credits on; at the end of course it always had ‘By arrangement with The Robert Stigwood Organisation’, and that was always the final thing. Our roadie at the time was Tom Kennedy, so we added ‘and Tom Kennedy’, and it got into print! Millions of records went out with ‘By arrangement with The Robert Stigwood Organisation and Tom Kennedy.’ Have a look at the [first American pressings of the] singles of ‘Love So Right’ [and ‘Boogie Child’ as well as the Children of the World album]. There was a gold album with the label on it, as well, all saying ‘and Tom Kennedy.’ Robert wasn’t too pleased about that!”

  Tom Kennedy pointed out the obvious. “Nobody had proof-read the liner-notes! That’s the sort of pranks we’d get up to … I’ve got the gold record where it’s actually on the label.”

  As praise came in for their production work on the new LP, Maurice was modest, paying credit to their mentor. “We could never say that Arif Mardin didn’t do 50 per cent of the groundwork for the hits we have today,” he admitted. “Everyone knows what a great producer he is. We don’t pretend to produce like Arif does now, but we’ve learned to write our music more like he would produce it.”

  Maurice revealed that as they began work on the album, they had sought Mardin’s input. “We were saying, ‘Can we send you the tapes to see what you think?’ He said, ‘Well, I have to hear them sometime, but don’t tell anybody.’ So we sent him the tapes and he sent a note back saying, ‘They’re fantastic. Don’t do a thing to them.’ ”

  As Children Of The World raced up the charts, The Bee Gees’ “second” career was moving from strength to strength. “This album doesn’t just have disco and R&B,” Barry said. “To us, there are other tracks on the album and on Main Course that could be hits as well. For The Bee Gees, it’s not right to put out these tracks as singles yet.”
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br />   The Bee Gees have of ten described their songwriting as almost telepathic. ‘Love So Right’ was a case in point. “No line ever looked so right to me as, ‘I thought you came forever, but you came to break my heart.’ But we didn’t think of it,” Barry revealed. “We sat there singing along and there it was. Maybe we did think of it but not on a conscious level.”

  “It just comes … Sometimes we surprise ourselves,” Robin added. “It’s as if somebody had said, ‘Put that line there.’ It’s like we’re picking it up from somewhere … as if somebody is trying to get hold of us and tell us that that’s the line to use.”

  ‘Love So Right’ became the second single from Children of the World, issued to coincide with the album’s release, and RSO also released a special promotional 12-inch containing four Children of the World tracks, including extended versions of ‘Boogie Child’ and ‘You Stepped Into My Life’, the seven inch version’s B-side. The release eventually climbed to number three in the US charts, their fourth American Top 10 single in two years. Once again, Europe and the UK markets were harder to crack, with the song barely breaking into the Top 40 in either region. However, by now, The Bee Gees were beginning to become a bit sensitive about the disco label. “The new single is an R&B ballad and you certainly couldn’t dance to it,” Barry said. “We always have the fear of falling into that bag with these new records because we’re not just a disco group.”

  “We won’t put out two disco songs in a row either,” Maurice added. “Disco music isn’t that bad, as long as it progresses with new sounds and lyrics. But The Bee Gees aren’t a band that will do disco for the rest of their lives just because we’ve clicked again with it. We clicked with other kinds of music as well. We’ll go on trying other kinds of music if this stops working. Our music will always go on. We might get too old one day to sing it, but until then we don’t intend to stop.”

  “We had to become an R&B band,” Barry agreed. “If you look at our past history, it’s gone from one form of music to another. We’re a band that likes most kinds of music, and in five years you may not find us doing this any more. Children of the World is a mixture, as was Main Course. Side two wasn’t played so much because it’s oldish Bee Gees. Right now it’s a very vibrant band, and the songs are pouring out. In the old days, we took three or four weeks to cut an album, and now we’re taking three months. It makes a hell of a difference, especially when you’re in there with the right people. The band — Dennis Bryon, Alan Kendall, and Blue Weaver — are more like Bee Gees than side musicians, these guys have been with us for years. On Children of the World everyone gets a cut, not just a wage.”

  A two-week stint in Las Vegas was cancelled due to “increasing commitments elsewhere in the USA,” much to the brothers’ relief. For them, nightclub work, no matter how deluxe, still brought back horrible memories of failure. The Bee Gees also cancelled a proposed concert at the Palace Lido to raise money for the Isle of Man’s Olympic participants.

  After rehearsals in the Isle of Man, The Bee Gees flew to New York on November 8, accompanied by a blaze of publicity. In Melody Maker, Chris Charlesworth wrote, “A casual visitor to New York this month could be excused for thinking that The Bee Gees are currently running for elected office.

  “It has been a campaign worthy of a presidential candidate, the purpose of which is to trumpet to the nation the fact that The Bee Gees, after a very shaky period at the beginning of this decade, are currently bigger and more popular than at any time during their career.”

  To celebrate their success Robert Stigwood threw a stylish party for them at his sumptuous triplex apartment on Central Park West and, in an unprecedented move, RSO combined their massive publicity drive with The Bee Gees opening their “International Headquarters,” a shop on busy 57th Street. The shop sold their albums, tickets, posters, clothing — anything and everything Bee Gees. “It’s the sort of place you can buy souvenirs, t-shirts, records that are collectors’ items, things like that,” Maurice said. “It also tells you where we are touring, [in case] anybody wants to know where we are at a certain time.”

  Barry described it as “a gathering place for the people who are interested in the music and the oddities they may want to collect. It was our management’s idea.”

  “We didn’t see it until we came to New York,” Robin added.

  The shop certainly drew its share of visitors. There seemed to be no escape from the group for the people of New York City with posters of the Children of the World album cover adorning the backs of the city’s buses.

  At the opening ceremony, policemen struggled to contain the crowd of predominantly teenage girls as the group stepped through a gigantic replica of the Children of the World album, which had been reproduced with Blue Weaver’s little amendment. The disc was “literally six or eight feet tall,” Tom Kennedy recalled, “and at the bottom it said, ‘Robert Stigwood & Tom Kennedy.’ I didn’t know anything about it at that time. Later on, Robert found out it was Blue, and he saw the funny side of it.”

  For the better part of the month, Barry, Robin and Maurice held court in a suite at the Sheraton Hotel on 7th Avenue, giving countless interviews. “Publicity is a key factor,” Robin explained. “People say if the music is there, you don’t need publicity. But tasteful publicity, well done, isn’t harmful. People in America love this kind of thing. They like to have things put smack bang in their faces.”

  “The fact is that the music is succeeding, and our record company wants to promote us,” Barry added.

  They announced their plans to donate the net proceeds of their Madison Square Garden concert to New York’s Police Athletic League, a charity to provide sporting facilities for underprivileged children via police sponsored youth clubs. Maurice explained, “A lot of gigs come here and take a lot of bread out of the city and never give it back. We want to leave the money here this time.”

  The Bee Gees were invited as the guests of honour for a gala luncheon party on the lawns of Gracie Mansion by the mayor of New York, Abe Beame. It was the first time a party for a pop group had ever been held at the mayoral mansion, and Mayor Beame was more than a little bemused by it all. “Rock Music? The only notes I know about are the ones they put on Wall Street,” quipped the diminutive mayor. He later proved his point by referring to his honoured guests as “The Jay Pees” and “The Gee Bees” before presenting them with the key to the city.

  New York in November is not the usual venue for a garden party, but Robert Stigwood picked up the bill of nearly $15,000 for the Mayor’s “midi dansant” *, including heating the giant yellow and white marquee against the near freezing cold outside. He reasoned, “It’s hard to get 300 of the beautiful people out for a pop group, but an invitation from the mayor is an offer they can’t refuse.”

  James Taylor, Carly Simon, Andy Warhol and Paulette Goddard were among the 1,000 guests — the celebrities mingling with journalists from both the political and pop world — who dined on beef wellington, hot smoked salmon, pâté and lobster mousse and danced to the music of Peter Duchin. Despite the mayor’s wife spilling tomato juice on his shoulder, Maurice gallantly asked Mrs Beame to dance, but she declined, saying she had an ingrown toenail.

  It was also a rather shrewd — but nonetheless generous — promotional stunt to kick off the tour, which took them across the country, collecting the keys to the cities of New Orleans and San Francisco along the way.

  “The tours certainly were gruelling, I have to say,” Tom Kennedy admitted. “It was bags at 9.00; bodies at 10.00, on and on and on.”

  Gruelling or not, Maurice claimed he wouldn’t have it any other way. “I think if we weren’t allowed to tour,” he declared, “or at least go on stage any more, I’d be very upset. I love going on stage and having a good time and pleasing the audience that buys the records. I think if we just stayed a studio group and didn’t perform, I’d be, you know, a bit down about it. I would find it boring just sitting at home, going to the studio to record and then back home again. Yo
u don’t meet the other people, the people who buy your records.”

  “We have come pretty close to our recorded sound on stage because we have some good people who do our sound, and we go for the best we can. In fact, somebody said to us once, ‘Are you miming?’ We try to get the best stage effects, the best sound, the best lighting and so forth,” he added.

  At the pre-concert sound check for the Madison Square Garden concert, the group nostalgically performed ‘Let Me Love You’, Barry’s early composition from their Redcliffe Speedway days.

  After the concert, Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb presented Robert Morgenthau of the Police Athletic League with a cheque for $31,000. In addition to donating the net proceeds of the concert, The Bee Gees personally paid the costs of lighting, stage and sound crews, as well as all musicians and production fees.

  “I hope this sets a precedent for the other groups,” Barry said. “It would be nice if every band gave one concert for charity. A really big band would never miss the money.”

  Maurice added, “We did it because New York has given us so much inspiration for writing, things like that, and all sorts of people have been great to us. We thought we’d pay the city back. It was not because the Police Athletic League was the one we picked; it was just the one that needed help most, because they’re the ones that look after people.