The Ultimate Biography of The Bee Gees

by Hector Cook

  “It’s good,” Maurice added. “It was quite funny hearing him with a drum machine and a keyboard in his lounge room somewhere, singing the song with his bit in the middle that he put in. But it’s a lovely tape, and we value [it] very much.”

  While Albhy raves about the song itself, he calls it “one of those cases where I would say we lost it in the mix.”

  Both the album and the single were released in September, 1985, with the single reaching number 38 in Germany, but only a disappointing 71 in the UK and 77 in the US.

  The surprise big hit of the album was the second single, ‘Chain Reaction’ — “the one song that wasn’t going to be on the album,” Barry said. “It was, in fact, the last song we cut. We’d done the whole album and she said, ‘Well, we still need one more song from somewhere.’ We’d had ‘Chain Reaction’ all along but hadn’t the nerve to play it to her because it was so Tamla Motown-ish that we were scared she wouldn’t want to go back there.”

  Robin recalled, “We said, ‘We think it’s time you did something which you would have done with The Supremes, not as Diana Ross. It’s time to do that again.’ She didn’t really think it was going to be appropriate at the time. It wasn’t ’til after she’d recorded it and sat down and heard it, that she thought it was right, and it was a credible tribute to her past.”

  Released in December, The Supremes-like number with Barry singing the back-up was a massive hit in some countries, topping the charts in Britain* and Australia and reaching number 11 in Germany. It did nothing at all in the United States, where a new Diana Ross release was as welcome as a Bee Gees release at that time.

  The single was well supported by a brilliant video of Ross looking much as she did in her Supremes days, singing the song against a black and white set in a Sixties-type television studio with a live audience, á la Hullabaloo; then as the song goes into its chorus, the video changes to colour and an Eighties-style Diana Ross. The song captured the Motown/Supremes era so perfectly that the black singers miming Barry’s backing vocals looked perfectly natural. The single was even reissued in the UK eight years later in October, 1993, and placed number 20 in its second outing.

  A third single, ‘Experience’, was written by all four Gibb brothers. It reached number 47 in the British charts in April, 1986, but failed to make a showing elsewhere.

  The overlooked gem of the album would be ‘More And More’, a cocktail lounge piano number by Barry, Andy and Albhy that Miss Ross coos in a nice Marilyn Monroe voice.

  Barry summed up the experience by saying, “Diana Ross is a woman of many parts, and I think, it’s not really a criticism, but I think she concentrates on about a dozen things at once. She might be hosting the Academy Awards on the same week as she’s doing her vocal and you won’t see her ’cause she’s at rehearsals when she should be singing … I wouldn’t call it unprofessional, I wouldn’t have the right to call it unprofessional — this woman was having hits when I was having my diapers changed. I’m not going to have the audacity to say that Diana Ross is unprofessional. All I’m saying was, it wasn’t comfortable.”

  * * *

  The first sign of trouble within The Bee Gees’ camp was the discord between Barry and Albhy, but there were rumblings of discontent elsewhere. While Barry was enjoying the independence that Middle Ear afforded him, Robin and Maurice were not enjoying quite the same use of the facility. Maurice had been heard to grumble about having to use Criteria’s studio when all three brothers had one of their own. Barry enthused, “One of the nicest things about having your own studio is the ability to leave complicated set-ups on the console or in the studio and know that no other act is going to be booked in the morning, so you will have to change it all back again in the afternoon. We can make our own hours and fine tune set-ups for days, if necessary, which enables us to complete projects in a way that gives us much more creative freedom.”

  “All three of them shared the ownership [of Middle Ear], so all three of them shared the expenses,” Tom Kennedy explained. “Any project that went through there was billed.

  “It was really that Barry got first tabs on it, and it cost them a third each to run it … If it costs $175 an hour to break even, that’s what they would pay … I always thought if Robin and Maurice weren’t going to get the use out of it, it shouldn’t cost them money, and I actually voiced that opinion on many occasions and got away with it … Why should it cost 25 grand to Robin and Maurice, you know, why have a studio at all?”

  Barry teamed up with country star Larry Gatlin to write ‘Indian Summer’, which was included on The Gatlin Brothers’ Smile LP in October, 1985 and was also issued as a single in Australia. The song featured lead vocals by Larry, with Barry and Roy Orbison providing backing vocals. Barry also played synthesizer and Maurice keyboards on the track. It has since appeared on several Roy Orbison anthologies and, as far as David English is concerned, the song is deserving of a wider audience than it has thus far received. “I continually talk to BG about ‘Indian Summer’,” he lamented. “If ever there was a song which would go to number one, it’s ‘Indian Summer’. That and ‘My Eternal Love’,” he reflected.

  Barry was also rumoured to be considering album projects for Neil Diamond and fellow Miami resident, Julio Iglesias.

  Walls Have Eyes, Robin’s third album of the Eighties, was recorded at Criteria and Middle Ear. It was again a joint project with Maurice, who provided keyboards, bass, and backing vocals, and produced it together with Atlantic veteran Tom Dowd. Barry co-wrote eight of the 10 songs, and sang on one. The brothers were inching towards a Bee Gees reunion.

  Dowd recalled the album as something of “an exercise,” elaborating, “It wasn’t really a worthy recording endeavour. We tried and did the best we could with the material and the concept and the budget which we had available. But in all sincerity, I don’t think it was the best Robin could do. It wasn’t my cup of tea, finally.”

  The instigator for the project was the head of A&R for Polygram in the UK. “I think he was a loyal Bee Gees fan,” Dowd explained. “He wasn’t heavy-handed about what he wanted, but he didn’t give us the artistic freedom we’d like to have [had] … It was never a dispute, but just not the way you’d like it to be.”

  An animated and gifted storyteller who changes voices and character to fit the tale, he continued, “It was ‘I want this, and something that’ll do that, and it’s got to fit this.’ He’s not giving the artist the freedom of expressing what the artist is best at. That’s normal, because when they sign somebody they’re thinking, ‘If we can get them into this market, we can do this and that.’ They’re living in a different world. All of a sudden you realise that, ‘Wait a minute, I’m not in here to make the best record that this artist is capable of making, I’m here to make a record that will fill this guy’s concept of what he can sell,’ which is a little bit different, you know! Sometimes you can pull it off, and sometimes it isn’t a very good marriage.”

  “We were sitting on a tight monetary consideration, and here we were recording in the United States for a record company that’s in England, and once in a while somebody shows up, and the rest of the time it’s like, ‘What did you do, you should have told me,’ and all of a sudden, the reins are getting tighter.”

  Both the albumand first single were released in November, 1985. The lead single was ‘Like A Fool’, similar in feel to ‘Another Lonely Night in New York’. Unlike the songs on Now Voyager, all the tracks on Walls Have Eyes are all pretty straight verse-chorus songs, so Robin seems to have directed the songwriting using contributions from Barry, not the way a Bee Gees album would be written by the same three. ‘Like A Fool’ is nicely done, but nothing they hadn’t done before just as well.

  The second single ‘Toys’ was released in February, 1986, and features all three brothers. “I think at this point, because things weren’t going the way they ‘were planned to go’,” Tom Dowd intoned slowly, shifting into his Dr Evil voice for the final four words, “it was, ‘Hey, ma
ybe if we get the brothers on it, we’ll be able to come out smelling better.’ I am guessing that — I can’t determine what goes on in record companies’ minds. That was an unusual record company. It wasn’t like Atlantic, where we were always exchanging information and in touch with each other. Here we were working with record companies that were not as well organised and not as sensitive to artists and artists’ facilities.”

  Barry’s second Love & Hope Tennis Festival was held on December 13 and 14, 1985. Once again, Andy was on hand to lend support to the charity and in addition to his own ‘Shadow Dancing’, also joined his eldest brother for a seasonal favourite, ‘White Christmas’.

  * * *

  In September, 1985, a young songstress called Carola visited Barry and Maurice in Miami to record some demos, hopefully for an album. She stayed only one week on that first visit, returning to Sweden with her demos and the promise of a whole album in the future.

  Carola Maria Häggkvist was born on September 8, 1966, in Hägersten, Sweden. Like the Gibb brothers, singing was always her first love and Carola rapidly became Sweden’s hottest singer and developed a strong following in the Far East as well, although European stardom outside Scandinavia eluded her. In April, 1985, she signed with Polydor International with her next album to be produced by Maurice. She met with Maurice in London just before Christmas to further discuss the project, returning to Miami early in the new year to begin recording.

  “It was a wonderful experience to work with The Bee Gees,” Carola said. “A fabulous thing, in fact. Maurice and Robin were in the studio everyday. Maurice is very modest, and we do have the same kind of humour. Robin is very concentrated when he is working. He helped me with the pronunciation, and he does have much musical specialities.

  “Most of the studio work was done in the afternoons and evenings. In the daytime I went out to the beach and relaxed. It was great,” she enthused.

  Maurice was equally impressed with her. He raved, “Her voice is remarkably perfect, and she is easy to work with. She is really fantastic!”

  The resulting album, Runaway was issued only in Sweden. Maurice co-wrote all the songs with Robin, some also with Barry, and one with keyboard player Rhett Lawrence, the only musician on the album besides Maurice, and one with Lawrence and Carola herself. Robin adds some backing vocals but Barry was not involved with the recording itself.

  Carola has a good clear voice somewhat reminiscent of the Scottish singer, Sheena Easton, that combines well with Maurice’s usual clean production. The lead single, ‘The Runaway’, written by Robin and Maurice, was a good representative of an album that, as far as most non-European fans are concerned, was so hard to obtain that its release went virtually unnoticed. A video for the single was shot in Miami, and the song topped the charts in Sweden and reached the Top 10 in other Scandinavian countries.

  “I think Runaway still today ranks as a very modern, and up-to-date album, having been made in the Eighties. It was in forefront of the technology in those days. I still like it a lot,” Carola said.

  She explained that she had little input on the album. “I was too young and inexperienced to get fully involved in the making of the songs, although I did a bit on one track. I had very little to say all in all in the project. I was just the voice. The songs were also a bit too high for me, I think. Maurice made me sing so high! Especially on the track ‘We Are Atomic’. These days I like to sing a bit lower on the scale, so I have something to balance with if I go up.”

  Shortly after the release of the albumin July, 1986, Carola joined the Livets Ord fundamentalist sect, and it was rumoured that she refused to promote the album, a charge she denied years later. “I wanted to do a lot of promotion. In fact, I was up to it. But the communication between me and The Bee Gees was not up and running. They heard things from other sources, and they probably believed those stories. Anyway, the album died, and I went on to other projects.”

  The album was withdrawn after a short time. “There was this person responsible for the project in Polydor,” Carola explained, “and when he quit, the whole project sort of disappeared.” Despite its short release time, it was a platinumseller in her native country, selling 200,000 copies in Scandinavia. “In retrospect, I was perhaps not ready for eventual international stardom,” she added.

  * * *

  During 1986, Barry commenced recording his second solo album that was never released, probably because of his American label MCA. Many of the songs appeared on his Hawks soundtrack two years later. They are similar in style to Now Voyager for the most part, although with greater variety since there was a country ballad and a few sung in falsetto. For whatever reasons, this project was pushed back until it collided with The Bee Gees’ reunion album E.S.P. Three songs that appeared on Hawks also appeared on non-American copies of the 1990 box set, Tales From The Brothers Gibb, of which Barry said he was especially proud of ‘Letting Go’, one of the falsetto ballads.

  Another Barry project begun at this same time was The Bunburys, with the single of ‘We’re The Bunburys’ issued on Island in June with no reference to Barry or The Bee Gees as performers, although the writer credit to Barry and David English was visible on the disk. The 45 rpm came in the back cover of a thin children’s book about a team of cricket-playing rabbits, written by David English, who narrates the story for the B-side, and illustrated by Jan Brychta. Barry Gibb contributes a short and uncredited speaking part on the track, doing his best Australian imitation.

  “It’s for under-privileged children, the charity that we’ve chosen for The Bunburys,” Barry explained. “In other words, charities that will be involved with us having to find a large piece of land in Scotland, which hopefully with local government permission, we can get to name Bunbury for about two weeks a year … to take under-privileged children or children without parents for the holiday of their lives. Pony rides, hiking, camping. Ian Botham, in fact, will drive the children up there, and other star players will come up there and play cricket with the kids.”

  At the beginning of the year, The Bee Gees sang ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ at the annual football game between Florida’s Metro Dade’s Deputy Dawgs and The Force.

  Robin also participated in the all-star assembly at Abbey Road to record ‘Live In World’ as part of an anti-heroin project for the Phoenix House Charity Drug Rehabilitation Centre.

  It was reported that Barry was working with Burt Bacharach and Carole Bayer Sager to write the title song for the next Jane Fonda film, but nothing ever came of the project.

  In September, Barry joined Barbra Streisand in her first live concert appearance in eight years, a Democratic senatorial fundraiser. Dressed in white, the pair reprised their duets of ‘Guilty’ and ‘What Kind Of Fool’ at Barbra’s California ranch before a celebrity audience, and the concert was recorded and filmed as an album, HBO television special and video, One Voice. For the eagle-eyed viewer, ‘What Kind Of Fool’ provides some inadvertent entertainment, watching Barry’s belt mysteriously turn from white to black to white again. Look even closer, and you notice that it’s not even the same white shirt that he’s wearing all the way through the song. Apparently, someone was not pleased with all the close-up shots in the video footage, and parts needed to be re-filmed. No one bothered to check all the fine details in continuity, although the editing is so smoothly done that apart from the changing belt, it appears to be all one seamless performance.

  That same year, Alcatrazz, with former Marble Graham Bonnet as lead singer, reprised ‘Only One Woman’ on their LP.

  Barry held his third Love & Hope Tennis Festival on November 15 and 16, with Andy once again supporting the cause. Barry was also joined on stage for the finale by Andy, Larry Gatlin and long time Australian friend, Noeleen Batley Stewart, who joined for a lively version of ‘What’d I Say’.

  With the non-release of Barry’s album, the limited release of Carola’s albumin Sweden, and the limited release of The Bunburys single in England, it looked to most people as if th
e group had taken a year off. This would have to be the fewest records sold for the most Gibb work since their aborted solo projects of 1970.

  “We’d lost our management and our record company,” Barry explained, “and all of those legal problems associated with both led us into a vacuum for three years. And so, for those years we weren’t a pop group and we enjoyed it. It was good for us. Then I think we basically just got tired of listening to everything that was on the radio and knowing we could do just as well, if not better.”

  * * *

  On October 30, 1986, The Bee Gees had signed a long-term contract with Warner Brothers Records in New York. In honour of the change of record companies, Warner Brothers issued an official promotional cassette entitled Words& Music, celebrating the past, present and future careers of The Bee Gees, while in Brazil, Polydor issued one last Bee Gees promo LP, Bee Gees Mix.

  Early in the year, Beri — at that time called Bobbi — Gibb and her band, Social Fact, produced a demo and video of a 1985 composition by all four Gibb brothers called ‘Girl Gang’.

  In April, ‘Chain Reaction’ picked up the Most Performed Work trophy at the 32nd Annual Ivor Novello Awards in London.