Robin Gibb on Movie Music Mania

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Barry Gibb Is 'In The Now' With New Solo Album

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Barry Gibb In Miami 2016

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Barry Gibb Full Performance The Royal Variety 13 12 2016

 

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Take That Gary Barlow and Barry Gibb "We write the songs" 2020.12.27

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Barry Gibb - Butterfly (Visualizer) ft. David Rawlings, Gillian Welch

 

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Barry Gibb & Jason Isbell

Last year, Jason Isbell came home to his wife and bandmate, Amanda Shires, and played her a duet he’d just recorded with Barry Gibb. “She said, ‘That’s the best I’ve heard you sing,'” Isbell says. “I said, ‘Well, I was singing with Barry Gibb. I had to do my absolute best.'”

Isbell may be a rootsy songwriter from Alabama, but he’s been a Bee Gees fan his entire life. The song he and Gibb recorded, “Words of a Fool,” appears on Gibb’s upcoming album, Greenfields: The Gibb Brothers Songbook, which features rerecordings of his catalog with artists including Brandi Carlile, Dolly Parton, and Alison Krauss. “I’ve always been a real freak on old country music,” Gibb says. “After the Bee Gees no longer existed, I drifted into my own bliss, which is this kind of music.”

“I was nervous, Barry,” Isbell says of their duet.

“My jaw was on the floor,” Gibb tells him. “You guys didn’t need to do this. The fact that you cared about those songs means everything to me.”

 

Isbell: I think you got your star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame a couple months after I was born, so I’ve known your music my whole life.

Gibb: Wow. I need to give you a little bit of input about our roots. We were an immigrant family who moved to Australia in 1958, and from then onwards, we heard so many records from America. Roy Orbison and Elvis…these were country stars, but they were also rock stars. George Jones, Dolly…these people had a radical influence on us.

Isbell: I have a question about that. The fact that you guys didn’t spend your formative years in England, do you think that made for a different mix? I don’t hear as much skiffle in what you were doing. It sounds like country music.

Gibb: We were inundated with American country music, and don’t forget: We went through that whole folk era as well.

Isbell: Totally. Songs like “Massachusetts” could be a country song.

Gibb: To us, they were. But we were just kids. We were still figuring out who we should be, what kind of music we loved the most. We loved every kind of music, so that’s why there are so many different styles, so many different insights in the songs that we wrote. Not that we knew that then. More than anything, I miss the romanticism. I miss beauty in a song.

Isbell: I think you guys were way ahead of your time, because you were making music that affected people in the same way that black R&B records did, but you didn’t sound like you were ripping off black artists. You sounded like yourselves. There’s something about that that I think a lot of people miss now. They try to make R&B music, or what they would call soul music, and they wind up sounding like a caricature of the music that they love. You guys didn’t do that. You sounded unique.

Gibb: It might have been perceived that way by certain people. But the truth is, the falsetto comes from the Delfonics and the Stylistics. It comes from all the different records where the falsetto was a feature. Brian Wilson, Frankie Valli. It became something that we didn’t fear anymore. I discovered it. I didn’t even know I could do that.

When it was time for change, Ahmet Ertegun rejected about three songs off the Main Course album in 1975. They were going to drop us, and he said, “You’ve got to kick it up. We can’t use these songs, they’re too sad.” So that’s where the change came, and [Atlantic Records producer] Arif Mardin, bless his heart, he was there at the time when we needed a man with his kind of insight. Fantastic influence on us. Arif taught me that music is something you see in your mind and in your heart, it’s not just something on the radio.

 

Isbell: Something I’ve noticed about your songs that I never had until the country album is the connection between the melodies that you write and the melodies that somebody like Jimmy Webb writes. Honestly, that’s the only other person that I could really compare you to melodically, because there’s a way that you do tension and release that I don’t understand it. I couldn’t do it if I tried.

Gibb: Some of our songs seemed simple, but they really weren’t. There was a lot of complexity.

Isbell: They were not. When you try to play them, they are not simple.

“The only other person that I could really compare you to melodically is Jimmy Webb,” says Isbell. “There’s a way that you do tension and release that I don’t understand. I couldn’t do it if I tried.”

Gibb: We had songs that didn’t work as well as songs that did, and we had to learn to keep our heads up even if things didn’t work out. “Boy, this one stiffed, back to the studio.”

Isbell: I know there was a period of time in the Seventies when you had to go back to playing smaller clubs before the second wave. How did you keep your head up? How did you stay busy and keep from letting it get the better of you?

Gibb: In a way, we knew we could sustain by just continuing to work and developing and not worrying about the moment that we were in. “Bad news, this record didn’t work out.” One of us might have said, “Well, I didn’t think it should be a single anyway.” Don’t forget, it’s three brothers — or four brothers if you like — and we never agreed on everything. So it was a great disappointment for some of us when things didn’t work out, and it was a great joy when things did. But then we all started having kids, we started raising families and that became more important than anything else. You can make music all your life, but you can’t be alone all your life.

Isbell: You got 50 years [married] coming up soon, don’t you?

Gibb: Last week. Go figure that one.

Isbell: How do you do that, being a rock star and a professional musician? What’s the secret to that?

Gibb: I don’t know. But I do think it’s humor and the ability to laugh at everything that makes things work out. We have five grownup children and eight grandchildren. What happens is that whatever you’re doing that works or doesn’t work, life is okay.

Isbell: You still go home to your family.

Gibb: I did a lot of that during the so-called backlash situation after Saturday Night Fever. Disappointing, there’s no question about that. There was pain. But you’ve got to pick yourself up and dust yourself off, and we learned how to do that.

Isbell: You guys made the blueprint for that. That was the first time that I know of that a group had gotten huge and then gotten blamed for it, for no good reason whatsoever.

“We started raising families and that became more important than anything else,” says Gibb. “You can make music all your life, but you can’t be alone all your life.”

Gibb: I never understood it. I’ve always had a problem criticizing anything that was a Number One record. Then people started putting us down, and I couldn’t say that about any artist that had six Number One records in a row. So we’d always go back into the studio and take another shot, take another shot. Then we got into programming, which was relatively boring. Then I fell back in love with real people playing real music.

Isbell: Things like loops and samples, I don’t think people realize how big the Bee Gees were for the way a lot of popular production is happening now. The Saturday Night Fever soundtrack had the first loop I know of.

Gibb: “More Than a Woman” is the same drum loop as “Stayin’ Alive.” “Woman in Love,” same drum loop. We used it on different records, but I think there was some kind of obsession with accuracy. The groove had to be dead-on.

Isbell: There’s entire records and whole careers made with a drum loop that didn’t exist before you guys did it.

Gibb: I don’t know if you ever did this, but do you remember cutting a song and then towards the end of the song, you speed it up? We did that a lot.

Isbell: I miss those kinds of recording tricks. I read somewhere that on a couple albums, the Rolling Stones would bury the lead vocal, so people would have to go out and buy the songbooks to see what Mick was saying

 

Gibb: I miss the creativity that the Beatles gave to us. The idea that you can write about any subject whatsoever and make it work. You didn’t have to just write about love. They were playing with our heads and they were being incredibly creative, which is what triggered it all. It doesn’t surprise me that they only lasted 10 years. “Yellow Submarine,” come on. Where does that come from and why did it work?

Isbell: It still works. Every time I listen to it, my five-year-old daughter loves it just as much as I do.

Gibb: Never figured it out, but got to salute them. A group like that. It will never be them again.

 

Isbell: I wanted to ask you about your guitar playing style, because I had been a little familiar with it before we went in the studio together. The closest I could come to was Richie Hayward. Do you remember Richie Hayward?

Gibb: He sat in my house and played all night. 1968 maybe.

Isbell: There’s something about your guitar playing that reminds me of his, or the other way around.

Gibb: It’s a bigger sound.

Isbell: Fills in a lot of space. I know that obviously Joni Mitchell had a lot of her own tunings that she made up as she was going, and Stephen Stills did that. My friend David Crosby does it all the time, he’s still coming up with new tunes.

Gibb: I love them all. They were in the studio with us when we were doing the vocals to [1976’s] Children of the World. They just sat along the wall of the studio. In those days, there was no like, “You can’t come in here.” Everybody visited everybody. If you’re in a building with six studios, we had Lynyrd Skynyrd next door, we had the Eagles on the other side of the building, all making their own records, but nobody was restricted. You You could go to any of those other studios and just sit and listen. You don’t see that anymore.

You guys both worked on extremely successful soundtracks to blockbuster movies, with Saturday Night Fever and A Star Is Born. What were those experiences like for you?

Isbell: Dave Cobb, again, put me in a situation that I was really lucky to be in. He was working with Mark Ronson and with Gaga and Lukas Nelson, and they were working on the music for that movie. Dave came to me and said, “I need you to write a song for this character, he needs a hit.” I said, “I’ve never written a hit before in my life, you’ve come to the wrong guy.” But then he explained the character and it wasn’t exactly the same as the Streisand/Kristofferson version, it was a little different. This guy was more of a folk singer.

So I took a song that I’d been working on for a while and I changed it up a little bit. Bradley Cooper sang it in the movie and I was worried, because nobody had ever heard Bradley sing before. He sent me his recording of it and I was just about to get on a flight, and I thought, “I don’t want to listen to this right now. If this is bad, I don’t want to have to call Bradley Cooper back, who is directing the movie and starring in it, and say, ‘Yeah, sorry. This is not going to work for me.’”

I got on the flight and I responded to him about four hours later, after I’d flown across the country. He did a lot of work, he took vocal lessons. He did a good job singing that song. I didn’t find out until the movie came out that was the moment that made him the most nervous. Somebody asked him in a panel, like, “What was the hardest part about making this movie?” He said, “Well, I sent Jason a copy of the song when I recorded it and he didn’t respond to me for like four hours, and I was sweating bullets the whole time. 

Isbell: Well, thank you.

Gibb: Our story is we recorded those songs in Hérouville, outside Paris. The company was picking places for us to play where the taxes wouldn’t affect the company. So we were outside Paris in the Château — the Elton John album Honky Château, same place. It used to be an old brothel, believe it or not. It was a totally rundown building. The studio was amazing, but that was totally rundown too.

So we were in the worst possible circumstances, especially for making records. Then one of our drummer’s parents got very sick, so we didn’t have a drummer. So that’s where the desire for something that sounded like drums came from. So “Night Fever,” “More Than a Woman,” “Stayin’ Alive,” “If I Can’t Have You,” were written on the stairs of that building in the dark. “If I Can’t Have You” was really more about ABBA than us. We just wanted to write an ABBA song.

So that’s how those songs came about, we never saw the script. Nobody knew it was going to do what it did, nobody. Especially Robert [Stigwood], so I think it was a shock for all of us at the moment. A million copies a week.

Isbell: Wow. That was the biggest selling record of all time up until Thriller, right?

Gibb: As a soundtrack, but ultimately, we never knew how many records we sold. We didn’t know how to copyright a song. So it was really just, “Get on with the music.” God, I wish it was like that now.

Isbell: I wish so too, because I have to know all that shit all of the time.

Gibb: Now we’re living in a period where we can’t find a stage to play on.

Isbell: What have you been doing since the pandemic hit?

Gibb: Watching Netflix. Always watching Down from the Mountain. I watch it over and over again. I love the PBS stuff, the moments that were the Fifties and different periods of time.

Isbell: I do a lot of that too. I sit and play the guitar all day. If I have to, I’ll drag a Marshall [amp] to the front yard and play for the neighborhood, I’m getting there. I’m close to that point now.

Gibb: If I play, I’m playing for myself. If I like the song, I’ll applaud.

Isbell: It’s been reminding me more of the reason I started making music in the first place.

Gibb: Do you know the first gig we ever played publicly was a speedway? We talked the people there into letting us sing in the middle of the oval, between the races. We were on the back of a lorry with a microphone. The people threw coins onto the track. That was our first real audience.

Isbell: That sounds like something that very easily could have happened in Alabama, where I grew up.

Gibb: Once you have any kind of success, then it becomes a competition. I think it’s hard for groups. If you’re a family, you can make it last. If you’re not a family, things can fragment pretty quickly.

Isbell: I’ve definitely seen that. I was in a band for a long time where we had three songwriters and three singers, and it was tough. Ever since then, I feel like I do my best when I’m either being told what to do or if I’m making the decisions. But anything in between, I haven’t been all that good at.

Gibb: I’ve always written songs or recorded songs to please somebody, and I don’t know if that’s the same thing for you. I very rarely would write a song just to please myself.

Isbell: I think we all have that. Even if it’s some sort of amalgamation of different people in your life. My wife is the first person to see my songs. She’s got a master’s in poetry; she’s a great songwriter herself. So it’s a little scary. I don’t want to send her one until I think it’s pretty solid. It’s helpful, because she’ll come to me and she’ll say, “I think you could say this better. This is a cliché. That doesn’t rhyme exactly.” It’s hard. I will fight back. I’ll defend to the death some of my stupid lines, but it helps.

Gibb: Happens to me. If I’m sitting alone in a room and Linda walks through, she might make some offhanded comment like, “I think you can do better than that.”

Isbell: I think that’s the thing that impresses me about you the most: the fact that you are so committed to being a good human being. You have a family you’re close to, and you’ve not allowed your abilities to give you an excuse to act like a bad person. I appreciate that.

Gibb: You learn as you go. My feet never really left the ground. Once you’ve had a couple of failures, you realize that failure is always just around the corner. Success is a bit like walking on a sponge. You start to sink. Nothing lasts, no matter what you do. It doesn’t matter who you are. So you prepare yourself for the time when it’s fine to just watch TV or read. But I’m at that point in life where I’d love to be able to walk on another stage.

 

Isbell: Hopefully, one of these days we can go out and do that song together live.

Gibb: I’d love that, man.

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Interview Barry Gibb december 2020

The band’s last surviving member talks about falling out with his brothers before they died, how his wife saved him from drugs – and why he had to ask Michael Jackson to leave his house

From underneath a black Stetson hat, Barry Gibb stares out of my laptop screen. He is in Miami, where he has lived since 1974 when the Bee Gees’ career was in the doldrums and Eric Clapton suggested a change of scenery might do them good. They relocated en masse, moving into the house Clapton immortalised in the title of his album 461 Ocean Boulevard. Gibb never really left, although he still has a home in England. He liked Miami, he says, because it reminded him of Australia, where his parents emigrated when he was 11.

He lives in a waterfront mansion in an exclusive country club, which is clearly a long way from the penury the Gibb family experienced in Australia – of which more later – but that’s what comes of selling between 120m and 220m records, depending on whose estimate you believe.

His late brother Robin Gibb used to own a house a couple of doors down – Tony Blair caused rather a fuss by holidaying there when he was prime minister – and, as he puts it, “multiple Gibbs” live nearby: five children, seven grandchildren. There are clearly worse places in the world to be holed up during a pandemic. “We’ve been trying to self-isolate and do everything we’re supposed to do,” he says. “As you’ve seen on the news, [coronavirus] is pretty rampant in Miami.”

 

As far as one can tell over Zoom, Gibb is in pretty good shape for a man who recently celebrated his 74th birthday and his golden wedding anniversary on the same day: he met his wife Linda, a former Miss Edinburgh, backstage at Top of the Pops in the late 60s. A 50-year marriage is a rare thing among rock aristocracy, but Linda sounds a rather redoubtable figure. Gibb’s brothers all famously struggled with their fame: Maurice’s fondness for a scotch and Coke turned into a drink problem that plagued him until he entered rehab in the early 90s; Robin was overly fond of amphetamines; the youngest brother, Andy – catapulted to solo success on the back of his brothers’ fame – developed a cocaine addiction that killed him aged 30. That Barry seemed to emerge relatively unscathed is apparently down to his wife. “My brothers had to deal with their demons but I was married to a lady who wasn’t going to have it,” he says. “I could bring drugs into the house but they would end up down the toilet. She never allowed me to go in that direction. I had to deal with my brothers being pretty much out there, but I was lucky.”

He seems in a brighter mood than he did last time I met him, perhaps understandably. That was seven years ago: he was about to embark on a solo world tour, but it was barely a year since Robin had died of cancer and Gibb was clearly still haunted by his death, wondering aloud why Robin had refused to tell him he was ill, and distressed that they had not been on good terms when he died. It was the same with Maurice, he explained – they “weren’t really speaking” when he died suddenly during an operation in 2003 – and with Andy; in their last conversation, Gibb had tried some tough love, hoping to shake him out of his addictions, but a few days later he was dead. “Jesus,” he sighed at one point. “That’s all my brothers.”

 

Today, he is more sanguine about the past. No, he says, it wasn’t painful revisiting the Bee Gees’ career for a new feature-length documentary, How Can You Mend a Broken Heart: “I’ve had to deal with loss, not just my brothers but my mother and father. But what I’ve learned from all of it is that things just roll on, and you roll on with them.”

He is positively bubbling over with enthusiasm for a new album he has made, where he revisits the Bee Gees’ back catalogue in the company of a raft of country stars ranging from Dolly Parton to Alison Krauss: he calls the sessions “the thrill of a lifetime”, although there seems something faintly telling about the fact that his son Stephen had to convince him that anyone would be interested in working with him. You get the feeling the virulent critical opprobrium the Bee Gees attracted in the wake of Saturday Night Fever’s record-breaking success has never quite dislodged itself from his psyche: the days of comedians making fun of their teeth and Gibb’s falsetto voice are long gone; the backlash against disco is now viewed as an aberration fuelled by homophobia and racism. How Can You Mend a Broken Heart is packed with big names paying homage to the Gibbs’ songwriting talent: Chris Martin, Noel Gallagher, Mark Ronson, Justin Timberlake. But something of the outsider still seems to cling to Barry Gibb. He looked genuinely startled by the rapturous reception he got at Glastonbury in 2017, when he played the Sunday afternoon “legend” slot, despite having turned up as Coldplay’s special guest the year before. “I’m the last person to think I’d still be hearing those songs now,” he shrugs, “or that anybody would be interested in them now. It’s a long time ago.”

Then again, the Bee Gees were outsiders from the start. In clips from Australian TV in the early 60s, they look more like an old-fashioned variety act than a rock’n’roll band: a lanky teenager and his little twin brothers, telling jokes and mugging for the camera in between songs. Teenagers being what they are, you would have thought the 14-year-old Barry might view being shackled to his 10-year-old siblings as fatally injurious to his cool, but apparently not. “I never thought of them as my little brothers,” he frowns. “It just wasn’t like that. There was something we all loved doing and we kept on doing it. There was nothing more fun than singing in three-part harmony.”

Besides, from the moment they were discovered by a local DJ performing between races at a Brisbane speedway meeting, they were the family breadwinners. “We were a family who had literally no money and we could get 10 dollars a show,” he says. “We had to earn money; it couldn’t be done any other way. We probably rented 20 houses during the seven years or so that we were in Australia. I think, without overemphasising it, my father just didn’t pay the rent. We were that family in the middle of the night with the suitcases.”

By 1965, they were sporting Beatle boots and writing their own songs, but they couldn’t get a hit. In what you have to call a fairly radical solution to the problem, the brothers announced to their parents that the entire family would have to move back to England in order to further their career. With impeccable timing, they left Australia days before their latest single, Spicks and Specks, reached No 1: their record label sent a boat out after them, but the Gibbs hid in their cabin and refused to come out. On arrival in the UK, they spotted another band – “absolute Beatles lookalikes” – standing on Southampton dock. It should have seemed like a good omen, but it didn’t really work out that way. “We went down the steps, and there in the fog was this group. Heaven knows what they were doing there.” He laughs. “And they said: ‘Go back to Australia, there’s nothing happening here. They won’t sign groups any more.’”

That ranks as one of the most hopeless predictions in pop history: within a month, the Bees Gees had a management contract with Brian Epstein’s company NEMS; within two, their single New York Mining Disaster 1941 was a transatlantic hit. A band who had struggled to get anywhere in Australia were suddenly revealed to be preternaturally gifted songwriters. Still in their teens, they could knock out both ballads that became modern standards and a deeply odd, idiosyncratic brand of pop: To Love Somebody and Words co-existed with stuff like Barker of the UFO and Mrs Gillespie’s Refrigerator, songs that don’t sound psychedelic so much as peculiar and engaging.

 

They were vastly successful. In archive footage included in the documentary, Maurice Gibb says he owned six Rolls-Royces by the time he was 21, but when I mention it, Gibb rolls his eyes. “Maurice,” he says, in what are unmistakably the tones of a long-suffering older brother, “was the master of exaggeration. It never went away. Maurice only had one Rolls-Royce, but he loved expanding everything that happened to him.”

Nevertheless, he says, the Bee Gees’ fame was so huge and came so fast that anyone would have struggled to handle it. “There’s fame and there’s ultra-fame and it can destroy. You lose your perspective, you’re in the eye of a hurricane and you don’t know you’re there. And you don’t know what tomorrow is, you don’t know if what you’re recording will be a hit or not. And we were kids, don’t forget.”

No sooner had they become famous than the Bee Gees fell out, or rather, Barry and Robin did: none of the brothers had a clearly defined role in the band and they ended up arguing over who was the frontman. “Before we ever became famous were the best times of our lives,” he says. “There was no competition, it didn’t matter who sang what. When we had our first No 1, Massachusetts, Robin sang the lead, and I don’t think he ever got past that; he never felt that anyone else should sing lead after that. And that was not the nature of the group,” he says firmly, an older brother once more. “We all brought songs in; whoever brings the idea in sings the song.”

 o the Bee Gees split up in 1969, re-forming a couple of years later, only to watch their celebrity slowly wane. By 1972, they were so unsure of who their audience were, they released an album called To Whom It May Concern. In a last-ditch attempt to salvage their careers, they moved to the US and took up their record label’s suggestion that they “make some records for fun, make some dance music, just enjoy yourselves”. Anyone with even a passing interest in pop music knows what happened next: Jive Talking, You Should Be Dancing, the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, 45m albums sold, total domination of the US charts and radio, one No 1 hit after another.

Gibb says they only realised how huge they had become when they embarked on another project: a disastrous all-star attempt to make a film musical out of the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper album. “We tried to talk our way out of Sgt Pepper, that didn’t work, and then suddenly Fever becomes the album that everyone in the film started to dance to at lunchtimes: what’s going on? It had started selling a million copies a week. We only had one Winnebago between the three of us when the film started, and within two or three weeks, we had a Winnebago each! It was a measure of success.”

 

A combination of the disco backlash and US radio stations’ fatigue at having to play one Bee Gees track after another brought them crashing down, before Barbra Streisand asked them to work on her next album. Gibb says he was “terrified” when the offer came in – “You never know if something’s going to turn out, do you? You just hope and pray it will” – but 1980’s Guilty went on to sell 15m copies, sparking the Gibbs’ 80s career as songwriters for hire. Ironically, given that radio wouldn’t play Bee Gees tracks, every hit they wrote for someone else – Dionne Warwick’s Heartbreaker, Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton’s Islands in the Stream, Diana Ross’s Chain Reaction – sounded exactly like a Bee Gees song.

They even worked with Michael Jackson, although the results were never released. “Well, we sat around in my lounge for days at a time, just having fun, not really writing songs. We came up with one, All in My Name, but we were never that serious about it. I think Michael was just trying to escape the legal environment he was trapped in, he was visiting people he knew that he could relate to, because he didn’t know who his friends were. But then he started to hang out at the house all the time and I had to get up in the morning; I’m 12 years older than him, I had to take my kids to school. At some point, I said: ‘Michael, wherever it is you’re going, you’ve got to go.’ So,” he chuckles, “I politely asked Michael Jackson to leave my house because I couldn’t get anything else done.”

Maurice’s death in 2003 brought the Bee Gees’ career to an end: Gibb says Robin was desperate to continue, but he demurred – “We can’t just keep forcing ourselves on everyone, saying we’re the Bee Gees without Mo” – causing yet another falling-out. “He was very hyper about it, wanting us to remain the Bee Gees. I think he might have known that he was ill at least a couple of years before it became very serious. And I think spiritually, he didn’t want to become an invalid. He just never wanted to be recognised as someone who had something wrong with him, so he hid it, from me anyway. And when I finally discovered what was wrong, I understood why he was so hyper, why he wanted to keep going, no matter what. I understood it then.”

Gibb thought about retiring after Robin’s death, he says, but then he realised that, as the last surviving Bee Gee, it was down to him to keep the music alive: “I care that the music lives, and I do everything in my power to enhance that. That’s my mission.”

So he went on tour and started making albums again. And, at some point, he changed his mind about the Bee Gees’ legacy. Before he goes, he tells me a story about his daughter hearing Stayin’ Alive on the radio while driving to dinner. “They turned the volume up and opened the windows and people on the street started dancing,” he says. “It’s not explainable how it happened, but those things seem to have penetrated the culture to the point that I don’t think this music’s going to be forgotten.”

• The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart is on Sky Documentaries at 9pm on 13 December 2020.

source : https://www.theguardian.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

Robin Gibb and Maurice Gibb interview JUNE 20 1984

 

 

 

 

 

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Bee Gees in Manchester 1981

1981

November 26

Music superstars the Bee Gees return to their Manchester roots during a promotional trip to the UK.

The Gibb brothers lived in Chorlton until the late 1950s and formed their first band there – a skiffle outfit called the Rattlesnakes. The family then emigrated to Queensland, Australia.

Pictured outside their former home are, from left, Barry Gibb, Robin Gibb and Maurice Gibb.

 

Barry Gibb, Robin Gibb and Maurice Gibb outside their former home in Chorlton (00115095) (C) Mirrorpix
 

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 ©https://www.inyourarea.co.uk

 

Stayin' Alive: The Bee Gees Way Reopens

After five years of partying and entertaining thousands of people, Redcliffe's Bee Gees Way has been given an upgrade, with improvements to the audio, visual and lighting infrastructure. COIVID may have stopped Sir Barry Gibb from being at the reopening of the Bee Gees Way in person, but he spoke to Craig and Loretta from his home in Miami to mark the official reopening.

 

https://www.abc.net.au/radio/brisbane/programs/breakfast/barry-gibb/12910002?fbclid=IwAR1Jc4L4oOOBbEqxN2T1dVL9erzQ2C6wBC0ETuyjHaAAoydVP-e2-S-PcDE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Barry Gibb - Greenfields: The Gibb Brothers' Songbook (Vol. 1 / Album Trailer)

Sir Barry Gibb And Friends Re-Record Bee Gees Songbook

by Paul Cashmere on November 6, 2020

in News

Sir Barry Gibb has gathered his famous friends to revisit his Bee Gees songbook for ‘Greenfields: The Gibb Brothers Songbook, Vol 1’.

The album features collaborations with Alison Krauss, Brandi Carlile, David Rawlings, Dolly Parton, Gillian Welch, Jason Isbell, Jay Buchanan, Keith Urban, Little Big Town, Miranda Lambert, Olivia Newton-John, Sheryl Crow and Tommy Emmanuel. 

The first single is the Jason Isbell collaboration ‘Words of a Fool’.

 

In a statement Barry Gibb said, “From the first day we stepped into RCA Studios in Nashville (the very place where Elvis, Willie, Waylon, Roy, the Everly Brothers and so many other legends made their magic) the album took on a life of its own. I couldn’t be more grateful for the opportunity to work with Dave and all the artists who stopped by. They were all incredibly generous with their time and talent. They inspired me more than words can express. I feel deep down that Maurice and Robin would have loved this album for different reasons. I wish we could have all been together to do it…but I think we were.”

Jason Isbell adds, “Barry Gibb is one of the greatest songwriters and singers in popular music history, and I’m happy to say he still has that beautiful voice and that magical sense of melody. Working with him on this project has been one of the great honors of my career. He’s a prince.

GREENFIELDS: THE GIBB BROTHERS SONGBOOK, VOL. 1’ TRACKLIST

1. ‘I’ve Gotta Get A Message To You’ with Keith Urban
   2. ‘Words of a Fool’ with Jason Isbell
   3. ‘Run to Me’ with Brandi Carlile
   4. ‘Too Much Heaven’ with Alison Krauss
   5. ‘Lonely Days’ with Little Big Town
   6. ‘Words’ with Dolly Parton
   7. ‘Jive Talkin’’ with Miranda Lambert, Jay Buchanan
   8. ‘How Deep Is Your Love’ with Tommy Emanuel, Little Big Town
   9. ‘How Can You Mend A Broken Heart’ with Sheryl Crow
   10. ‘To Love Somebody’ with Jay Buchanan
   11. ‘Rest Your Love On Me’ with Olivia Newton-John
   12. ‘Butterfly’ with Gillian Welch, David Rawlings

 

 

”

 

 

The time Barry Gibb got his finger stuck in a bottle during a Bee Gees TV interview

Bee Gees Maurice, Robin and Barry Gibb were being interviewed in 1989 ahead of their One For All World Tour, when eldest brother Barry got his forefinger stuck in the plastic water bottle he had been absently playing with throughout the segment.

As Barry struggled to try to free himself Maurice started laughing and Robin Gibb said patiently: "He always does this. He always gets his fingers stuck in bottles."

 The sweet moment between the three brothers begins at seven minutes into the interview when the NBC host asked the trio about any possible future collaborations, and the Bee Gees reveal they are planning to team up with Michael Jackson.

 

We were talking in Cleveland [with Michael Jackson] that he would like to do an album with us," Maurice began.

"It was a single I think," Barry corrected "...and we'll write it together

 "Perhaps your world tours could join up?" the interviewer said.

"Well, he said something about that..." Barry started saying, before holding up his finger to show everyone it was stuck in a plastic water bottle, grinding the interview to a halt.

"It's the fifth time this week he's done that," Robin deadpans, pointing to Barry.

Maurice and Barry dissolve into giggles as Robin continues, "Last time he did it with a large bottle."

 Yeah," Maurice adds, "It took him two days to get that one off."

 As Barry sits between his brothers, trying to hold his composure, Robin continues: "Yeah, it flew in the interviewers face....it was Melvyn Bragg wasn't it?"

 

The host tries to get the interview back on track. "You still haven't told me what [Michael Jackson] said?"

Pointing the finger and bottle at her, a laughing Barry replies finally: "He said it would be great to go on tour together" and resignedly continues the last few minutes of the interview with the bottle stuck on his hand.

Barry Gibb and Michael Jackson did eventually record a duet, 'All In Your Name' in 2002, but it wasn't released until nine years later on June 25, 2011, the second anniversary of The King of Pop's death.

 

 source:smooth radio

Video :01livingeyes from Beegees Fan Fever

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Barry Gibb NEW Release coming soon!

I ’m a bluegrass artist, I’m a country artist, i’m a songwriter, i’m a collaborator...Greenfield’s coming soon

 

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The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart - Filmmaker Q&A

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Cliff Richard - Too much heaven 2020

 

 

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Bee Gees documentary How can you mend a broken heart

The feature documentary premieres December 12 on HBO Max. #HBO #HBODocs Subscribe to HBO on YouTube: https://goo.gl/wtFYd7

Barry Gibb Rehearsals of Indian Summer 1985

 

Bee Gees You Should Be Dancing Lonely Days

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Nashville Film Festival Opening Night Review: Bee Gees HBO Documentary

 October 2 2020 

Nashville Film Festival kept us “Stayin’ Alive” thanks to their opening night film, The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart. Below is our full review of the nearly two-hour-long documentary which chronicles the rise of The Bee Gees.

The film, which was directed/produced by Frank Marshall and produced by Nigel Sinclair, opens with the brothers singing the title song to an enthusiastic crowd. That transitions into Barry, Maurice and Robin Gibb discussing their musical inspirations including Smokey Robinson and Otis Redding.

Speaking of Otis Redding, in the film, we find out that The Bee Gee’s song “To Love Somebody” was initially written for Redding to release but, days later, before he could record it, he passed away in a plane crash. This is just one example of what this documentary taught me about music — and this legendary band.

It also lets fans in on the songwriting process of The Bee Gees. Their process was a pretty unusual one, too. Not only do we see how they’re able to create these iconic songs but we also get a behind-the-scenes glimpse at how talented each brother is as a writer.

Throughout the film, we’re also able to see just what it’s like to work with family. While it can be one of the greatest gifts, it can also be a curse. When the band split up, it was no longer just about them. It was about their wives and their families — and overcoming obstacles in front of them.

We obviously also get to witness the trio get back together in the documentary and that’s when we see the story of “Stayin’ Alive.” The song’s deep meaning is revealed while we also get to see how much they value meaningful lyrics.

The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend Broken Heart then goes on to show viewers one of the greatest moments in the band’s history. Of course, we’re talking about Saturday Night Fever and its legendary soundtrack. Through this unique angle, we’re able to see how they managed to put their own spin on it, thus helping it become one of the best-selling albums of all time.

In conclusion, one of the most incredible things about this documentary is that it takes us through both the highs and the lows of The Bee Gees. How they transformed themselves through all the adversity, whether it was the breakup or the disco era, and then rose to the occasion to reinvent who they are.

The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend Broken Heart swoons you with the heart and soul of The Bee Gees

 

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Cliff richard recorded too much heaven on new cd

Cliff Richard's new album titled Music... The Air That I Breathe will be released on 30th October. 

 The 12 track album features 2 brand new songs 'Falling For You' and 'PS Please' and interpretations of 'Here Comes The Sun' (Beatles) and 'Too Much Heaven' (Bee Gees)

 https://beegeesfanfever.blogspot.com/

 

HBO Documentary Films has acquired North American rights to The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend A Broken Heart.

EXCLUSIVE: HBO Documentary Films has acquired North American rights to The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend A Broken Heart. 

 

The feature documentary, which was an official selection of the 2020 Telluride Film Festival before it was scratched by the pandemic, tells the story of an iconic band that is way more than a symbol of the polyester disco era from when their soundtrack fueled Saturday Night Fever. 

 That was just one part of their evolution as musicians, and Frank Marshall has directed an intimate look at siblings Barry, Maurice and Robin Gibb. They wrote more than 1,000 songs, including twenty number one hits throughout their career. The film will premiere on HBO later this year and will be available to stream on HBO Max.

 Pic is a Polygram Entertainment presentation of a Kennedy/Marshall and White Horse Pictures production in association with Diamond Docs;. Marshall produced alongside Nigel Sinclair and Jeanne Elfant Festa, and Mark Monroe, latter of whom wrote the script. Their collective credits include HBO’s The Apollo, The Beatles: Eight Days a Week, HBO’s George Harrison: Living in the Material World, and Icarus.

“Like so many people, I’ve loved the Bee Gees’ music all my life,” said Marshall, “But discovering their uncanny creative instincts and the treasure trove of music, their humor, and loyalty was a great two-year journey. We are very happy and proud to be with HBO, and it has been an honor to work on this project.”

“It’s an honor to tell the story of the Bee Gees – as brothers, as superstars and iconic songwriters – and to shine a light on their incredible career and the global impact of their music,” said Executive Producer and Chairman/CEO of Universal Music Publishing Group, Jody Gerson.

Said Sinclair: “This is a story of how three brothers with paramount musical gifts created music that touched the collective unconscious across five continents for five decades straight,” said. “It is brotherhood and family, creativity, entertainment, joy, and tragedy. We all feel very privileged to be involved.”

The Bee Gees story with all their tunes, has been catnip and aside from a stage musical project with Barry Gibb, Elisabeth Murdoch and Stacey Snider at Sister are teamed with Steven Spielberg and Bohemian Rhapsody producer Graham King and scribe Anthony McCarten are developing with Paramount a big Bee Gees narrative film.

 The docu is exec produced by David Blackman, Jody Gerson, Steve Barnett, Nicholas Ferrall, Cassidy Hartmann, Ryan Suffern. The story consultant is Cassidy Hartmann

 source Deadline.com

 

The Bee Gees Hits and Memories Special,

Michael Jackson was secretly living at Barry Gibb?

Barry revealed Jackson was a regular visitor and actually moved in with him and his family.

 Speaking back in 2014, he told The Mirror: “He would come to Miami and stay in our house. He’d sit in the kitchen and watch the fans outside his hotel on TV, just giggling – ‘Hee hee!’ He lived upstairs for a while.”

 Barry explained it was in the early 2000s before Jackson was put on trial on child molestation charges. He insisted he never talked about the court case with his new housemate. 

The singer went on: “[It was] right before his child-molestation trial for numerous children. We never discussed the case.”

 The Bee Gees star also revealed Jackson was fond of booze and would often get so drunk he’d pass out on the floor. 

He added: “We would just sit around and write and get drunk. Michael liked wine – there were a few nights when he just went to sleep on the floor.” 

 Jackson would often book a hotel room in the city but would stay with Barry instead and the singer insisted he never saw the star unhappy.

 Barry went on to say how the pair indulged in wine together, and sometimes Michael didn’t even make it to bed. 

 They were such good friends that Barry named one of his children after the singer, and the King Of Pop became Godfather to little Michael Gibb. 

In a statement released after Jackson’s death in 2009, Barry wrote: “We are devastated”. 

Robin Gibb added: “We’ve not only lost a great friend in Michael but also lost a wonderful sensitive human being.”

 Barry said the group was “devastated” in a statement released after the hitmaker’s death in June 2009.

Andy Gibb Desire Cantagiro 1980

Bee Gees Graham Kennedy Coast to Coast July 1989

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Robin Gibb Bomber Command monument Dutch TV english subtitle

Barry Gibb guests on Today, 1988

 

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A Message From Robin Gibb In remembrance of The SS Ellan Vannin

Bee Gees You win Again

BEE GEES Massachusetts & When He's Gone 1991

 

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T.G. Sheppard Talks Elvis Presley, Barry Gibb and 'Midnight in Memphis

T.G. Sheppard returned in Sept. 2019 with his first solo country album in 22 years, Midnight in Memphis. Noteworthy songs include the title track, penned by the Bee Gee's Barry Gibb, and a comedic ode to Sheppard's mentor, "I Wanna Live Like Elvis."

Stories told on the album reflect a life blessed with famous friends and 21 No. 1 hits, dating back to Sheppard's debut country single, 1974's "Devil in The Bottle," and its follow-up, "Tryin' to Beat the Morning Home."

The Gibb connection reminds us that Sheppard's success as a country artist positioned him to rub shoulders with music industry greats well into the 21st century.

"I met Barry 15 or 20 years ago," Sheppard told Wide Open Country at February's Country Radio Seminar in Nashville. "He was in the process of buying the Johnny Cash house here in Nashville, and then he wound up buying it. 
We became friends, and we just stayed friends. When it came time to do my first country solo project in 22 years, he told me, 'I've written a song just for your album. If you don't record it, it'll never be heard.'
 I said, 'Are you serious? Who's going to turn down an original Barry Gibb song?' I heard it, and it was titled 'Midnight in Memphis.' I liked it so much that I titled the album that."

Source  www.wideopencountry.com






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Update projects

GSI NEWS UPDATE
Source: GSI WEBSITE/ FACEBOOK GROUP
“I finally have time to update you again and give answers on lots of questions which arrived at GSI recently and even today.
-To begin with, many of you noticed the articles about Steve Gibb in the newspapers. I always wait with posting until I have more info, until I have checked whether it’s okay to post at all. This quite often happens with situations even a few times this weekend!!  I just do not want to hurt anyone and I see GSI in the first place as a place to honour the Gibb music and the people behind the music. That being said:
I understand lots of you were quite shocked to read the news articles about Steve having had problems with drugs and alcohol.

I knew about that period in his past but I understand why a number of fans suddenly mailed me asking etc.
The story is a bit out of its context I heard and on top of that I understand that the last thing Steve thought was that the UK press would pick up on his podcast, but as it is out there now it’s okay. It’s been a rough time for him and now he’s even trying to help others who are in trouble. Great guy!!

If you’d like to follow his talks just visit these links which I already posted before on GSI.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5VlR8uY89I9Qa3rRLT_Gng
https://www.facebook.com/addictiontalkspodcast/

Concerning some other subjects you often ask me about:
Due to the whole corona problem world wide most activities, also those concerning The Gibbs, are ON HOLD.

Though I have good hope that the Bee Gees documentary will air in December of this year!! and Barry’s new album will be released in January 2021!!

The film won’t be ready before 2022/2023 and Barry has not long ago started working on a book about his life which we talked about already here on GSI quite some time ago. At that time an album did have priority for Barry. That album is finished now and waiting for a good time to get released. Barry will take his time to write down his live story and I expect the book to be ready in 3 to 4 years from now.

Also due to corona like previous mentioned there is delay of starting the special Legacy Shows:  the celebration of The Gibb Music, which woud start this year. Robin John Gibb, family, business partner, friends and special guests are working on it for quite some time already and now use the corona time to do lots of on line / charity projects and the live concerts won’t be  starting before somewhere next year with shows in Europe and outside Europe!!  

Barry Gibb Radio Interview with Eddie Stubbs Aired on October 28, 2013 RARE

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BEE GEES VH1 FASHION SHOW

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Bee Gees Writing for others

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Bee Gees & Celine Dion Immortality Live in Miami 1998

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Robin Gibb Juliet TV Show Germany

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We did have fights, but were brothers, so there was always going to be sibling rivalry' Inside the head of Barry Gibb

When did you last feel happy?

In March my daughter-in-law Jenna, who’s married to my youngest son Michael, gave birth to a little girl, Taylor May. When she was born I was so happy. I just kept thinking, ‘This is life. You lose people you love and then a child is born and it’s pure joy.’

What is your earliest memory?

It’s of finding a baby floating in a box on a little stream near our house in Spring Valley on the Isle of Man. I still dream about it. It was the year the King died (King George VI in 1952), so I was about five. I picked it up and I remember the baby was taken to a house. It was never really explained to me, but I guess it was abandoned. I never saw it again.

What sort of child were you?

I was very quiet. At the age of two I was very badly scalded by a pot of boiling water on a table. I was toddling around and grabbed it, and it went all over me. I have no memory of it happening; I wiped it out as it was so traumatic. I never spoke for two years after that. I was in hospital for most of that time and I think it made me a very shy boy.

 

When did you last cry, and why?

I cry at the drop of a hat. If I’m watching a sad movie or TV show, I sit with a towel on my lap because I cry so much. I came back to Australia recently, the first time without my brothers. A local reporter showed me a copy of our first television appearance and I started blubbering. I can’t help it – I’m emotionally wired.

How do you relax?

I’m a huge reader. I collect first editions – I have a first edition of Peter Pan and Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I can lose myself in books, and my greatest joy is spending hours in a bookshop. I feel sad that so many of them are disappearing. These are places where I’ve spent so many happy hours just browsing, lost in that world.

What or who do you dream about?

I occasionally dream about spending a day with Paul McCartney. We just sit around talking, having lunch, spending a few hours together playing music in the studio. I don’t actually know him, but he’s someone I’d really like to talk to.

What has been your biggest achievement?

I can’t point to one single thing, because to me the achievement is the whole journey with my brothers, good and bad. We did have fights, but we were brothers, so there was always going to be sibling rivalry. But there was always a lot of love.

What are you best at, and what would you like to be better at?

I’m best at singing and songwriting. There are things that other people wish I was better at – like technology. I don’t have a mobile or an email address.

What is your best character trait?

I have a very well-developed sense of humour. I laugh a lot. I think if there is a God, he gave us the ability to laugh to get through the tough times. I also believe you should never worry about tomorrow.

... and your worst?

I get angry very quickly. I almost don’t see it coming, and it can be something big or small. When I was younger I’d get angry about anything, like being interrupted when I was working, and just fly off into a rage. It happened too much. I think it’s to do with the life I’ve lived. No one teaches you how to deal with the attention. But I  have worked on it. I’m much calmer now.

Who would your dream dinner date be?

My wife Linda and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I love the Sherlock Holmes books.

Who are you closest to?

Linda, my mother Barbara and my sister Lesley.

What is your biggest fear?

The loss of books. Handing down ideas and truths through books is a beautiful tradition, but it’s fast disappearing. I have two libraries in my house.

What is your biggest regret?

I regret losing my brother Andy when he was just 30. None of my brothers made the age of retirement except for me. It’s a poignant thing for my mother to have outlived three of her sons.

Who is the love of your life?

My wife Linda. I met her on Top Of The Pops in 1967 when we were celebrating Massachusetts getting to No 1. It was love at first sight. We went to the BBC canteen for a cup of tea and then hid in the Doctor Who Tardis, where time literally stood still.

What is your most treasured possession?

My guitars. My favourites are my Guild and my two Matons, which is an Australian make. As a kid I always wanted one, but they were so expensive. I recently went to the factory and had two made for me.

 

source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk

 

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Bee Gees : Interview Robin and Maurice Gibb at Japanese TV show

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Ronan Keating - about singing with the Bee Gees

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Barry Gibb - lonely violin

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Bee Gees star Robin Gibb gets back to his roots - and spends a penny

 27 MAY 2011

Robin Gibb, one third of the world’s most famous family band, took a break from filming for the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? in Winton, Salford. He dashed into Good Looks Salon on Worsley Road, then stayed to chat to customers and staff.

Beauty salon customers got a bonus treatment when a Bee Gee popped in – to spend a penny.
Robin Gibb, one third of the world’s most famous family band, took a break from filming for the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? in Winton, Salford.

He dashed into Good Looks Salon on Worsley Road, then stayed to chat to customers and staff.
Robin, who was brought up in Chorlton, was filming at nearby Alder Forest Funeral Home. for the BBC programme, where celebrities trace their family trees.
Funeral director Eric Birch was interviewed on camera and was told that research had traced a Gibb family member, a nurse, who used to live in the property in the 1930s.

Eric said: "I didn’t know the crew was coming, they just turned up and said they were filming for Who Do You Think You Are?

"I was interviewed and then I had a chat with Robin.
"He was a nice bloke and really down to earth. He caused quite a fuss and there were loads of people taking pictures."
After filming, it is understood Robin went on to the Marriot Hotel in Worsley for lunch.

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This Ol’ Hat” Charity Auction and Raffle Announced

Musician and hatmaker Charlie Overbey and partner Vanessa Dingwell are raising money to aid the Navajo Nation Reservation hit by COVID-19.



Charlie Overbey is a busy guy, splitting his time between writing and performing music with his band, the Broken Arrows, and making one of a kind hats for musicians, actors, and anyone else who is interested in attaining their own unique, custom-made hat. Charlie and his partner Vanessa Dingwall have joined forces with United Natives and Dr Michelle Tom in order to provide aid to the Navajo Reservation. Various Lone Hawk Hat owners have come together by autographing and donating their hats to be auctioned off to help raise money.

The donated hats will be auctioned on Lone Hawk Hats’ Instagram starting on Friday, May 22. 
Overbey explains, “When we learned that the Navajo Nation now has more documented COVID-19 cases per capita than any of the United States and they are not yet receiving U.S. government funding, we knew we had to do something to help.”

In addition to the Lone Hawk Hat charity auction, Overbey will raffle off “This Ol’ Hat,” a vintage hat signed by the Lone Hawk Hat family members.
The list of people who have donated to the auction and “This Ol’ hate” raffle are:



Cree Summer (actress)
Raoul Max Trujillo (actor)
Barry Gibb (Bee Gees)
Sheryl Crow
LP (singer / songwriter)
Nils Lofgren (Crazy Horse / Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band)
Chris Robinson (The Black Crowes)
Richard Fortus (Guns N’ Roses)
Jimmy Vivino
Charlie Starr (Blackberry Smoke)



Marcus King (The Marcus King Band)
Adam Slack (The Struts)
Corey McCormick (Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real)
Aaron Lee Tasjan
Jeff Schroeder (Smashing Pumpkins)

You can donate to Lone Hawk Hats’ GoFundMe campaign which is raising money for United Natives and enter the raffle to win “This Ol’ Hat” here.