Bee Gees

The **Bee Gees** were an English-Australian musical group founded by brothers Barry, Maurice and Robin Gibb in 1958. Originating as a light rock group and garnering their fair share of hits in the 60s and early 70s, their fortunes began to wane until the release of their 1975 album *Main Course*, which contained the funk hit "Jive Talkin'". With hits like this and "You Should Be Dancin'", they took off in a disco direction, rising to meteoric stardom when the soundtrack to the movie *Saturday Night Fever* was released in 1977, containing the #1 hits "Stayin' Alive", "Night Fever" and "More Than a Woman". After commercial success waned in the early-mid 80s, they had a comeback in the late 80s before disbanding in 2003 due to Maurice's death. The group briefly reformed in 2009 and performed until 2012, when Robin died, leaving Barry as the sole surviving member.

## History

Born on the Isle of Wight in the late 1940s, Barry, Maurice, Robin and two friends named Paul Frost and Kenny Horrocks formed a rock/skiffle group called The Rattlesnakes. After Frost and Horrocks left, the remaining members formed a group called Wee Johnny Hayes and the Blue Cats, with Barry as "Johnny Hayes".

In 1958, the Gibb family moved to Redcliff, Queensland, Australia, just northeast of Brisbane. Here, they'd been hired by speedway promoter and driver Bill Goode to perform at the Redcliff Speedway between races, and Goode subsequently introduced them to local radio DJ Bill Gates. Gates called the group "BGs", later changed to "Bee Gees" after Goode's, Gates' and Barry Gibb's initials. The name that had nothing to do with the phrase "Brothers Gibb".

Over the next few years, they performed at resorts up and down the Queensland coast, and Barry's songwriting sparked the interest of Australian singer-songwriter Col Joye, who got them signed to Leedon Records, a subsidiary of Festival Records. Not only did they release two or three singles a year, but they even supplied songs to other Australian artists and even got chosen as a support act for Chubby Checker at a Sydney Stadium concert in 1962.

With the minor hit "Wine and Women" in 1965, they released their first LP, *The Bee Gees Sing and Play 14 Barry Gibb Songs*. However, this failed to garner much commercial success, and Festival Records was considering dropping the group altogether until American-born songwriter, producer and entrepreneur Nat Kipner stepped in. He briefly took over as their manager and got them signed to Spin Records in exchange for granting Festival the Australian distribution rights to their recordings. They also met producer/engineer Ossie Byrne, who had produced or co-produced earlier Spin recordings. Byrne gave them virtually unlimited access to St. Clair Studio for several months in mid-1966, which resulted in a number of songs, including their first real hit, "Spicks and Specks"

Returning to England in 1967, Hugh Gibb sent some demos to Brian Epstein, who passed them to Robert Stigwood, who got them a five-year recording contract, with Polydor Records releasing their music in the UK and Atco Records doing so in the US. Work got underway on their first international album, with Stigwood undertaking a huge promotional campaign. In 1967, they had another hit with "New York Mining Disaster 1941", which was initially issued to radio stations with a blank white label. Mistakenly assuming this to be a new single from The Beatles, radio stations put it into heavy rotation, and from there, the Bee Gees' success grew, with hits such as "To Love Somebody", "Massachusetts" and "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart", the latter reaching #1 on the US chart in 1971. Success hadn't been an easy road for them, with Robin taking a solo career in 1969 due to taking issue with Stigwood over feeling as though Barry was being favored as the frontman, and Barry and Maurice also doing solo work. However, after a brief hiatus, they got back together in 1970.

By 1973, the group's fortunes were waning, with the album *Life In a Tin Can* and subsequent single "Saw a New Morning" selling poorly. Their soul-focused 1974 album *Mr. Natural* also flopped. Upon Eric Clapton's advice, the brothers moved to Miami, Florida. It was on a fateful car ride over the Julia Tuttle Causeway that the brothers modelled a new song after the sound their car made driving over the bridge. Originally called "Drive Talkin'", it was reworked to "Jive Talkin'" and included on their disco-oriented 1975 album *Main Course*. Both the single and the album revived the band, which was now driven by Barry's falsetto vocals. Disco stardom continued with the 1976 album *Children of the World*, which featured the hit "You Should Be Dancing"

While the Bee Gees were making a new name for themselves with their new disco sound, it wasn't until 1977 that they would truly make their mark on musical history. That year, Stigwood commissioned them to create songs for an upcoming movie titled *Saturday Night Fever*, starring John Travolta, who by that point was probably best known for the TV show *Welcome Back, Kotter*. The brothers wrote the songs in practically one weekend at at Château d'Hérouville studio in France. Including the previously-recorded "Jive Talkin'", the group had #1 hits with "Stayin' Alive", "Night Fever", "More Than a Woman" - the latter also being recorded by Tavares - and the ballad "How Deep Is Your Love". They also had hits with other artists, such as "If I Can't Have You" by Yvonne Elliman and "Grease" by Frankie Valli.

The Bee Gees continued to find disco success with their 1979 album *Spirits Having Flown*, which included the hit "Tragedy". However, with the decline of disco after Disco Demolition Night, so too did the group's fortunes take a tumble, and they concentrated more on solo careers in addition to production and songwriting work in the 80s, though they did have a minor hit in 1983 with the song "The Woman In You" from the *Stayin' Alive* soundtrack. However, with the release of their 1987 album *E.S.P.*, they found another comeback, propelled by the #1 hit "You Win Again". In 1988, a fourth Gibb brother, Andy, died at age 30 from a heart condition, so they started a group with Eric Clapton known as The Bunburys to raise money for charity. The group continued to have modest success in spite of Barry battling back problems and Maurice battling alcoholism, with their 1997 album *Still Waters* being their highest-charting album in the US in the post-Stigwood era.

Success, however, would not continue for much longer. While waiting for emergency surgery to repair a strangulated intestine in 2003, Maurice died of a heart attack, and the group disbanded. After appearing together in 2006 for a charity concert to benefit the Diabetes Research Institute, Barry and Robin reformed the Bee Gees in 2009. However, Robin was diagnosed with liver cancer in 2011, and several months later, contracted pneumonia and fell into a coma. He came out of the coma, only for his condition to deteriorate rapidly, and he died in 2012, thus putting an end to the group.

## Discography

### Albums

* *The Bee Gees Sing and Play 14 Barry Gibb Songs* (1965)
* *Spicks and Specks* (1966)
* *Bee Gees' 1st* (1967)
* *Horizontal* (1968)
* *Idea* (1968)
* *Odessa* (1969)
* *Cucumber Castle* (1970)
* *2 Years On* (1970)
* *Trafalgar* (1971)
* *To Whom It May Concern* (1972)
* *Life in a Tin Can* (1973)
* *Mr. Natural* (1974)
* *Main Course* (1975)
* *Children of the World* (1976)
* *Spirits Having Flown* (1979)
* *Living Eyes* (1981)
* *E.S.P.* (1987)
* *One* (1989)
* *High Civilization* (1991)
* *Size Isn't Everything* (1993)
* *Still Waters* (1997)
* *This Is Where I Came In* (2001)

## Trivia

* In 1977, during their meteoric rise to success, Austiran singer Claudia Field (real name Claudia Schwarz née Pohl) recorded a disco cover of their hit "To Love Somebody".