March 2, 2021 • 45 mins
The Bee Gees were Barry Gibb and his younger twin brothers, Robin and Maurice. From the time they started playing together as children, they dreamed of stardom, and they certainly succeeded. The Bee Gees became among the top-selling music groups of all time. The distinctive “blood harmony” of the brothers' voices set the dance floor on fire and their prodigious talent as songwriters extended their career long past disco’s days. Now in his mid-70s, Barry is the sole survivor of the group. Barry talks to Alec about his songwriting, fame, and family. Robin died in 2012 and Maurice in 2003. Barry’s keeping the Bee Gees’ music alive and still making music. HBO recently released a documentary about the group, How Can You Mend a Broken Heart? and Barry put out an album featuring Nashville greats singing Bee Gees songs called Greenfields: The Gibb Brothers Songbook (Vol. 1).
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing
from My Heart Radio. The recently released HBO documentary How
Can You Mend a Broken Heart mentions the term blood
harmony or bio harmony that unique Blendwin siblings sing together.
(00:27):
I think the Beach Boys, the Jackson Five, the Everly Brothers,
and the Bjs. My guest today is Barry Gibb with
(00:47):
his younger twin brothers, Robin and Morris. The b Gs
conquered the world with their ethereal harmonies. Today Barry misses
his brothers. Maurice died in two thousands three, Robin in
two thousand twelve. I wanted to know if he'd ever
considered what kind of solo career he might have had. Well,
(01:08):
I I don't know. I know what I wanted. I
wanted to be a pop star or a rock star,
or whatever it is that goes through our heads at
that point. At some point in your life, you wanted
to be an actor, you know. All I know is
that the moment that my brothers began to do individual things,
and I didn't know about them, but I thought, well,
it's okay. I can do individual things too. But I
(01:29):
I never did that before they did. And once that began,
I thought, oh, wow, they've gone and done this on
their own. Morris has done this, or Rob has done this.
It's pretty good. You know. Wow. I didn't know that
they did that without even a question. So I figured,
well it was okay. And once Barbara Streisan came along,
(01:50):
I just grabbed the bar you know. I thought, this
is a wonderful opportunity. And I love her and the
idea of working with her. I learned so much from that,
and I think you learn things from just about everyone
you work with. You just pick up something that you
didn't know before. Who brought you in stressand together? Was
it a producer and no, it was Barbara calling me
(02:11):
up about and she just called up and said, will
you make an album with me? And so after I
got up off up the ground, I told my wife
and I told everybody in my family that I just
had this call from Barbara Streisan, and of course everyone's going,
you gotta do it, you gotta do it, and I
was terrified. So I came to the conclusion that if
(02:35):
I call Neil Diamond, you don't bring me flowers that
he might give me some advice. So I called Neil
Diamond and I said, what is she like? What is it?
What's the experience like working with her? He just said,
don't worry about it. Just go do it. You know,
everything falls into place if the stars aligned. Don't worry.
(02:57):
He says. She's terrific and she's changeable, but that's fine.
Just go with her. You know, when you recorded with her,
were you in the same studio for some portion or
all of it or not all of it? We coult
all the tracks in Miami at Criteria, which is now
the Hit Factory. The interesting thing about Barbara was that
if she sang something, she considered it to be sung.
(03:19):
She didn't think she had to sing it again. And
that's old school, you know. It's like that's how she
grew up. And I would say, you know, especially on Guilty,
first song she sang, I said, can you give us
about four or five tracks? And she said, well, I
just sang it. No, No, can you give us choices?
Can you give us for five tracks so that we
can pick and choose which are the best moments? But
(03:40):
I just sang it. Boy, I'm gonna try that when
I got to work. I'm gonna that's it. I'm like
Bob Hope and that's one take fellas focus hit the spot,
say the words get out. You talk about, you know,
wanting multiple tracks to Cheo is from when you were
(04:01):
recording with your brothers. Was that a rule you had
where you had unanimity about what the take was and
what what worked or was there a decider there was
there a producer there that you will entrusted the decision
to um myself, but really also adhering to my brother's opinions.
We never did anything where it was two out of three.
(04:21):
It wasn't a democracy. You know. We had to be
in total agreement about everything we were doing. So if
if we love something, we were all on, you know,
and okay, what do we do next? What's the next step? Yeah,
we need a lead guitar on this, We need something here,
we need something there. But we were always in agreement.
Real life is very different, so you know, we didn't
(04:42):
live together, but we did have the van. We did
have the minivan with the BJS on the side. You know,
people talk about the documentary has introduced the least as
far as I'm concerned, it might have existed somewhere else
the term bio harmony. And when I first heard that phrase,
I was like, oh my god, I never thought about that,
(05:03):
that they sing differently and they interact differently because they're
actually related. I believe that's true, that I've never heard that,
But yeah, I agree with all of that, and there
are many different side stories to all of that. I mean,
the Beetles sound my brothers, So there's a lot. There's
a lot about where you come from. The Beatles come
from Liverpool. They all have the same accent, the same tone,
(05:26):
if you like, and so blending together was something special
for them. You didn't really have to be brothers. And
I was talking to a little big town yesterday and
they are incredible and they all come from the same
basic area of the country. So it wasn't that they
were blood. It was that they all had the same dialect,
the same kind of tonality, you know. And that's Nashville
(05:49):
when you're working with people that are your family, yea,
and God knows, um, yes, you have brothers. I have
brothers in that way that you want everyone to do well,
you know. I want my brothers to do well and
succeed and have what they want. And you realize that
the businesses uh is fragile. You know, you even when
(06:10):
you're successful, when you're with your brothers and you're recording
with your brothers and they've been gone for a while now, yeah,
about eight years since Robin left. So it's eight years
now where both of them are gone. And um when
when when when Maurice passed away, was it understood between
you and and Rob that you wouldn't continue just the
two of you know, Robin wanted us to wanted to continue,
(06:34):
and I didn't. I didn't think it was the right
thing to do. I felt we should suspend the group
as it stood, and if we were going to work
any more together, we would do it as as the
two brothers, you know, we wouldn't do it as the bjs.
So but but Robin didn't agree with me. He wanted
to continue being the bs and but then lo and behold.
(06:57):
What I didn't know is that Robin was getting ill
and as time went on he became more immoral, but
he didn't tell anybody, and so you could you could
see that something was wrong, but you didn't know what
it was. And he it wasn't like he was capable
of really doing anything because in my opinion, he wasn't
(07:19):
you know he was? He was going very frail, very quickly.
Did you guys when you went your separate ways, was
there always a sense of like the Eagles and like
Fleetwood Mac and like csn Y were they professed to
have some tension between them he had, They always got
back together because that band together whole was the cash
(07:40):
cow for them. It was never going to be as
successful as that did. The bjs go through the same
thing where you we were. Each of you had your
respective and you had a very successful solo career. Well,
the background to all of that, what you just said
is really important. The cash cow was not the center
of attention because because for us it was always tough
(08:01):
to get paid always that's the that's rock and roll,
you know. And we didn't really make any real money
until Saturday Night Fever. So success equals money that wasn't
happening for us, So we didn't worry about it. What
we're worried about was getting more hits, making more records,
writing more songs. You know, that was what preoccupied us. Crosby, Stills,
(08:25):
Nash and Young when we were doing Children of the World.
They would sitting along along the wall, four of them
watching us do the vocals, and they were in the
next studio. So the greatest thing about all of those
days is that the Eagles Leonard skinnerd were always in
the next room or two rooms away. And in those
days you could visit each other. There was no you know,
(08:46):
you can't come in here. There was none of that,
you know, and we enjoyed that I could go in
and listen to them. I played with them all night
without coming up with anything creative. We were just having
a blast, you know. Was there a sense from you
or all three of you that you had something special
(09:07):
and that was the hand you wanted to play? Well
there was a brand name, well, you know, then you
deally with the brand name, which wasn't even called that
when we were a group, you know, there was no
such thing as a brand name. You know, it's branding. Yeah,
So I've had people come up to me Clive Davis's
dinner a couple of years back. I worked for Forbes magazine.
I'd like to talk to you about branding. I don't
(09:31):
know anything about branding. You got there. We just became
a group, you know, so it wasn't really this is
the cash cow, this is what we gotta do. I
think it was that way for a lot of people.
But I remember the time when R. S O. The
company took away our song copyrights without telling us, and
(09:51):
so suddenly they owned all of our songs. How were
they able to do that? By forming a company in
Holland and playing all kinds of tax ga they managed
to acquire all of our copyrights without us knowing. And
that caused really like World War three, I mean, And
so you look at the period when the bags were
in trouble, look behind the scenes. You know there was
(10:12):
something else going on that was intense. Were you able
to get the rights back? Got them all back? But
that took a lot of energy out of me. It
took me about a year or two to finally get
things back in our own ownership. I told Robert stick
Would that I would never write another song if he
didn't get back the songs. And Morris and Rob they
(10:34):
didn't really want to fight. They were still too naive.
They just sort of, you know, it's having success, let's
not let's not argue with it. But did that fall
on you to be the more the business mind in
the trio would do. The other two were more pure artists,
and they were like, hey, man, I really don't have
the stomach for that. Well, I couldn't. I couldn't stomped
the idea that someone could take away your songs. I
(10:56):
just couldn't live with that. So if they were okay
with that, it wasn't really a matter of that's how
they felt. It was more a matter that Robert Stick
would on rso played divide and Conquer, you know, so
they would nurture and be nice to Robin and Morris,
and Robin and Morris wouldn't worry about it, you know.
So it's all about that. It's people whispering in your ears.
(11:18):
It's the same with every group. You know. There's always
going to be someone in the industry that thinks they
can make something out of you if you don't have
your brothers. And that was said to Robin, was said
to Morris, and was said to me, I want to
do a movie about your career. I'm gonna do a
narrative film, and I want to play the record executive
who gets each of you alone in the same evening.
(11:40):
It says, you know, Marris, if you just unloaded these
two losers. You have no idea that the heights we
could hit. And Robin, these guys are just dead weight
around your I mean your brother. I mean we've seen
every color they have, Barry, I mean, come on, these
guys are just dragging you down. Man. You know all
that stuff Divide and conquer, But industrial, yeah, not the
(12:01):
family is not the wives, but the people who who
sought to gain from something or to or in fact
to screw Robert stick, would you know. So it was
it was a huge industrial game. Armad hurt Kin and
who was the head of Atlantic Records, and Robert began
to fall out because Jive Talking in the movie Saturday
(12:23):
Night Fever, where Robert only used the live version of
give talking so you wouldn't have to pay the extra,
you know, and a Reef Mardin and Armored went berserk
because they didn't have a record in Saturday Night Fever.
They didn't know it's going to be successful. In fact,
most of the time I think they doubted us anyway.
So when that happened, they were unhappy. They were really unhappy.
(12:45):
And so I think that was the cause of a
lot of a lot of crisis points for us as
well as Robert. I'm Alec Baldwin. You were listening to
Here's the Thing. If you love conversations with legendary singers,
be sure to check out my episode with the incomparable
(13:08):
Barbara streisand we shared lunch and talked about our love
for food and Barbara's early dreams of fame. I read
Nancy Drew Mysteries. I read movie magazines, you know, and
dream that someday maybe I could be famous. Do you
have that dream? Then when you're here, I would have
(13:30):
my pint of coffee, ice cream Briers and sit in
my bed and dream go to the movies sometimes on
a Saturday afternoon the Lowise Kings. We had the greatest
ice cream, and we also well yeah. Here the rest
of my conversation with Barbara streisand at Here's the Thing
(13:51):
dot org. After the break, we talk about disco and
how the b GS soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever in
ninety brought them near total domination of the music charts
and the dance floor. Hi'm Alec Baldwin, and you're listening
(14:22):
to Here's the Thing. The BGS distinguished themselves vocally with
their lush harmonies. Robin had his distinctive vibrato, Maurice anchored
the melody, and then, like an ace pitcher discovering a slider,
(14:44):
Barry found his falsetto well. It first happened on a
song called Please Read Me that I did a few
different false know harmonies to that song, basically because because
of the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson and I forgot
(15:07):
all about that. So we were recording Nights on Broadway
and a ref Martina producer at that point said, can
anybody scream like Paul McCartney. We all looked at each
other and said, well, how do you mean? He said, well,
you know, like I saw her standing there and and
how Paul suddenly screams high note? Can anyone? Can any
of you guys do that? And I said, well, yeah,
(15:29):
I've done something like that way back, I said, but
I became the volunteer. Nobody else really wanted to take
a shot at that, So I went out there and
just discovered it. At first, it was tentative and nervous
and and I didn't know what it was. And then
it just began to get stronger and stronger. With you
and your brothers, there's such a quotient of beauty inside
(15:54):
the music. There's so much sensitivity inside of the lyrics
and the singing. And I'm wondering when you would perform live,
what was your ritual if you had one. On the
day of a live show, did you cardle your voice?
How did you prep for a show? I would wake
up singing because after a show you lose your voice.
(16:15):
It's gone. So the next morning you just hope and
pray that it's going to come back again, you know,
so when you wake up, you start warming up, So
I'd be I'd been doing a lot of this different
range stuff. One set of principles for the falsetto another
set of principles for the real voice. Check out your
highest note, do it all day and it comes back
(16:39):
if you're lucky. And how much before you would do
a live show? How much would you rehearse prior to
going on the rope? Rehearsal would you would usually be
about a month with weekends out so you could work
your chops back again, and that way you develop strength
and you develop confidence. And these days I have had
(16:59):
these three eighties that are amazing, and so any song
where Robin might have sung, they cover me and they
do those things. But there's actually nothing like walking from
the dressing room to the stage. Nothing like it. In
the word I think Bruce Springsteen said it, there's there's
something magical about hearing the crowd two minutes before you
(17:20):
walk on the streak coming. You're getting closer to that. Yeah,
music occupies such a unique place in people's lives, and
really dwarfs of film and television, because film and television
is something you have to make an appointment with, you
have to sit and watch it. Where music is something
that you can have in your life anywhere. You can
(17:40):
be driving, you could be having sex, you could be
at the gym jogging. Music is in your ears at will,
whenever you want it to be. And therefore, and I
think when people I always say the same line when
you die, Uh, you don't remember an episode of Seinfeld?
You remember? How can you ment a broken heart? You
(18:01):
know what I mean? Yes, I do. And then the
question then becomes why why does music and harmonics and
vibrations and notes mean so much to us? You know,
I love Frank Sinatra as much as I love Pavarotti.
I love the Distant Past, the immigrant music as much
as I love country music. I don't have categories, you know,
(18:21):
I just love what I love and if it's not
turning music? But why why do we all do this?
You know? What is the need in us? So I
want to do something about that. I'd love to do
a program about trying to understand that. I mean, this
is a corny question, but like, have you ever stood
there and you were going to sing a lyric there
(18:41):
was a particularly exquisite lyric of one of your most
famous songs and you thought you were going to break
down crying? Yeah, have you over been almost overwhelmed by
the music you're singing? Yes, we wrote a song called
Wish You Were Here for Andy because he passed away
at the age at thirty, and we wanted to do
(19:02):
it on stage and we never could. So, you know,
we got through about two or three lines and then
looked at each other, we can't do this. We just
can't do this. It's it makes it just makes me cry.
I just can't sing it. At least the song is there,
you know, But yes, that was a moment. That was
a moment. It's all part of it. You're you're in
(19:23):
a way, you're sort of acting and you're pretending to
be someone that you probably don't believe you are anyway.
You know, the song has always moved me. How deep
is your love moves me? And and immortality the song
that Celine Dion. I can't believe you said that. Every
time I hear that song, I think I would break
down if I sang that song because just the meaning
(19:44):
of that song. You wrote that song? Yeah, yeah, what
is that song about in your mind? Well, I think
it's a it's at some point in your life you
reflect on who you are and what you are and
and the culmination of your opinion. And if you can
do that, then everything's okay, you know. So so for me,
it's like, so this is who I am, this is
(20:05):
all I know, and I must choose to live for
all that I can give the spot that makes the
power grow. But I also find it's kind of a poem,
if you will, about being a famous artist. You know,
like inside some of those lyrics, I hear someone sitting
They're going, there's no turning back for me. Now that's right,
that's right. But we don't say goodbye, And that to
(20:26):
me is the key part of the song. It doesn't
matter whether I'm here or not. There are no goodbyes,
you know. And it was written for Robert Stiegwood wanting
a song for the stage version of Saturday Night Fever,
and we'd already come up with the song, but he
wanted the guy in the show to sing it. And
I thought, but this is a woman's song. It's a
(20:46):
woman's song. Some songs of women and some songs of
the men, you know, so there's a masculinity in some music,
and there's a femininity. And that's why I went with
Barbara's right work with Diana Ross and the ability to
mean Selene, to lock in to the feminine side, you know,
and understand that a Barber Streisan still doesn't quite understand
(21:09):
what woman in love means, you know. It's it's a
right idea. Call her and get a rebuttals. It's a
right out offend, which is in the song. She just
what does that mean? It's a right out offend. And
I did spend some time explaining before the Me Too
movement that women can fall in love too without telling anybody.
(21:31):
It's not all down to the guy, you don't know,
And I had to sort of talk her through that.
Kenny Rogers still doesn't know what Alans in the stream
is about. Come on, Kenny, well, let's let's let's throw
your cards on the table here. What songs that you've
immortalized do you not really know what they're about? Come on,
(21:52):
it's it's time for you to fest them saying you
don't really get the meaning of We never recorded a
song that we didn't understand. You know, there were some
very abstract songs lemons, never forget. I think he's a
very abstract song and not everybody's favorite. Everything had a
purpose to it. We began to learn from the Beatles
that you could write about anything. You could write about
(22:14):
life itself. You know. So you had Paperback Wright or
and you had Yellow Submarine, and and it was okay,
you know, you can write about these things. It doesn't
all have to be about having your heartbroken or falling
in love or they went through that, but then they understood,
they understood something about life. That's where Sergeant Pepper reached
(22:36):
its point, the culmination of the peak three creativity that
these guys were giving us. You know, well, when you
mentioned Sergeant Pepper, and I think when you go into
Saturday night Fever and when you're inside that experience and
you're recording the music to that. Did they show you
cuts of the film? Did you see some footage of
(22:56):
the film or the whole film to inspire you to
go write the music? Or you had to write the
music without any cinematic reference point. Robert sent us a script,
but we didn't read it. We just we just listened
to his verbial describing what it was, which to him,
it was you didn't see the film finished and then
write the music. Wow. He sent us a script, but
we didn't read it, and we just said, tell us
(23:19):
what you want, tell us what you think it's it is, Well,
it's tribal rites of a new Saturday Night, okay, and
as that was an article by Nick con And in
New York right. And he said, but I need a
better name for the film. And I said, well what
about night Fever? And he said, no, that's too pornographic. Okay. Um,
(23:41):
But then in the end it turned into Saturday in
Night Fever and I didn't know. So when you're inside
that experience of making that music, do you kind of
know that you're onto something or you had no idea
what that was going to become. We had no idea
what it was going to become and we were trying
to reinvent ourselves anyway. We just mixed a live album
(24:02):
that we've done in l a and then Robert called
up and said, I need five or six songs for
this film with this new gentleman named John Travolta. So okay,
all of that in itself is exciting enough. It's sort
of kickstarted the ideas, and staying alive was one of
those ideas. More than a woman, if I can't have you,
(24:22):
how deep your love obviously a night fever. So we
just started writing. Were fifty miles outside of Paris. We
didn't have, you know, television, we didn't have any of
those distractions if you like, and we just got on
with it and about three weeks, two or three weeks,
and then we got serious when we got back to
Miami and made the records for real. Well, I just
(24:45):
want to say as a reference point that I am
in Washington, d C. I went to college down there first,
my then girlfriend, who was very much of a nightclub dancing.
She and her roommate, I think there was like three couples.
We go see the movie Saturday Night Fever, and we
said to ourselves and the guys are looking at each other, going,
(25:07):
Jesus Christ, look at this. You think I'm gonna get
up there and do that in a room full of people,
Like she wants to go to clubs and go dancing
like this. I said, that's never happening, right, happening within
two weeks, I had the platform shoes. I had my
hair blow dried to death. My hair was blow dry
like it with some French pastry. I put more hair sprayed.
(25:30):
My hair was all poofed out and out. And the
shirt I got, the shirt opened right to I got
the I'm ready, I'm ready to go. It was a tsunami.
Saturday night. Fever was a tsunami. Yeah, whether you like
it or not, it was. It was gonna stay around,
It was gonna liked it. It was just every week.
(25:52):
Well that My story is that we were starting to
shoot Sagan Pepper the movie right and and we had
Peter Frampton had his own win a bagel, and we
had one Winner bagel between us, and about two weeks
into shooting, at the same time, Fever came out and
all of the dancers in the movie was suddenly dancing
(26:13):
to this music at the launch breaks and we could
hear it from Win a Bagel like, what what are
they doing? Why are they playing Saturday Fever? You know,
because at that point hadn't taken off, you know, And
with then about a week we had our own separate
Win a Bagel. So there's Hollywood right there. You know,
(26:34):
we made that up. But we made that movie. The
soundtrack to that movie. We're the only other group to
record the Hold of Sergeant Pepper with George Martin. Right,
So there's something that's something I'm proud of. How would
you describe that experience? You're performing somebody else's music. Oh yeah,
but we were learning serge Yes, the legendary music, and
we wanted to perform that music. And George Martin was
(26:57):
happy to show us the different ricks that that they
would all get up to, you know, the song Sun
King or because they all sang the same melody once
and then they would sing the harmony all together, the
same thing again, all singing the same melody, and then
they did the third harmony and they'd sing all that together,
(27:18):
so that you've got three guys on three tracks singing
each harmony, not three part harmony. And then you played
that back and it's mind blowing. So we just learned stuff.
We learned stuff. Whose idea was it to do the documentary? Well,
it was Frank Marshall, Nigel Saint Clair, and they had
(27:39):
done this an Archer documentary. They've done a couple of
others that they were very proud of the Beatles eight
days a week, I think they did that. The day
that we signed with Capital was the day I met
Frank Marshall and Steve Barnett, the president of that point,
introduced me to Frank Marshall. Frank Marshall said, we're gonna
do this documentary and and tell us tell us something
(28:01):
about how it began for you guys. And I did.
I told him a story and he went, okay, we're
going to do this documentary. And that's how it began.
But it was it was two years, two and a
half years before we saw anything, you know, and the
verse cut didn't fly very well. Why uh, there were
too many untruths, too many misconceptions that were everyone was saying, well,
(28:25):
that's true, but it really wasn't. So I had to
take issue with some of the things. And I know
that in the end some of those things may still
be there, but I never. I could never watch it
again because I can't watch my family pass one up
to the other. That's not fun. Very GiB Subscribe to
(28:51):
Hear The Thing on the I Heart Radio app, Apple
Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there,
leave us a review. When we return from the break,
Barry talks about his regrets and will also hear from
his son Steve. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to
(29:26):
Here's the Thing that is, of course more than a
woman from the soundtrack of Saturday Night Fever. It's been
a busy time for Barry Gibb. There's the new HBO
(29:48):
documentary about the Bigs, and earlier this year, Barry released
an album of big songs covered by some of Nashville's
biggest names. It's called Green Fields. These are people I
admired the most. These are country artists that have always
been in my blood so ever since I was a child.
Dolly Pardon has has been a really important part of
(30:11):
music for me. Hey day to me, I wanted to
get people I admired the most to sing our songs
and maybe it's volume two that it will happen in
the future. I don't know, but this was great fun
(30:33):
and I was more than intimidated. But it wasn't in
my hands. It was in Dave Cobbs sense. When you
say you were more than intimidated, absolutely, how so, well,
how many people do you truly admire? You know, so
when you're in their company, you just feel. When I
meet Paul McCartney, I don't know what to say. My
(30:54):
mouth won't won't say anything. You know. All I can
say is I feel fine. And you granted they must
have been intimidated to sing your music as well. Oh yeah, no,
it was all the way around, there's no question about that.
The only person I think was not intimidated by any
of us was Dave Cobble, the producer, So he was
(31:16):
the decider, he was the sider, he was the director. Well,
the cut you do with Dolly, What a beautiful rendering
that is of that song. When you hear other people
sing your songs, what goes through your mind? It's a
very flattering thing. It's like anytime over the years anyone's
sang one of our songs, it's someone's covering your song.
(31:38):
That's a huge compliment. So at the same feeling every
time and that goes back a long, long way. So
anyone's singing our songs is wow, why did that person
sing our song? Now, when someone wants to sing your songs,
is it open to anybody? Anyone who records our song
doesn't need to ask us. They don't. It's just the
(31:59):
way it works. No one needs to ask us to
sing one of our songs. If you're using one of
our songs in a movie or in a single license
like a commercial, you have to ask, and you have
to make a sure. But beyond that, anyone can record
our songs. But they pay you the royalties for you
as the songwriter, Well it will be we'd be paid
indirectly by the system that works, like mechanical royalties and
(32:21):
things like that. But what the only question I ever
had was, I don't like commercials about alcohol. I don't
like commercials about cigarettes. Is it true that you have
a someone's making a feature film about the Beach's. Yeah,
the biopics in its own process right now. Graham King
is in charge of that. He did the Bohemian Rhapsody movie.
(32:41):
You're gonna have some participation in that. Absolutely. I'm sort
of an agreement with Graham and that is that sometimes
the story can be a little different than the truth,
but not too much. You more than your two brothers. Um.
I'll say this only because this is my recollection of it.
You know, you guys would get out there and sing.
(33:04):
When you watched you sing on film, you know, it's
a different story when you're just listening to the music,
But when you'd watched you sing. Your brothers are pretty
straightforward musicians, and here you are, and the hair and
the clothes. He was like this preposterously handsome guy. And
then you'd open your mouth and you'd sing these like
(33:26):
heart stoppingly beautiful songs. And I want to ask you that,
when the bjs were at the zenith, when everything was
just clicking for you, what was the best part of
it and what was the what was the downside of
it for you? You know, I I there's a lot
of things I regret. Saturday Night People wasn't something I regretted.
I didn't like people disregarding us after fever. I thought
(33:48):
that was unfair. But but that's the industry, you know,
it's very fragile. As you said earlier, it will it
will turn on you in a heartbeat. And so I
think generally, what I regret is that we became over exposed,
and I think that that was from fever, yeah yeah,
and everything else was just having five songs in the
(34:11):
top ten or three songs in the top five. We
were becoming pretty tainted. You know. We were beginning not
to really appreciate having a number one record. But we
equaled the Beatles record. We have six number ones in
a row, and that was all right. I can live
with that. I can lit work. That'll work, you know.
(34:33):
But I mean, my other thing is that I find
that the business is that people tend to look at
something that's super successful and say, well, if it's successful,
then it's like potato chips. It can't be really that great.
It's just it's just it's like a snack food. If
it's something that appeals to the general public too, masses
of the general publish. If you're selling tens of millions
of records, it can't really be that it's too commercial, right,
(34:56):
did you get You got it with that? Yes? But
you know, I look back a long way and I
see the final year of Elvis's life, the final year
of the Beatles, Michael Jackson and how they began to fragment,
you know, and because nothing ever really less a group
is not a natural state to be in, unless your relatives,
(35:17):
unless your brothers or sisters. So I see all that.
I see that in the end, people like Elvis Michael
Beatles began to make records that weren't quite up to
the scratch of Sergeant Pebble was well, when the disco inferno,
if you will, dies down, what happens to your songwriting
when you realize that's petered out that well because of
(35:41):
the backlash, we didn't base our lives on fever. We
just sort of well back to the studio, you know
that we were. You know, I've been married for fifty
years now. Last September was fifty years and and I've
had a wonderful time. You know. I love this that woman,
and we've been together for that long, and so I
always had her at my back. I always had I
(36:04):
never I never had to be out there on my own.
You had a home family. So at the end of EVA,
we were starting to raise kids, you know, and so
the distractions were plentiful, no plentiful. And you know, even
when that happens, you think to yourself. I know, I
thought to myself. Well, maybe that's it. That was warm,
that was great, that was wonderful. Maybe go back to Australia,
(36:27):
maybe go back to England and you start to question
your life and if it's time to change your life.
That was the moment you could have done it. Speaking
of family, your son plays with you from times. Yeah,
he's right, son, Stevie plays with you, and he also
plays some other types of music. He's like into heavy metals.
(36:50):
We need CTV to command just for one second, tell
us does he get the bends when he goes from
the music of Barry Gibb to the music of Metallica
or whatever you're doing. What's the seam in between that
kind of music? You know, I grew up watching the Bags.
I stood on the side of the stage as a kid,
and I thought my dad was the coolest guy on
(37:12):
planet Earth. You know, I really did. But what happened
was is there was a band called Kiss that came
out around a similar time, and that was my introduction
into hard rock and heavy metal. And I was always
fascinated with the guitar. So you know, when I saw
a guitar that was on fire, I said, Okay, I
(37:32):
don't know how or when I'm gonna get to do that.
But I gotta figure out how to do that. And
I knew enough to know that being a musician and
being Barry Gibb's son was probably a terrible idea, and
I knew that from a young age. So I followed
my joy with the guitar, and that took me a
(37:52):
lot of places. I I you know, I've played in
a bunch of heavy metal bands over the years, like
Black Label Society, Crowbar came to a sorrow, And the
thing is is that I figured it made me different
enough that I could maybe carve out a career and
not be compared to my dad. Well what happened is
(38:15):
my dad and I have always kind of, you know,
messed around a little bit, you know, writing songs and
stuff like that. So you know, I got to learn
about songwriting from the best, you know, and I got
to watch the BGS right many times over my you know,
the course of my life. So I'm I've been a
student of theirs. But you know, when when Robin passed away,
(38:35):
Dad was clearly struggling to figure out where to go
in life. And at that point I was like, Dad,
you gotta channel this into music, like you can't sit
here and and and mourn forever, you know. And he said, okay,
well let's do let's do a show. And I said, yeah,
you should do that, and he goes, well, I only
(38:56):
want to do it if you do it with me.
I mean, I definitely didn't feel like I could step
into those roles that Robin and or Morris had. But
over the course of a few years, you know, with
his patients and uh and kindness, I found my place
with him. You know. I sometimes joke that I'm his
emotional support animal. But the fact of the matter is
(39:19):
is we've come to understand it. Even especially recently. Now
I know how to harmonize with him, which I didn't
really know how to do. I began to learn that
really by being thrown in the fire with him. And
to be honest, it's been probably the greatest gift of
my life to come full circle and actually be with
(39:40):
him making us to Australia. Yeah, we told England, we
told America, and that was an incredible year of just
finding yourself again. Stevie said that he thought his father
was the coolest guy. Let me tell you something, stev
your father is the coolest guy. Your father that reminds
(40:00):
me of Nat King Cole. Your father reminds me of
a guy that could sing and just bring you to tears.
He was so beautiful and the songs were so beautiful,
and he sang them perfectly. And then when you'd watch
him on film doing you go, oh my god, he's
also the coolest guy I've ever seen in my life.
Look at this guy. You know. I don't know that
(40:22):
anybody will ever be able to relate to this, because
I do feel a little unique in that I've had
this experience. But I think that for me, we all
have great memories throughout our life, whether it's the you know,
the birth of our children, or or you know, that
first big accomplishment that you make, or whatever it is
in life. But I have to tell you that I
(40:44):
was talking about that show that we did after Robin died,
and there was a moment where he was singing and
I was off to his right on stage, and and
he was really in a I have to say, he
kind of transcending into another level in front of my eyes.
I was like, I could not I was reduced to
(41:07):
tears while I was on stage watching him sing because
you know, I remember being a very small kid standing
on the side of the stage going hey, Dad, you know,
I'm over here type of thing. And then two, you know,
thirty something years later, I'm standing on stage with him,
and there was a moment where he took a breath
(41:27):
and just looked at me, and it was he winked
at me, and there was the most pure expression of
love with no words, between a father and son in
that moment. And I remember thinking to myself, I'll never
forget this moment for the rest of my life, because
there are no words for that kind of love between
(41:49):
a son and a father. And I tell him this
all the time. I said, Dad, it's okay that you
don't think you're the greatest of all time, but just
don't ever forget that there is in a set and
that I don't believe that you're the greatest of all time.
Just be true to yourself and and do what you love.
Because his love is pure and his expression of it
(42:13):
is incredible, and I'll never get tired of it. Listen.
I say this only because it's true, and I feel
that we all are seekers of the truth, your truth
and beauty, and that is Stevie your father knows full
well that he's the greatest of all time. He knows,
and this modesty thing, it's just a part of an act.
It's a part of a public It's always like this,
(42:35):
Oh thank you, Oh God, that's so nice of you
to say that, Oh thank you. No no please, no,
no please. Your father is fully aware of who he
is and what his towering achievements in the music industry are.
Him and his brothers and him on his own frozen
for that matter. I want to say I have loved you,
and I have loved your music. I mean, I'm good
(42:56):
music is good music, and I have loved you and
I loved your music forever. I mean, I have so
many Begs albums, so every now and then I gotta here,
I can't see nobody. I play that song and I'm oh,
you know, I can't see nobody. Was written in a
dressing room with strippers. I thought it was you were
(43:20):
like in church. It was one of it's one of
my greatest memory bad bums. And here's a song. You know.
Let's stop right there and let me just say I'm
so grateful to you. You are one of the greatest
musicians that ever lived. And one of the greatest vocalists
that ever lived. And I never get tired of listening
(43:41):
to your music. Never very kind. Thank you both for
making time to do this. This has been a joy.
This has been a real joy. It's been a real
joy for us too. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening
to Here's the Thing, When to Be if you need
(44:09):
show Indeed, we're produced by Kathleen Russo, Carrie donohue and
(44:30):
Zach McNeice. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Thanks for listening
to open up your to love
I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing
from My Heart Radio. The recently released HBO documentary How
Can You Mend a Broken Heart mentions the term blood
harmony or bio harmony that unique Blendwin siblings sing together.
(00:27):
I think the Beach Boys, the Jackson Five, the Everly Brothers,
and the Bjs. My guest today is Barry Gibb with
(00:47):
his younger twin brothers, Robin and Morris. The b Gs
conquered the world with their ethereal harmonies. Today Barry misses
his brothers. Maurice died in two thousands three, Robin in
two thousand twelve. I wanted to know if he'd ever
considered what kind of solo career he might have had. Well,
(01:08):
I I don't know. I know what I wanted. I
wanted to be a pop star or a rock star,
or whatever it is that goes through our heads at
that point. At some point in your life, you wanted
to be an actor, you know. All I know is
that the moment that my brothers began to do individual things,
and I didn't know about them, but I thought, well,
it's okay. I can do individual things too. But I
(01:29):
I never did that before they did. And once that began,
I thought, oh, wow, they've gone and done this on
their own. Morris has done this, or Rob has done this.
It's pretty good. You know. Wow. I didn't know that
they did that without even a question. So I figured,
well it was okay. And once Barbara Streisan came along,
(01:50):
I just grabbed the bar you know. I thought, this
is a wonderful opportunity. And I love her and the
idea of working with her. I learned so much from that,
and I think you learn things from just about everyone
you work with. You just pick up something that you
didn't know before. Who brought you in stressand together? Was
it a producer and no, it was Barbara calling me
(02:11):
up about and she just called up and said, will
you make an album with me? And so after I
got up off up the ground, I told my wife
and I told everybody in my family that I just
had this call from Barbara Streisan, and of course everyone's going,
you gotta do it, you gotta do it, and I
was terrified. So I came to the conclusion that if
(02:35):
I call Neil Diamond, you don't bring me flowers that
he might give me some advice. So I called Neil
Diamond and I said, what is she like? What is it?
What's the experience like working with her? He just said,
don't worry about it. Just go do it. You know,
everything falls into place if the stars aligned. Don't worry.
(02:57):
He says. She's terrific and she's changeable, but that's fine.
Just go with her. You know, when you recorded with her,
were you in the same studio for some portion or
all of it or not all of it? We coult
all the tracks in Miami at Criteria, which is now
the Hit Factory. The interesting thing about Barbara was that
if she sang something, she considered it to be sung.
(03:19):
She didn't think she had to sing it again. And
that's old school, you know. It's like that's how she
grew up. And I would say, you know, especially on Guilty,
first song she sang, I said, can you give us
about four or five tracks? And she said, well, I
just sang it. No, No, can you give us choices?
Can you give us for five tracks so that we
can pick and choose which are the best moments? But
(03:40):
I just sang it. Boy, I'm gonna try that when
I got to work. I'm gonna that's it. I'm like
Bob Hope and that's one take fellas focus hit the spot,
say the words get out. You talk about, you know,
wanting multiple tracks to Cheo is from when you were
(04:01):
recording with your brothers. Was that a rule you had
where you had unanimity about what the take was and
what what worked or was there a decider there was
there a producer there that you will entrusted the decision
to um myself, but really also adhering to my brother's opinions.
We never did anything where it was two out of three.
(04:21):
It wasn't a democracy. You know. We had to be
in total agreement about everything we were doing. So if
if we love something, we were all on, you know,
and okay, what do we do next? What's the next step? Yeah,
we need a lead guitar on this, We need something here,
we need something there. But we were always in agreement.
Real life is very different, so you know, we didn't
(04:42):
live together, but we did have the van. We did
have the minivan with the BJS on the side. You know,
people talk about the documentary has introduced the least as
far as I'm concerned, it might have existed somewhere else
the term bio harmony. And when I first heard that phrase,
I was like, oh my god, I never thought about that,
(05:03):
that they sing differently and they interact differently because they're
actually related. I believe that's true, that I've never heard that,
But yeah, I agree with all of that, and there
are many different side stories to all of that. I mean,
the Beetles sound my brothers, So there's a lot. There's
a lot about where you come from. The Beatles come
from Liverpool. They all have the same accent, the same tone,
(05:26):
if you like, and so blending together was something special
for them. You didn't really have to be brothers. And
I was talking to a little big town yesterday and
they are incredible and they all come from the same
basic area of the country. So it wasn't that they
were blood. It was that they all had the same dialect,
the same kind of tonality, you know. And that's Nashville
(05:49):
when you're working with people that are your family, yea,
and God knows, um, yes, you have brothers. I have
brothers in that way that you want everyone to do well,
you know. I want my brothers to do well and
succeed and have what they want. And you realize that
the businesses uh is fragile. You know, you even when
(06:10):
you're successful, when you're with your brothers and you're recording
with your brothers and they've been gone for a while now, yeah,
about eight years since Robin left. So it's eight years
now where both of them are gone. And um when
when when when Maurice passed away, was it understood between
you and and Rob that you wouldn't continue just the
two of you know, Robin wanted us to wanted to continue,
(06:34):
and I didn't. I didn't think it was the right
thing to do. I felt we should suspend the group
as it stood, and if we were going to work
any more together, we would do it as as the
two brothers, you know, we wouldn't do it as the bjs.
So but but Robin didn't agree with me. He wanted
to continue being the bs and but then lo and behold.
(06:57):
What I didn't know is that Robin was getting ill
and as time went on he became more immoral, but
he didn't tell anybody, and so you could you could
see that something was wrong, but you didn't know what
it was. And he it wasn't like he was capable
of really doing anything because in my opinion, he wasn't
(07:19):
you know he was? He was going very frail, very quickly.
Did you guys when you went your separate ways, was
there always a sense of like the Eagles and like
Fleetwood Mac and like csn Y were they professed to
have some tension between them he had, They always got
back together because that band together whole was the cash
(07:40):
cow for them. It was never going to be as
successful as that did. The bjs go through the same
thing where you we were. Each of you had your
respective and you had a very successful solo career. Well,
the background to all of that, what you just said
is really important. The cash cow was not the center
of attention because because for us it was always tough
(08:01):
to get paid always that's the that's rock and roll,
you know. And we didn't really make any real money
until Saturday Night Fever. So success equals money that wasn't
happening for us, So we didn't worry about it. What
we're worried about was getting more hits, making more records,
writing more songs. You know, that was what preoccupied us. Crosby, Stills,
(08:25):
Nash and Young when we were doing Children of the World.
They would sitting along along the wall, four of them
watching us do the vocals, and they were in the
next studio. So the greatest thing about all of those
days is that the Eagles Leonard skinnerd were always in
the next room or two rooms away. And in those
days you could visit each other. There was no you know,
(08:46):
you can't come in here. There was none of that,
you know, and we enjoyed that I could go in
and listen to them. I played with them all night
without coming up with anything creative. We were just having
a blast, you know. Was there a sense from you
or all three of you that you had something special
(09:07):
and that was the hand you wanted to play? Well
there was a brand name, well, you know, then you
deally with the brand name, which wasn't even called that
when we were a group, you know, there was no
such thing as a brand name. You know, it's branding. Yeah,
So I've had people come up to me Clive Davis's
dinner a couple of years back. I worked for Forbes magazine.
I'd like to talk to you about branding. I don't
(09:31):
know anything about branding. You got there. We just became
a group, you know, so it wasn't really this is
the cash cow, this is what we gotta do. I
think it was that way for a lot of people.
But I remember the time when R. S O. The
company took away our song copyrights without telling us, and
(09:51):
so suddenly they owned all of our songs. How were
they able to do that? By forming a company in
Holland and playing all kinds of tax ga they managed
to acquire all of our copyrights without us knowing. And
that caused really like World War three, I mean, And
so you look at the period when the bags were
in trouble, look behind the scenes. You know there was
(10:12):
something else going on that was intense. Were you able
to get the rights back? Got them all back? But
that took a lot of energy out of me. It
took me about a year or two to finally get
things back in our own ownership. I told Robert stick
Would that I would never write another song if he
didn't get back the songs. And Morris and Rob they
(10:34):
didn't really want to fight. They were still too naive.
They just sort of, you know, it's having success, let's
not let's not argue with it. But did that fall
on you to be the more the business mind in
the trio would do. The other two were more pure artists,
and they were like, hey, man, I really don't have
the stomach for that. Well, I couldn't. I couldn't stomped
the idea that someone could take away your songs. I
(10:56):
just couldn't live with that. So if they were okay
with that, it wasn't really a matter of that's how
they felt. It was more a matter that Robert Stick
would on rso played divide and Conquer, you know, so
they would nurture and be nice to Robin and Morris,
and Robin and Morris wouldn't worry about it, you know.
So it's all about that. It's people whispering in your ears.
(11:18):
It's the same with every group. You know. There's always
going to be someone in the industry that thinks they
can make something out of you if you don't have
your brothers. And that was said to Robin, was said
to Morris, and was said to me, I want to
do a movie about your career. I'm gonna do a
narrative film, and I want to play the record executive
who gets each of you alone in the same evening.
(11:40):
It says, you know, Marris, if you just unloaded these
two losers. You have no idea that the heights we
could hit. And Robin, these guys are just dead weight
around your I mean your brother. I mean we've seen
every color they have, Barry, I mean, come on, these
guys are just dragging you down. Man. You know all
that stuff Divide and conquer, But industrial, yeah, not the
(12:01):
family is not the wives, but the people who who
sought to gain from something or to or in fact
to screw Robert stick, would you know. So it was
it was a huge industrial game. Armad hurt Kin and
who was the head of Atlantic Records, and Robert began
to fall out because Jive Talking in the movie Saturday
(12:23):
Night Fever, where Robert only used the live version of
give talking so you wouldn't have to pay the extra,
you know, and a Reef Mardin and Armored went berserk
because they didn't have a record in Saturday Night Fever.
They didn't know it's going to be successful. In fact,
most of the time I think they doubted us anyway.
So when that happened, they were unhappy. They were really unhappy.
(12:45):
And so I think that was the cause of a
lot of a lot of crisis points for us as
well as Robert. I'm Alec Baldwin. You were listening to
Here's the Thing. If you love conversations with legendary singers,
be sure to check out my episode with the incomparable
(13:08):
Barbara streisand we shared lunch and talked about our love
for food and Barbara's early dreams of fame. I read
Nancy Drew Mysteries. I read movie magazines, you know, and
dream that someday maybe I could be famous. Do you
have that dream? Then when you're here, I would have
(13:30):
my pint of coffee, ice cream Briers and sit in
my bed and dream go to the movies sometimes on
a Saturday afternoon the Lowise Kings. We had the greatest
ice cream, and we also well yeah. Here the rest
of my conversation with Barbara streisand at Here's the Thing
(13:51):
dot org. After the break, we talk about disco and
how the b GS soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever in
ninety brought them near total domination of the music charts
and the dance floor. Hi'm Alec Baldwin, and you're listening
(14:22):
to Here's the Thing. The BGS distinguished themselves vocally with
their lush harmonies. Robin had his distinctive vibrato, Maurice anchored
the melody, and then, like an ace pitcher discovering a slider,
(14:44):
Barry found his falsetto well. It first happened on a
song called Please Read Me that I did a few
different false know harmonies to that song, basically because because
of the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson and I forgot
(15:07):
all about that. So we were recording Nights on Broadway
and a ref Martina producer at that point said, can
anybody scream like Paul McCartney. We all looked at each
other and said, well, how do you mean? He said, well,
you know, like I saw her standing there and and
how Paul suddenly screams high note? Can anyone? Can any
of you guys do that? And I said, well, yeah,
(15:29):
I've done something like that way back, I said, but
I became the volunteer. Nobody else really wanted to take
a shot at that, So I went out there and
just discovered it. At first, it was tentative and nervous
and and I didn't know what it was. And then
it just began to get stronger and stronger. With you
and your brothers, there's such a quotient of beauty inside
(15:54):
the music. There's so much sensitivity inside of the lyrics
and the singing. And I'm wondering when you would perform live,
what was your ritual if you had one. On the
day of a live show, did you cardle your voice?
How did you prep for a show? I would wake
up singing because after a show you lose your voice.
(16:15):
It's gone. So the next morning you just hope and
pray that it's going to come back again, you know,
so when you wake up, you start warming up, So
I'd be I'd been doing a lot of this different
range stuff. One set of principles for the falsetto another
set of principles for the real voice. Check out your
highest note, do it all day and it comes back
(16:39):
if you're lucky. And how much before you would do
a live show? How much would you rehearse prior to
going on the rope? Rehearsal would you would usually be
about a month with weekends out so you could work
your chops back again, and that way you develop strength
and you develop confidence. And these days I have had
(16:59):
these three eighties that are amazing, and so any song
where Robin might have sung, they cover me and they
do those things. But there's actually nothing like walking from
the dressing room to the stage. Nothing like it. In
the word I think Bruce Springsteen said it, there's there's
something magical about hearing the crowd two minutes before you
(17:20):
walk on the streak coming. You're getting closer to that. Yeah,
music occupies such a unique place in people's lives, and
really dwarfs of film and television, because film and television
is something you have to make an appointment with, you
have to sit and watch it. Where music is something
that you can have in your life anywhere. You can
(17:40):
be driving, you could be having sex, you could be
at the gym jogging. Music is in your ears at will,
whenever you want it to be. And therefore, and I
think when people I always say the same line when
you die, Uh, you don't remember an episode of Seinfeld?
You remember? How can you ment a broken heart? You
(18:01):
know what I mean? Yes, I do. And then the
question then becomes why why does music and harmonics and
vibrations and notes mean so much to us? You know,
I love Frank Sinatra as much as I love Pavarotti.
I love the Distant Past, the immigrant music as much
as I love country music. I don't have categories, you know,
(18:21):
I just love what I love and if it's not
turning music? But why why do we all do this?
You know? What is the need in us? So I
want to do something about that. I'd love to do
a program about trying to understand that. I mean, this
is a corny question, but like, have you ever stood
there and you were going to sing a lyric there
(18:41):
was a particularly exquisite lyric of one of your most
famous songs and you thought you were going to break
down crying? Yeah, have you over been almost overwhelmed by
the music you're singing? Yes, we wrote a song called
Wish You Were Here for Andy because he passed away
at the age at thirty, and we wanted to do
(19:02):
it on stage and we never could. So, you know,
we got through about two or three lines and then
looked at each other, we can't do this. We just
can't do this. It's it makes it just makes me cry.
I just can't sing it. At least the song is there,
you know, But yes, that was a moment. That was
a moment. It's all part of it. You're you're in
(19:23):
a way, you're sort of acting and you're pretending to
be someone that you probably don't believe you are anyway.
You know, the song has always moved me. How deep
is your love moves me? And and immortality the song
that Celine Dion. I can't believe you said that. Every
time I hear that song, I think I would break
down if I sang that song because just the meaning
(19:44):
of that song. You wrote that song? Yeah, yeah, what
is that song about in your mind? Well, I think
it's a it's at some point in your life you
reflect on who you are and what you are and
and the culmination of your opinion. And if you can
do that, then everything's okay, you know. So so for me,
it's like, so this is who I am, this is
(20:05):
all I know, and I must choose to live for
all that I can give the spot that makes the
power grow. But I also find it's kind of a poem,
if you will, about being a famous artist. You know,
like inside some of those lyrics, I hear someone sitting
They're going, there's no turning back for me. Now that's right,
that's right. But we don't say goodbye, And that to
(20:26):
me is the key part of the song. It doesn't
matter whether I'm here or not. There are no goodbyes,
you know. And it was written for Robert Stiegwood wanting
a song for the stage version of Saturday Night Fever,
and we'd already come up with the song, but he
wanted the guy in the show to sing it. And
I thought, but this is a woman's song. It's a
(20:46):
woman's song. Some songs of women and some songs of
the men, you know, so there's a masculinity in some music,
and there's a femininity. And that's why I went with
Barbara's right work with Diana Ross and the ability to
mean Selene, to lock in to the feminine side, you know,
and understand that a Barber Streisan still doesn't quite understand
(21:09):
what woman in love means, you know. It's it's a
right idea. Call her and get a rebuttals. It's a
right out offend, which is in the song. She just
what does that mean? It's a right out offend. And
I did spend some time explaining before the Me Too
movement that women can fall in love too without telling anybody.
(21:31):
It's not all down to the guy, you don't know,
And I had to sort of talk her through that.
Kenny Rogers still doesn't know what Alans in the stream
is about. Come on, Kenny, well, let's let's let's throw
your cards on the table here. What songs that you've
immortalized do you not really know what they're about? Come on,
(21:52):
it's it's time for you to fest them saying you
don't really get the meaning of We never recorded a
song that we didn't understand. You know, there were some
very abstract songs lemons, never forget. I think he's a
very abstract song and not everybody's favorite. Everything had a
purpose to it. We began to learn from the Beatles
that you could write about anything. You could write about
(22:14):
life itself. You know. So you had Paperback Wright or
and you had Yellow Submarine, and and it was okay,
you know, you can write about these things. It doesn't
all have to be about having your heartbroken or falling
in love or they went through that, but then they understood,
they understood something about life. That's where Sergeant Pepper reached
(22:36):
its point, the culmination of the peak three creativity that
these guys were giving us. You know, well, when you
mentioned Sergeant Pepper, and I think when you go into
Saturday night Fever and when you're inside that experience and
you're recording the music to that. Did they show you
cuts of the film? Did you see some footage of
(22:56):
the film or the whole film to inspire you to
go write the music? Or you had to write the
music without any cinematic reference point. Robert sent us a script,
but we didn't read it. We just we just listened
to his verbial describing what it was, which to him,
it was you didn't see the film finished and then
write the music. Wow. He sent us a script, but
we didn't read it, and we just said, tell us
(23:19):
what you want, tell us what you think it's it is, Well,
it's tribal rites of a new Saturday Night, okay, and
as that was an article by Nick con And in
New York right. And he said, but I need a
better name for the film. And I said, well what
about night Fever? And he said, no, that's too pornographic. Okay. Um,
(23:41):
But then in the end it turned into Saturday in
Night Fever and I didn't know. So when you're inside
that experience of making that music, do you kind of
know that you're onto something or you had no idea
what that was going to become. We had no idea
what it was going to become and we were trying
to reinvent ourselves anyway. We just mixed a live album
(24:02):
that we've done in l a and then Robert called
up and said, I need five or six songs for
this film with this new gentleman named John Travolta. So okay,
all of that in itself is exciting enough. It's sort
of kickstarted the ideas, and staying alive was one of
those ideas. More than a woman, if I can't have you,
(24:22):
how deep your love obviously a night fever. So we
just started writing. Were fifty miles outside of Paris. We
didn't have, you know, television, we didn't have any of
those distractions if you like, and we just got on
with it and about three weeks, two or three weeks,
and then we got serious when we got back to
Miami and made the records for real. Well, I just
(24:45):
want to say as a reference point that I am
in Washington, d C. I went to college down there first,
my then girlfriend, who was very much of a nightclub dancing.
She and her roommate, I think there was like three couples.
We go see the movie Saturday Night Fever, and we
said to ourselves and the guys are looking at each other, going,
(25:07):
Jesus Christ, look at this. You think I'm gonna get
up there and do that in a room full of people,
Like she wants to go to clubs and go dancing
like this. I said, that's never happening, right, happening within
two weeks, I had the platform shoes. I had my
hair blow dried to death. My hair was blow dry
like it with some French pastry. I put more hair sprayed.
(25:30):
My hair was all poofed out and out. And the
shirt I got, the shirt opened right to I got
the I'm ready, I'm ready to go. It was a tsunami.
Saturday night. Fever was a tsunami. Yeah, whether you like
it or not, it was. It was gonna stay around,
It was gonna liked it. It was just every week.
(25:52):
Well that My story is that we were starting to
shoot Sagan Pepper the movie right and and we had
Peter Frampton had his own win a bagel, and we
had one Winner bagel between us, and about two weeks
into shooting, at the same time, Fever came out and
all of the dancers in the movie was suddenly dancing
(26:13):
to this music at the launch breaks and we could
hear it from Win a Bagel like, what what are
they doing? Why are they playing Saturday Fever? You know,
because at that point hadn't taken off, you know, And
with then about a week we had our own separate
Win a Bagel. So there's Hollywood right there. You know,
(26:34):
we made that up. But we made that movie. The
soundtrack to that movie. We're the only other group to
record the Hold of Sergeant Pepper with George Martin. Right,
So there's something that's something I'm proud of. How would
you describe that experience? You're performing somebody else's music. Oh yeah,
but we were learning serge Yes, the legendary music, and
we wanted to perform that music. And George Martin was
(26:57):
happy to show us the different ricks that that they
would all get up to, you know, the song Sun
King or because they all sang the same melody once
and then they would sing the harmony all together, the
same thing again, all singing the same melody, and then
they did the third harmony and they'd sing all that together,
(27:18):
so that you've got three guys on three tracks singing
each harmony, not three part harmony. And then you played
that back and it's mind blowing. So we just learned stuff.
We learned stuff. Whose idea was it to do the documentary? Well,
it was Frank Marshall, Nigel Saint Clair, and they had
(27:39):
done this an Archer documentary. They've done a couple of
others that they were very proud of the Beatles eight
days a week, I think they did that. The day
that we signed with Capital was the day I met
Frank Marshall and Steve Barnett, the president of that point,
introduced me to Frank Marshall. Frank Marshall said, we're gonna
do this documentary and and tell us tell us something
(28:01):
about how it began for you guys. And I did.
I told him a story and he went, okay, we're
going to do this documentary. And that's how it began.
But it was it was two years, two and a
half years before we saw anything, you know, and the
verse cut didn't fly very well. Why uh, there were
too many untruths, too many misconceptions that were everyone was saying, well,
(28:25):
that's true, but it really wasn't. So I had to
take issue with some of the things. And I know
that in the end some of those things may still
be there, but I never. I could never watch it
again because I can't watch my family pass one up
to the other. That's not fun. Very GiB Subscribe to
(28:51):
Hear The Thing on the I Heart Radio app, Apple
Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there,
leave us a review. When we return from the break,
Barry talks about his regrets and will also hear from
his son Steve. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to
(29:26):
Here's the Thing that is, of course more than a
woman from the soundtrack of Saturday Night Fever. It's been
a busy time for Barry Gibb. There's the new HBO
(29:48):
documentary about the Bigs, and earlier this year, Barry released
an album of big songs covered by some of Nashville's
biggest names. It's called Green Fields. These are people I
admired the most. These are country artists that have always
been in my blood so ever since I was a child.
Dolly Pardon has has been a really important part of
(30:11):
music for me. Hey day to me, I wanted to
get people I admired the most to sing our songs
and maybe it's volume two that it will happen in
the future. I don't know, but this was great fun
(30:33):
and I was more than intimidated. But it wasn't in
my hands. It was in Dave Cobbs sense. When you
say you were more than intimidated, absolutely, how so, well,
how many people do you truly admire? You know, so
when you're in their company, you just feel. When I
meet Paul McCartney, I don't know what to say. My
(30:54):
mouth won't won't say anything. You know. All I can
say is I feel fine. And you granted they must
have been intimidated to sing your music as well. Oh yeah, no,
it was all the way around, there's no question about that.
The only person I think was not intimidated by any
of us was Dave Cobble, the producer, So he was
(31:16):
the decider, he was the sider, he was the director. Well,
the cut you do with Dolly, What a beautiful rendering
that is of that song. When you hear other people
sing your songs, what goes through your mind? It's a
very flattering thing. It's like anytime over the years anyone's
sang one of our songs, it's someone's covering your song.
(31:38):
That's a huge compliment. So at the same feeling every
time and that goes back a long, long way. So
anyone's singing our songs is wow, why did that person
sing our song? Now, when someone wants to sing your songs,
is it open to anybody? Anyone who records our song
doesn't need to ask us. They don't. It's just the
(31:59):
way it works. No one needs to ask us to
sing one of our songs. If you're using one of
our songs in a movie or in a single license
like a commercial, you have to ask, and you have
to make a sure. But beyond that, anyone can record
our songs. But they pay you the royalties for you
as the songwriter, Well it will be we'd be paid
indirectly by the system that works, like mechanical royalties and
(32:21):
things like that. But what the only question I ever
had was, I don't like commercials about alcohol. I don't
like commercials about cigarettes. Is it true that you have
a someone's making a feature film about the Beach's. Yeah,
the biopics in its own process right now. Graham King
is in charge of that. He did the Bohemian Rhapsody movie.
(32:41):
You're gonna have some participation in that. Absolutely. I'm sort
of an agreement with Graham and that is that sometimes
the story can be a little different than the truth,
but not too much. You more than your two brothers. Um.
I'll say this only because this is my recollection of it.
You know, you guys would get out there and sing.
(33:04):
When you watched you sing on film, you know, it's
a different story when you're just listening to the music,
But when you'd watched you sing. Your brothers are pretty
straightforward musicians, and here you are, and the hair and
the clothes. He was like this preposterously handsome guy. And
then you'd open your mouth and you'd sing these like
(33:26):
heart stoppingly beautiful songs. And I want to ask you that,
when the bjs were at the zenith, when everything was
just clicking for you, what was the best part of
it and what was the what was the downside of
it for you? You know, I I there's a lot
of things I regret. Saturday Night People wasn't something I regretted.
I didn't like people disregarding us after fever. I thought
(33:48):
that was unfair. But but that's the industry, you know,
it's very fragile. As you said earlier, it will it
will turn on you in a heartbeat. And so I
think generally, what I regret is that we became over exposed,
and I think that that was from fever, yeah yeah,
and everything else was just having five songs in the
(34:11):
top ten or three songs in the top five. We
were becoming pretty tainted. You know. We were beginning not
to really appreciate having a number one record. But we
equaled the Beatles record. We have six number ones in
a row, and that was all right. I can live
with that. I can lit work. That'll work, you know.
(34:33):
But I mean, my other thing is that I find
that the business is that people tend to look at
something that's super successful and say, well, if it's successful,
then it's like potato chips. It can't be really that great.
It's just it's just it's like a snack food. If
it's something that appeals to the general public too, masses
of the general publish. If you're selling tens of millions
of records, it can't really be that it's too commercial, right,
(34:56):
did you get You got it with that? Yes? But
you know, I look back a long way and I
see the final year of Elvis's life, the final year
of the Beatles, Michael Jackson and how they began to fragment,
you know, and because nothing ever really less a group
is not a natural state to be in, unless your relatives,
(35:17):
unless your brothers or sisters. So I see all that.
I see that in the end, people like Elvis Michael
Beatles began to make records that weren't quite up to
the scratch of Sergeant Pebble was well, when the disco inferno,
if you will, dies down, what happens to your songwriting
when you realize that's petered out that well because of
(35:41):
the backlash, we didn't base our lives on fever. We
just sort of well back to the studio, you know
that we were. You know, I've been married for fifty
years now. Last September was fifty years and and I've
had a wonderful time. You know. I love this that woman,
and we've been together for that long, and so I
always had her at my back. I always had I
(36:04):
never I never had to be out there on my own.
You had a home family. So at the end of EVA,
we were starting to raise kids, you know, and so
the distractions were plentiful, no plentiful. And you know, even
when that happens, you think to yourself. I know, I
thought to myself. Well, maybe that's it. That was warm,
that was great, that was wonderful. Maybe go back to Australia,
(36:27):
maybe go back to England and you start to question
your life and if it's time to change your life.
That was the moment you could have done it. Speaking
of family, your son plays with you from times. Yeah,
he's right, son, Stevie plays with you, and he also
plays some other types of music. He's like into heavy metals.
(36:50):
We need CTV to command just for one second, tell
us does he get the bends when he goes from
the music of Barry Gibb to the music of Metallica
or whatever you're doing. What's the seam in between that
kind of music? You know, I grew up watching the Bags.
I stood on the side of the stage as a kid,
and I thought my dad was the coolest guy on
(37:12):
planet Earth. You know, I really did. But what happened
was is there was a band called Kiss that came
out around a similar time, and that was my introduction
into hard rock and heavy metal. And I was always
fascinated with the guitar. So you know, when I saw
a guitar that was on fire, I said, Okay, I
(37:32):
don't know how or when I'm gonna get to do that.
But I gotta figure out how to do that. And
I knew enough to know that being a musician and
being Barry Gibb's son was probably a terrible idea, and
I knew that from a young age. So I followed
my joy with the guitar, and that took me a
(37:52):
lot of places. I I you know, I've played in
a bunch of heavy metal bands over the years, like
Black Label Society, Crowbar came to a sorrow, And the
thing is is that I figured it made me different
enough that I could maybe carve out a career and
not be compared to my dad. Well what happened is
(38:15):
my dad and I have always kind of, you know,
messed around a little bit, you know, writing songs and
stuff like that. So you know, I got to learn
about songwriting from the best, you know, and I got
to watch the BGS right many times over my you know,
the course of my life. So I'm I've been a
student of theirs. But you know, when when Robin passed away,
(38:35):
Dad was clearly struggling to figure out where to go
in life. And at that point I was like, Dad,
you gotta channel this into music, like you can't sit
here and and and mourn forever, you know. And he said, okay,
well let's do let's do a show. And I said, yeah,
you should do that, and he goes, well, I only
(38:56):
want to do it if you do it with me.
I mean, I definitely didn't feel like I could step
into those roles that Robin and or Morris had. But
over the course of a few years, you know, with
his patients and uh and kindness, I found my place
with him. You know. I sometimes joke that I'm his
emotional support animal. But the fact of the matter is
(39:19):
is we've come to understand it. Even especially recently. Now
I know how to harmonize with him, which I didn't
really know how to do. I began to learn that
really by being thrown in the fire with him. And
to be honest, it's been probably the greatest gift of
my life to come full circle and actually be with
(39:40):
him making us to Australia. Yeah, we told England, we
told America, and that was an incredible year of just
finding yourself again. Stevie said that he thought his father
was the coolest guy. Let me tell you something, stev
your father is the coolest guy. Your father that reminds
(40:00):
me of Nat King Cole. Your father reminds me of
a guy that could sing and just bring you to tears.
He was so beautiful and the songs were so beautiful,
and he sang them perfectly. And then when you'd watch
him on film doing you go, oh my god, he's
also the coolest guy I've ever seen in my life.
Look at this guy. You know. I don't know that
(40:22):
anybody will ever be able to relate to this, because
I do feel a little unique in that I've had
this experience. But I think that for me, we all
have great memories throughout our life, whether it's the you know,
the birth of our children, or or you know, that
first big accomplishment that you make, or whatever it is
in life. But I have to tell you that I
(40:44):
was talking about that show that we did after Robin died,
and there was a moment where he was singing and
I was off to his right on stage, and and
he was really in a I have to say, he
kind of transcending into another level in front of my eyes.
I was like, I could not I was reduced to
(41:07):
tears while I was on stage watching him sing because
you know, I remember being a very small kid standing
on the side of the stage going hey, Dad, you know,
I'm over here type of thing. And then two, you know,
thirty something years later, I'm standing on stage with him,
and there was a moment where he took a breath
(41:27):
and just looked at me, and it was he winked
at me, and there was the most pure expression of
love with no words, between a father and son in
that moment. And I remember thinking to myself, I'll never
forget this moment for the rest of my life, because
there are no words for that kind of love between
(41:49):
a son and a father. And I tell him this
all the time. I said, Dad, it's okay that you
don't think you're the greatest of all time, but just
don't ever forget that there is in a set and
that I don't believe that you're the greatest of all time.
Just be true to yourself and and do what you love.
Because his love is pure and his expression of it
(42:13):
is incredible, and I'll never get tired of it. Listen.
I say this only because it's true, and I feel
that we all are seekers of the truth, your truth
and beauty, and that is Stevie your father knows full
well that he's the greatest of all time. He knows,
and this modesty thing, it's just a part of an act.
It's a part of a public It's always like this,
(42:35):
Oh thank you, Oh God, that's so nice of you
to say that, Oh thank you. No no please, no,
no please. Your father is fully aware of who he
is and what his towering achievements in the music industry are.
Him and his brothers and him on his own frozen
for that matter. I want to say I have loved you,
and I have loved your music. I mean, I'm good
(42:56):
music is good music, and I have loved you and
I loved your music forever. I mean, I have so
many Begs albums, so every now and then I gotta here,
I can't see nobody. I play that song and I'm oh,
you know, I can't see nobody. Was written in a
dressing room with strippers. I thought it was you were
(43:20):
like in church. It was one of it's one of
my greatest memory bad bums. And here's a song. You know.
Let's stop right there and let me just say I'm
so grateful to you. You are one of the greatest
musicians that ever lived. And one of the greatest vocalists
that ever lived. And I never get tired of listening
(43:41):
to your music. Never very kind. Thank you both for
making time to do this. This has been a joy.
This has been a real joy. It's been a real
joy for us too. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening
to Here's the Thing, When to Be if you need
(44:09):
show Indeed, we're produced by Kathleen Russo, Carrie donohue and
(44:30):
Zach McNeice. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Thanks for listening
to open up your to love
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