Being banned
from my children drove me to the brink of madness - and the truth about me and
Gordon Brown"
( Daily Mail, June 1 2008)
Any
father enduring the anguish of an enforced estrangement from his children will
know the grief felt by Robin Gibb.
Having
been denied access to his daughter and elder son for six years after his first
marriage ended in divorce, the Bee Gee compares the sense of loss to
bereavement.
'I felt as
if I was on the verge of madness,' he says.
It was
distressing and very traumatic because I had no contact whatsoever. There was
no response to my calls, no acknowledgement of my gifts, no letters. I felt
dejected, rejected, worthless. Nobody was telling me anything about my kids.
'You can
achieve great things in life professionally, but if your children are being
kept away from you, you feel empty. Emotionally, mentally and spiritually I
felt abandoned.
'I had
some of my blackest moments during those lost years when my children became
strangers to me. I think the bleakness I felt was matched only when my twin
brother Maurice died.'
Maurice
Gibb, one third of that stupendously successful pop trio the Bee Gees, died
prematurely five years ago from complications caused by a burst intestine,
leaving Robin and their elder brother Barry custodians of a catalogue of hit
songs unrivalled in popularity, except by The Beatles.
But as
Robin's musical career burgeoned, his personal life was crumbling. His divorce
from first wife Molly Hullis, in 1980, was followed by the painful separation
from his son, Spencer, and daughter, Melissa, who were then aged six and four
respectively.
Now 58,
Robin, is contentedly married to his second wife, Dwina, with whom he has a
son, the composer and actor Robin-John.
But today,
18 years after he and his children were eventually reunited, he is exhuming his
past grief to give solace and hope to others.
He is also
doing so because he was approached directly by the Prime Minister, who has
enlisted him to support a government-backed campaign, Parent Know How, aimed at
encouraging fathers separated from their children to stay in touch.
'I've had
a relationship with Gordon [Brown] for a number of years,' explains Robin. 'He's
a big fan of my music and he listens to it every day.'
Is the PM
fond of any particular song? 'He likes all our stuff. He says our music is
timeless,' he discloses.
'He spoke
to me directly about the campaign - we quite often have supper together - and I
said as long as I could be positive and useful, I would be happy to use my own
experience to help others.
'You don't
really understand other people's problems until you've experienced them
yourself.
'There is
no replacement for a father, and there are so many of them out there in the
world who love their children dearly but who are not able to spend the time
they should with them.
'All I can
say to those who are experiencing a life-changing divorce is: "I got
through it."
'You have
to think of the children in everything. Their needs are paramount. In the end,
they will make everything right. Kids are nature's way of getting us all on the
right path.'
Robin's
personal trauma began when Molly - whom he met when she was a secretary with
Brian Epstein's organisation - filed for divorce.
They had
married in 1968 when he was 18 and she 21. In the ensuing years, the Bees Gees
became a worldwide phenomenon; creators of the soundtrack to Saturday Night
Fever and pioneers of a new dance music called disco.
But global
success had its downside: Robin's rock-star lifestyle and protracted absences
from home irked his young wife so much that she began an affair. When she
sought a divorce, she also acquired a court order forbidding Robin from seeing
their children.
'I felt
betrayed,' he says now. 'Molly was unfaithful to me, but it's not as important
now as it was then. What is important is my relationship with the children.
'I was
absent for six of their formative years. It was terrible. No one would tell me
where they were.
'I learned
later that they had been spirited off to relatives to Molly's brother's house
in the north. My relationship with them just ended. I couldn't understand why
Molly didn't want me in the parental loop.
'Twenty-five
years ago, the law favoured mothers without question. As a father, I was at a
disadvantage. I worked in the music industry; that was perceived as a further
weakness because Molly said I was on the road all the time and never at home.
'My
lifestyle was seen as rather bohemian. The courts didn't understand it and took
a very Victorian view of it.
'I didn't
have affairs. But perhaps Molly had too much time on her hands while I was
away, because she did have a relationship - which I'm not condemning. What I
fail to understand is why the children had to be taken out of my life.
'I went to
great lengths to see Melissa and Spencer, but every attempt I made through the
courts failed. As the years passed, my sense of urgency increased.
'I knew
how important it was to get back with the kids so we could make up for lost
time. Molly was, and is, a fine mother but they needed a father's influence,
too.
There were
black moments of pure misery when I felt I'd go mad, but I never gave up. I marked
every Christmas. I sent bikes for their birthdays; letters and cards, but there
was never a response. It was very distressing.'
After four
years of fruitless applications through the courts, Robin abandoned his
attempts to secure a legal rapprochement. He did not, however, relinquish hope.
'And I
never stopped loving them,' he says simply.
Finally,
Molly relented. 'Maybe my stopping the legal attempts was a factor in
persuading her,' he says.
In any
event, he prepared for his first meeting with his children, after what he calls
'those six years in the wilderness', with a potent mix of joy and trepidation. A
family friend was recruited to act as mediator.
He drove
Spencer, then 12, and ten-year-old Melissa, to a pantomime where Robin was
waiting for them. He was under no illusion that re-creating a relationship
would be easy. He did not indulge in mawkish displays of affection.
'I was too
nervous for tears,' he recalls. 'Re-establishing myself as their father was
very hard. It was like getting to know two kids who were little strangers to
me.'
In time,
however, Melissa (now 28) and Spencer (30) were ready to spend their first
night with Robin, his second wife, Dwina, and their little half-brother,
Robin-John, at their former monastery home in Thame, Oxfordshire.
The place
is a child's fantasy; a sprawling medieval mini-village in the mode of Harry
Potter's Hogwarts, with flag-stoned corridors, wending staircases and dimly-lit
rooms adorned with oil paintings.
Two
venerable stone griffins guard the heavy oak front door where Dwina, smiley,
blonde and attended by two Irish wolfhounds, welcomes me with a hug.
Robin is
less effusive. Thin to the point of gauntness, he speaks in flat, measured
Northern tones. (He spent an impoverished boyhood in Manchester before
the family decamped to Australia.)
His humour
is dry. There is a sense he never exaggerates a point; never over-plays an
emotion.
'I
remember thinking when the kids first came to stay how incredible it was that
they were with me again. It felt strange,' he says. 'To start with, I didn't
know if they were accepting me or just play-acting.
'It took a
huge investment in time, energy and devotion to become their father again. I
think it took five or six years: a year of rebuilding for every one we spent apart.
'At the
start, Melissa had a problem with calling me "Dad". She didn't refer
to me by name at all, and it hurt a little. But I was much more concerned about
how the kids felt than how I was.'
How did he
know when Spencer - now a musician in Texas - and Melissa, a
London-based translator of Arabic, had finally embraced him as their father?
'There was
a landmark moment,' he recalls. 'They just rang out of the blue and said:
"We're coming over." Then, as they got older, they just started to
show up unannounced. That
was when I knew I had them back.'
Around the
sitting room, photos of all three children are displayed. Robin and Dwina, an
artist, poet and famously, a Druid, have been married for 23 years and they
present a picture of easy domestic contentment.
So it is
hard to credit that Robin once teased a New York
interviewer that Dwina was a 'lipstick lesbian' and that they enjoyed
three-in-abed romps with her girlfriends.
He has
since admitted that the remarks were a tantalising fiction. But I ask anyway,
if he really did enjoy an open marriage?
'When it
comes to the test, I don't think any marriage can be open,' he says. 'The
suggestion does crop up and you have to quell it.'
So is his
marriage monogamous? 'Yes,' he says. Life, he observes, is often far more
prosaic than rumour.
'Every man
likes an adventurous woman, and people in the film and music industry are often
perceived as larger than life,' he says.
'But the
reality is pretty boring. 'Most of the time, real life is just sitting at home,
as I'm doing now, enjoying a cup of tea.'
Celebrity,
fame, spectacular wealth and influential friends may be the products of Robin
Gibb's professional success. But he values family and the duties and joys of
parenthood beyond them all.
'All that
matters now is that they remain close to their mother and me - and that they
know I never stopped loving them