Andy Gibb Interview with Robert W. Morgan : 1981
Suzanne: "Ah, bachelor #2 what is your favorite thing to do at the beach?"
Bachelor # 2: " Gee, I like to fill plastic bags with empty aluminum cans and turn them in to be recycled."
Host: "Ok Suzanne it is time to choose a lucky bachelor who will accompany you on your dream date. Will it be Bachelor #1, Bachelor #2, or Bachelor #3?"
Suzanne: "Well, Bachelor #3 sounds like he’s a real cutie; and I like Bachelor #2’s voice, but his answers were kind of ’drippy’. I choose Bachelor #1, I think he’ll make a real dream boat! "
Host: " Bachelor #1 it is Suzanne, meet the man who is escorting you to Rio!"
Suzanne: "Oh, my God!!! Oh, I don’t believe it! Oh!"
Host: "Oh well, what do you make of that guy, kind of drippy. Look at that guy, he’s heading off to Rio with a TV star and I’m headin’ home with a TV guide. What does a woman want, I use a Roll on, I drive a Plymouth Valiant, I’ve got a hot tub and Gino Vanelli is a personal friend of mine. I think I need some pointers from the guy who gets the girls. The guy whose got some moves. I think I need to talk to a real ‘ladies man’."
Mr. Morgan: "This week on the special of the week I am working on my style. Studying the moves of music’s ‘man of the world’, he’s an ace of the chase, he’s the Gibblette who’s grown up. Dancing out from the shadow of his superstar siblings with an ear for #1 records and an eye for #1 beauties. He is Rock-N-Roll’s roamin’ Romeo, he is Andy Gibb."
Andy: "I went through a period where it was always right in front of me. I mean, I don’t mean just so much sex, girls, and dates who were around me because I was ‘Andy Gibb’ and I just started to back away from it, I didn’t like to date so much, I started looking for that special girl. I think, I’m like my brothers, I’m a romantic, and I don’t like ‘one night stands’, I’m really not into that, ya know. I’m a guy like anybody else and I’ve had my fun, but think I was looking for that nice lady to live with or settle down with and I won’t take anything but I know is her."
Mr. Morgan: "Sure Andy, sounds like you’re singing a new tune for your new interest Victoria Principal, she stars on Dallas, but what about old flames like Olivia Newton-John, Marie Osmond, Susan George, Farrah Fawcette and Tai Babilonia, didn’t they set your heart on fire too? Or were they just matches struck by the gossip columns?"
Andy: "Olivia was total publicity and there was nothing into that at all. Farrah, I have never met Farrah. (laughs). There was only one, and I have never said it in any interviews, as a matter of fact I denied it in most interviews, there was only one girl I was really crazy about and that was Marie. And I think, even though nothing really happened. Once I met her I just totally relaxed, calmed down and I stopped dating so much. I think it was a ‘saving myself thing’, and it was stupid because now we are just good friends. There is nothing there now. We both felt something at the time and she is just a really unique lady. That was the one that was not just publicity, for my part it was pretty true."
Mr. Morgan: "Andy isn’t the only Gibb who can’t help falling for stars. His brother Maurice married into a Lu Lu of a match. With their show business careers they learned that it is hard to make friends meet."
Andy: "I remember once, my brother married Lu Lu, a famous English singer, many years ago. They were married 4 years. And I used to remember Maurice would return from a tour and he would arrive in the early hours back from an American tour. And she would say ‘bye’ I am off on a British tour or Europe; and they would hardly ever run into each other and the strain was just too much for them, it didn’t work."
Andy: "No, I could not give up my career for anybody, and I wouldn’t expect somebody to who had a career like that, it’s not easy."
Mr. Morgan: "Well Andy, it must be tough, loving and leaving all those beautiful women. Tell me like it is, are your romantic songs based on your true romances?"
Andy: "We create a situation, a love story or whatever, and put ourselves into that situation. And lots of people think it is a personal experience we have been through or something, but we just create out of a nice title or a nice groove, or something and write around it. And more often than not, there is not an awful lot to tell about the songs, because they come just that easily and it is very non-personal, but you think it will be very personal when you hear it."
Mr. Morgan: "Andy Gibb reveals all his moves, next on the special of the week."
Mr. Morgan: "Discovering why Andy Gibb is grandmaster of the dating game. While I am still learning the rules. When it comes to romance, the accent’s on Andy who has an accent you can’t quite place. Maybe ‘cause he’s lived almost everyplace. Born in Manchester, England Andy was only 6 months old when his family moves to Australia; and when his big brothers the Bee Gees become the ‘bee’s knees’, the Gibbs move back to the suburbs of London where baby brother turns into a ‘wild child’.
Andy: "It was a very, very different life I’ve had from most kids. I left school very, very young and I think my whole youth was kind of a risk in a way, a big gamble. I didn’t have any education to fall back on if things didn’t work out. I can hold my own conversationally I think with just about anybody because traveling has educated me an awful lot. But getting down to degrees or having qualifications, if I didn’t make it in singing or didn’t make it in show business, I didn’t think there was anything else I could do."
Mr. Morgan: "Andy joins a skinhead gang for a short time, but before these punk pioneers can make this youth uncouth, his family moves him to Ibiza which I believe is an island off the coast of Spain."
Andy: "It is part of a chain of islands called the Boleric Islands and the Yorker was the big one there, there were just hotels everywhere full of German, Swedish and Danish tourists. That was just a big holiday for me, you know I was young at the time and I worked in these bars and clubs around the town there. That’s where I got my experience. Non- professionally, they couldn’t pay me; that was the problem. So I used to get my free drinks, but it was a great experience, I think everything I did then has helped me now. You know, it was just a beautiful lifestyle out there. Nothing was pressured, the only world that I knew of in show business was my brothers’ and they lived in London and they were very famous at the time, but I just had a big holiday there, 3 1/2 years of it."
Mr. Morgan: "Ibiza is the first good move for the young singer and songwriter, but there is another move to make before he gets down to the business of stardom. Andy Gibb gets down under to pay his dues among the kangaroos."
Andy: "I had one single out in Australia and it never did anything for me at all. I mean with all due respect to the Australians it is a great training ground, because you can be the biggest name in Australia and without outside help you will not get heard outside of Australia. So, you can make a lot of mistakes there and there are also very tough audiences there."
Mr. Morgan: "Andy’s touring in the toolies of the Aussie outback learning why it is called "down under’."
Andy: "One afternoon around 4 O’clock I got a call in Sydney, ‘would you please come to Adelaide tonight’. So we drive 1100 miles across Australia and about 500 miles outside of Adelaide we stop to do a little concert in a town called Tullebuck, strange name. I still remember it, and that was literally in the outback, in the bush country. These were like kids who had never seen a group before. They were very starved for talent of any kind and that was a memorable show we did there, a great response we got from them. Anyway, we get to Adelaide; we leave Tullebuck. We arrive at the gig there and find out: ‘they’ve never even heard of us.’ (laugh) We drove 1100 miles and we weren’t even booked to play the place. Those are the little things you have to put up with in Australia, you know if you are struggling along."
Mr. Morgan: "Andy is dancing out from the shadows of obscurity and waltzing Matilda all over down under. In 1977 big brother Barry and Robert Stigwood called to end a honeymoon and launch his stardom. Andy moves into Bee Gees big time when "I Just Want to Be Your Everything", his first RSO recording, reaches #1."
Andy: "That was one of the most meaningful songs of all for me you know. When that started it was in 1977, it was my first record. It all came about that I and just gotten married in Australia at the time. And Robert Stigwood and my brother Barry asked me to fly out to Bermuda as kind of a honeymoon come working set-up to meet with Barry and to sign up for with Robert for RSO Records. So, once we discussed it all and got the deal together, this was all still at Robert’s home we did this in Bermuda. And me and Barry locked ourselves in a bedroom and Barry just started writing, and when Barry writes it is very hard to collaborate with him, because he is so quick. And before I knew it he was starting to do the chorus (sings) "I just want to be your everything", and I thought ‘wow, what a hook’, it was right in there.’"
Mr. Morgan: "Andy moves to Miami to record with Barry and the Bee Gees. He soaks up the Florida sun while soaking up studio savvy. Suddenly his face graces the teen magazine covers, but he is no flash in the Miami sand. His second single makes a splash too."
Andy: "Actually, that title is mine, it is about the only clever, even though it says on the credits ‘B & A Gibb’, it is really Barry’s song. Again, it is very hard to write with Barry, but he said help me think of a great title. That was a period where Barry was thinking of titles first and seeing how they would inspire him to write a song from a title. We were thinking of good titles and I said ‘how about thicker than water’? I did not say ‘Love is...’ just ‘thicker than water’. He said ‘that’s great!’ Then he came up with (sung) ‘Love is higher than a mountain, love is thicker than water.’ Then he just went on from there, but the title was totally my idea."
Mr. Morgan: "You would think that Andy Gibb would be happy with a gold-mine full of records, two Grammies (transcriptionist note: Andy was nominated for 2 Grammies, but unfortunately he did not win. He did win a People’s Choice Award), and more dates than a calendar, but even a crooning Casanova can suffer from self-doubt."
Andy: " I read reviews and everything about, they always relate to the Bee Gees sound, how Gibb is like helped, and sounds like the Bee Gees and everything. I always thought that people were buying my records as an extension to the Bee Gees. I was automatically getting the Bee Gee fans who liked that sound and I never thought there was any individual thing in there that they liked. I think it has changed an awful lot now. Matter of fact I am looking very much forward to my next album, so I can get in there and write every song myself. I just felt that anything I would say would not be as valuable as the ideas that they were working on and that it would not matter that much. You know, that it really wasn’t good enough, and so I used to hold back and they would say ‘well it’s ‘Andy’s baby’ we want Andy to give us an idea about how he feels about it. And I never really did until the last 2 albums. I felt that I really wasn’t good enough, they had just brought me up from Australia. I didn’t have any confidence."
Mr. Morgan: "A darker side of Andy blames his record company for releasing the wrong songs from his 3rd album."
Andy: "’After Dark’ is a single that was never released and I wish it was, to this day it still should have been a single. I believe it was the strongest cut on that album."
Mr. Morgan: "Andy’s dark cloud has a silver lining. He takes control of his songs and he moves toward a sound that moves an older audience, the result: A Greatest Hits Album containing past and future hits; and Andy Gibb is a self-made songsmith."
Andy: "I wrote all of them out here in Los Angeles on my own, not all of them I mean, only ‘Without You’ I wrote out here. It took me about 2 weeks to write that song. Again, it is not a personal experience or anything like that, it is just a song I sat down and I had a deadline to write and I sat down and I wrote it. A lot of people that have heard it think it is one of the most prettiest I have ever written; but then again I am very critical, I don’t know. ‘Time is Time’ is very interesting, it was written about the same period out here in LA. When we went out to record them in Florida, Barry heard ‘Time is Time’ and he altered one little thing in the song and for that reason you will see A&B Gibb, but it is mostly my record."
Mr. Morgan: "Right now, Andy’s ‘principal’ interest is, besides Victoria, is Gilbert & Sullivan. He is co-starring in the LA production of ‘Pirates of Penzance’, the same swashbuckling saga that starred Linda Ronstadt in NY. And for an encore, Andy’s moving in on the movies."
Andy: "I’m very into acting and I want to make a film badly and again I often worry if my Australian character would not work in the movies, but that is something I feel I can do. It would have to be the right type of script, it has to be the right concept, everything. I get away from it all by just being reclusive, I don’t often go out. I stay in my house. It is very rare to get me out anywhere. I go to see an occasional concert, I might go to dinner somewhere, maybe once every 3 weeks that’s it. I went through the period of having all the money and probably being very immature with it and having all the material things, and then to go through all that young and then when you should be achieving it as you get older now, then to have to come down or almost to go backwards and to have to bring yourself back down to earth is a different thing. I really went through all the material things and Ferrari’s and boats and a big home in FL once, and now I’m just, I’m actually forcing myself to go the other way now. I think I am doing ok at it, because I am enjoying it so far."
Mr. Morgan: "Andy Gibb is all grown up, instead of standing in the shadows his family’s success, Andy stands out on his own, with his own special love songs and special love affairs. He is moving beyond music, reaching with his everything. For Andy Gibb the family that plays apart, stays together, very together."
Andy: "I don’t know how my brothers feel, but I feel our family is special. I feel there is something special about us, even if it is just a family feeling of specialness, but you know it has been a big family, the name has, in the show business world, but it is not a royalty type thing. We are just very proud of what we have and we want the name to go on."
