The Ultimate Biography of The Bee Gees

by Hector Cook

  ‘Andy’s Song’

  Am I all that I appear

  when the spotlight dims and dies

  or only a reflection

  of the glitter etched in lies

  Been far from home for much too long

  not sure what I should feel

  and even if I felt it

  could I be sure it’s real

  So dim the lights and set the stage

  they want to see the show

  all the time and effort

  Lord, I hope they know

  ’Cause with every song a part of me

  is what I give to you

  and when the show is over

  may the memory shine through

  It’s hard to form relationships

  when you’re on the road a lot

  I’ve yet to find a lady

  who’ll forgive the things I’m not

  There’s a side of me that’s worked so hard

  for all I’ve come to know

  a dream achieved throughout the years

  I just can’t let it go

  So dim the lights and set the stage

  they want to see the show

  all the time and effort

  Lord, I hope they know

  ’Cause with every song a part of me

  is what I give to you

  and when the show is over

  may the memory shine through.

  © Andy Gibb, 1985

  Another memorial service was held in Miami, and a plaque dedicated to Andy’s memory was placed at St. Mary’s Chapel in Thame.

  * * *

  In the aftermath, Andy’s family and friends struggled to come to terms with their loss. “It was a devastating experience for us, obviously,” Barry explained, “but you know, I think it was more devastating for our mum and dad than it was for us. He was our youngest brother, but when it’s the youngest in the family, I think Mum and Dad really feel it the hardest.

  “But you know, the fascinating thing about all of that situation is, three months before he died, this boy learnt to fly a plane. Now, you have to think about that. You know, it takes an awful lot for a person to learn to fly a plane. We haven’t done it; Maurice would probably like to. But you know it takes an awful lot of mental, you know, concentration to learn to fly. And he did this three months before he died. So you have to at least assume that his head was in the right place.”

  It is indicative of the way that that everyone who knew Andy thought of him; that at 30 years old, Barry still referred to him as a boy.

  “It’s like the old Shakespeare saying — Andy did have success thrust upon him,” Robin said. “He wasn’t born into it, he wasn’t prepared for it. He went from being a young kid to being a young star who could get anything he wanted, and he’d spend it until there was nothing left.”

  Barry agreed, “He is a perfect example of what happens if the business gets you and you don’t get the business. He was not strong enough to deal with it.”

  “Andy’s problem wasn’t drugs or alcohol,” Barry reiterated. “It was the lack of things. He lacked confidence. He had forgotten how to grab life. That was the sad thing. He’d lost faith.”

  “We wanted to revitalise him, get his confidence back, refocus him,” Robin added. “He was really young when he died. There was a hell of a lot he could have done. Maybe he never should have pursued a solo career. Maybe he should have got confidence without having success first; maybe it would have been better for his first four or five records to have died.”

  A year on, Maurice maintained, “In many ways, I think we’ve all refused to accept he’s gone for good. I suppose because he was taken from us so suddenly, we still find it impossible to accept. His death has definitely brought the rest of the family closer together. We are united in our devastation.”

  For Barry, the memories of his last telephone conversation with his youngest brother are painful. “I regret that we didn’t spend more time. We were always too busy and of course, you always have that after somebody’s gone. You always feel remorse because you could have given them more time, there were things you could have said you didn’t say and vice versa. The last thing that happened between me and Andy was an argument, which is devastating for me because I have to live with that all my life. In that phone call between him and me, I was sort of saying, ‘You know, you’ve really got to get your act together, and this is no good.’ Instead of being gentle about it, I was angry because someone had said to me at some point, you know, tough love is the answer. For me it wasn’t, because that was the last conversation we had. So that’s my regret, that’s what I live with.

  “In hindsight, you could always see things clearer,” Barry added, “how it could have been or what we should have done, or the words that we didn’t say and we should have done and the arguments that we should never have had. All these things go through your mind when you lose someone like Andy. And the guilt, I’m afraid, is part of that. People say we shouldn’t feel responsible or that we shouldn’t feel guilty, but we do. We do.”

  Robin, with whom Andy had spent his last few weeks, was philosophical about his brother’s life. “He was a great artist out of control, and his personality and his emotions just couldn’t deal with what was going on around him and the success that he had. I don’t think he liked the world that was going on out there so he kind of constructed his own; which, in the end when he did have to deal with the real world, was kind of hard for him.”

  Maurice shared similar emotions saying, “I hope people particularly remember his kindness, because he helped a lot of people. He just couldn’t help himself.”

  “Andy is out there, somewhere,” Barry said. “When you lose someone close to you, your concept of death is changed. You can’t believe it is just dust.”

  He insisted, “Both my wife Linda and my mother have seen Andy’s ghost. They both saw him at the same time — in different parts of the world. It was just a few weeks after he’d died. He appeared in front of Linda, unshaven, and kissed her on the cheek. He woke her up! The very next day, my mother phoned from Nevada and told me exactly the same story.”

  “I was sleeping alone and felt something very strange,” Linda explained. “The light was on at the end of the bedroom, as one of the children had been in. It was about four a.m. I felt a kiss and a little bit of bristle on my face. I opened my eyes and looked up and Andy was there. He was smiling.”

  Maurice, too, claimed to have ghostly visitations. “Andy always came by boat; he never used the front door. He’d park and say, ‘Hey, buddy!’ He always used to say ‘buddy’, which I think he picked up from The Osmonds. I was having this barbecue with the family, and then we went inside. I heard, ‘Hey, buddy!’ as loud as anything. It was his voice. It had this slight nasalness to it.” He has also mentioned Andy’s favourite chair moving in the studio, or seeing Andy’s face in the audience when The Bee Gees have performed live.

  While Kim made no claims of apparitions, she said, “I think Andy will haunt me for the rest of my life. I know that I will never find anyone who will love me as much as Andy did.” She and Peta returned to Australia with much unresolved.

  “There were times when he thought I might have turned [Peta] against him,” Kim explained, “but I never dreamed of doing that. I wanted her to love him. And I wanted her to know that Andy loved her.”

  In that, at least, she was successful. Peta, whose only meeting with her father took place when she was just two years old, knew him through his phone calls. “Well, my main memories of him are on the phone, and he was always, you know, my father, sweet and gentle, and he seemed to love me,” she said, “so I grew up with that.”

  “In quite a few phone calls that he made, he did tell me that not a day went by when he didn’t think of us,” Kim revealed. “I think we were the only touch with reality he ever had.”

  A year after Andy’s death, she mused, “It was all so long ago and yet the interest in Andy has never faded. Why? I know Andy worshippe
d his older brother, Barry, but I always thought that Andy had the greatest potential of the lot. Maybe that’s why he still generates so much interest.”

  In 1989, Kim appealed to the executors of Andy’s estate on her daughter’s behalf. “I have never been interested in money,” she insisted, “especially Andy’s money.” She continued to live with her parents, staying home with Peta and existing on the Australian welfare, until Peta began school at age five. “At the time, Andy was making millions, but I never asked him for a penny,” she added.

  “But Peta is older now, and her needs have grown. And she is the only heir to Andy’s estate. I want justice for her. I want to establish what Andy left — if anything — and I want her to receive what is rightfully hers.”

  Kim’s main goal for her daughter was to see that she received the education that both her parents lacked. With understandable pride, she stated, “Peta is special. She’s bright, always at the top of her class. She’s a great little poet, and she loves to write songs and sing and dance.”

  While Kim admitted that she had reservations about “the song and dance part” after seeing the destructive side of show business, she said, “I’d never stop her from doing whatever she wants. The only thing that I’m adamant about is that she gets an education. I don’t want her to be forced into a career she doesn’t want because she doesn’t have the right qualifications.”

  She reflected back to her last court battles, saying, “The one thing I remember out of the divorce proceedings is a line my QC said to me. He said Andy and I didn’t matter, that a child takes precedence over everything. Peta is the most important person in my life, and I intend to take care of her to the best of my ability. And if it means going through the horrors of another legal battle, I’ll do it. I just hope it doesn’t come to that. This may sound odd, but I believe Andy would have wanted me to do battle for Peta. I feel this is the last thing I can do for him, the last wish I can fulfil.”

  Barry, Robin and Maurice agreed with Kim’s assessment that Peta’s education should be everyone’s first concern, and they arranged for funds to be made available for her school and college fees in later years. Additionally, mindful of the family’s responsibility to Peta as Andy’s sole beneficiary, they were also instrumental in negotiating appreciable increases in the royalty rate payable on Andy’s record sales which, although far from the level that they were in his heyday, remain meaningful if not substantial. In any event, Peta seems to be enjoying life away from the public eye and, at the time of writing, is pursuing a career in the fashion industry.

  * * *

  Everyone who knew Andy displays genuine affection for him and deep regret for what might have been.

  For Robert Stigwood, who had launched Andy’s career, the fight to persuade Andy to seek help for his alcohol and substance abuse left its own scars. “I tried and tried and tried and broke my heart,” he said, yet he remained sympathetic about the pressures of teenage adulation which drove Andy in that direction. “It is terribly hard to cope with. He got devoured because he was the current celebrity.”

  Family friend David English fondly remembers the high-spirited “little boy [of] about 14 or 15, whom he first met with Barry. “I saw a lot of signs of great enthusiasm, he was just like a Barry junior. He was very keen and very funny, a chip off the old block. He was somebody who was so versatile; he flew planes, he was wonderful on boats, he was a good singer … but the problem with Andy was that he never really realised how good he was, he always had to be continually reminded how good he was. He was always living in the shadow of his brothers, but he didn’t have to because he was certainly exceptional in his own right … He used to run around, always very keen … He used to get bored very easily, always needed to be on the go all the time.”

  John Stringer and John Alderson, members of Andy’s first band Melody Fayre on the Isle of Man, both remember hearing the news of Andy’s death on the radio as they were driving to work. “It was a complete shock,” said John Stringer, now a police sergeant on the island. “My own personal feelings are that I would have liked to have met him again as a bit more grown up. We had far more good times with him than we ever had bad times. I’ve always been a little bit upset that Andy never contacted me or John [Alderson], for old time’s sake more than anything, because we did get on well with him, and we didn’t have any arguments with him.”

  Down Under, the radio also brought the sad news to Trevor Norton from Zenta. “The people I was with that morning could see I was quite upset,” he recalled. “I could not believe it. Even though I had not seen him for quite a few years, it really hit me. He was one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met.”

  His Pirates Of Penzance co-star, Pam Dawber, said, “I felt like he died of a broken heart. I felt like he just checked out; he just couldn’t do it anymore.”

  “Andy had everything,” Marie Osmond said. “He had fame and popularity and the money and anything you could want, but he was still empty.”

  For actress Victoria Principal, Andy’s death left much unspoken but like his brothers, she too was able to find her own way to resolve things. “Several years after Andy died, I had a dream and in that dream, Andy came to me, knowing that I was haunted by our unfinished business. So we sat down, and we had the talk that I certainly wanted to have and that we probably needed to have. I thought it was so like Andy, even after his death to find a way to bring me solace because he was simply the nicest person I’ve ever known.” However, she reflected, “I had to live for many years with the awareness it wasn’t if Andy would die, it would be when Andy would die.”

  Brad Lachman, who signed him to co-host the American television show Solid Gold, remembered Andy as “a very charming, vulnerable and charismatic performer. He wanted everyone to love him. He had so much going for him, but he just couldn’t believe it.”

  * * *

  Just two months after Andy’s death, The Andy Gibb Memorial Foundation was formed by Renée Schreiber, Beverly Burke and Karen Witkowski to continue to raise funds through the charities he had supported throughout his lifetime. It still thrives to this day.

  On March 10, 1989, the Gibbs’ adopted hometown of Miami, Florida named a street in Andy’s honour, Andy Gibb Drive. The Mayor of Miami Beach, Alex Daoud, and Miami Beach commissioners named the street in South Point Park in Miami Beach in honour of Andy’s accomplishments and charitable work for the community. The mayor brought Barry, Robin and Maurice on stage to present them with the proclamation, which Barry accepted, saying that he felt that Andy was there in the park with everyone, enjoying the sunshine. A cheque for $5,000 from the Andy Gibb Memorial Foundation was presented by Renée Schreiber to the American Heart Association.

  “We promised ourselves when Andy died that something would be done in his memory,” Barry explained. “We want to thank the Mayor, the City Commission and the people of Miami Beach for helping us to fulfil that dream.” The sign later disappeared but was restored with the change of name to Andy Gibb Way.

  In 1991, Polydor released a CD, entitled simply Andy Gibb, consisting of Andy’s greatest hits with one track from his final recording sessions, ‘Man On Fire’. Another, ‘Arrow Through The Heart’, remains officially unreleased, but the Gibb family agreed to its use in VH1’s Behind The Music: Andy Gibb, whilst ‘Price Of Fame’ and ‘Hell Or High Water’ were never released. Andy’s first three albums would finally be released in CD format in 1997.

  The world around him changed, but Andy Gibb never did. Whether he could have regained the early promise of his career, we will never know, but he remains forever young in the memories of those closest to him; the bright star that burned out far too quickly.

  The haunting final words come from Andy himself. In one of his last songs, ‘Arrow Through The Heart’, the eerily prophetic lyrics describe the protagonist’s anguish in his quest for an everlasting love.

  But an arrow through the heart,

  Arrow through the heartbreak over you,

  Steady hand, yo
ur aim is true,

  Bring me to my knees again,

  I’m too young to die.

  Andrew Roy Gibb, March 5, 1958-March 10, 1988.

  38

  WISH YOU WERE HERE

  “THEY SAY IT causes soul growth when you lose somebody,” Barry mused. “Before, you don’t look at the metaphysical side of life much at all. After, you start looking at everything like that …”

  Barry believes that the loss of their brother was the catalyst for The Bee Gees’ decision to go back to live performances. “Andy’s death kicked us in the pants and got us going again. It got us motivated to go back on the road. Andy’s death stopped us in our tracks and woke us up.

  “The trauma of losing Andy, the idea that we were wasting what we were doing, everything compounded to make us start performing again,” he explained. “We were a live group before we ever made a record. We’re out to show that that’s the kind of energy we’re prepared to put in our work. We don’t want to hide behind our records, which we’ve done for the last 10 years.”

  Although they were still unwilling to commit to a full tour, the three surviving Gibb brothers made their first live appearance at the Atlantic Records 40th Anniversary Concert at Madison Square Garden in New York on May 15, 1988. Backed by Paul Schaffer & The World’s Most Dangerous Band*, The Bee Gees performed ‘To Love Somebody’, ‘Lonely Days’ and ‘Jive Talkin’ ’ to an appreciative audience.

  This was followed on June 6 by their first live appearance in Great Britain in 14 years. The group took part in The Prince’s Trust Rock Gala Concert at the Royal Albert Hall, where they performed ‘Jive Talkin’ ’ and ‘You Win Again’ and were presented afterwards to the Prince and Princess of Wales. Five days later, they joined in the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute Concert at Wembley Stadium, performing ‘You Win Again’ and ‘I’ve Gotta Get A Message To You’. As with the Prince’s Trust concert, Phil Collins was their guest drummer for the performances.

  The following week, Barry took part in the Harrod’s Pro-Celebrity Tennis Tournament at the Royal Albert Hall in London.