Issue #163 – The Bee Gees
Resurrected from the ashes after imploding in 1969, THE BEE GEES would spend most of the following year telling you they didn’t exist, before finally giving in, reuniting and putting a new album out in record time in a chaotic blur of activity.
MARTIN RUDDOCK counts their Lonely Days
It’s 1st December 1969, and Maurice Gibb is enjoying some winter sun in Sydney with his wife, pocket pop powerhouse Lulu. It’s been a weird year for the fraternal hit machine that is The Bee Gees. In a little over 12 fractious months, they’ve dwindled from a quintet to a duo. Guitarist Vince Melouney had quit in late ’68, his heavier leanings at odds with lead songwriters Barry and Robin Gibb’s penchant for melodic balladry.
More damagingly, the prolific, eccentric Robin had bailed in March to go solo just as their epic double LP Odessa hit the shelves. Drummer Colin Petersen was abruptly sacked in the summer, leaving Mo and older brother Barry to complete their TV film Cucumber Castle and its attendant album as a duo. Nobody felt Robin’s absence more keenly than twin brother Mo, but he’d stepped up. Not even 20 years old, he’d put in hard time as the band’s studio wizard – singing more leads and manfully trying to bridge the void left by Robin. On top of this, he was producing Aussie emigres Tin Tin and musically tinkering with brother-in-law and co-writer Billy Lawrie.
Last in the studio with Barry in late November, and with an album still to mix and the pair’s new Gee Gee label to sort out, Mo felt he’d earned a break after two breakneck years of recording and touring. He was surprised then when reporters started interrupting his holiday to quiz him about his future plans. Telling NME he was “Fed-up, miserable and completely disillusioned” Barry had quit The Bee Gees for a solo career, and threatening to go into acting. “I just didn’t believe in two people being a group. Colin, Vince and Robin have put the lid on it for me. They all left for their own reasons. I had nothing to do with them leaving, despite the things they have said,” Barry snippily told Disc & Music Echo a few days later. “Vince said that my music got on his nerves, Robin said he was a better singer than me, Colin said that I wanted to be ‘king’. What Maurice does is his own business.” Twisting the knife, the ever-quotable Robin told Disc, “He was very bitter because Maurice was out of the country with Lulu getting things done by himself, and he was just sitting around at home.”
Shrugging it all off, Mo followed Barry’s lead. Returning home a few days later, he went straight into the studio with Lawrie and started work on his own solo album. Why not? Why should the others take all the glory? Robin had just wrapped his solo debut Robin’s Reign and was already working on a follow-up in an astonishing creative splurge fuelled by speed and downers. “I wrote three songs one night in my mind,” Robin told NME that month. Song after song piled up, ranging from jaunty pop to haunted gothic fantasias decorated with sweeping orchestration and the lurch of his new Rhythm Ace drum machine.
And so, as the last days of the ’60s ebbed away, the brothers Gibb all attempted to strike out on their own. As we’ll see, thanks to family ties and commercial pressures, it wouldn’t pan out quite as planned. In fact, they couldn’t quite agree on whether or not they’d actually split up.
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