But fourteen songs are a lot, and a few, of necessity, must be rubbish.
In the buildup to the release of the “Words” single, Barry said: “We were not striving for originality, but for melody. I think pop people have been ignoring melody.”{111} “We always keep the public in mind when we do a record,” Maurice said. “We’ll never progress from melody. Nobody knows what commerciality is, if people can whistle a melody and keep it going through their minds, that’s enough.”{112}
“Words,” a straight-up romantic ballad, sincere with a little frosting of cornball,{113} came out on January 26. In the UK it hit #8, but in the US made only #15. The band regarded “Words” as a near failure. “I thought it would have been a bigger hit than it is, because it is very commercial, as commercial as ‘Massachusetts,’ and basically it is on the same lines,” Vince said. “I thought it would have been a No. 1.” “We set our own trends,” Robin said. “We avoid influences. We never look for ideas. You look for ideas and you become unoriginal. You leave your mind open.”{114} “We don’t like anything to do with trends,” Vince echoed.
It’s a tough stance, insisting that they ignored trends, when to listeners and critics, the effect of their influence was obvious. “The Bee Gees are to the Beatles as Cliff Richards was to Elvis Presley,” writes Miller, wrong-headedly dismissing their originality. He argues that the Bees Gees’ music represents a “virtuoso codification of British group conventions.”{115} He means that the Bee Gees do a great job of synthesizing the conventions of British pop: strings, Beatles harmonies and production, twee psychedelia, melodrama and “no bullshit here, just unblushing romanticism.” Miller misses the point. The weak Bee Gees cuts might fall prey to his list of symptoms, but the strong ones prove him wrong. Being wrong did not stop Miller’s view from becoming the prism through which American critics viewed the Bee Gees for decades to come.
In mid-January, Lulu was a bit smitten with Davey Jones of the Monkees. They wrote one another and spoke on the phone when Davey was able to sort out the time difference between LA and London. Maurice was chasing Lulu by phone as well. He flew to Las Vegas to see Lulu and then flew back to Germany to do a TV show with the band. “A few days after that,” Lulu wrote, “Stigwood was quoted in the press saying I was madly in love with Maurice and had pictures of him plastered all over my walls.” Lulu knew exactly what Stigwood was up to. “I called him and raged down the phone. ‘How dare you use me like that? I’m not stupid. I know what you’re doing’ . . . I slammed down the phone.”{116}
Stigwood was both trading on Lulu’s name to get the band more publicity and pressuring her to give in to Maurice. Lulu gave Maurice hell even as she acknowledged that he wasn’t behind the ruse. Lulu feared the atmosphere of manipulation and control she saw around Stigwood. When she did a two-week stand in London, Maurice showed up every night.
While Maurice chased Lulu, Barry chased fame, for himself and for Stigwood’s other clients. In an interview with Melody Maker, Barry dissected the current state of pop music. “It’s not groups that are selling records now—it’s songs,” he said. “If the Stones recorded something bad, it wouldn’t go. People are buying the song: the performer is almost incidental now. They’ll [sic] be a lot of new groups making it in a big way this year and a lot of the established ones will fall by the wayside. I think the Traffic and the Cream will really be big this year. (Both Traffic and Cream were managed by Stigwood.) The Cream will establish their place as the world’s number one blues group. It’s still possible to make it big in the pop world, if the group is good and they are promoted properly. After all, good promotion is the most important thing, as well as the material.
“The Bee Gees have set a target—you have to or you’d never do anything. We know what we want to do this year and we are going out to do it. If we fail, we’ll set another target and try again. We are confident. You must never feel ‘we’ve made it to the top.’ That’s fatal. It’s a mistake to become egotistical about success because it can turn sour. We’ve been lucky. And we’re glad that no one person has been singled out of the group as the ‘star’ or the person at which all the attention is directed. Because the public can build up a person and then turn against him. They are less likely to do it with a group. But the public is fickle and you have to be prepared for it.”{117}
As “Words” climbed the charts worldwide, the band never rested. In late January they did their first American show in Anaheim, California. In early February they lip-synched “And the Sun Will Shine” on The Smothers Brothers Show, an American variety hour noted for its pro-drug and anti-Vietnam humor and to-the-moment taste in musical guests. Two days later the Bee Gees performed in Copenhagen and Stockholm. In late February, a long series of German shows began that ran into middle March. Their mini-tour concluded with a concert in Berne, Switzerland.
Stories circulate from the European tours of Barry’s curious seduction methods. In the Bee Gees’ autobiography, a book ostensibly written to burnish their image with their fans, Dick Ashby tells of Barry’s carrying a collection of cheap engagement rings. Barry told his potential one-night stands that he had fallen in love with them at first sight and wanted to marry them. He already had a reputation for saying that to every girl he wanted to take home in London. Ashby tells of multiple German girls showing up backstage, each wearing a ring and trying desperately to see Barry. It was up to Ashby to put them off.
Why did Barry think the girls needed extra convincing? Did he not know, or not want to own, how big a star he really was? All Barry had to say was: “Hi, my name is Barry.” His Alpha-ness with the band seems at odds with his romantic technique. Those around him knew he hated to give bad news in person. He might tell people exactly what he wanted them to do, but he preferred to have proxies swing the hammer. Maybe he thought his conquests needed an excuse to sleep with him; maybe he couldn’t bring himself to simply say: “Do you want to come back to my hotel?” Or maybe it goes to Barry’s refusal to deal with emotion in his music. Maybe Barry had to conceal his motives, no matter what the situation. Or maybe he got off on deception.
That such a story—and a later story about their real reasons for cancelling a long-awaited tour—appears in the Bee Gees’ official autobiography illustrates their career-long juxtaposition of ill-conceived oversharing and dunderheaded transparent image-polishing. They never figured out how a spoonful of truth helps the hype go down or how a wagonload of hype hides an unpleasant fact. They never learned what not to say, and seldom understood the effects of what they did say. In other words, they began, and remained, clueless.
Lynda, Barry’s future wife, told of the aftermath of one of Barry’s tour conquests. “Barry was doing a TV thing. I was at home feeling a bit flat, so I was in a scruffy old dress and wearing no make-up. The doorbell rang. We lived in a penthouse and the door wouldn’t open unless I buzzed the person in. You could look through this eye and see who it was. I saw this chick there and thought: ‘Oh!’ because she looked as if she was expected. I opened the door and said: ‘Can I help you?’ She said: ‘Oh yes I have come to see Barry.’ I knew there was some press expected that afternoon so I said ‘Come on in—he won’t be long.’ She made herself very at home, took her coat off and threw it over the chair. She lies back on the chair and says: ‘Barry and I, we are so in love.’ Biting my tongue, I said: ‘Oh really?’ She said: ‘Oh we had such a wonderful time last night at the Top of the Pops.’ I said ‘Oh, you did, did you?’ Getting very mad. She said: ‘Are you the girl who answers the phone and does things for Barry?’ I answered: ‘I’ve just stopped.’ I got on the phone. ‘Who is this girl?’ I screamed. Keith, Barry’s assistant said: ‘What are you talking about?’ I said: ‘The girl who had such a wonderful time with Barry. I’m going to pack my bags and go. Then Barry came to the phone and said: ‘Are you all right, love?’ ‘Barry,’ I said: ‘There’s some Swedish girl telling me about you and her last night.’ He said: ‘Oh, she arrived at Top of the Pops last night, it wasn’t my fa
ult. It happened on a tour before you were around. I said, like I usually do: ‘When you come to England, come to see me.’ I said: ‘I don’t believe you.’” Barry eventually managed to persuade Lynda that he was telling the truth.
Lulu went to LA and indulged in romantic dinners and long nights of “necking” with Davey Jones while they tried to figure out if they were going to become a couple. At the time, Monkee Peter Tork’s LA swimming pool was surrounded daily with lounging naked girls waiting to be taken up by any Monkee who passed. When it came to Lulu, Jones showed remarkable patience.
On March 17, the Bee Gees were in New York for that crucial rite of passage, The Ed Sullivan Show. “Maurice got locked in the toilet of the St. Regis Hotel,” Robin said, “and we only just got him out in time.” Sullivan’s variety hour had introduced Elvis and the Beatles to mainstream American audiences. It was at that time the single most important entertainment marketing venue in the country. Sullivan seemed comatose, a not unusual state for him. “I think Ed had some kind of dementia,” Robin said, “because he introduced us with the words, ‘And now, a great group from England: Cary Grant.’” Actually, Sullivan introduced the band as “a great soloist, Barry Gibb.” “He really didn’t seem to know who we were,” Barry said. “He would say things that made no sense, these strange statements, as if there was something wrong with him.”{118}
Robin slumps at the piano, hair hiding his face, with a sheepish grin and limp hands on the keyboard, looking like the biggest dork in the universe. Maurice sports a Keith Moon bowl haircut and a tight, shiny, bright-green Mod suit. Despite that description, he looks really good. Barry, in a screaming light-blue blazer, leopard-pattern waistcoat, yellow high-collar shirt and maroon ascot tied at this throat like a necktie, is the total pop—not rock—god, a young version of Englebert Humperdink. The band disinterestedly feigns playing to the recorded track. Barry’s flanked by a string and horn section, all faking it like mad. Barry sings live, though, which took courage. The band, with nothing to do, comes off awkward as hell. Barry, radiating confidence, nails it.
Lulu watched the show from her hotel room in LA, worrying that Maurice might have heard about her carrying on with Davey Jones.
In late March, the band released “Jumbo” as their new single. It tanked, reaching only #25 in the UK and #57 in the US. It’s a lightweight nursery rhyme and shockingly insubstantial after the weight and power of “Words.” It was the worst possible choice for a follow-up single. Andy Warhol famously said: “Always leave ’em wanting less.” Stigwood—whether he heard Warhol say it or not—always operated via excess. He abhorred a vacuum, and kept singles rushing to market not one after another, but one atop the other.
“Any criticism of ‘Jumbo’s’ failure is really my fault,” Stigwood said, speaking the truth. “I pick their singles and so in this case it was my judgment at fault.”{119} “I can only lay it down to one reason,” Robin said, “Not because it was the wrong choice of song, it wasn’t the wrong choice and could easily have been a hit. But (a) because we released it while ‘Words’ was still in the Top Thirty and (b) because we were releasing too many singles far too fast, which gets people confused.” Robin’s right about (a) and (b), but wrong about the rest. “Jumbo” shows a lack of perception of the band’s strengths, and what audiences liked about their earlier singles. “You see,” said Colin, “the Beatles will put out a record which isn’t obviously commercial and takes a lot of plays. People feel obliged to play it and play it until it clicks. For other groups, us included, if a record isn’t obviously commercial at first they won’t play it again and again.”
Barry, changing his tune from a few months before, when it was all about the song and not the group, said: “I think something’s changed in the past year as regards groups or any artists because you can have a flop record and still retain the popularity you had in the first place. Because the kids now pick a group they like and then buy the song if they like it. If they don’t like it, it doesn’t mean they don’t like the group. There are usually dozens of kids around our door and those kids haven’t faltered in any way. They haven’t drifted away because we’ve had one record that hasn’t done well. They’re still there and they’re waiting for the new single.”{120}
Stigwood might have been a little distracted. He was preparing to open his own production of the groundbreaking hippie musical Hair—with its notorious all-nude finale—in the West End of London in September. Hair would go on to run for five years.
The band played England’s holiest of holies, the Royal Albert Hall, in late March. Sharing the bill were the Grapefruit, the Foundations, and Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich. The last six names were, in fact, one group with a long handle and two million-selling singles. They gained an extra moment of fame when their rocking hit “Hold Tight” provided the soundtrack for a spectacular car crash in Quentin Tarantino’s exploitation-redux, Death Proof.
The Bee Gees were accompanied by an orchestra, a hundred air force and army brass players, and a hundred-person choir “who appeared vastly amused at their inclusion.”{121} When the Bee Gees hit the stage, their women fans ran screaming down to the front and stayed there, shrieking throughout the show. One rather pissy critic wrote: “The Bee Gees are a precocious talent who deserve to be encouraged to realise their full potential, but there is really little point in having a 67-piece orchestra (two harps!) if you are going to drown them with amplified guitars and the incessant screaming of several hundred fans.”{122} “We really did not expect all that excitement. You have to remember our previous concert was at the London Saville Theatre which was very sedate,” Barry said. “We just did not know what to expect. We made a tremendous effort to give fans value for their money. We proved that we could produce the live sound on our albums on stage and draw a big crowd.”{123}
In April, Stigwood recruited Johnny Speight, a many-credited British sitcom writer, to write the screenplay for a film, Lord Kitchener’s Little Drummer Boys. Stigwood, as executive producer, had a £500,000 budget and the Bee Gees were to write six new songs for the film. Speight also had “major roles” for the Bee Gees in a TV special called If There Weren’t Any Blacks, You’d Have to Invent Them, which had been commissioned and then decommissioned by the BBC for being “too offensive.”{124}
“We are not going out to do another pop group in a film feature,” Colin said. “We all play different characters, but we are not aware of the details because Johnny Speight is still sitting in his bath typing the script.” Speight, with a little desk hanging from the rim, really did type in his bathtub. He claimed it unleashed his creativity. Stigwood responded to criticism of both projects by saying: “This business is rife with jealousies and frustrations and little managers whose groups are still ‘puddling’ around obscure ballrooms. Many of them are jealous of the fact that this group is going places and has places to go. They have a tour of America and Japan soon after this British tour is completed and a $500,000 film to start work on.”{125} It all came to nothing: no movie, no TV show and the American tour was scaled back.
Between the Royal Albert Hall and mid-May, the Bee Gees did over thirty shows around England and Scotland. The pace never let up. In May, they won the prestigious Ivor Novello award and did three concerts in Ireland. When they stopped touring they went straight back into IBC to cut songs for their next record. Stigwood was busy planning a major tour of America to begin in August. The tour was timed to the release of their next album, Idea, and its first single, “I Gotta Get a Message to You.”
The Bee Gees set out for their first tour of America with high expectations. Everywhere they went in Europe they were mobbed; girls lined up by the thousands outside their hotel rooms; their singles hit the top 20 in every European country. They had good chart results in the US and had done the necessary television and concert groundwork. The band booked a thirty-piece orchestra for every show and was guaranteed a million dollars for the tour.
They were to be bitterly disappointed.
> The first shows, in Los Angeles and Sacramento, were sparsely attended. San Francisco was little better. “I Gotta Get a Message to You” was released in the US between the Sacramento and San Francisco shows. Though the song became their next #1 in the UK and scored a #8 in America, it did nothing for ticket sales. The one bright spot was a sold-out concert in a howling rainstorm in Forest Hills, Queens. Bee Gee fans stood in the downpour for the duration, screaming and cheering as they had in England, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark and Germany. The drenched fans’ love and stamina raised the Bee Gees’ spirits. But after one more empty hall in Providence, Rhode Island, Stigwood pulled the plug. Phoning around the country to cancel shows, he could hardly admit to the world that the US public had no interest in paying to see the Bee Gees. Such brand damage might be fatal. Stigwood fell back upon a tried and true solution to disappointing ticket sales: nervous exhaustion.
Robin took one for the team, though he was pretty exhausted at the time anyway. Stigwood made the announcement: Robin was nervously exhausted. He had to go home and be taken care of.
One amusing aspect of this deceit is that books and websites that describe Stigwood’s ploy are careful to say “rumors persist” that Robin wasn’t really sick. But it’s the farthest thing from a rumor; the Bee Gees state plainly—in their own authorized autobiography—that sales were disastrous and that Robin faked exhaustion to save the band from disgrace.
The Bee Gees would—Stigwood told the world—in the name of brotherhood, regretfully bail on the tour, eat the financial losses and make plans to return when they could. “I hope we will be able to pick up the tour somewhere along the line,” Stigwood told the press, “and play the missed dates later. But I can’t say anything until I have conferred with Robin’s doctors.”{126}
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