Why were the Bee Gees – and their songs – so bizarre?
Are the Bee Gees underrated? Such is the premise of Bob Stanley’s loving biography of the brothers Gibb. I’m not entirely convinced that it’s possible to be underrated if you’ve sold more than 220 million records worldwide, scored dozens of classic hits (including nine US Number Ones), and are still part of the musical fabric over 20 years since you ceased operations. Clearly a lot of people rate the Bee Gees very highly – Stanley among them.
But what Stanley is really grappling with in Bee Gees: Children of the World is a perceived lack of respect for the group’s quixotic talents, signified by an absence of the kind of detailed critical assessments showered on other artists of comparable stature. You could stock libraries with books about The Beatles, but this is the first attempt to place the work of Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb under a serious critical spotlight.
“The Bee Gees didn’t fit in. They never really made sense,” writes Stanley, who views them as pop’s greatest misfits, a band whom everyone knew but no-one understood. Himself a songwriter with the indie-pop combo Saint Etienne, Stanley has become a brilliant historian of 20th-century popular music, writing 2013’s Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern Pop and last year’s Let’s Do It: The Birth of Pop Music, encyclopaedic tomes that offer counter-narratives to the notion that rock has been the definitive sound of our times.
Stanley was 10 years old when, in 1975, he was given a C-90 cassette of The Best of the Bee Gees by an uncle. “What exactly did ‘Bee Gees’ mean?” he recalls wondering, contemplating a photo of an unsmiling trio on a mustard-coloured cover. “It sounded like someone was trying to say ‘Beach Boys’, but they’d lost the will halfway through.” What he discovered inside was “inventive, shape-shifting writers of death-haunted melodies, with voices that sounded like no one else. They were deeply odd, and quite wonderful.”
One difficulty of contemplating the Bee Gees’ extensive oeuvre – B for ‘Brothers’, G for ‘Gibb’ – is the sheer length and peculiarity of a career that came to encompass doo-wop, folk, country, whimsy, psychedelia, light classical, soul, disco and clattering synth-pop, including soundtracks, solo albums, collaborations and sundry productions for other artists created in various combinations.
Musically, Stanley is a wonderful guide, showing us the gems of this vast catalogue with enthusiasm, insight and wit. The trio first performed as a harmony group in 1958, but didn’t score an international hit until 1967, with the beautifully bizarre New York Mining Disaster 1941, inspired by the echo in a studio lift-shaft that made them think about being buried underground. They went on to enjoy two distinct periods of superstardom as mellifluous soft rockers in the late 1960s (To Love Somebody, Words, How Can You Mend A Broken Heart) then blue-eyed disco monsters with weaponised falsettos in the late 1970s (Stayin’ Alive, Jive Talkin’, Tragedy).
They were knocked off the rails by a virulent anti-disco backlash, led by white male American rock critics and DJs in the early 1980s, but enjoyed a twilight period as hitmakers for other artists, including Barbra Streisand (Woman in Love), Diana Ross (Chain Reaction), Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton (Islands in the Stream) and Dionne Warwick (Heartbreaker). There was even a comeback as revered veterans in the 1990s, before they shut up shop following the 2003 death of Maurice, aged 53, of complications from a twisted intestine. Robin died of liver cancer aged 62 in 2012, while Barry, the eldest brother, is effectively retired at 76, rarely venturing back into the studio or onto the stage.
Raised in a musical family beset by poverty, the brothers’ peripatetic childhood took in the Isle of Man, Manchester and Australia, making them insular and co-dependent. “We’re like a non-violent version of Oasis,” Barry Gibb told me in 2009. Inevitably, Robin disagreed. “It’s not rivalry,” he said. “Well, it could be, a bit,” argued Barry. And so on, for an hour of conversation in which they would constantly finish each other’s sentences, but not necessarily as originally intended, spinning off in random directions.
You could see how such a wonky relationship could thrive as creative inspiration, while driving everyone involved quietly mad. I met all the Bee Gees, and found them fascinatingly eccentric characters, with a peculiar mix of gold-plated self confidence and intense sensitivity to perceived slights.
Stanley is especially intrigued by their symbiosis, viewing them as “outsider” artists whose self-reliance created a pop language uniquely their own. He has some fun trying to get to the bottom of their decidedly peculiar way with lyrics, which he likens to “abstraction”, using words “intentionally incorrectly” to “paint a scene more vivid than one that used direct language”. That’s a way to excuse such lyrical anomalies as “I set out to get you with a fine-tooth comb” (from Islands in the Stream).
I once asked Barry and Robin about this. They explained that melodies were sacrosanct and always dictated their lyrics: certain vowels were better suited to falsetto singing – “‘ee’ and ‘ooh’ don’t work up high,” said Barry – and the atmosphere of a record had as much to do with its meaning as the words. “It’s a whole game to say the right thing,” Barry added. They had never even been to Massachusetts, the supposed subject of a 1968 hit; they just liked the sibilance of the word.
It’s a weakness of Stanley’s book that he had no interactions with his heroes – was Barry even approached, I wonder? – and is overly reliant on observations and quotes culled from press clippings. Although he rattles through a complex triple life story at a fair clip, covering 70 years in under 300 pages, he isn’t really interested in their private lives, and I came away feeling I didn’t understand the Gibbs any better as people.
But then I’m not sure they ever really understood themselves. “We’re durable, persistent little buggers” was how Robin summed up their longevity in 1998. Their catalogue of pop standards may be rivalled only by Lennon and McCartney, yet the Bee Gees also endured long periods in the doldrums, spending desultory summer seasons playing Northern variety clubs or having albums rejected by their own record company.
They made more than their fair share of masterpieces, but there’s a lot of absolute clunkers too, which even a fan as enamoured as Stanley finds difficult to love. He describes the 1981 single He’s A Liar, for instance, the group’s first single of a new decade, as “a clumsy, ugly noise” with an “abstract” instrumental hook and vocals “barked through gritted teeth”. “You couldn’t dance to it, hum it or whistle it (go ahead and try),” he admits in baffled defeat.
The Bee Gees’ up-and-down career could make them unnecessarily prickly and defensive, often unable to enjoy the fruits of their success. Asked what his epitaph would be in 1997, Robin replied: “I came and I went, and in between was padding.” “We ought to appreciate what happened,” Barry belatedly acknowledged after his brothers had passed away. “The dream came true. And it’s OK.” I think he’ll appreciate Stanley’s advocacy.
Bee Gees: Children of the World is published by Bonnier at ￡22. To order your copy, call 0844 871 1514 or visit Telegraph Books
