It was a name that prioritised Barry Gibb, and his dominance was a source of resentment to the others for the rest of their lives.
#Love bee gees series
After a fidgety series of name changes – Barry and the Twins, Johnny Hayes and the Blue Cats, the Rattlesnakes, and BGs – they finally settled on the Bee Gees. As child stars on television and radio, they were soon providing the family income. The Gibb family emigrated to Australia in 1958, arriving in Brisbane on Barry’s 12th birthday. He was quick to spot his boys’ worth, though, and appointed himself their manager while they were still in shorts. ‘We created our own world and fed off our fantasies and ideas.’ In later years, Robin would dye his hair red to match the coat of his Irish setter, and was filmed at home with his pet chinchillas for The Rolf Harris Show.īack in the 1940s, their father Hugh had been a successful northern dance band leader on the Mecca ballroom circuit, but by the 1950s the work had dried up and he was obliged to take a series of dead-end jobs, including delivering bread and selling fridges. ‘We were like the Brontë sisters,’ recalled Robin, who was the oddest. The brothers were saved by their talent for writing and singing three-part harmonies. Before long, Barry was caught stealing a child’s pedal car and given two years probation. Once the family moved to Manchester, Maurice stole toys from Woolworths, while Barry and Robin were enthusiastic arsonists, setting fire to a shed, a car and a shop. Barry and his younger twin brothers, Robin and Maurice, avoided the birch, though not for want of trying. They were born on the Isle of Man –described by Stanley as ‘an island with a strange mystique’ which, in the late 1940s, ‘used the birch for capital punishment’, which sounds very time-consuming. The name prioritised Barry Gibb, and was a source of resentment to the others for the rest of their lives ‘I’ve written this book as an attempt to give them their rightful place at the very top of pop’s table,’ he declares in his introduction: ‘I also want to explain why and how the Gibb brothers have been othered, and – unlike the Beach Boys – rarely treated with the respect they should have earned as a right.’ He argues that, from the beginning, they were regarded as out-siders, though this could be said of virtually every pop star, apart from Julian Lennon and Ziggy Marley. Bob Stanley is on a mission to rescue their reputation. They are to pop music what Fanny Cradock was to cookery or Julian Fellowes is to the world of letters. This means that the last sound some of us will ever hear is ‘Stayin’ Alive’, with our chests as the drums:įeel the city breakin’ and everybody shakin’ĭespite their success, the Bee Gees have always been regarded as naff.
The British Heart Foundation’s step-by-step guide to cardiopulmonary resuscitation advises performing chest compressions ‘to the beat of “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees’. For quite some time, the prospect of death has held a fresh terror.
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