Bee Gees

• 1. Introduction

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  The Bee Gees were the act that made Barry Gibb the only songwriter in history to have four consecutive number-one hits in the United States, breaking a record held by John Lennon and Paul McCartney since 1964. That achievement arrived at the peak of Saturday Night Fever, an album that spent 25 consecutive weeks at No. 1 and sold more than 40 million copies. But the story of Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb begins not in a recording studio or a discotheque, but on the back of a truck circling a speedway track in Queensland, Australia, where three boys sang for pocket money while the crowd threw coins onto the tarmac. How did a family of English children from the Isle of Man transform themselves into one of the best-selling acts in the history of recorded music? How did they survive a brutal break-up, a decade of indifference, and the eventual collapse of the very genre that made them famous? And what does it mean that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's citation placed them behind only Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Michael Jackson, Garth Brooks, and Paul McCartney in total records sold?

• 2. The Speedway and the Shellac Record

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  In December 1957, Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb were about to lip-sync to a record at the local Gaumont cinema in Manchester, as other children had done on previous weeks. Running to the theatre, the fragile shellac 78-RPM record broke. Forced to sing live, they received such an enthusiastic response that they decided to pursue a singing career instead. That decision would ultimately produce an estimated 120-250 million records sold worldwide.

  Born on the Isle of Man to English parents, the Gibb brothers had moved with their father Hugh to Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester, in 1955, the same year they formed a skiffle and rock and roll group called the Rattlesnakes. The lineup included Barry on guitar and vocals, Robin and Maurice on vocals, and two friends, Paul Frost on drums and Kenny Horrocks on tea-chest bass. By May 1958, when Frost and Horrocks left, the brothers regrouped as Wee Johnny Hayes and the Blue Cats, with Barry performing as "Johnny Hayes".

  In August 1958, the entire Gibb family, including older sister Lesley and infant brother Andy, who had been born just that March, emigrated to Australia and settled in Redcliffe, Queensland, just north-east of Brisbane. The young brothers began performing to earn pocket money. Speedway promoter Bill Goode hired them to entertain crowds at the Redcliffe Speedway in 1960, where they typically performed during the interval on the back of a truck that drove around the track. Any coins the audience threw onto the track were theirs to keep. Goode introduced them to Brisbane radio presenter Bill Gates, who named the group the "BGs" after his own initials, Goode's, and Barry Gibb's. Gates later changed the name to "Bee Gees". The name was not, as popular belief held, a reference to "Brothers Gibb".

  Through his songwriting, Barry caught the attention of Australian star Col Joye, who helped the brothers secure a recording deal in 1963 with Leedon Records, a subsidiary of Festival Records. They released two or three singles per year while Barry supplied additional songs to other Australian artists. By 1966, Festival Records was on the verge of dropping them for a perceived lack of commercial success. At that critical moment, they met American-born songwriter and entrepreneur Nat Kipner, who had just been appointed A&R manager of the independent label Spin Records. Kipner negotiated their transfer to Spin and connected them with engineer-producer Ossie Byrne, who gave the brothers virtually unlimited access to his self-built St Clair Studio in the Sydney suburb of Hurstville for several months during mid-1966.

• 3. Broken Glass and "Spicks and Specks"

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  At St Clair Studio, the Gibb brothers recorded a large batch of original material, including the song that would become their first major hit, "Spicks and Specks", on which Ossie Byrne played the trumpet coda. They also recorded cover versions of current hits by overseas acts and collaborated with members of beat band Steve and The Board, led by Steve Kipner, Nat's teenage son. The group later acknowledged that this period of studio access allowed them to significantly improve their skills as recording artists.

  Frustrated by their inability to break through commercially, the Gibbs began their return journey to England on the 4th of January 1967, with Byrne travelling with them. While still at sea, they learned that Go-Set, Australia's most popular and influential music newspaper, had declared "Spicks and Specks" the best single of the year.

  Before leaving Australia, their father Hugh had sent demo tapes to Brian Epstein, who managed the Beatles and ran NEMS, a British music store. Epstein passed the demos to Robert Stigwood, who had recently joined NEMS. After an audition with Stigwood in February 1967, the Bee Gees signed a five-year contract whereby Polydor Records would release their records in the UK and Atco Records would do so in the United States. Stigwood proclaimed them "the most significant new musical talent of 1967" and mounted a promotional campaign comparing them to the Beatles.

  The comparison briefly seemed to have real commercial weight. Their second British single, "New York Mining Disaster 1941", was issued to radio stations on a blank white label listing only the song title. Some DJs immediately assumed it was a new Beatles release and began playing it in heavy rotation, helping it climb into the top 20 on both sides of the Atlantic. No such strategy was needed for the follow-up, "To Love Somebody", originally written for Otis Redding. The soulful ballad, sung by Barry, has since become a pop standard recorded by hundreds of artists. At their first New York introduction, the band was billed as "the English surprise".

• 4. Tensions, Break-Up, and Reunion

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  By 1969, Robin Gibb had concluded that manager Robert Stigwood was favouring Barry as the group's frontman. The tension came to a head over a double A-sided single pairing "First of May" with "Lamplight". Robin felt that "Lamplight" should have been the A-side. Feeling overruled, he quit the group in mid-1969 and launched a solo career. His UK No. 2 hit "Saved by the Bell", from the album Robin's Reign, showed he could generate commercial success independently.

  While Robin pursued his solo work, Barry, Maurice, and drummer Colin Petersen continued as the Bee Gees on the album Cucumber Castle. They even recruited their sister Lesley to replace Robin at at least one performance. Petersen was subsequently fired during the filming of the accompanying television special, which aired on the BBC in December 1970. The situation grew severe enough that on the 1st of December 1969, Barry and Maurice also parted ways professionally.

  In mid-1970, according to Barry, the call came: "Robin rang me in Spain where I was on holiday, saying 'let's do it again'." By the 21st of August 1970, after the brothers had reunited, Barry announced publicly that the Bee Gees "are there and they will never, ever part again". Maurice said, "We just discussed it and re-formed. We want to apologise publicly to Robin for the things that have been said."

  They recruited drummer Geoff Bridgford, who had previously played on Maurice's unreleased first solo album, and returned to the charts with the single "Lonely Days", which reached No. 3 in the United States, promoted by appearances on The Johnny Cash Show, The Andy Williams Show, The Dick Cavett Show, and The Ed Sullivan Show. Their single "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" became their first to reach No. 1 on the US charts, earning them a Grammy Award nomination for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals. When Bridgford left partway through recording the LP To Whom It May Concern, the band chose not to replace him, and the three-piece lineup of Barry, Robin, and Maurice remained unbroken for the rest of their active years.

• 5. Miami, Falsetto, and the Fever That Didn't Start the Fire

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  At Eric Clapton's suggestion, the Bee Gees moved to Miami, Florida, early in 1975 to record at Criteria Studios. The move prompted a sound change that would redefine their commercial fortunes. Producer Arif Mardin, who had been working with the group on the advice of Atlantic Records head Ahmet Ertegun, encouraged them to lean further into soul and dance music. The resulting album, Main Course, included their second US No. 1, "Jive Talkin'", and was the first Bee Gees album to feature Barry using falsetto. It was also their first to chart on the R&B charts and their first to produce two US top-10 singles since the 1968 album Idea.

  The album Children of the World, released in September 1976, deepened that direction. Its opening single, "You Should Be Dancing", featured percussion from musician Stephen Stills and pushed the Bee Gees to a level of US stardom they had not previously reached. The follow-up pop ballad "Love So Right" reached No. 3 in the US.

  When Robert Stigwood was developing the film that would become Saturday Night Fever, the Bee Gees were not part of the initial concept. As John Travolta later recalled, the early dance sequences were set to Stevie Wonder and Boz Scaggs. Stigwood commissioned the Bee Gees to create the songs, and Barry Gibb later described what happened when the brothers wrote them: "virtually in a single weekend" at the Chateau d'Herouville studio in France, with Stigwood and music supervisor Bill Oakes arriving to hear the demos and, in Barry's words, "flipping out". Oakes later offered a perspective that complicated the film's reputation: "Disco had run its course. These days, Fever is credited with kicking off the whole disco thing. It really didn't. Truth is, it breathed new life into a genre that was actually dying."

  Three Bee Gees singles from the project, "How Deep Is Your Love", "Stayin' Alive", and "Night Fever", each hit No. 1 in the United States. The brothers also wrote "If I Can't Have You" for Yvonne Elliman, which became a further US No. 1. During a nine-month span beginning in the Christmas season of 1977, seven songs written by the Gibbs held the No. 1 position on the US charts for 27 of 37 consecutive weeks. On the Billboard Hot 100 chart for the 25th of March 1978, five Gibb-written songs occupied the US top 10 simultaneously. The last time that level of chart dominance had occurred was April 1964, when the Beatles held the top five American singles.

• 6. Writing for Everyone Else

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  In March 1980, Barry Gibb worked with Barbra Streisand on her album Guilty. He co-produced and wrote or co-wrote all nine tracks, four of them with Robin and the title track with both Robin and Maurice. The album reached No. 1 in both the US and the UK, as did the single "Woman in Love", written by Barry and Robin. Both of the Streisand-Gibb duets, "Guilty" and "What Kind of Fool", also reached the US top 10.

  The pattern of the Gibbs writing for other artists extended across multiple genres. In 1982, Dionne Warwick reached UK No. 2 and US Adult Contemporary No. 1 with "Heartbreaker", written largely by the Bee Gees and co-produced by Barry. A year later, Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers recorded "Islands in the Stream", which hit No. 1 in both the US and Australia. Rogers' entire 1983 album, Eyes That See in the Dark, was written by the Bee Gees and co-produced by Barry, reaching the US top 10 and earning a Double Platinum certification.

  In 1985, Diana Ross released Eaten Alive, written by the Bee Gees with the title track co-written with Michael Jackson, who also performed on it. Barry co-produced the album, and the single "Chain Reaction" gave Ross a No. 1 hit in the UK and Australia. By 1978, the Gibb brothers were responsible for writing and/or performing nine of the songs on the Billboard Hot 100 simultaneously. They placed 13 singles onto the Hot 100 that year, with 12 reaching the top 40. At least 2,500 artists have recorded Gibb-penned songs. In 2009, as part of Queensland's Q150 celebrations, the Bee Gees were named among the Q150 Icons of Queensland for their role as influential artists.

• 7. Loss, Legacy, and the Knighthood

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  Maurice Gibb died unexpectedly on the 12th of January 2003, at age 53, from a heart attack while awaiting emergency surgery to repair a strangulated intestine. The same week Maurice died, Robin's solo album Magnet was released. On the 23rd of February 2003, Barry and Robin, along with Maurice's son Adam, accepted the Grammy Legend Award in a tearful ceremony, making the Bee Gees the first recipients of that award in the 21st century. On the 2nd of May 2004, Barry and Robin received the CBE at Buckingham Palace, with Adam accepting his father Maurice's posthumous award.

  In late 2009, Barry and Robin announced plans to perform again as the Bee Gees. On the 15th of March 2010, the two inducted the Swedish group ABBA into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The reunion was cut short when Robin, then aged 61, was diagnosed with liver cancer on the 20th of November 2011. His final public appearance came on the 13th of February 2012, at a charity concert for injured servicemen at the London Palladium. He died on the 20th of May 2012 of liver and kidney failure, aged 62.

  The accolades accumulated over Barry's remaining years: inductions into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, Florida's Artists Hall of Fame, and the ARIA Hall of Fame, alongside an Emmy-winning HBO documentary released in late 2020 titled The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart. A Paramount biopic was subsequently announced in development with Kenneth Branagh directing and Barry serving as executive producer. On the 27th of June 2018, Barry Gibb was knighted by Prince Charles after being named on the Queen's New Year's Honours List.

  In 2022, Barry was made an Honorary Companion of the Order of Australia, that country's highest national honour. The following year he became a Kennedy Center Honoree as a "pop music pioneer". The Bee Gees' induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997 was presented by Brian Wilson, himself the leader of a family harmony group, the Beach Boys, and the Hall's citation remains one of the starker measurements in popular music: by that point, only Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Michael Jackson, Garth Brooks, and Paul McCartney had outsold them.