The Ultimate Biography of The Bee Gees

by Hector Cook

  The single teamed Kenny with the effervescent Dolly Parton. “Dolly Parton, now there’s a lady that is the pleasure to work with,” Barry enthused. “I mean, [what a] fantastic voice!”

  “When we did ‘Islands In The Stream’, we imagined Dolly singing the other part,” Maurice recalled, “because she was the queen of country, he was the king, [but] they never sang together [before]. So it’s a perfect sort of marriage.

  “That was an R&B song, and yet as soon as Kenny and Dolly sang it, we got country crossover. We have the [original] demo of it. It’s very R&B; in fact, it’s Smokey Robinson type of R&B.”

  The song earned The Bee Gees the National Music Publishers’ Association award for the Country Song Of The Year in Los Angeles the following March.

  Despite his disappointment with some aspects of the album, Albhy had to concede that he was thrilled that the next single, ‘This Woman’, which he co-wrote with Barry, garnered them an Academy of Country Music award and a Billboard award for a country record, “so personally I am glad the record was made in some ways. [‘This Woman’] was more in Kenny’s regular range, more of a regular Kenny song,” he said. The single was released in January of 1984, and reached number 23 in the US.

  * * *

  In August, 1983, plans were announced for a new Best Of Bee Gees album to be released in January. The proposed album was to feature their hits from Children Of The World and Spirits Having Flown, as well as three new tracks: ‘It’s My Neighbourhood’, ‘Dimensions’ and ‘Toys’, the latter described as a Christmas song.

  That same month, the brothers attended a book signing at Liberty’s in London for David English’s updated Legend, donating their proceeds from the sale of the book to the World Wildlife Fund.

  In September, The Bee Gees were Noel Edmonds’ guests on his Late Late Breakfast Show and to their embarrassment were shown a film of their first television appearance, singing ‘Time Is Passing By’, as children in Australia.

  Barry also joined Stevie Wonder on stage on November 6 in Sunrise, Florida, to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ for Martin Luther King.

  Maurice made a 15-minute film with soundtrack, at a cost of $60,000, which he donated to the Metro-Dade Tourism Department.

  In November, The Bee Gees participated in the Salute To Neil Sedaka television special, paying tribute to the singer/songwriter with a rendition of his ‘Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen’.

  Christmas Eve was a time for happy families, and Cilla Black’s Christmas special featured a live satellite link to Miami bringing Barry and Linda with their sons, Stevie, Ashley and Travis; Maurice and Yvonne with Adam and Samantha; and in their first real public appearance, Robin and Dwina with baby Robin John. It had been an eventful year, but all was calm as the family joined Cilla in singing ‘Silent Night’.

  35

  PRICE OF FAME

  WITH HIS LOVE affair with Victoria Principal behind him, Andy returned to the role of Frederic, this time in the critically acclaimed Canadian version of The Pirates Of Penzance in Toronto in August. Once again, he began with high hopes and good intentions, but once again he left the company a short time later.

  In the autumn, a new role beckoned; this time the starring role in the national company of the Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice musical, Joseph And The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat.

  After his Pirates experience, Andy was reluctant to commit himself to another stage show. The challenging Gilbert and Sullivan operetta required a trained tenor voice, and accustomed to singing pop music, his voice couldn’t hold up. Besides, Andy said ingenuously, “It sounded kind of biblical. I didn’t know if I wanted to be in something like that. It was a big transition from being a rock singer to a biblical thing.”

  Andy was unfamiliar with both the musical and the story of Joseph from the book of Genesis, but he saw the show on a trip to New York and found that the music was more in keeping with his pop background. He was instantly sold on the idea. “I wanted to be in it,” he said. “I just knew I wanted to do it, no doubt about that. It was so colourful, I wanted to be up on that stage.”

  Andy read the story of Joseph in the Bible and found himself enjoying it. He made his début in the national company of Joseph And The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat in Philadelphia in November, the final month of the national tour of the show, and later that month appeared in costume on a float in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade performing songs from the show including ‘Any Dream Will Do’. Andy couldn’t make the immediate transition from the national company to Broadway until he first fulfilled a previous commitment.

  The director and choreographer for Joseph, Tony Tanner, was also the director for Andy’s next project, a made for cable television musical comedy entitled Something’s A foot, filmed for Showtime Cable TV. Andy’s co-stars were the veteran actress, Jean Stapleton, best known for her role of Archie Bunker’s wife Edith in the long-running American television series, All In The Family, and Lenore Zann. The play was a musical murder mystery inspired by Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who even rate a mention in the lyrics. Ten guests at an English country manor house are being murdered one by one; a real Ten Little Indians affair. The set was elaborate. Andy explained, “They had a huge mansion built on stage, a six-ton set.”

  The tedium of filming a play for television was something that Andy hadn’t encountered in his Solid Gold days, and just as the characters in the play were diminishing so were the audience numbers. “We’d start every evening with a live audience,” he recalled. “We kept stopping to get things right, and they’d get bored and leave until in the end, there was nobody in the audience at all.”

  Soon, he found himself escaping into music during quiet moments in the filming of the show. While his co-stars studied their lines, “I’d find myself slipping in the tape of the Joseph soundtrack. I loved the music,” he confessed.

  When Something’s A foot first aired on December 9, 1982, Andy’s performance was given full marks. Showtime repeated the show three more times during the month.

  On December 1, 1982, Andy made his Broadway début in Joseph And The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat at New York’s Royale Theater, opening to rave reviews. His parents, Barry and Maurice were there to cheer him on for his opening night, and Andy’s name proved to have a powerful drawing power, ensuring sold-out houses. Nearly every night brought another round of standing ovations, and Andy seemed to be on top of the world.

  The show’s producer, Zev Bufman, said, “When he started rehearsals, his brothers were jumping up and down with excitement. His mum and dad came over from England.”

  In Manhattan’s Celebrity Café, Andy met the country music star, Tanya Tucker, with whom he was romantically linked for a very short time. Tanya had recently ended a well publicised relationship with an older star; in her case, singer Glen Campbell. Her publicist rather tactlessly revealed, “Tanya had a two-night with [boxer Gerry] Cooney and a three-night stand with Gibb.” Tanya’s mother confirmed, “Tanya called me from New York at four a.m., and this man said, ‘Hello, Mama Tucker. This is Gerry Cooney.’ I talked with Andy Gibb one morning too. It was really exciting.” Tanya has since said that her feelings for Andy were almost maternal, explaining, “You just wanted to baby him.”

  While Andy enjoyed the music and the spectacle of Joseph, he admitted wistfully, “I miss performing in front of my fans, singing my own hits and stuff.”

  But the following month, Andy missed a full week of performances and was threatened with firing if he didn’t return. “He used to say it was because of his throat,” his mother explained, “but of course, it wasn’t. They bought that for a while, and then they realised what was happening. We couldn’t get himout of bed, you know, his door was locked. It happened and it’d break his heart, you know, he was sorry. But then it would happen again.”

  “He was always talking about it as a new start,” Bufman recalled. “But we’d lose him over long weekends. He’d come back on Tuesday, and he’d look beat. He was like a litt
le puppy — so ashamed when he did something wrong.”

  Bufman added, “He was all heart, but he didn’t have enough muscle to carry through.” His words were more prophetic than he could ever have imagined.

  On January 12, Andy didn’t appear for either the matinée or the evening performance at the Royale Theater. His scheduled TV appearances were cancelled, and his understudy Doug Voet took his place on stage. Bufman said, “Doug has been great. He gets standing ovations so he’ll be the logical one to replace Andy.”

  Unfortunately, no matter how talented he might be, Doug Voet was not a familiar name, and in the long term, the show needed a star. Other former teen idols stepped into the role of Joseph. First David Cassidy and later Donny Osmond would wear the multicoloured “dreamcoat,” with the latter recording both the soundtrack and a video of the show.

  Three years later, Andy admitted, “My past history has shown what the drug has done to me. I lost a lot of work through it. I lost Solid Gold. I lost Joseph on Broadway,” but in the months after his dismissal from the show, he simply blamed immaturity and insisted that he would love to return to the theatre sometime in the future. “I’d really want to be ready for it, though,” he said. “I didn’t work out and get in shape for those other things. I just wasn’t ready for them. I guess I’ll have to wait until I’m older. Right now, my attention span over three months is very bad, doing the same thing night after night. But maybe when I get older, more mature, maybe then I can cut it.”

  He felt that his time with both Pirates and Joseph had given him valuable experience. “I’m just sorry I wasn’t able to stick it out [in Joseph for] the full six months,” he said. “But it was very demanding on me at the time, doing eight shows a week.”

  Like his eldest brother before him, Andy was tempted by a career in Hollywood. “I have had some offers, but nothing I’d want to do the first time out,” he explained. “They always want me to play a rock singer, but I don’t want to take a film role and then play myself. When the right thing comes along, though, I’ll know it.”

  In the meantime, he was still in demand as a famous face, making the rounds of talk shows and awards presentations. At the 1983 American Music Awards, Andy teamed up with a member of another famous singing family, La Toya Jackson, to present the Favourite Pop Group award to Hall & Oates.

  In June, he began his first South American tour, with scheduled appearances in Brazil, Columbia, Argentina, Venezuela and Puerto Rico. It was an unfortunate coincidence, given its reputation, that Columbia was the one country where problems were encountered. But it had nothing whatsoever to do with drugs, more to do with the expectations of the promoter outweighing those of the performer. As the disagreement between the two gained momentum, Andy felt threatened and eventually sought refuge in the country’s American Embassy when the promoter refused to return his passport. Being a famous face undoubtedly helped his cause, and although Andy was a resident alien rather than an American citizen, members of the elite United States Special Forces Unit escorted him back to the US without incident.

  Recovering from his ordeal, which was kept out of the press, Andy insisted that reports of his condition after his well-publicised split from Victoria Principal were exaggerated, and that he now was off drugs and completely over his emotional crisis, with no desire to discuss what had passed. “I’m not saying it wasn’t bad. It certainly wasn’t good,” he admitted. “It’s something everybody wants to talk about. It just seems to me, why does it have to be brought up? The point is, it’s not something I’m ashamed of. It’s something I learned a lesson from.

  “To me, it’s just an old memory,” he said. “I’m so much healthier now and really together.”

  Andy and his band and managers went on a camping trip on a lake near Santa Barbara, California, between gigs. “The idea was to just relax and catch some bass and have a good time,” he said.

  In August, he launched his nightclub act with a one-week engagement at The Resorts International Hotel Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, with former Bee Gees’ band member, Dennis Bryon, on drums. It was yet another fresh start for the 25-year-old.

  “This is a whole new thing to me,” Andy said. “I’ve never done anything quite like this before, and we have been working hard putting the show together, rehearsing every day. In fact, right now my voice is really sore. The difference between this and the big concerts is that the setting is more intimate. I’ll be talking more than I have before, chatting with the audience. And besides that, we’ll have a few surprises up our sleeves — some dance routines, things that I’ve never done before.”

  Two days after his Resorts International Casino appearance was over, Andy opened a one-week stand at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

  Press reports described him as a young Tom Jones with wholesome appeal, adding, “Versatility seems to be Andy’s calling card.” Andy’s set included ‘Old Time Rock’n’Roll’, ‘Show Me’ ‘How Deep Is Your Love’, ‘Massachusetts’, ‘Words’ and a Mills Brothers medley with his own songs, ‘Time Is Time’, ‘Me (Without You)’ and ‘Shadow Dancing’.

  Next he planned to return to the recording studio to begin work on an album, scheduled for release in the spring of 1984.

  “I’m looking forward to it,” said Andy. “It’s time that I get back to recording. It’s just that there were so many hits in a rather short time, and I needed to get away from it for a while, to try other things. But now I’m looking forward to getting back at it. I have six of my own songs. They aren’t quite finished yet, but I think they’re pretty good songs.” But the album was not to be.

  In November, Andy co-hosted the Penthouse Magazine One Million Dollar Pet Of The Year awards at the Sands Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City.

  Despite the time that had passed since his last record, he continued to be in demand for television appearances throughout 1983, featuring on the situation-comedy, Gimme A Break (with Dennis Bryon), Battlestars and Fantasy, which he co-hosted on several episodes. He also continued to perform live in Denver and at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, and opened on December 26 at the Diplomat Hotel in Hollywood, Florida. He began the New Year at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas with his Solid Gold co-star, Marilyn McCoo, playing from January 13—19, 1984, and returning for a repeat engagement from May 3—30.

  In February he gave a concert at Vina Del Mar in Chile, playing before 35,000 fans, and was honoured with The Silver Torch award for his performance. From there he went on to a week’s engagement at the Sun City Resort Hotel in South Africa, ending the day before his twenty-sixth birthday.

  Returning to North America, Andy made appearances in Minneapolis, Montreal and Lake Tahoe in the spring, before kicking off his summer season with a week at Caesar’s in Atlantic City.

  Once again teaming up with his former co-star Marilyn McCoo, Andy kicked off a 10-date tour in Dallas, performing with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. On his final concert of the tour at the James. L. Knight Center in Miami Beach on September 1, Andy was joined on stage by his brother Maurice and his eight-year-old nephew, Adam. The proceeds of the concert, which was filmed, were donated to benefit the American Diabetes Foundation.

  Later that month, Andy appeared on a television show about heart disease called For The Sake Of Heart Life. No one could possibly have guessed at that time that the athletic, fit young man could have any health concerns in that direction.

  Returning to his Malibu ranch, Andy took on the task of singing the national anthem before a Los Angeles Raiders football game. ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ is a difficult piece of music for anyone to sing in those circumstances, since football stadiums are not built for acoustics and your own voice echoes back at you. For someone who grew up in Australia and Britain, it must be even more daunting, but Andy performed it faultlessly.

  On December 18, Andy made another sitcom appearances, this time on Punky Brewster, playing the piano teacher of the young title character. He reappeared on the programme a month later, this time acting
as the master of ceremonies — even taking part in a magic trick — for the “Miss Adorable Pageant”.

  In January, 1985, it was reported that Andy was due to start filming a movie called Satan And Eve in Rome. Andy was cast as Adam, with Orson Welles as God and Malcom McDowell as Satan, but the project fell through.

  Andy was very briefly romantically linked with another actress, 17-year-old daytime soap star Melissa Brennan Reeves, who played Jade on Santa Barbara and currently appears on another soap opera, Days Of Our Lives, in the part of Jennifer Horton.

  He appeared live at the Olympic Velodrome in Montreal in February and was asked to head the Royal Command Performance of Australia Salutes The UK for Princess Anne. He insisted that there was “no drug problem, no way. I only had one drug problem in my life and I’m never gonna go through that again,” he stated emphatically, but by early spring, it was clear that he was once again losing the battle with substance abuse.

  Barbara watched helplessly as the son she adored turned into a stranger. “When he was under the influence, that wasn’t him at all,” she insisted. “That was [when] somebody else took over. The next day, he would be back apologising to everybody. He wouldn’t know what he’d done, but he would be sorry.”

  He became demanding and abusive to the people he worked with, ordering them to supply him with cocaine. “He would threaten them that he wouldn’t go on stage if they didn’t get him some … I don’t know where they got it from, but somebody always managed to get him some,” Barbara said sadly. Her naïve remarks about the comparative dangers of drugs in the Seventies must have haunted her as she watched Andy’s decline.

  Andy’s problems ran much deeper than the drugs and alcohol which he used as a crutch to cope with his extreme lack of self-esteem. His agent at the time, Jeff Witjas, said, “Sometimes I’d say, ‘Andy, look in the mirror. You’ve got everything — good looks, talent. Women love you.’ Men liked him too. But when he looked in the mirror, you always had the feeling he didn’t see anything.”