In 1994, there were rumors of Maurice having a relapse and being arrested for drunk driving. He denied them, saying: “I did what every recovering person should do—go back [to rehab] before you relapse.”{627}
In 2002, Maurice sang with Lulu on her television special. In September, he participated in the World Paintball Championships with his team, the Royal Rat Rangers. Maurice had become a freak for paintball. The team’s emblem was a rat holding a paintball gun, surmounted by a crown. Maurice competed constantly, sponsored the Rangers and opened his own paintball store, Commander Mo’s Paintball Shop, in North Miami Beach. The “Commander” referred to Maurice’s royally granted CBE (Commander of the British Empire). Maurice called paintball “the most rock and roll thing.” In October, Maurice sold his house on Biscayne Bay. He bought a new home for $7.1 million near Barry’s house, on the same residential island between Miami and Miami Beach. Maurice said that he moved to be closer to his brother.
In January of 2003, Maurice collapsed at home and was rushed to the hospital. The doctors feared he had had a heart attack, and performed surgery for an intestinal blockage. Barry was with Maurice at the hospital; Robin was in England. A hospital spokesman said: “Maurice has undergone surgery for an intestinal blockage. He is in critical condition in intensive care. We are awaiting a full medical prognosis later today but everyone is very, very worried.”{628} “It was completely out of the blue,” Maurice’s manager, Carol Peters, said. “No pains or anything beforehand, just all of a sudden, boom. After the operation, he opened his eyes, wiggled toes and feet, so it’s good.”{629}
“It was all quick and sudden,” Robin said. “The last 24 hours have been the most crucial. The latest update is that all his vital organs are A1 and recovering, which is good. Obviously, it’s been bad, but every hour is a bonus.” Robin, as had Maurice the day of Robin’s train wreck in 1967, knew something was wrong. “The morning Maurice was taken ill,” he said, “I had stomach pains for an hour to two hours at the very time. It was a discomforting feeling that something wasn’t right and I hadn’t had any pains like that before. It was at exactly the same time as he fell ill.”{630}
Few outside the family understood the gravity of Maurice’s condition. The Daily News did not take it seriously. They ran a headline reading bee gee hit by more than night fever. The News reported that Maurice “was reunited with his Bee Gee brothers at a Miami hospital last night as he recuperated from a severe stomach ailment that nearly turned their famous three-part harmonies into a duet.”{631}
On January 11, Robin and Barbara flew to Miami. Maurice was deteriorating. “Maurice’s doctors initially diagnosed a mild heart attack and an intestinal blockage,” a family friend said. “What they found wasn’t good. They had to remove part of his intestine, which was gangrenous, and also some of his stomach. They believe he has had an undiagnosed twisted intestine from birth. I don’t want to be too downbeat but it is pretty devastating news.”{632} Maurice remained unconscious and the doctors feared brain damage. There were unconfirmed reports that he opened his eyes and squeezed his daughter’s hand. The Sunday Mail reported that Michael Jackson had visited.
Maurice Gibb died on January 12, 2003. He was fifty-three.
The family issued a statement: “It is with great sadness and sorrow that we regretfully announce the passing of Maurice Gibb this morning. His love and enthusiasm and energy for life remain an inspiration to all of us. We will all deeply miss him.”{633}
“We are both devastated,” Robin said. “We’ve actually been in shock for the last few days since Maurice was taken ill. I still can’t come to terms with it now. It’s like a nightmare that you wake up to every day. It’s going to take a long time for it to sink in.”{634}
The brothers called for an investigation of Maurice’s treatment and the procedures utilized. “The fact that they had to operate on Maurice during the shock of cardiac arrest is questionable,” Barry said. “We will pursue every factor, every element, every second of the timeline, of the final hours of Maurice’s life. We will pursue that relentlessly. That will be our quest from now on.”{635}
“They knew by late Saturday that Maurice wasn’t going to make it,” said a friend of the family. “Barry is absolutely devastated, he’s beside himself . . . inconsolable. Robin is obviously deeply upset, but he is relieved he was at least able to share a few hours with Maurice.”{636}
“His drinking did upset his system,” friend of the family Christopher Hutchins said. “He was greatly weakened by what he put himself through, in terribly destructive years. His marriage to Lulu was torn apart by the fact that he did indulge in all of these things to try to take the pain away, and stop what was going on in his mind. He was a much tormented soul. He was not the star, and he knew it, he felt it. He would often go back to the dressing room after a show and drink so heavily, and during the time of his marriage to Lulu, it was crockery smashing time every night.”{637}
“Not as handsome as his taller brother Barry,” one rock writer wrote, “nor as intense as his bucktoothed twin Robin, Maurice was the group’s engine room; the bass and keyboard player, the rock-steady one who kept the others together. In private, he was the easygoing, amiable one of the group, the one who would talk to critics like me.”{638}
Maurice was cursed to be described as what he wasn’t or by his absence. Maurice made himself into a middle brother—the bridge between Robin and Barry. By doing so, Maurice placed himself third in the hierarchy; he liked it there. He always felt less talented than his brothers. Maurice’s drinking rendered him more or less a spectator to the best-selling records and most successful tour of his career. That certainly must have increased his self-loathing, and led to even more drinking. Unlike his brothers, Maurice was naturally good natured. The good-natured brother is always the unappreciated brother.
Maurice was the Bee Gees’ glue. For as long as he was capable, Maurice was the crucial instrumentalist in the studio. His unselfish harmonies—his compliant surrender of the lead vocal role—made Robin’s and Barry’s voices mesh seamlessly, which they never could without Maurice’s uncompetitive collaboration. His willingness to always be third meant one less ego in a band of ego clashes. Maurice had rich timbre and a beautiful voice, effortless, sincere and unaffected; he didn’t need Robin’s melodrama and, unlike Barry, was at home with the emotions he sang. Maurice was a patient singer; he let the material come to him. His solo record vocals evoke the relaxed pacing and soulful ease of country greats like Charlie Pride or Merle Haggard.
Days after Maurice’s death, Robin and Barry regretted going public with their suspicions about Maurice’s medical treatment. They tried to get the BBC not to air their complaints. “It was a case of wrong place, wrong time,” a family friend said. “They withdrew their comments. We are all completely grief-stricken and things get said that are not necessarily intended. Barry and Robin have lost a dear brother and they are obviously emotional and have questions, but the family has had a good respectful relationship with the hospital for something like 25 years. They are upset that those comments went out.”{639}
Maurice’s funeral, held on January 16, 2003, in Miami, at the Riverside Gordon Memorial Chapels, was private. Billboard reported that two hundred people attended. Maurice’s paintball teammates were there, as were Lulu and Harry Wayne Casey of KC and the Sunshine Band. Barry was too distraught to be part of the ceremony, and stayed behind until it was over, as did Michael Jackson. They paid their respects to Maurice together. On January 22, Robin announced that the name Bee Gees would be retired.
Maurice was cremated. Four purple gems were made from his ashes. They were given to Yvonne, Barbara, Robin and Barry.
“down came the sun”
The toxic level of Robin’s amphetamine addiction in the late 1970s and early ’80s turned him threatening, rageful, and paranoid during his divorce from Molly Hullis. One late night, wired up on speed and accompanied by a private detective, Robin broke into his former house—where Molly liv
ed with their children—while Molly and the kids were elsewhere. Robin still held the deed to the house and had keys to the locks. He did not have to force his way in, but he did. Robin found innocuous documents in the house that—in his deluded state—he thought suggested a plot by Molly and her lawyers to extort him for £5 million.
Robin believed that Molly was having an affair with her divorce attorney. He sought documents that would prove that the attorney and Molly were baiting him, and trying to get Robin to publicly accuse Molly of infidelity. If he did, Robin’s fantasy went, Molly would then sue him for £5 million.
That delusion led to a harrowing series of letters, phone calls and threatening telegrams, which were eventually forwarded to the FBI. Part of one telegram read: “What you have done is just about the limit. I warned and warned you. The situation is now very serious. Know [sic] one walks all over me . . . I have had enough. I have taken out a contract . . . It is now a question of time.”{640}
The FBI looked for Robin, but couldn’t find him. “Miami office unable to determine present location of the rock group Bee Gees at this time,” an internal memorandum went. “Any direct inquiries would alert Mr. Gibb to inquiries being made by the Miami office of the FBI, so no further attempt to verify present location of the group being made by the Miami office.”{641} Robin came to New York and the FBI wanted to interview him. Robin sent his attorney, who said that “his client would not be foolish enough to carry out any threat especially in view of his singing career,” and that his Molly and her lawyers were “attempting to use the FBI to embarrass Gibb and to bring pressure on him in the divorce proceedings.”{642}
Robin was running wild. Speed is poison and damages almost every processing system in the body. In a public service announcement from the early 1970s Speed Kills campaign, Frank Zappa speak-sings: “Speed! Rot your brain! Rot your teeth! Rot your Liver! Rot cha cha!” He wasn’t kidding. Robin’s intake had produced all the classic speed-freak symptoms: frightening weight loss, paranoid delusions, irrationality, hypersexuality and becoming an unbearable pain in the ass to anyone who cared for him.
“I remember being asleep and getting a call from Robin at 1 a.m.,” said Christopher Hutchins, Robin’s former manager. “He was saying, ‘It’s an emergency!’ and asking me to drive to his house in Knightsbridge.” When Hutchins got to Robin’s house, he found Robin in bed with a woman. “We have to go out and get a woman,” Robin told him. “[Robin’s] thing was to watch two women together,” Hutchins said. “In his drugged-up state he thought I would help him. His house at the time was a beautiful Georgian place near Harrods. One time, I noticed handprints on the walls, about 8 ft up. Obviously, some strange sexual adventures had been going on. He was always seeking a treatment for his drug addiction. He’d work through the night, never going to bed. Night and day meant nothing to him. He took uppers to keep him awake and downers to put him to sleep.”{643}
Around this time, Robin met his future wife, Dwina Murphy. Nobody in the Bee Gees’ saga was ever on the receiving end of so much rage and scorn, not only from the Gibb family, but from Bee Gees fans as well. It’s hard to see why Dwina was selected as the arch-villain. She and Robin talked about their sex lives with a candor so explicit it could be traumatizing to the listener, but they appear to have been genuinely in love. Dwina helped Robin with his drug addiction, and they stayed together until his death. Dwina’s been labeled a gold digger and sorceress; things written about her imply that she somehow had Robin under a spell. The logical truth seems to be that for all their eccentricities, they liked each other and, in their way, got along.
“My marriage had broken up and I needed a minder,” Robin said. “Someone to drive me around. I got Ken Graydon through a recruiting firm. He told me he was meeting his cousin and would I mind if he took time off. I said: ‘Maybe I’ll come with you.’ I saw Dwina’s drawings, liked them and commissioned some from her. Two weeks later she came house-hunting and it all accelerated.” “Robin asked Ken to bring me round so he could commission some drawings for his new home,” Dwina said. “I dressed up in big zigzagging black and white lines, very artsy, just the sort of thing Robin doesn’t like. I recognised him immediately and wished I wasn’t wearing the artsy outfit. I decided to do the story of Persephone for him, and I made the drawings detailed so they took a long time and I could go on seeing him. I wouldn’t finish them, because I’m superstitious—I’m afraid that if I did, that would be it.” “We had a couple of one-night stands towards the end of 1980,” Robin said. “I was attracted to her, but it didn’t get really serious until the following year, when she moved into my house in Barnes. She kept her house in Plumstead in case she had a change of heart, but it did work out, it worked very well, and she became pregnant with Robin-John.”{644}
Robin’s divorce was finalized near the end of 1980. There was endless litigation; custody battles over their children raged until 1983. Robin narrowly avoided jail after a judge ordered him not to discuss the custody proceedings and Robin told the press all about them.
On October 28, 1983, Robin announced to the world that he had a new son, Robin-John, who had been born the previous February. “We wanted little Robin and he’s wonderful,” Robin said, “but neither Molly, my former wife, nor my other two children know about him yet. I will be introducing the children to their little brother, but it’s still too early and the situation is too fragile.” Robin explained his curious behavior about the baby and his divorce by saying: “I developed a terrible mistrust of women. It’s taken a while for me to get over it. But having the baby with Dwina sealed our happiness.”{645}
Robin and Dwina were married on July 31, 1985.
“I’d always fought against the idea of marriage, living with one person,” Dwina said. “But I liked the idea of having a child with Robin. I recognised his creative spirit, his gentleness, the poet in him, and I thought ours would be good genes to put together. We tried to have a child, off and on, but it didn’t happen until I moved in with him. We got closer and closer; I felt he was my brother, my lover, my son, my father. We got married in 1985, on the eve of Lughnasadh, the turning point of the year.”{646} Citing Lughnasadh, a Gaelic harvest festival, in one of her first public pronouncements, set the tone for Dwina’s image; she was henceforth regarded as a New Age nutcase.
Dwina, conversely, regarded herself as a Druid priestess, an artist and an author. She wrote historical novels concerning a third-century Celtic king who trained his warriors to be poets and thus brought peace to Ireland. Perhaps her historical research gave her insight into Druidism. Little is known about ancient Druids, what they believed and how that belief functioned. They are thought to be have been pagans in Ireland, Britain and Gaul. Perhaps they committed human sacrifice, perhaps not. The ideology of modern Druidism is hard to pin down; they wear white robes and like Stonehenge a lot. In June of 1992, Dwina was elected a patroness of the Druids. “My job is basically to spread the word,” Dwina said. “To tell people about Druidry not only as a religion but a way of life. People are becoming more interested in the environment and part of my job will be to show how that fits in with our beliefs.”{647} As part of her belief system, Dwina made plans to have the tennis court in the estate she shared with Robin converted to a smaller version of Stonehenge. “When it is completed,” she said, “I will be able to tell what time of the year it is by looking at which stone the sun is shining on . . . It will be of far more use than a tennis court.”{648}
The tennis-court-henge sits in Prebendal, near Thames, Oxfordshire. Prebendal was built in the thirteenth century as a training college for monks. Robin acquired it in 1984. Covering twenty acres, the estate has its own chapel, and was visited by Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Mick Jagger sought to buy Prebendal but the owners feared wild parties and the like. Robin convinced them to sell by doing copious research on Prebendal. They trusted in his sincere love of the place, which was no act. Robin had a genuine preservationist and curatorial interest in the place. “I’ve always
loved history,” he said. “Which might surprise some people, as Bee Gees songs don’t have many historical references—it’s hard to slip them into pop songs.”{649} He and Dwina put in medieval-style furniture, restored a dragon-decorated fireplace and ordered a suit of armor for Robin-John and a gypsy wagon for Dwina. “The house has a resident ghost,” Robin said, “who seems to mysteriously fill up the water font in the chapel, part of which has now been converted into a dining room.”{650} Dwina and Robin would visit the Gibbs in Florida, but Dwina preferred Prebendal. “I can completely relax and wear long flowing gowns instead of beach gear,” she said. “It’s wonderfully cool here. I actually hate the sun in Florida and spend a lot of my time inside. Given the choice, both Robin and I would rather live in our Oxfordshire home permanently, it makes me feel part of history.”{651}
On November 24, 1993, Barry, Maurice and Robin went on Howard Stern’s radio show. Stern opened up the conversation by asking Barry if he’d “nailed” Barbara Streisand when they worked together. Robin volunteered: “My wife cheats on me now. But not with men. She has a steady girlfriend at the moment. My wife looks at other women like guys look at women.” Stern asked how their mother felt about Dwina bringing her girlfriends to family gatherings. Barry said: “This is the nineties and I think our mother is about as hip . . . as anybody else is.”{652} “His comments did upset me,” Dwina said. “But only because I was worried about how my mother and our son, Robin-John, would take it. I don’t have shame about what Robin said and I still don’t. I’ve always been liberated. No one can hurt me in anything they do or say. I just carry on living my life.”{653} Robin and Barry went on Stern to promote their new album, but once Stern heard about Dwina, he hardly mentioned it.
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