Thursday, June 14, 2001
The brothers Gibb are back--again--with a new album and a spot in KIIS' Wango Tango.
By RANDY LEWIS, Times Staff Writer
REUTERS
The Bee Gees may have been born in England, but they clearly picked up a key character trait during their childhood years in Australia--these guys come back more often than a boomerang.
This weekend they share the stage at KIIS-FM's Wango Tango 2001 with such hot young pop acts as Ricky Martin, the Backstreet Boys, Jessica Simpson and host Britney Spears--performers who weren't born when the Bee Gees got their first taste of success. Or, in some cases, their third.
Brothers Barry, Maurice and Robin Gibb, however, simply refuse to stay down for the count.
After an initial blast of seven Top 10 pop hits in 1967 and '68, Robin quit and, shortly thereafter, Barry left. The trio reunited in 1970 and came back with "Lonely Days," followed by their first No. 1 record, "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart." That was six months before Ricky Martin was born.
Another career downturn followed, as did another revival, this time to stratospheric heights. "Saturday Night Fever" so dominated late '70s pop that it seemed impossible to turn on a radio without hearing Barry Gibb's falsetto riding atop the signature harmonies and disco beats.
Now they're back again, with a new album, "This Is Where I Came In," which entered Billboard's Top 200 chart at No. 16 in April.
That makes five decades running the group has posted hit albums. At the same time, their music is featured in the stage version of "Saturday Night Fever--The Musical," now playing in Southern California as part of a national tour.
As for the group's presence at Wango Tango, the Bee Gees find that, like Tom Jones and Tony Bennett, they're hip once more.
"I never played a Beatles record in my house, yet my kids got turned on to them all by themselves when they were very young," says Maurice, 51. "It's really hard to predict when things will come around again."
Certainly "Saturday Night Fever" has, giving the last laugh to John Travolta and the Bee Gees, both written off two decades back by the death-to-disco crowd.
"We just love what we're doing, so we keep doing it," says Maurice, who with twin brother Robin is two years younger than Barry. "Some people said after 'Fever,' 'Why are you making another album?'
"This is what we love to do. If you're a writer and you win a Pulitzer Prize, you don't stop writing. If you're a scientist and you win the Nobel Prize, you don't say, 'Now I don't have to science anymore.' It's born in us, we've done it all our lives."
They haven't made records the same way all their lives, but for "This Is Where I Came In" they revisited the way they worked back when they started singing in the mid-1950s and made their first records in the '60s.
Instead of relying on studio technology, they largely used acoustic instruments and sang with all three clustered around a single microphone.
"We like to approach every album differently," Maurice says. "We started with the (title) track, and we did it the way the Beatles did 'You're Gonna Lose That Girl' in the movie 'Help.' I also was using the guitar I was given by John Lennon for my 21st birthday, so that was inspirational too.
"What I loved about it was the simplicity," he adds. "Honestly, it was the most energizing thing I've ever experienced .... It was a lot more creative because we had total freedom."
The Gibbs settled in Miami Beach after recording there on the recommendation of Eric Clapton, and Gibb finds it ironic that they're living in what has become the boy-band capital of the world.
http://beegeesfanfever.blogspot.nl/
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Monday, January 26, 2015
Barry Gibb Tormented by his Brother's Death
Woman's Day (Australian) 1989
The handsome Bee Gee candidly admits he will always wonder if he could have done more to prevent his baby brother's tragic death
Mega-rich rock star Barry Gibb has known personal heartache as his group, the Bee Gees, has swerved in and out of fashion. But his troubles have been nothing compared with the agony he feels over his brother Andy. Tragic Andy was just 30 when he died a year ago of a massive heart attack, brought on by drink and drugs.
Now Barry, who's on the verge of yet another Bee Gees comeback, is haunted by the belief that maybe he could have done something to save his brother.
"That has to be the saddest, most desperate moment of my life, when I heard he had gone," admits Barry. "Since then, I've asked myself a thousand times, could I have done more or said more to help him?"
The 42-year-old star certainly did his best when Andy was still alive, giving him constant encouragement and help. But it did seem nothing could rescue Andy: he was never able to believe he could match his brothers' success, and gradually he spiralled downward into despair.
Now the Bee Gees have relaunched their career with a new album "One", dedicated to Andy, and a single, "Ordinary Lives".
Stunning-looking Andy's life was never ordinary. A former boyfriend of ex-"Dallas" beauty Victoria Principal, and a pop star in his own right with a string of solo hits in the 1970's, Andy was always the odd-Gibb out. Too young to share in the Bee Gees first wave of success in the 60's, he never joined brothers Barry, Maurice and Robin in the band.
"And because of that, Andy was always a bit of a loner," says Barry. "But six months before his death, I campaigned to get him included. It was put to the vote and I'm afraid I was outvoted two to one."
Barry wonders if that blow might have contributed to Andy's sad death.
"But I don't really think so. Andy's attitude was "Well, I'd like to have some more hits on my own before I join anyway!" The biggest thing on his mind was "Can I make it back to the top?" That's what he really wanted to do-and under all the pressure his mind and heart gave way."
On the face of it, Andy Gibb was blessed with everything - looks, hits, and beautiful girls. He was romantically linked with beauties like Marie Osmond, Susan George and Olivia Newton-John after his divorce from his wife, Kim, in 1978. But Barry saw another side and worried about Andy's bingeing on drugs and alcohol.
Andy blew a fortune on cocaine and, six months before he died, was made bankrupt in Florida, owing some $2 million. Friends say he finally did kick the habit, but after his death his mother Dorothy (sic), found a huge hoard of more than 20 vodka bottles under his bed.
This is how Barry now explains his brother's reliance on booze and on drugs, "He always seemed to have a zest for life. But beneath all that fun was an incredible sadness that only a few of us could see. He was the most insecure man in the world and even when he had hit records, he felt it was still not good enough. Whatever I'd say to reassure him, he would still go away and hide in the depths of depression."
Barry says the only way he could keep his baby brother's spirits up was to constantly tell him how well he was doing. "I was either on the phone or seeing him, giving him encouragement. I would say to him, "Just get up and sing. Do what you do best. No one does it better." I would tell him this everyday."
Yet when Andy did get back to the recording studio, all his confidence went right out of the window, says Barry. He turned into a recluse - just at the time when Barry himself was tied up working on a new film. He and writing partner David English were developing their own idea about two terminally ill young men having a last wild fling, which became the major movie "Hawks", and starred the James Bond actor, Timothy Dalton.
Ironically, Andy saw two previews of it before his death, which came after he'd been admitted to hospital in Oxford, U.K. suffering from crippling stomach cramps. "Andy had been staying at Robin's house in Oxfordshire for around a month, working on the album. Those previews were virtually the only times he went out," says Barry.
A few days before he died, Barry said his partner David suggested they should go over and see Andy. "We had heard stories he was not behaving himself. But I didn't realize just how much he was folding up inside."
"I'd always be telling him, "Andy, you look great. You look incredible. Let's go out". He'd say "Okay". Then five minutes later he'd ask, "Are you sure that I look alright?" He never knew how much talent he had and the more I told him, the less he seemed to believe it."
Barry himself has suffered some devastating knocks. After the Bee Gees success in the 60's, selling 30 million singles and six million albums, they went out of fashion. "The downfall did not make it any easier to take when it happened again in the 70's - after the "Saturday Night Fever" craze ended.
But now the Gibb Brothers are trying for chart success the third time around. Their new album and single are high on the international charts. "A lot of people look at our lifestyle and wonder why we need it," admits Barry. "It's not the money but the self-respect and wanting to create good music."
"The real sense of achievement in having a film out last year and an album out this year is enormous," he says. "I only wish Andy could have been some part of it.
http://beegeesfanfever.blogspot.nl/
The handsome Bee Gee candidly admits he will always wonder if he could have done more to prevent his baby brother's tragic death
Mega-rich rock star Barry Gibb has known personal heartache as his group, the Bee Gees, has swerved in and out of fashion. But his troubles have been nothing compared with the agony he feels over his brother Andy. Tragic Andy was just 30 when he died a year ago of a massive heart attack, brought on by drink and drugs.
Now Barry, who's on the verge of yet another Bee Gees comeback, is haunted by the belief that maybe he could have done something to save his brother.
"That has to be the saddest, most desperate moment of my life, when I heard he had gone," admits Barry. "Since then, I've asked myself a thousand times, could I have done more or said more to help him?"
The 42-year-old star certainly did his best when Andy was still alive, giving him constant encouragement and help. But it did seem nothing could rescue Andy: he was never able to believe he could match his brothers' success, and gradually he spiralled downward into despair.
Now the Bee Gees have relaunched their career with a new album "One", dedicated to Andy, and a single, "Ordinary Lives".
Stunning-looking Andy's life was never ordinary. A former boyfriend of ex-"Dallas" beauty Victoria Principal, and a pop star in his own right with a string of solo hits in the 1970's, Andy was always the odd-Gibb out. Too young to share in the Bee Gees first wave of success in the 60's, he never joined brothers Barry, Maurice and Robin in the band.
"And because of that, Andy was always a bit of a loner," says Barry. "But six months before his death, I campaigned to get him included. It was put to the vote and I'm afraid I was outvoted two to one."
Barry wonders if that blow might have contributed to Andy's sad death.
"But I don't really think so. Andy's attitude was "Well, I'd like to have some more hits on my own before I join anyway!" The biggest thing on his mind was "Can I make it back to the top?" That's what he really wanted to do-and under all the pressure his mind and heart gave way."
On the face of it, Andy Gibb was blessed with everything - looks, hits, and beautiful girls. He was romantically linked with beauties like Marie Osmond, Susan George and Olivia Newton-John after his divorce from his wife, Kim, in 1978. But Barry saw another side and worried about Andy's bingeing on drugs and alcohol.
Andy blew a fortune on cocaine and, six months before he died, was made bankrupt in Florida, owing some $2 million. Friends say he finally did kick the habit, but after his death his mother Dorothy (sic), found a huge hoard of more than 20 vodka bottles under his bed.
This is how Barry now explains his brother's reliance on booze and on drugs, "He always seemed to have a zest for life. But beneath all that fun was an incredible sadness that only a few of us could see. He was the most insecure man in the world and even when he had hit records, he felt it was still not good enough. Whatever I'd say to reassure him, he would still go away and hide in the depths of depression."
Barry says the only way he could keep his baby brother's spirits up was to constantly tell him how well he was doing. "I was either on the phone or seeing him, giving him encouragement. I would say to him, "Just get up and sing. Do what you do best. No one does it better." I would tell him this everyday."
Yet when Andy did get back to the recording studio, all his confidence went right out of the window, says Barry. He turned into a recluse - just at the time when Barry himself was tied up working on a new film. He and writing partner David English were developing their own idea about two terminally ill young men having a last wild fling, which became the major movie "Hawks", and starred the James Bond actor, Timothy Dalton.
Ironically, Andy saw two previews of it before his death, which came after he'd been admitted to hospital in Oxford, U.K. suffering from crippling stomach cramps. "Andy had been staying at Robin's house in Oxfordshire for around a month, working on the album. Those previews were virtually the only times he went out," says Barry.
A few days before he died, Barry said his partner David suggested they should go over and see Andy. "We had heard stories he was not behaving himself. But I didn't realize just how much he was folding up inside."
"I'd always be telling him, "Andy, you look great. You look incredible. Let's go out". He'd say "Okay". Then five minutes later he'd ask, "Are you sure that I look alright?" He never knew how much talent he had and the more I told him, the less he seemed to believe it."
Barry himself has suffered some devastating knocks. After the Bee Gees success in the 60's, selling 30 million singles and six million albums, they went out of fashion. "The downfall did not make it any easier to take when it happened again in the 70's - after the "Saturday Night Fever" craze ended.
But now the Gibb Brothers are trying for chart success the third time around. Their new album and single are high on the international charts. "A lot of people look at our lifestyle and wonder why we need it," admits Barry. "It's not the money but the self-respect and wanting to create good music."
"The real sense of achievement in having a film out last year and an album out this year is enormous," he says. "I only wish Andy could have been some part of it.
http://beegeesfanfever.blogspot.nl/
YOU LOOKIN ' AT ME? By Johnny Black
MOJO Magazine - May Issue - Pages 48 - 52
Ridiculed as disco has-beens, The Bee Gees have come through death, pills, booze, and the derision of bald barristers to become the ultimate pop survivors. Johnny Black documents their remarkable resurrection.
"What image?" asks Barry Gibb, "I haven't' got an image," What he does have, though, is a guitar. It's a second-hand customized hollow-bodied Epiphone, bought just half an hour ago, and he's showing it off proudly to sound engineer John Merchant in the Bee Gees' Miami Beach workplace, Middle Ear Studios. "The bloke in the shop didn't want to sell me it," says Barry, the pitch of his voice rising. "He said it didn't fit
my image. What does he think I am, a librarian? Right now I don't think I've got an image. I'm hoping this guitar will give me one. I said, I'm reinventing myself - just put the guitar in the box!"
Merchant eyes his boss, as if seeking a clue as to whether there's a trace of whimsy in the remarks. The body of the guitar is hand-painted with a striking, not to say lurid, flame design. Mother-of-pearl dice are inlaid at the points along the fretboard, and extravagantly large red-and-white translucent plastic dice have replaced the volume and tone controls.
Barry holds the guitar up and studies it in detail for a moment, before his mouth finally cracks into a tell-tale grin. "I think the big dice will have to go."
Few Artists can be quite so acutely aware of their image as Barry Gibb. In the mid-70's, when the Bee Gees were outselling every other act on the planet, their open-shirted, wind-blown disco dude look did more harm to their reputation than 'net porn did to Gary Glitter. Within a couple of years, it had rendered their craft naff and their multi-platinum achievements vulgar. Consigned to the darkest recesses of that rockin' remainder-bin marked 'disco oblivion', their reputation was not fully restored until two decades later when, suddenly, it
seemed as if every teen band in the world spent all its time poring over The Bee Gees' back catalogue in search of inspiration.
No, Barry Gibb knows exactly what his image is. Maybe that's why, for his MOJO interview, he's turned up in a crumpled blue shirt over a baggy blue V-neck and scruffy old blue jeans, the whole ensemble topped off with a denim baseball cap - blue, defiantly won the right way round. He appears every inch the working rock musician at ease. Then again, maybe he actually is just a working rock musician, albeit of the multi-millionaire persuasion, and he happens to be at ease. With an artist who has been in the public eye for over 40 years, it's impossible to know for sure.
His reading glasses and his shades dangle from the base of the V-neck, and he sips continually from a plastic bottle of Evian water. "Let's go upstairs and do it," he says. We amble out of the studio, past a small alcove housing a shrine to Andy, the youngest Gibb brother, the one who didn't survive the excesses of stardom. His guitar hangs on the wall, a single rose taped to the front, with other mementoes surrounding it. Later, Barry will tell me that the most stupid question anybody can ask him is, "What's the worst thing that ever happened to you?", because the answer is so obvious and still so painful.
In the stairwell, we pass more platinum discs than most people have discs. At the top, next to the office of their personal manager, Dick Ashby, a big, airy, wood-panelled room with an opulent leather suite has been set aside for the interview. Maurice, looking tanned and fit, shows up in an expensive black leather jacket and matching hat which stays on throughout the afternoon. As he speaks, he drags continually on Dunhills and peers over his pince-nez. His non-identical twin, Robin, is last to arrive. Almost worryingly stick-like and seeming the least relaxed of the trio, he's nonetheless amiable.
It all seems almost too laid-back because The Bee Gees are notoriously not an interviewer's dream. It's said that they're touchy about the disco years, that Barry has an inflated concept of his own status, and, famously,
this is the band who, on October 22, 1997, stalked off the Clive Anderson - All Talk TV show in mid-interview.
"We've lived through much worse than that," points out Maurice. The way he tells it, being well aware of the Anderson style they'd declined to appear on the show for two years. Eventually, on being assured that Anderson was a huge fan, they consented. "Then the three of us go out there and as soon as he opened his mouth."
It certainly wasn't long before Anderson said, "You're hit writers, aren't you? I think that's the word, anyway." Barry Gibb responded, "That's the nice word." And Anderson immediately quipped, "We're one letter short."
"People think it was the last thing he said - the remark about tossers - that made us walk off," says Barry. "It wasn't. It was the very first thing. We gave him a few more minutes out of professionalism."
"We could see our fans in the audience," confirms Maurice, "and they were stunned, like, 'How can they sit here and take that?' Before I knew it, Barry was up, and I could feel the heat from his body. He was really angry.
But some good has come out of it. Robin has changed since that night. He's mellowed down. It's like he got rid of all the garbage. People have been taking the piss for many years. Anderson was just the straw that broke the camel's back. That was a turning point for us."
Blood being thicker than hair spray, The Bee Gees have ridden out many difficult spells that would have finished off less determined spirits. Drink and drug problems caused them to split at the end of the '60's. Their 1974 album A Kick In The Pants Is Worth Eight In The Head was rejected by RSO, the label owned by their manager Robert Stigwood. Then came the ill-fated 1978 Sgt. Pepper movie, a critical and financial disaster followed two years later by a high-profile court case when songwriter Ron Selle sued them, claiming they'd stolen the song How Deep Is Your Love.
But as if they thrived on adversity, every time they were counted out, The Bee Gees came back stronger than before. The first great reinvention was in 1975. The previous year had seen them sink to trudging round the UK supper club circuit. "I remember us talking about it backstage at Batley Variety Club," recalls Barry. "I said, If this is the bottom, there's no further we can fall. Something's gotta happen for the positive."
What happened was Arif Mardin. After rejecting A Kick In The Pants, Stigwood put the band together with the revered Atlantic Records producer/arranger, who'd worked with Aretha Franklin, The Rascals, Dusty
Springfield and Hall & Oates. "The first album I did with them, Mr. Natural, didn't do well, and they were very
despondent about that," says Mardin. "But to me, it was just a beginning. I was learning how to work with them. It was the second album, Main Course, which we did at Criteria Studios in Miami, that turned everything around."
But even Main Course had started off badly, as the band simply rehashed their old big ballad formula that had now worn so thin. Stigwood flew out from England and delivered a pep talk. "I didn't like a lot of the tracks.
I told them I wanted to scrap a lot of the things they'd done, and I'd like them to start again. I'd swallow the costs, not to worry, but to open their ears and find out in contemporary terms what is going on."
Luckily, remembers Barry, what was going on in Miami was a thriving soul/R&B scene, which re-kindled the band's early love of black music. Mardin encouraged a move in that direction, suggesting they should bring in some of those new-fangled funky synthesizers, and the first result was Jive Talkin'. "I have to stress," he says, "that we were not trying to make a dance record. We were just trying to make some music we liked. It was only when we played it for Robert Stigwood, and for Ahmet Ertegun, my boss at Atlantic, that they both said it was a natural dance hit."
The next building block in the reinvention of The Bee Gees came when they were working on Nights On Broadway. Keyboardist Blue Weaver recalls: "We'd recorded the song in a key that Barry found difficult to sing in. He had to take his voice down very low, which was giving him problems." Mardin suggested taking it up an octave, which Barry could only achieve by going into falsetto. "Arif said to me, 'Can you scream?'
I said, Under certain circumstances. He said, 'Can you scream in tune?'
I said, Well, I'll try." Barry was not immediately convinced, but Mardin was adamant that it worked, giving the track the extra emotional impetus and energy it had lacked.
The dance grooves, funky synths and falsetto vocals became the new Bee Gees trademark, spawning an astonishing run of hits peaking in December 1977 when, fuelled by the success of the movie Saturday Night Fever, How Deep Is Your Love became the first of six singles on RSO Records to consecutively hit the US Number 1 slot. By January 1979, the Bee Gees-dominated Saturday Night Fever soundtrack had notched up 25 million sales.
"People think we sat down and planned the whole thing, but it just happened that way," insists Maurice. "Robert asked us to do some songs for a little film he was producing. We just thought it would be a nice soundtrack to a nice little film about this guy who works in a paint shop, blows his wages every Saturday night and wins a dance competition. End of story. Then it blew everything else out of the water. Other record
companies were pressing it up for our record company because we couldn't keep up the supply."
It was, ironically, a rare case of success breeding failure. With disco perceived by the white rock media as manufactured teen pap, The Bee Gees were tarred as traitors, and their ongoing, ego-driven fraternal bickering
won them no friends. By the start of the '80's they were continually denying that the group was about to split again. "A lot of people thought we started with Saturday Night Fever, so it became our albatross," says Maurice. "Before the film, we were called blue-eyed soul, but after the film we were the kings of disco. How Deep Is Your Love was an R&B ballad, but when the film came out it was a disco ballad."
"I'll tell you something, though, I love those songs and, whatever went down, we had to go through there to get to here. A lot of people I know would have loved to have a Fever in their career. I've always been proud of
it, but we had to live with the pisstake through the negative '80's."
Barry is less phlegmatic. "Oh, it still haunts me like hell. Every time anyone asks me about it my mouth goes dry. It's almost become the kind of subject matter that to talk about actually will make you nauseous. We won't be playing too many of those songs on the next tour. But that's one side of my brain. The other side says wasn't that a wonderful time and it wasn't really about The Bee Gees, so don't worry about it. It was about a period of time where everybody was sort of going through a party mode. Maybe it was something else we were trying to get over."
Although most of the '80's, the decade in which Andy died, saw the group at a low ebb, Barry continued to shine as a songwriter/producer, helming Woman In Love for Barbra Streisand (US and UK Number1), ), Islands In The Stream for Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton (US Number 1), Chain Reaction for Diana Ross (UK Number1) and Dionne Warwick's comeback smash Heartbreaker. Then, in what was beginning to seem like a Pavlovian response to failure, the group reunited with Arif Mardin and bounced back yet again, hitting Number 1 in the UK with You Win Again in 1987. So what is it that keeps them going?
"One of the commonest misconceptions about The Bee Gees is that it's Barry's group," says Arif. "It isn't. Certainly Robin and Maurice look up to him because he's their big brother, but if you've ever watched them write a song, you'll know that they all contribute, and they're each prepared to fight for their ideas."
You Win Again is a perfect example. "When we get together and write it's not like three individuals, it's like one person in the room," says Maurice. "Usually we have a book of titles and we just pick one. I loved You Win Again as a title, but we had no idea how it might turn out as a song. It ended up as a big demo in my garage, and I recorded stomps and things. There was just one drum on there. The rest was just sounds. Then everybody tried to talk us out of the stomps at the start. They didn't want it. 'Take it off. Too loud! Can we have them on the intro, just when the music starts?' All this stuff. But as soon as you hear that 'jabba-doomba, jabba-doomba' on the radio, you know it's us. It's a signal. So that's one little secret, give people an automatic identification of who it is."
"We're all boss of this band at one time or another," confirms Barry. "If I get really dogged about something and I don't want to do it and everyone else does, my wife Linda will turn 'round and say, 'Get your pants on and go and bloody do it and shut up moaning.' In fact, all the Bee Gee wives are good like that. They have no time for our egos.
They'll say, 'This is that showbiz ego thing - get rid of it, act your age.' So we're like that with each other, as brothers. We drive each other."
Although the group didn't manage any Number 1s in the '90's, they weren't too unhappy with a UK Number 2 album (Still Waters, 1997) and a brace of top 20 singles, but the banner of their songwriting legacy was now taken up by a new generation of pop acts. N-Trance took Stayin' Alive to Number 1 in Canada, Take That ended their career with a UK Number 1 version of How Deep Is Your Love, Boyzone covered Words (UK Number 1) and Steps covered Tragedy (UK Number1).
"That was wonderful confirmation for us as songwriters, but everything really started to change in 1997," reflects Maurice. "We had four Lifetime Achievement Awards in three months, from the World Music Awards to our induction in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I mean, that's quite weird. It just started turning around, and people started listening. So when the One Night Only live shows came out in 1998, there was incredible interest."
Structured to give a bunch of middle-aged men an easier life on the road, the One Night Only concerts were a stroke of genius. Playing just one show in a string of major cities worldwide not only bestowed the cachet of rarity value to each Bee Gee event, but also gave them time to recharge their batteries between each show. None of them was getting any younger; in particular, Barry had been in the hospital during 1994 with heart problems.
"Playing Wembley Stadium had been a dream of ours for years," says Maurice. "But what I remember most about it was that we were all up in this room above the stadium watching the crowds stream in and Barry nudged me and said, 'Well, we got away with it. We fooled them again.' And we just laughed ourselves silly, because that's how it's always felt to us - like we're getting away with it and one day somebody will notice."
The new album, This Is Where I Came In, finds each individual Bee Gee making his presence felt more than on any previous effort. "We each approached this album in different ways," explains Robin. "So that each of us could have a little more of our own creative bursts, we decided to cut two tracks per brother and do the rest together, but we still ended up helping each other out on the individual tracks. I cut mine in England with Pete Vitesse, who worked with us on the One album. Maurice did his in the studio here pretty much as a solo effort. Then Barry came in with our touring band, which gave his tracks a different approach."
The result is probably the most diverse bunch of tracks The Bee Gees have ever recorded. "In a way, it's a retrospective," concedes Barry. "It's a look at four, five, maybe six decades. There's influences in all those decades for us. Technicolor Dreams, for example, is more of a Noel Coward song than a Bee Gee song, but to make an album of one kind of music, at this point in our lives, is a little bit boring. We're just recording based on all of our influences right from being children, and we don't really mind which era they come from."
"I have to tell you," says Maurice, barely able to contain his delight, "I did this song, Walking On Air - very summery and Beach Boys, that wonderful type of thing - Brian Wilson called me last night and said, 'I'm blown away with Walking On Air.' Which just validated it for me, because it was like a tribute to him because of all the harmonies they've done over the years which influenced so many people, particularly us."
Apart form the potential dents in their egos, whether or not the new album goes multi-platinum is hardly an issue. The Bee Gees, who claim to have made nothing out of their '60's successes, are now in clover. "We've been able to renegotiate everything," explains Barry. "We went back to '67, when we had our first financial conflicts, and we demanded everything that we owned back and we got that. We now own all of our work, we own all our publishing, we own all of our record masters. Today, times are extremely good and we're in control of ourselves. As far as having hits is concerned, we never know if we're going to do it again. We're
just driven to do it, and if it doesn't work we're despondent, and if it does it's like a five-year-old getting an ice cream cone. There's nothing to beat it."
Although they had disputes with 'fourth Bee Gee' Robert Stigwood over the years, Barry now says there's nothing he would change. "I don't ever remember Robert making a bad move. I don't even think Sgt. Pepper was a bad move. It looks bad in retrospect, but it was a great idea for a film. Robert's instinct was right."
A figure of enormous power and influence, Stigwood had remained remote from the media. The Gibbs, however, insist that rather than being a power-crazed Svengali, his was a paternal presence in the Brian Epstein mould. "We were always fortunate to have Robert looking after us, because there were a lot of sharks around. With us and Robert, from the start, it was an absolute collaboration. We could get together over dinner with the president of the record company and our manager and play our tracks and everybody would discuss what would be the best things to do."
As the years have passed, though, the Gibbs have watched the industry become increasingly fragmented and clandestine. "There's a dark side to the top end of the business which the artist never sees. There are country houses where powerful people meet to plan careers or to help each other out in different ways. All the record company presidents do the same thing. As a result, the artist becomes very isolated. The manager speaks to the record company president. The company president calls the manager back, and the manager lets the group know what's been decided. But that's the business now. It's conglomerate, it's not localised."
As an example, he cites the case of a song he recently composed with the Backstreet Boys in mind. "Of all the boy bands, I think they're the best," he says. "I wrote this song for them, got it to them and had word back that they loved it. The next message is from their manager: the Backstreet Boys only record the songs he gives them. What's that all about?"
It's a blow to his pride rather than his wallet, but he has no time to dwell on it. As we finish, he returns to the studio where he and John Merchant go over details of the arrangements, musicians and equipment they'll need for an upcoming BBC TV special. To promote the new album they're planning One Night Only concerts, in Japan, Brazil and ("Hopefully," says Maurice) the UK. Beyond that, at least partly inspired by MOJO's recent Buried Treasure feature, there's a proposal to stage Robin's finest moment, their concept album Odessa, in a series of special shows.
Despite their exceptionally daft name, their oft-checkered career, their sibling bickerings, their improbable teeth, and more, The Bee Gees now rank in the top 5 most successful recording artists ever, alongside The Beatles, Paul McCartney, Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson. Barry is rated the all-time Number 3 record producer, with the most Number 1 records (14). The adoration of the '90's teeny bands is easy to understand, but it's when you hear Britpop overlord Noel Gallagher stating, "I wish I'd written a song like To Love Somebody" or goth godfather Alice Cooper declaring, "They're great songwriters. I love their music", that you know The Bee Gees have moved beyond image, cool, and fashion, even beyond sales graphs. It's hard to imagine what they can do next to screw it all up and plunge them back into despair. But hey, they'll think of something.
http://beegeesfanfever.blogspot.nl/
Ridiculed as disco has-beens, The Bee Gees have come through death, pills, booze, and the derision of bald barristers to become the ultimate pop survivors. Johnny Black documents their remarkable resurrection.
"What image?" asks Barry Gibb, "I haven't' got an image," What he does have, though, is a guitar. It's a second-hand customized hollow-bodied Epiphone, bought just half an hour ago, and he's showing it off proudly to sound engineer John Merchant in the Bee Gees' Miami Beach workplace, Middle Ear Studios. "The bloke in the shop didn't want to sell me it," says Barry, the pitch of his voice rising. "He said it didn't fit
my image. What does he think I am, a librarian? Right now I don't think I've got an image. I'm hoping this guitar will give me one. I said, I'm reinventing myself - just put the guitar in the box!"
Merchant eyes his boss, as if seeking a clue as to whether there's a trace of whimsy in the remarks. The body of the guitar is hand-painted with a striking, not to say lurid, flame design. Mother-of-pearl dice are inlaid at the points along the fretboard, and extravagantly large red-and-white translucent plastic dice have replaced the volume and tone controls.
Barry holds the guitar up and studies it in detail for a moment, before his mouth finally cracks into a tell-tale grin. "I think the big dice will have to go."
Few Artists can be quite so acutely aware of their image as Barry Gibb. In the mid-70's, when the Bee Gees were outselling every other act on the planet, their open-shirted, wind-blown disco dude look did more harm to their reputation than 'net porn did to Gary Glitter. Within a couple of years, it had rendered their craft naff and their multi-platinum achievements vulgar. Consigned to the darkest recesses of that rockin' remainder-bin marked 'disco oblivion', their reputation was not fully restored until two decades later when, suddenly, it
seemed as if every teen band in the world spent all its time poring over The Bee Gees' back catalogue in search of inspiration.
No, Barry Gibb knows exactly what his image is. Maybe that's why, for his MOJO interview, he's turned up in a crumpled blue shirt over a baggy blue V-neck and scruffy old blue jeans, the whole ensemble topped off with a denim baseball cap - blue, defiantly won the right way round. He appears every inch the working rock musician at ease. Then again, maybe he actually is just a working rock musician, albeit of the multi-millionaire persuasion, and he happens to be at ease. With an artist who has been in the public eye for over 40 years, it's impossible to know for sure.
His reading glasses and his shades dangle from the base of the V-neck, and he sips continually from a plastic bottle of Evian water. "Let's go upstairs and do it," he says. We amble out of the studio, past a small alcove housing a shrine to Andy, the youngest Gibb brother, the one who didn't survive the excesses of stardom. His guitar hangs on the wall, a single rose taped to the front, with other mementoes surrounding it. Later, Barry will tell me that the most stupid question anybody can ask him is, "What's the worst thing that ever happened to you?", because the answer is so obvious and still so painful.
In the stairwell, we pass more platinum discs than most people have discs. At the top, next to the office of their personal manager, Dick Ashby, a big, airy, wood-panelled room with an opulent leather suite has been set aside for the interview. Maurice, looking tanned and fit, shows up in an expensive black leather jacket and matching hat which stays on throughout the afternoon. As he speaks, he drags continually on Dunhills and peers over his pince-nez. His non-identical twin, Robin, is last to arrive. Almost worryingly stick-like and seeming the least relaxed of the trio, he's nonetheless amiable.
It all seems almost too laid-back because The Bee Gees are notoriously not an interviewer's dream. It's said that they're touchy about the disco years, that Barry has an inflated concept of his own status, and, famously,
this is the band who, on October 22, 1997, stalked off the Clive Anderson - All Talk TV show in mid-interview.
"We've lived through much worse than that," points out Maurice. The way he tells it, being well aware of the Anderson style they'd declined to appear on the show for two years. Eventually, on being assured that Anderson was a huge fan, they consented. "Then the three of us go out there and as soon as he opened his mouth."
It certainly wasn't long before Anderson said, "You're hit writers, aren't you? I think that's the word, anyway." Barry Gibb responded, "That's the nice word." And Anderson immediately quipped, "We're one letter short."
"People think it was the last thing he said - the remark about tossers - that made us walk off," says Barry. "It wasn't. It was the very first thing. We gave him a few more minutes out of professionalism."
"We could see our fans in the audience," confirms Maurice, "and they were stunned, like, 'How can they sit here and take that?' Before I knew it, Barry was up, and I could feel the heat from his body. He was really angry.
But some good has come out of it. Robin has changed since that night. He's mellowed down. It's like he got rid of all the garbage. People have been taking the piss for many years. Anderson was just the straw that broke the camel's back. That was a turning point for us."
Blood being thicker than hair spray, The Bee Gees have ridden out many difficult spells that would have finished off less determined spirits. Drink and drug problems caused them to split at the end of the '60's. Their 1974 album A Kick In The Pants Is Worth Eight In The Head was rejected by RSO, the label owned by their manager Robert Stigwood. Then came the ill-fated 1978 Sgt. Pepper movie, a critical and financial disaster followed two years later by a high-profile court case when songwriter Ron Selle sued them, claiming they'd stolen the song How Deep Is Your Love.
But as if they thrived on adversity, every time they were counted out, The Bee Gees came back stronger than before. The first great reinvention was in 1975. The previous year had seen them sink to trudging round the UK supper club circuit. "I remember us talking about it backstage at Batley Variety Club," recalls Barry. "I said, If this is the bottom, there's no further we can fall. Something's gotta happen for the positive."
What happened was Arif Mardin. After rejecting A Kick In The Pants, Stigwood put the band together with the revered Atlantic Records producer/arranger, who'd worked with Aretha Franklin, The Rascals, Dusty
Springfield and Hall & Oates. "The first album I did with them, Mr. Natural, didn't do well, and they were very
despondent about that," says Mardin. "But to me, it was just a beginning. I was learning how to work with them. It was the second album, Main Course, which we did at Criteria Studios in Miami, that turned everything around."
But even Main Course had started off badly, as the band simply rehashed their old big ballad formula that had now worn so thin. Stigwood flew out from England and delivered a pep talk. "I didn't like a lot of the tracks.
I told them I wanted to scrap a lot of the things they'd done, and I'd like them to start again. I'd swallow the costs, not to worry, but to open their ears and find out in contemporary terms what is going on."
Luckily, remembers Barry, what was going on in Miami was a thriving soul/R&B scene, which re-kindled the band's early love of black music. Mardin encouraged a move in that direction, suggesting they should bring in some of those new-fangled funky synthesizers, and the first result was Jive Talkin'. "I have to stress," he says, "that we were not trying to make a dance record. We were just trying to make some music we liked. It was only when we played it for Robert Stigwood, and for Ahmet Ertegun, my boss at Atlantic, that they both said it was a natural dance hit."
The next building block in the reinvention of The Bee Gees came when they were working on Nights On Broadway. Keyboardist Blue Weaver recalls: "We'd recorded the song in a key that Barry found difficult to sing in. He had to take his voice down very low, which was giving him problems." Mardin suggested taking it up an octave, which Barry could only achieve by going into falsetto. "Arif said to me, 'Can you scream?'
I said, Under certain circumstances. He said, 'Can you scream in tune?'
I said, Well, I'll try." Barry was not immediately convinced, but Mardin was adamant that it worked, giving the track the extra emotional impetus and energy it had lacked.
The dance grooves, funky synths and falsetto vocals became the new Bee Gees trademark, spawning an astonishing run of hits peaking in December 1977 when, fuelled by the success of the movie Saturday Night Fever, How Deep Is Your Love became the first of six singles on RSO Records to consecutively hit the US Number 1 slot. By January 1979, the Bee Gees-dominated Saturday Night Fever soundtrack had notched up 25 million sales.
"People think we sat down and planned the whole thing, but it just happened that way," insists Maurice. "Robert asked us to do some songs for a little film he was producing. We just thought it would be a nice soundtrack to a nice little film about this guy who works in a paint shop, blows his wages every Saturday night and wins a dance competition. End of story. Then it blew everything else out of the water. Other record
companies were pressing it up for our record company because we couldn't keep up the supply."
It was, ironically, a rare case of success breeding failure. With disco perceived by the white rock media as manufactured teen pap, The Bee Gees were tarred as traitors, and their ongoing, ego-driven fraternal bickering
won them no friends. By the start of the '80's they were continually denying that the group was about to split again. "A lot of people thought we started with Saturday Night Fever, so it became our albatross," says Maurice. "Before the film, we were called blue-eyed soul, but after the film we were the kings of disco. How Deep Is Your Love was an R&B ballad, but when the film came out it was a disco ballad."
"I'll tell you something, though, I love those songs and, whatever went down, we had to go through there to get to here. A lot of people I know would have loved to have a Fever in their career. I've always been proud of
it, but we had to live with the pisstake through the negative '80's."
Barry is less phlegmatic. "Oh, it still haunts me like hell. Every time anyone asks me about it my mouth goes dry. It's almost become the kind of subject matter that to talk about actually will make you nauseous. We won't be playing too many of those songs on the next tour. But that's one side of my brain. The other side says wasn't that a wonderful time and it wasn't really about The Bee Gees, so don't worry about it. It was about a period of time where everybody was sort of going through a party mode. Maybe it was something else we were trying to get over."
Although most of the '80's, the decade in which Andy died, saw the group at a low ebb, Barry continued to shine as a songwriter/producer, helming Woman In Love for Barbra Streisand (US and UK Number1), ), Islands In The Stream for Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton (US Number 1), Chain Reaction for Diana Ross (UK Number1) and Dionne Warwick's comeback smash Heartbreaker. Then, in what was beginning to seem like a Pavlovian response to failure, the group reunited with Arif Mardin and bounced back yet again, hitting Number 1 in the UK with You Win Again in 1987. So what is it that keeps them going?
"One of the commonest misconceptions about The Bee Gees is that it's Barry's group," says Arif. "It isn't. Certainly Robin and Maurice look up to him because he's their big brother, but if you've ever watched them write a song, you'll know that they all contribute, and they're each prepared to fight for their ideas."
You Win Again is a perfect example. "When we get together and write it's not like three individuals, it's like one person in the room," says Maurice. "Usually we have a book of titles and we just pick one. I loved You Win Again as a title, but we had no idea how it might turn out as a song. It ended up as a big demo in my garage, and I recorded stomps and things. There was just one drum on there. The rest was just sounds. Then everybody tried to talk us out of the stomps at the start. They didn't want it. 'Take it off. Too loud! Can we have them on the intro, just when the music starts?' All this stuff. But as soon as you hear that 'jabba-doomba, jabba-doomba' on the radio, you know it's us. It's a signal. So that's one little secret, give people an automatic identification of who it is."
"We're all boss of this band at one time or another," confirms Barry. "If I get really dogged about something and I don't want to do it and everyone else does, my wife Linda will turn 'round and say, 'Get your pants on and go and bloody do it and shut up moaning.' In fact, all the Bee Gee wives are good like that. They have no time for our egos.
They'll say, 'This is that showbiz ego thing - get rid of it, act your age.' So we're like that with each other, as brothers. We drive each other."
Although the group didn't manage any Number 1s in the '90's, they weren't too unhappy with a UK Number 2 album (Still Waters, 1997) and a brace of top 20 singles, but the banner of their songwriting legacy was now taken up by a new generation of pop acts. N-Trance took Stayin' Alive to Number 1 in Canada, Take That ended their career with a UK Number 1 version of How Deep Is Your Love, Boyzone covered Words (UK Number 1) and Steps covered Tragedy (UK Number1).
"That was wonderful confirmation for us as songwriters, but everything really started to change in 1997," reflects Maurice. "We had four Lifetime Achievement Awards in three months, from the World Music Awards to our induction in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I mean, that's quite weird. It just started turning around, and people started listening. So when the One Night Only live shows came out in 1998, there was incredible interest."
Structured to give a bunch of middle-aged men an easier life on the road, the One Night Only concerts were a stroke of genius. Playing just one show in a string of major cities worldwide not only bestowed the cachet of rarity value to each Bee Gee event, but also gave them time to recharge their batteries between each show. None of them was getting any younger; in particular, Barry had been in the hospital during 1994 with heart problems.
"Playing Wembley Stadium had been a dream of ours for years," says Maurice. "But what I remember most about it was that we were all up in this room above the stadium watching the crowds stream in and Barry nudged me and said, 'Well, we got away with it. We fooled them again.' And we just laughed ourselves silly, because that's how it's always felt to us - like we're getting away with it and one day somebody will notice."
The new album, This Is Where I Came In, finds each individual Bee Gee making his presence felt more than on any previous effort. "We each approached this album in different ways," explains Robin. "So that each of us could have a little more of our own creative bursts, we decided to cut two tracks per brother and do the rest together, but we still ended up helping each other out on the individual tracks. I cut mine in England with Pete Vitesse, who worked with us on the One album. Maurice did his in the studio here pretty much as a solo effort. Then Barry came in with our touring band, which gave his tracks a different approach."
The result is probably the most diverse bunch of tracks The Bee Gees have ever recorded. "In a way, it's a retrospective," concedes Barry. "It's a look at four, five, maybe six decades. There's influences in all those decades for us. Technicolor Dreams, for example, is more of a Noel Coward song than a Bee Gee song, but to make an album of one kind of music, at this point in our lives, is a little bit boring. We're just recording based on all of our influences right from being children, and we don't really mind which era they come from."
"I have to tell you," says Maurice, barely able to contain his delight, "I did this song, Walking On Air - very summery and Beach Boys, that wonderful type of thing - Brian Wilson called me last night and said, 'I'm blown away with Walking On Air.' Which just validated it for me, because it was like a tribute to him because of all the harmonies they've done over the years which influenced so many people, particularly us."
Apart form the potential dents in their egos, whether or not the new album goes multi-platinum is hardly an issue. The Bee Gees, who claim to have made nothing out of their '60's successes, are now in clover. "We've been able to renegotiate everything," explains Barry. "We went back to '67, when we had our first financial conflicts, and we demanded everything that we owned back and we got that. We now own all of our work, we own all our publishing, we own all of our record masters. Today, times are extremely good and we're in control of ourselves. As far as having hits is concerned, we never know if we're going to do it again. We're
just driven to do it, and if it doesn't work we're despondent, and if it does it's like a five-year-old getting an ice cream cone. There's nothing to beat it."
Although they had disputes with 'fourth Bee Gee' Robert Stigwood over the years, Barry now says there's nothing he would change. "I don't ever remember Robert making a bad move. I don't even think Sgt. Pepper was a bad move. It looks bad in retrospect, but it was a great idea for a film. Robert's instinct was right."
A figure of enormous power and influence, Stigwood had remained remote from the media. The Gibbs, however, insist that rather than being a power-crazed Svengali, his was a paternal presence in the Brian Epstein mould. "We were always fortunate to have Robert looking after us, because there were a lot of sharks around. With us and Robert, from the start, it was an absolute collaboration. We could get together over dinner with the president of the record company and our manager and play our tracks and everybody would discuss what would be the best things to do."
As the years have passed, though, the Gibbs have watched the industry become increasingly fragmented and clandestine. "There's a dark side to the top end of the business which the artist never sees. There are country houses where powerful people meet to plan careers or to help each other out in different ways. All the record company presidents do the same thing. As a result, the artist becomes very isolated. The manager speaks to the record company president. The company president calls the manager back, and the manager lets the group know what's been decided. But that's the business now. It's conglomerate, it's not localised."
As an example, he cites the case of a song he recently composed with the Backstreet Boys in mind. "Of all the boy bands, I think they're the best," he says. "I wrote this song for them, got it to them and had word back that they loved it. The next message is from their manager: the Backstreet Boys only record the songs he gives them. What's that all about?"
It's a blow to his pride rather than his wallet, but he has no time to dwell on it. As we finish, he returns to the studio where he and John Merchant go over details of the arrangements, musicians and equipment they'll need for an upcoming BBC TV special. To promote the new album they're planning One Night Only concerts, in Japan, Brazil and ("Hopefully," says Maurice) the UK. Beyond that, at least partly inspired by MOJO's recent Buried Treasure feature, there's a proposal to stage Robin's finest moment, their concept album Odessa, in a series of special shows.
Despite their exceptionally daft name, their oft-checkered career, their sibling bickerings, their improbable teeth, and more, The Bee Gees now rank in the top 5 most successful recording artists ever, alongside The Beatles, Paul McCartney, Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson. Barry is rated the all-time Number 3 record producer, with the most Number 1 records (14). The adoration of the '90's teeny bands is easy to understand, but it's when you hear Britpop overlord Noel Gallagher stating, "I wish I'd written a song like To Love Somebody" or goth godfather Alice Cooper declaring, "They're great songwriters. I love their music", that you know The Bee Gees have moved beyond image, cool, and fashion, even beyond sales graphs. It's hard to imagine what they can do next to screw it all up and plunge them back into despair. But hey, they'll think of something.
http://beegeesfanfever.blogspot.nl/
PUSHING BACK THE FRONTIERS OF SEXUALITY
OK! Magazine
1995
Bee Gee Robin Gibb outraged his family and friends by revealing on live radio, "My wife's a lesbian and I love it." His outburst caused such reverberations that he refused even to confirm whether it was true or not.
Now, Robin and Dwina talk for the first time about their most unusual marriage...
(Interview by Ian Woodward)
The Bee Gees string of pop hits brought Robin Gibb 50 million but, he says, it was his wife Dwina who brought him liberation.... As we sit by the pool in their sumptuous Miami mansion, he looks at her and says: "Dwina's brought
something to my private life which I doubt any other woman could bring." As for Dwina, she says: "If Robin hadn't come along, I would never have married. Definitely not."
She may not be a great advocate of marriage, but the couple have been together 15 years now and celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary on July 31st. They have even weathered the storm that raged in the British tabloids following Robin's revelation on American radio that his wife was a lesbian.
At the time, a shocked Dwina said "I'm going to kill him", and Robin has remained tight-lipped on the subject since then. But now the couple want to tell it how it is. Robin, 45, whose hits include "Night Fever", "Stayin' Alive", "If I can't have you" and "Massachussetts", explains: "I was being interviewed by the biggest shock jockey in the US on live radio. You have to shock with him or you become the butt of his treatment, so I got in first. It wasn't until I got on the plane later to go to London that I realised
what a can of worms I'd opened... but yes it's true, Dwina is bisexual with me."
Dwina says she wasn't hurt by Robin's revelations, but admits: "His comments did upset me, but only because I was worried about how my family, my mother and our son Robin-John (now 12) would take it. I didn't have shames 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."
And a very luxurious lifestyle she has, too. After the dust had settled, she decided to impose a fine on her husband: "I said, "You owe me the biggest diamond ever", and as I like Jaguars he gave me a diamond-blue XJRS with a
numberplate that says DRUID." Dwina, who was born in Northern Ireland, is a Druid leader as well as a successful artist and novelist. And, to show him all was forgiven, she gave Robin a gold ring with a cameo of Lord Nelson which had belonged to Lady Hamilton.
The couple are physically very different - Robin is extremely thin in drainpipe jeans, with diamond ear stud and bikers boots, and Dwina, 40, is blonde and blooming - but they believe they are kindred spirits.
"We share the same philosophy about breaking down the barriers erected by society, about pushing back the frontiers in terms of sexuality," says Dwina. And Robin says that she's "made me more open, liberated me". He
insists: "We have freedom to do our own thing. If we're parted from each other for two or three weeks, we don't worry about it. We don't have any jealousies. We've passed the frantic boyfriend / girlfriend thing."
"If Robin met another woman and wanted to have a fling, so what?" asks Dwina. "We have a spiritual / physical bond whereby we know we're always going to be together. And, because of AIDS, we're extra careful not to march
unthinkingly into extra-marital affairs."
Robin comes straight to the point. "I knew Dwina was gay when we married, but that didn't matter because I was in love with her; I still am very much in love with her. And, anyway, she is bisexual with me. She is the best wife any husband could want."
"If we find somebody who sexually excites us, we can actually talk to each other about it," says Dwina. "We'll discuss it without fear of feeling guilty. It's totally open. We like to cruise and we like to watch."
The Bee Gee leans forward. "All of which is why I got an enormous kick from talking about this on the radio. There was no malicious intention, just high-spirited tomfoolery in order to engage the moment."
Says Dwina: "He was trying to shock - and he certainly shocked my mother!"
So what did his brothers Maurice and Barry, who live close by, think?
"They're used to Robin," Dwina answers. "On one radio show they were asked what past lives they might have led, and Robin piped up, "Barry was probably a rent-boy for Oscar Wilde". He tends to throw in these bombshells.
That attraction began back in 1980. "Our first meeting was at Maurice's house", she recalls. "Robin was going to commission me to do some artwork, and I remember him peeping out from behind the curtains as I arrived with
some drawings."
Robin, who has two older children (Spencer, 22, and Melissa, 21 in June), was going through his divorce. He says: "I wasn't actually looking for anybody to have a relationship with. It was a pretty heavy period for me,
but in the end, we were both won over. We have the same sense of humour, the same interests in history and life.
"She's always accepted me totally for what I am, as I have her. We've both benefited from each other's lives, attitudes and personalities. It's a chemistry thing. Ours is very much a case where two similars have attracted.
I couldn't live with somebody who was opposite to me, or who held grudges. We never go to bed on an argument."
Dwina remembers, "I'd been a loner for about 10 years when I first met Robin. I'd had a little girl who was born prematurely and. sadly, she died. I was too busy working to give any thought to romance, living among brick dust in a house in south-east London while trying to do it up. I didn't have a roof over my kitchen and I was using the electric fire to cook three course meals."
She now has an in-house chef in each of her millionaire-rowhomes.
She goes on: "Not long after Robin and I met, we both knew we wanted a child together before actually being with each other. We felt ours would be good genes to put together. But the baby never came along until we started living
together. Robin found a breath of fresh air blowing through his life when he met me. I've brought him so many things, and vice versa. I'm poet, artist and novelist, and he has helped me to focus on getting things finished."
Dwina is certainly a prolific author. She's just finished a novel, "The Shackles", set among the gay and straight communities of Miami's South Beach area. Two other yet-to-be-published books, "Under Wraps" and "Whispers Tell Lies", explore women's relationships.
"Writing about a woman who has this deep love for another woman is a subject that's completely natural for me to tackle," she says. "There's a section in "Whispers tells Lies" about lesbianism and voyeurism. These are books I just
had to write. I don't like the boundaries that society confronts us with and Robin's the same. He was breaking boundaries when he talked about me on that radio show."
As they look back on 10 years of marriage, Robin, whose solo hits include "Oh Darlin" and "Saved By The Bell", says: "We weren't really that interested in the idea of being married. We didn't even contemplate it, lt alone expect it."
"Anyway," reflects Dwina, "I don't think that a piece of paper really ties you down. I've always been a rebel in that respect, and so has Robin."
"But," he insists, "that doesn't mean we have multiple partners. It simply means that we make our commitments in the eyes of God."
Robin says he fell in love with Dwina for her looks, personality and sexuality as much as for her spirituality. Today, she is a Druid leader - her full title is Patroness of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids - and one room in the Miami home houses spiritual artefacts from around the world.
"I've always shared Dwina's spirituality," says Robin, "though I've never actually been converted to Druidism. It's really a belief in the elements and the worship of nature, rather than dancing naked around Stonehenge."
But Robin does have some unusual beliefs of his own. He believes he was Dwina's brother in a previous life. Dwina, descendant of an Irish king, looked into their family trees and found that one of her ancestors married one of his ancestors. She says: "We're almost like twins. We were born on the same day."
And he's also obsessed with historical figures. "First it was Charles Dickens, the Oliver Cromwell, then Winston Churchill. Now I share my bed with Horatio Nelson," reveals Dwina. "And, of course, living in a house with such historical connections as this, he's in his element."
Apparently the house was frequented by President John F Kennedy 30 odd years ago. He took a succession of blonde lovelies there for amorous trysts, including Marilyn Monroe. "Our bedroom is where Kennedy made love to all his
girlfriends," says Robin, who seems to have a penchant for buying former lovenests. His previous Miami home, four doors down, was the hideaway of gangster Al Capone and Hollywood movie queen Lana Turner. When Robin-John was born, the Gibbs moved to their present abode.
"It was like the castle after Sleeping Beauty's 100-year sleep, all over-grown," he says. "And inside, it was almost like Miss Havisham's house in "Great Expectations": everything covered in dust. It had been pretty much empty since Kennedy's assasination. I used to drive past it every day though you couldn't see the house for overgrowth. The gates were open and people would drive in and use the
grounds for love-making sessions. I saw there was potential. I just knew this had to be my house in America. We've now been here for 12 years and I never tire of the place."
Their Miami home is where Robin and Dwina work, Robin on a new Bee Gees album at their own recording studio in Miami and Dwina finishing her Celtic saga, "Cormac: The Sage". When they want to relax, they go to their 4 million medieval property set in 20 acres in Oxfordshire.
Theirs may not be a conventional marriage but they're adamant it is one that works. "Our marriage has always been the same," she says softly, "and I think it always will be. We have a special relationship."
"A very special relationship," endorses her husband, as they sit in their gazebo looking across a magnificent moonlit bay. "We have a healthy understanding of each other's needs. I understand her creative spirit."
"It's impossible," insists Dwina, "to have a conventional lifestyle if you are creative people."
"Ours is not a conventional lifestyle," says Robin. "We don't live by the rules. What we do in our private lives might not be to many people's liking, but that's their problem. Life should be lived to the full, and that's what
we're doing. I'm not a monk, and Dwina's not a nun!
"" http://beegeesfanfever.blogspot.nl/
1995
Bee Gee Robin Gibb outraged his family and friends by revealing on live radio, "My wife's a lesbian and I love it." His outburst caused such reverberations that he refused even to confirm whether it was true or not.
Now, Robin and Dwina talk for the first time about their most unusual marriage...
(Interview by Ian Woodward)
The Bee Gees string of pop hits brought Robin Gibb 50 million but, he says, it was his wife Dwina who brought him liberation.... As we sit by the pool in their sumptuous Miami mansion, he looks at her and says: "Dwina's brought
something to my private life which I doubt any other woman could bring." As for Dwina, she says: "If Robin hadn't come along, I would never have married. Definitely not."
She may not be a great advocate of marriage, but the couple have been together 15 years now and celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary on July 31st. They have even weathered the storm that raged in the British tabloids following Robin's revelation on American radio that his wife was a lesbian.
At the time, a shocked Dwina said "I'm going to kill him", and Robin has remained tight-lipped on the subject since then. But now the couple want to tell it how it is. Robin, 45, whose hits include "Night Fever", "Stayin' Alive", "If I can't have you" and "Massachussetts", explains: "I was being interviewed by the biggest shock jockey in the US on live radio. You have to shock with him or you become the butt of his treatment, so I got in first. It wasn't until I got on the plane later to go to London that I realised
what a can of worms I'd opened... but yes it's true, Dwina is bisexual with me."
Dwina says she wasn't hurt by Robin's revelations, but admits: "His comments did upset me, but only because I was worried about how my family, my mother and our son Robin-John (now 12) would take it. I didn't have shames 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."
And a very luxurious lifestyle she has, too. After the dust had settled, she decided to impose a fine on her husband: "I said, "You owe me the biggest diamond ever", and as I like Jaguars he gave me a diamond-blue XJRS with a
numberplate that says DRUID." Dwina, who was born in Northern Ireland, is a Druid leader as well as a successful artist and novelist. And, to show him all was forgiven, she gave Robin a gold ring with a cameo of Lord Nelson which had belonged to Lady Hamilton.
The couple are physically very different - Robin is extremely thin in drainpipe jeans, with diamond ear stud and bikers boots, and Dwina, 40, is blonde and blooming - but they believe they are kindred spirits.
"We share the same philosophy about breaking down the barriers erected by society, about pushing back the frontiers in terms of sexuality," says Dwina. And Robin says that she's "made me more open, liberated me". He
insists: "We have freedom to do our own thing. If we're parted from each other for two or three weeks, we don't worry about it. We don't have any jealousies. We've passed the frantic boyfriend / girlfriend thing."
"If Robin met another woman and wanted to have a fling, so what?" asks Dwina. "We have a spiritual / physical bond whereby we know we're always going to be together. And, because of AIDS, we're extra careful not to march
unthinkingly into extra-marital affairs."
Robin comes straight to the point. "I knew Dwina was gay when we married, but that didn't matter because I was in love with her; I still am very much in love with her. And, anyway, she is bisexual with me. She is the best wife any husband could want."
"If we find somebody who sexually excites us, we can actually talk to each other about it," says Dwina. "We'll discuss it without fear of feeling guilty. It's totally open. We like to cruise and we like to watch."
The Bee Gee leans forward. "All of which is why I got an enormous kick from talking about this on the radio. There was no malicious intention, just high-spirited tomfoolery in order to engage the moment."
Says Dwina: "He was trying to shock - and he certainly shocked my mother!"
So what did his brothers Maurice and Barry, who live close by, think?
"They're used to Robin," Dwina answers. "On one radio show they were asked what past lives they might have led, and Robin piped up, "Barry was probably a rent-boy for Oscar Wilde". He tends to throw in these bombshells.
That attraction began back in 1980. "Our first meeting was at Maurice's house", she recalls. "Robin was going to commission me to do some artwork, and I remember him peeping out from behind the curtains as I arrived with
some drawings."
Robin, who has two older children (Spencer, 22, and Melissa, 21 in June), was going through his divorce. He says: "I wasn't actually looking for anybody to have a relationship with. It was a pretty heavy period for me,
but in the end, we were both won over. We have the same sense of humour, the same interests in history and life.
"She's always accepted me totally for what I am, as I have her. We've both benefited from each other's lives, attitudes and personalities. It's a chemistry thing. Ours is very much a case where two similars have attracted.
I couldn't live with somebody who was opposite to me, or who held grudges. We never go to bed on an argument."
Dwina remembers, "I'd been a loner for about 10 years when I first met Robin. I'd had a little girl who was born prematurely and. sadly, she died. I was too busy working to give any thought to romance, living among brick dust in a house in south-east London while trying to do it up. I didn't have a roof over my kitchen and I was using the electric fire to cook three course meals."
She now has an in-house chef in each of her millionaire-rowhomes.
She goes on: "Not long after Robin and I met, we both knew we wanted a child together before actually being with each other. We felt ours would be good genes to put together. But the baby never came along until we started living
together. Robin found a breath of fresh air blowing through his life when he met me. I've brought him so many things, and vice versa. I'm poet, artist and novelist, and he has helped me to focus on getting things finished."
Dwina is certainly a prolific author. She's just finished a novel, "The Shackles", set among the gay and straight communities of Miami's South Beach area. Two other yet-to-be-published books, "Under Wraps" and "Whispers Tell Lies", explore women's relationships.
"Writing about a woman who has this deep love for another woman is a subject that's completely natural for me to tackle," she says. "There's a section in "Whispers tells Lies" about lesbianism and voyeurism. These are books I just
had to write. I don't like the boundaries that society confronts us with and Robin's the same. He was breaking boundaries when he talked about me on that radio show."
As they look back on 10 years of marriage, Robin, whose solo hits include "Oh Darlin" and "Saved By The Bell", says: "We weren't really that interested in the idea of being married. We didn't even contemplate it, lt alone expect it."
"Anyway," reflects Dwina, "I don't think that a piece of paper really ties you down. I've always been a rebel in that respect, and so has Robin."
"But," he insists, "that doesn't mean we have multiple partners. It simply means that we make our commitments in the eyes of God."
Robin says he fell in love with Dwina for her looks, personality and sexuality as much as for her spirituality. Today, she is a Druid leader - her full title is Patroness of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids - and one room in the Miami home houses spiritual artefacts from around the world.
"I've always shared Dwina's spirituality," says Robin, "though I've never actually been converted to Druidism. It's really a belief in the elements and the worship of nature, rather than dancing naked around Stonehenge."
But Robin does have some unusual beliefs of his own. He believes he was Dwina's brother in a previous life. Dwina, descendant of an Irish king, looked into their family trees and found that one of her ancestors married one of his ancestors. She says: "We're almost like twins. We were born on the same day."
And he's also obsessed with historical figures. "First it was Charles Dickens, the Oliver Cromwell, then Winston Churchill. Now I share my bed with Horatio Nelson," reveals Dwina. "And, of course, living in a house with such historical connections as this, he's in his element."
Apparently the house was frequented by President John F Kennedy 30 odd years ago. He took a succession of blonde lovelies there for amorous trysts, including Marilyn Monroe. "Our bedroom is where Kennedy made love to all his
girlfriends," says Robin, who seems to have a penchant for buying former lovenests. His previous Miami home, four doors down, was the hideaway of gangster Al Capone and Hollywood movie queen Lana Turner. When Robin-John was born, the Gibbs moved to their present abode.
"It was like the castle after Sleeping Beauty's 100-year sleep, all over-grown," he says. "And inside, it was almost like Miss Havisham's house in "Great Expectations": everything covered in dust. It had been pretty much empty since Kennedy's assasination. I used to drive past it every day though you couldn't see the house for overgrowth. The gates were open and people would drive in and use the
grounds for love-making sessions. I saw there was potential. I just knew this had to be my house in America. We've now been here for 12 years and I never tire of the place."
Their Miami home is where Robin and Dwina work, Robin on a new Bee Gees album at their own recording studio in Miami and Dwina finishing her Celtic saga, "Cormac: The Sage". When they want to relax, they go to their 4 million medieval property set in 20 acres in Oxfordshire.
Theirs may not be a conventional marriage but they're adamant it is one that works. "Our marriage has always been the same," she says softly, "and I think it always will be. We have a special relationship."
"A very special relationship," endorses her husband, as they sit in their gazebo looking across a magnificent moonlit bay. "We have a healthy understanding of each other's needs. I understand her creative spirit."
"It's impossible," insists Dwina, "to have a conventional lifestyle if you are creative people."
"Ours is not a conventional lifestyle," says Robin. "We don't live by the rules. What we do in our private lives might not be to many people's liking, but that's their problem. Life should be lived to the full, and that's what
we're doing. I'm not a monk, and Dwina's not a nun!
"" http://beegeesfanfever.blogspot.nl/
Wednesday, January 21, 2015
Stephen Gibb joins Sandra and Wenda to share family stories and his own musical adventures.
after the presentation of the Grammy February 7th. Barry will start working and recording on his new solo album according to Steve. Which is planned to be ready for release by the end of 2015, early 2016.
Stephen Gibb (yes, Barry’s son) joins Sandra and Wenda to share family stories and his own musical adventures.
http://sofloradio.com/archives/Siren/Siren%20Says%20-%202015.01.20.mp3
Stephen Gibb (yes, Barry’s son) joins Sandra and Wenda to share family stories and his own musical adventures.
AUDIO
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Monday, January 19, 2015
Samantha Gibb NEW Single Memories on itunes!!
Samantha Gibb NEW Single Memories on itunes!! Check it out its a great song!!
https://itunes.apple.com/il/album/memories/id957562240?i=957562246
watch the video with lyrics at:
http://youtu.be/BRxEDY83yhE
Sunday, January 18, 2015
Window-shopping in Mayfair with the Bee Gees in1967,
Snapshot, 1967:
Window-shopping in Mayfair with the Bee Gees 18 January 2015 In 1967,
we find Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb admiring Bentleys and Rolls-Royces through the window of renowned automotive dealer Jack Barclay’s Berkeley Square showroom. But with international success imminent, they won’t need to window-shop for much longer…
After some early success in Australia, the brothers Gibb have returned to their homeland, where Beatles promoter Brian Epstein has taken control of the band’s management duties. He passes a demo tape to producer Robert Stigwood – who immediately hands them a five-year record deal, pretty much unheard-of at the time. From this moment, the fortunes of Barry, Robin and Maurice rise steeply, and the luxury saloons sold by the likes of Jack Barclay have all of a sudden become a reality:
Christmas will see Stigwood buy the trio a 1948 Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith as a festive reward. An Aston Martin DB6 and a Mini Cooper soon join the fleet, as does a Mulliner-bodied Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud – which is promptly crashed by Maurice while rushing to a party. A far cry from the not-so-distant days of noses pressed up against plate-glass windows.
Window-shopping in Mayfair with the Bee Gees 18 January 2015 In 1967,
we find Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb admiring Bentleys and Rolls-Royces through the window of renowned automotive dealer Jack Barclay’s Berkeley Square showroom. But with international success imminent, they won’t need to window-shop for much longer…
After some early success in Australia, the brothers Gibb have returned to their homeland, where Beatles promoter Brian Epstein has taken control of the band’s management duties. He passes a demo tape to producer Robert Stigwood – who immediately hands them a five-year record deal, pretty much unheard-of at the time. From this moment, the fortunes of Barry, Robin and Maurice rise steeply, and the luxury saloons sold by the likes of Jack Barclay have all of a sudden become a reality:
Christmas will see Stigwood buy the trio a 1948 Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith as a festive reward. An Aston Martin DB6 and a Mini Cooper soon join the fleet, as does a Mulliner-bodied Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud – which is promptly crashed by Maurice while rushing to a party. A far cry from the not-so-distant days of noses pressed up against plate-glass windows.
Friday, January 16, 2015
Barry Gibb's emotional powhiri before Mission show
Friday Feb 22, 2013
For this year's Mission Concert artist Barry Gibb, the moment was clearly enchanting and emotional. Three members of a powhiri group which put on a welcome and a cultural greeting for the Bee Gee in Hawke's Bay yesterday stepped forward and sang to him, delivering a beautiful rendition of How Do You Mend A Broken Heart?, one of the many songs he and his brothers Robin and Maurice gave to the world.
It came at the end of a Maori welcome which transfixed and delighted the Gibb whanau and their friends. The song was perfect for the occasion, after they were welcomed by Ngati Kahungunu's Hunni Williams who after greeting them explained that after Mr Gibb had accepted the traditional challenge he had been welcomed ``into our hearts.'' "Barry, welcome ... welcome ... your people are all with us today spiritually,"
Mr Williams said. Mr Gibb stood and returned the greeting. "We love you and thank you all for your incredible love," he told the members of the welcoming party, which included students from Karamu High School who delighted their guests with their traditional actions and songs. And Mr Gibb returned their welcome with a beautifully sung Words. The final line ``words are all I have, to take your heart away'' left the hosts spellbound. "So beautiful ... so very special," powhiri organiser, Rebecca Kamau, said.
Mr Gibb and his son Stephen were both adorned with korowai (cloaks) and were later presented with a taonga of a carved mere and bone and greenstone pendants. They were overcome. "This has just been so powerful. I love it," Stephen Gibb said. His father agreed. "What a wonderful ritual," he said. "That war chant is something else." With a proud smile he said: "I have to give the cloak back but I get to keep this [the carved mere]".
The powhiri group of about 30 was put together by the charitable trust group CLOSENZ, formed by Ms Kamau about four years ago to bring all walks of life together through a Maori cultural experience.
She said it was sparked in the wake of the arrival in Hawke's Bay of the many Motown artists who arrived to put on the 2010 Mission Concert.
She brought together a welcoming group of Ngati Kahungunu who captivated the visiting singers and musicians. "We were inspired by that," she said. "It is all about bringing people together from all cultures and all walks of life and sharing a breath and moment in time,'' Ms Kamau said.
She said Barry Gibb had shared his gifts of music with them, and everyone in the world, and they wanted to share their gifts with him. "Maori are known for their hospitality," she said. "So we hope the powhiri will provide hospitality that the artists would long remember. "It's about manaakitanga and maintaining our traditions to keep them alive and pay tribute to Barry for his gifted voice and contribution into the music industry that at some point in our lives, we've all felt a connection to his songs."
Mr Gibb said he would remember and cherish the memories of the occasion forever
http://beegeesfanfever.blogspot.nl/
Monday, January 12, 2015
Sunday, January 11, 2015
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
ON TOUR WITH BARRY GIBB: DOUG EMERY AND BEN STIVERS RE-INVENT THE SOUND OF CLASSIC BEE GEES
von Robbie Gennet, Keyboard Magazine, Dez 2014
The dynamic keyboard duo of Doug Emery and Ben Stivers began their musical journey studying jazz at the University of Miami and quickly became sought after on the Miami music scene. Stivers met the Gibb brothers in the early 1990s, working with them in their studio and eventually on their live shows and TV performances. Along the way, he and Emery formed a symbiotic partnership that is rare in the keyboard world and has served them well with major Latin acts such as pianist Di Blasio and pop star Chayanne. For Barry Gibb’s first solo tour, Stivers’ and Emery’s skills were put to the test, and Keyboard got the inside scoop.
Blue Weaver was on keyboards for the iconic Bee Gees tunes. In digging back through this music, what did you discover about him?
Ben Stivers: He’s more responsible for the sound of their music than maybe he gets credit for. It’s his harmonic vocabulary, especially on a song like “How Deep Is Your Love,” with its Rhodes part and all those extensions. The way Barry plays the chords on his guitar, he doesn’t have a lot of major sevenths; there’s not a lot of sus chords. It’s much more triadic. So all that color and flavor, that’s all Blue. All that disco stuff—“Night Fever,” “More Than a Woman”—that’s all him.
In accessing the catalog and prepping this tour, how did you guys split the keyboard duties?
Doug Emery: Ben and I have worked together a lot. So, because we've done other tours together, we kind of have a system.
Ben Stivers: It's a rare thing for a keyboard player to find. I only know maybe one or two other guys that I like playing with, because most of the time you get stepped on. We’re not used to playing with other keyboard players necessarily. And it’s difficult to find a guy like Doug that is both harmonically and texturally aware—sonically aware. On the Di Blasio gig, there were times in the show where he’d be just talking and we’d improvise a background, so we developed a vocabulary between the two of us. I know he’s not going to jump all over what I do and that he’s going to leave me space, and vice versa.
Doug Emery: The other thing is, neither one of us is trying to prove anything at this point. We’ve done this together long enough; I don’t need to prove anything to Ben, and that helps.
Ben Stivers: If we’re out to prove anything at all, it’s how good to make the whole. I don’t want to stick out, but I want people to go, “Holy crap, that was amazing what you guys did!”
What stands out about when you first started working with the Bee Gees?
Doug Emery: Interestingly, they weren’t that into retro sounds. It’s been a trend now for 20 years at least. But because they lived through it, it just sounded old to them. So especially when I first started, they weren’t all that interested in having authentic Rhodes or analog synth sounds—they’d done that already. Now that’s kind of changed because the imitations have gotten better. [Barry Gibb] realizes that it doesn’t sound old—it sounds like the song.
Ben Stivers: Right. One thing that changed in terms of distributing parts is that when I did the gig when Maurice Gibb was still alive, he would play piano and strings on a lot of stuff.
How was Maurice as a piano player?
Ben Stivers: He was great. He played all the parts. He knew the songs. He was really good because there are a couple of tricky tempos, especially on songs he starts alone. And singers get really particular about the cadence of lyrics. It may feel right to you, but it took me a minute when I first started taking over those duties to really feel where some of the songs need to sit. For example, “Lonely Days” has tempo changes and that’s all me. It used to be all Maurice. He knew what it was supposed to feel like.
Did you try to re-create the rig Maurice used, for this tour?
Ben Stivers: No. They’d stopped playing together, and Maurice died in 2004. So everything has changed since then. The rig basically had to be built from scratch, and the way things are these days, it was a pretty easy decision to go virtual. The sounds are just better and it’s so much easier to program. For my rig, I use a Korg anoKontrol as my MIDI brain. So literally any keyboard can show up in the backline—anything with 88 keys on it and a MIDI out, and I’m cool.
Are you just using one keyboard?
Ben Stivers: Yeah. I’ve got all the splits mapped and all the controller information on the NanoKontrol. So I show up with the Nano, laptop, interface, and that’s it. Since we’ve been doing these different set lists, just cataloging sounds and stuff, I’ve got a folder of Bee Gees patches and I can pull them in and out of my concert in [Apple] Main-Stage as needed.
Doug Emery: There’s an [M-Audio] Axiom that I run. It’s triggering two systems that are both running in tandem, but they’re not synced in any way, other than the fact that I’ve started them at the same time. I have one of those Radial SW8 audio switchers. So I have a footswitch by me. If I need to switch to the B rig, I press a footswitch.
Ben Stivers: There’s a separate computer running Ableton Live—actually two. Doug has two computers and I have one. We each have a laptop running MainStage and he has two Mac Minis running Ableton.
Aside from the Axiom, are your rigs identical?
Doug Emery: Mine’s the same. The only difference between his rig and my rig is I’m also using a Nord Stage. I’m a Nord guy.
Are you using the Nord’s internal sounds or are you using it as a controller?
Doug Emery: I’m using it primarily as a controller.
Ben Stivers: But he plays organ and Wurly.
Doug Emery: And Clav, and that’s coming from the Nord. I do a lot of orchestral stuff on this gig, which is all coming from MainStage.
Most Bee Gees hits are known for their great string arrangements. What are you using for strings on this gig?
Doug Emery: It’s a bunch of stuff: some Kontakt, some Omnisphere, and that new Logic analog Retro Synth. I’ve done this a lot, the string thing, so I know what I need to build. One part of that is always to have some sort of analog sound underneath it all.
It’s amazing that for the breadth of sounds and styles over those decades of music that you can pair everything down to the laptop, MainStage, and the controller.
Ben Stivers: We’re using a pretty wide range of plugins, though. Doug’s rig has Omnisphere and I have the Arturia stuff that he doesn’t. Everything else is the same. We both have the Native Instruments [Komplete] bundle as well.
Do you have a backup rig running like Doug does?
Ben Stivers: I haven’t needed it. That’s the fear, but mine’s never failed. I had more problems when I started the gig using dedicated hardware. My rig was a Kurzweil K2500 and a rack with a Roland D550 and JV-1080, a Korg M1R, two Akai S3000s, and a MIDI router. That thing was a nightmare. I’m much more stable now with MainStage and a small PreSonus audio interface.
How do you ensure you’re not overtaxing the system?
Ben Stivers: You have to think about what you need to accomplish and programming it efficiently. I’ll set up an effects bus with one reverb for the whole concert. It doesn’t have to be in every track. I love [Logic’s convolution reverb] Space Designer, but I don’t need it for the glockenspiel on “Words.” I can use a simpler reverb for that. You have to think about what you’re trying to build.
Let’s say you have a specific sound on a song that needs a certain slapback . . .
Ben Stivers: I have a delay on the Rhodes, and I’ve assigned enough controllers to it where I can tap in tempos, change the delay time, or just turn it off. So I don’t need 15 instances of that for different songs. I can open up the delay and twiddle knobs as if I had a delay pedal on the floor.
Doug Emery: What helps is the fact that in MainStage every patch can have its own tempo. There’s so much you can do within the pre-programming to take care of a lot of things where normally you would have to have multiple versions. The other thing is, since the [Intel] Core i-series processors came out, things have been a lot more stable. That, and 64-bit [processing] have made a huge difference.
What would you like to see as your nextlevel gig rig?
Ben Stivers: I’d like a hardware-based synth with a brandnew sample library because they’ve got to be able to fit more on to a chip now. And I think, more selfcontained units. Right now, this is a cool rig, but I live in New York and do a lot of work there. I don’t always like bringing the laptop because there are still a lot of connections to make. Usually I’m bringing a keyboard and a laptop and the interface, and plugging it all up and getting all my sounds out of the laptop. So, something along the lines of what Muse Research is doing—boxes that have a built-in processor, plughost, and audio and MIDI interface—but small. It wouldn’t take much to throw a decent processor inside a keyboard so you could hook up a monitor and look at MainStage. That could be something for Apple. Somebody’s got to be able to design a host that can stably run everything. Right now MainStage is probably the best at that—or the Muse Receptor.
What are you using for piano sounds on this gig?
Ben Stivers: I’m using Ivory for acoustic piano. I’m playing piano and Rhodes and brass; Doug is playing strings and synths.
Which songs are your favorites to perform?
Ben Stivers: “How Deep Is Your Love” is a great song. I get to play the Rhodes part. Back in the day I could get decent phasey tremolo Rhodes. The sound that I have now is pretty darned close. I really dig it.
Is it an internal sound, or are you using effects pedals?
Ben Stivers: No, the effects are all internal. I’m using a plug-in phaser and a plug-in tremolo. It just works.
Doug Emery: Ben is really good with that stuff in his hands. I think some guys using the plug-in thing, it would be like you’re making some sort of compromise. Ben’s really good at dialing in sounds.
Ben Stivers: Right back at you. It’s fun, and with the NanoKontrol, I have one button that turns the phaser on and off and one button that turns the tremolo panner on and off. And then I have control over the panner from two knobs. So it’s a lot like having a stompbox . . . There are other songs I like just because the parts are so rhythmic: I really like “Guilty.” That’s a killer Richard Tee Rhodes part on that. And I like playing “One.” It’s a little more mechanical. It almost sounds like Scritti Politti.
Doug Emery: I think for me, because it’s a killer tune and I just think it’s beautiful, we do a song called “With the Sun in Your Eyes.” It’s just me and Ben and Barry, and it’s just gorgeous.
Ben Stivers: On the record it was Mellotron, I think. But Doug does it on real strings and he’s kind of elaborated the part into some really pretty orchestral stuff. There’s a lot of moving lines. It’s pretty amazing what he’s done with it.
Doug Emery: And Ben brings in the horn stuff so it’s really nice. It’s a really beautiful moment of the show.
What about of the funkier side of things?
Doug Emery: I love “Jive Talkin’.” I’m playing the Wurly on it. And I’m playing the synth line, and I love that sound.
Ben Stivers: I get to play the bass.
Since there’s a bass player for the show, what happens during the parts when you play synth bass?
Ben Stivers: On that tune, the gig existed before I got it, and we actually double the part—we play the same thing, leaving space for each other to play fills. There’s another song in the set, one we hadn’t been playing: “Nights on Broadway.” In the 20 years I played with Barry, he’d never done it. It’s very high, very taxing on his voice. We decided to pull it out because Fallon and Timberlake had been parodying it. So it’s back and that also has synth bass. I started goofing around with that but the bass player got that Electro-Harmonix pedal, the bass synthesizer. It’s not really a synthesizer; it’s an envelope filter and an octaver. But he was able to get really close to the sound on the record.
And what do you do during that song?
Ben Stivers: I do piano. There’s a fairly busy piano part. If you listen to the record of that, the piano on it is hard-compressed and bright. So I have a compressor when I call up my piano sound. Once again, one of the buttons on my NanoKontrol kicks in a compressor and a bit of EQ to make it that bright kind of rock aggressive sound. It’s subtle but it makes a huge difference.
Doug Emery: I think that’s been another discussion in the band: It’s easy to make some of the stuff a little too pretty. So that’s been a big point of discussion. How do we make this a little less “soft rock”?
Ben Stivers: The old records are not that quantized and not that slick. And that’s the beauty of it. It’s rock music.
What is it like working with Barry Gibb?
Ben Stivers: He’s the best cat ever.
Doug Emery: I’ve really come to care for the guy, and I have to say, it’s been really great to see him accepted. There’s a resurgence of respect for what he has done.
He must feel amazing, seeing the response.
Doug Emery: He’s gotten overwhelmed sometimes.
Ben Stivers: It’s been more than any other gigs that I’ve ever done with him or anybody else: just the emotion of it. He’s able to be really vulnerable. It’s really raw. I’ve played with acts that were bigger at the moment or maybe had hits at the moment and crowds that were maybe more crazy or nuts, but I’ve never felt this level of empathy and emotion. It’s pretty amazing.
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| Ben Stivers (links), Doug Emery (rechts) Photo: Stephen Gibb |
Blue Weaver was on keyboards for the iconic Bee Gees tunes. In digging back through this music, what did you discover about him?
Ben Stivers: He’s more responsible for the sound of their music than maybe he gets credit for. It’s his harmonic vocabulary, especially on a song like “How Deep Is Your Love,” with its Rhodes part and all those extensions. The way Barry plays the chords on his guitar, he doesn’t have a lot of major sevenths; there’s not a lot of sus chords. It’s much more triadic. So all that color and flavor, that’s all Blue. All that disco stuff—“Night Fever,” “More Than a Woman”—that’s all him.
In accessing the catalog and prepping this tour, how did you guys split the keyboard duties?
Doug Emery: Ben and I have worked together a lot. So, because we've done other tours together, we kind of have a system.
Ben Stivers: It's a rare thing for a keyboard player to find. I only know maybe one or two other guys that I like playing with, because most of the time you get stepped on. We’re not used to playing with other keyboard players necessarily. And it’s difficult to find a guy like Doug that is both harmonically and texturally aware—sonically aware. On the Di Blasio gig, there were times in the show where he’d be just talking and we’d improvise a background, so we developed a vocabulary between the two of us. I know he’s not going to jump all over what I do and that he’s going to leave me space, and vice versa.
Doug Emery: The other thing is, neither one of us is trying to prove anything at this point. We’ve done this together long enough; I don’t need to prove anything to Ben, and that helps.
Ben Stivers: If we’re out to prove anything at all, it’s how good to make the whole. I don’t want to stick out, but I want people to go, “Holy crap, that was amazing what you guys did!”
What stands out about when you first started working with the Bee Gees?
Doug Emery: Interestingly, they weren’t that into retro sounds. It’s been a trend now for 20 years at least. But because they lived through it, it just sounded old to them. So especially when I first started, they weren’t all that interested in having authentic Rhodes or analog synth sounds—they’d done that already. Now that’s kind of changed because the imitations have gotten better. [Barry Gibb] realizes that it doesn’t sound old—it sounds like the song.
Ben Stivers: Right. One thing that changed in terms of distributing parts is that when I did the gig when Maurice Gibb was still alive, he would play piano and strings on a lot of stuff.
How was Maurice as a piano player?
Ben Stivers: He was great. He played all the parts. He knew the songs. He was really good because there are a couple of tricky tempos, especially on songs he starts alone. And singers get really particular about the cadence of lyrics. It may feel right to you, but it took me a minute when I first started taking over those duties to really feel where some of the songs need to sit. For example, “Lonely Days” has tempo changes and that’s all me. It used to be all Maurice. He knew what it was supposed to feel like.
Did you try to re-create the rig Maurice used, for this tour?
Ben Stivers: No. They’d stopped playing together, and Maurice died in 2004. So everything has changed since then. The rig basically had to be built from scratch, and the way things are these days, it was a pretty easy decision to go virtual. The sounds are just better and it’s so much easier to program. For my rig, I use a Korg anoKontrol as my MIDI brain. So literally any keyboard can show up in the backline—anything with 88 keys on it and a MIDI out, and I’m cool.
Are you just using one keyboard?
Ben Stivers: Yeah. I’ve got all the splits mapped and all the controller information on the NanoKontrol. So I show up with the Nano, laptop, interface, and that’s it. Since we’ve been doing these different set lists, just cataloging sounds and stuff, I’ve got a folder of Bee Gees patches and I can pull them in and out of my concert in [Apple] Main-Stage as needed.
Doug Emery: There’s an [M-Audio] Axiom that I run. It’s triggering two systems that are both running in tandem, but they’re not synced in any way, other than the fact that I’ve started them at the same time. I have one of those Radial SW8 audio switchers. So I have a footswitch by me. If I need to switch to the B rig, I press a footswitch.
Ben Stivers: There’s a separate computer running Ableton Live—actually two. Doug has two computers and I have one. We each have a laptop running MainStage and he has two Mac Minis running Ableton.
Aside from the Axiom, are your rigs identical?
Doug Emery: Mine’s the same. The only difference between his rig and my rig is I’m also using a Nord Stage. I’m a Nord guy.
Are you using the Nord’s internal sounds or are you using it as a controller?
Doug Emery: I’m using it primarily as a controller.
Ben Stivers: But he plays organ and Wurly.
Doug Emery: And Clav, and that’s coming from the Nord. I do a lot of orchestral stuff on this gig, which is all coming from MainStage.
Most Bee Gees hits are known for their great string arrangements. What are you using for strings on this gig?
Doug Emery: It’s a bunch of stuff: some Kontakt, some Omnisphere, and that new Logic analog Retro Synth. I’ve done this a lot, the string thing, so I know what I need to build. One part of that is always to have some sort of analog sound underneath it all.
It’s amazing that for the breadth of sounds and styles over those decades of music that you can pair everything down to the laptop, MainStage, and the controller.
Ben Stivers: We’re using a pretty wide range of plugins, though. Doug’s rig has Omnisphere and I have the Arturia stuff that he doesn’t. Everything else is the same. We both have the Native Instruments [Komplete] bundle as well.
Do you have a backup rig running like Doug does?
Ben Stivers: I haven’t needed it. That’s the fear, but mine’s never failed. I had more problems when I started the gig using dedicated hardware. My rig was a Kurzweil K2500 and a rack with a Roland D550 and JV-1080, a Korg M1R, two Akai S3000s, and a MIDI router. That thing was a nightmare. I’m much more stable now with MainStage and a small PreSonus audio interface.
How do you ensure you’re not overtaxing the system?
Ben Stivers: You have to think about what you need to accomplish and programming it efficiently. I’ll set up an effects bus with one reverb for the whole concert. It doesn’t have to be in every track. I love [Logic’s convolution reverb] Space Designer, but I don’t need it for the glockenspiel on “Words.” I can use a simpler reverb for that. You have to think about what you’re trying to build.
Let’s say you have a specific sound on a song that needs a certain slapback . . .
Ben Stivers: I have a delay on the Rhodes, and I’ve assigned enough controllers to it where I can tap in tempos, change the delay time, or just turn it off. So I don’t need 15 instances of that for different songs. I can open up the delay and twiddle knobs as if I had a delay pedal on the floor.
Doug Emery: What helps is the fact that in MainStage every patch can have its own tempo. There’s so much you can do within the pre-programming to take care of a lot of things where normally you would have to have multiple versions. The other thing is, since the [Intel] Core i-series processors came out, things have been a lot more stable. That, and 64-bit [processing] have made a huge difference.
What would you like to see as your nextlevel gig rig?
Ben Stivers: I’d like a hardware-based synth with a brandnew sample library because they’ve got to be able to fit more on to a chip now. And I think, more selfcontained units. Right now, this is a cool rig, but I live in New York and do a lot of work there. I don’t always like bringing the laptop because there are still a lot of connections to make. Usually I’m bringing a keyboard and a laptop and the interface, and plugging it all up and getting all my sounds out of the laptop. So, something along the lines of what Muse Research is doing—boxes that have a built-in processor, plughost, and audio and MIDI interface—but small. It wouldn’t take much to throw a decent processor inside a keyboard so you could hook up a monitor and look at MainStage. That could be something for Apple. Somebody’s got to be able to design a host that can stably run everything. Right now MainStage is probably the best at that—or the Muse Receptor.
What are you using for piano sounds on this gig?
Ben Stivers: I’m using Ivory for acoustic piano. I’m playing piano and Rhodes and brass; Doug is playing strings and synths.
Which songs are your favorites to perform?
Ben Stivers: “How Deep Is Your Love” is a great song. I get to play the Rhodes part. Back in the day I could get decent phasey tremolo Rhodes. The sound that I have now is pretty darned close. I really dig it.
Is it an internal sound, or are you using effects pedals?
Ben Stivers: No, the effects are all internal. I’m using a plug-in phaser and a plug-in tremolo. It just works.
Doug Emery: Ben is really good with that stuff in his hands. I think some guys using the plug-in thing, it would be like you’re making some sort of compromise. Ben’s really good at dialing in sounds.
Ben Stivers: Right back at you. It’s fun, and with the NanoKontrol, I have one button that turns the phaser on and off and one button that turns the tremolo panner on and off. And then I have control over the panner from two knobs. So it’s a lot like having a stompbox . . . There are other songs I like just because the parts are so rhythmic: I really like “Guilty.” That’s a killer Richard Tee Rhodes part on that. And I like playing “One.” It’s a little more mechanical. It almost sounds like Scritti Politti.
Doug Emery: I think for me, because it’s a killer tune and I just think it’s beautiful, we do a song called “With the Sun in Your Eyes.” It’s just me and Ben and Barry, and it’s just gorgeous.
Ben Stivers: On the record it was Mellotron, I think. But Doug does it on real strings and he’s kind of elaborated the part into some really pretty orchestral stuff. There’s a lot of moving lines. It’s pretty amazing what he’s done with it.
Doug Emery: And Ben brings in the horn stuff so it’s really nice. It’s a really beautiful moment of the show.
What about of the funkier side of things?
Doug Emery: I love “Jive Talkin’.” I’m playing the Wurly on it. And I’m playing the synth line, and I love that sound.
Ben Stivers: I get to play the bass.
Since there’s a bass player for the show, what happens during the parts when you play synth bass?
Ben Stivers: On that tune, the gig existed before I got it, and we actually double the part—we play the same thing, leaving space for each other to play fills. There’s another song in the set, one we hadn’t been playing: “Nights on Broadway.” In the 20 years I played with Barry, he’d never done it. It’s very high, very taxing on his voice. We decided to pull it out because Fallon and Timberlake had been parodying it. So it’s back and that also has synth bass. I started goofing around with that but the bass player got that Electro-Harmonix pedal, the bass synthesizer. It’s not really a synthesizer; it’s an envelope filter and an octaver. But he was able to get really close to the sound on the record.
And what do you do during that song?
Ben Stivers: I do piano. There’s a fairly busy piano part. If you listen to the record of that, the piano on it is hard-compressed and bright. So I have a compressor when I call up my piano sound. Once again, one of the buttons on my NanoKontrol kicks in a compressor and a bit of EQ to make it that bright kind of rock aggressive sound. It’s subtle but it makes a huge difference.
Doug Emery: I think that’s been another discussion in the band: It’s easy to make some of the stuff a little too pretty. So that’s been a big point of discussion. How do we make this a little less “soft rock”?
Ben Stivers: The old records are not that quantized and not that slick. And that’s the beauty of it. It’s rock music.
What is it like working with Barry Gibb?
Ben Stivers: He’s the best cat ever.
Doug Emery: I’ve really come to care for the guy, and I have to say, it’s been really great to see him accepted. There’s a resurgence of respect for what he has done.
He must feel amazing, seeing the response.
Doug Emery: He’s gotten overwhelmed sometimes.
Ben Stivers: It’s been more than any other gigs that I’ve ever done with him or anybody else: just the emotion of it. He’s able to be really vulnerable. It’s really raw. I’ve played with acts that were bigger at the moment or maybe had hits at the moment and crowds that were maybe more crazy or nuts, but I’ve never felt this level of empathy and emotion. It’s pretty amazing.
Monday, January 5, 2015
Songs you might not have thought were written by The Bee Gees
"Ain't Nothing Gonna Keep Me From You" by Teri DeSario
"Buried Treasure" by Kenny Rogers (backing vocals The Gatlin Brothers)
"Chain Reaction" by Diana Ross
"Come on Over" by Olivia Newton-John
"Emotion" by Samantha Sang and by Destiny's Child
"Gilbert Green" by Gerry Marsden
"Grease" by Frankie Valli
"Guilty" and "Woman in Love" by Barbra Streisand
"Heartbreaker" & "All the Love in the World" by Dionne Warwick
"Hold On to My Love" by Jimmy Ruffin
"I Will Be There" by Tina Turner
"If I Can't Have You" by Yvonne Elliman
"Immortality" by Celine Dion
"Islands in the Stream" by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton
"Morning of My Life" by Abi and Esther Ofarim and by Mary Hopkin
"Only One Woman" by The Marbles
"Rest Your Love on Me" by Conway Twitty
"Sacred Trust" by One True Voice
"Warm Ride" by Graham Bonnet and by Rare Earth
Saturday, January 3, 2015
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