Six months before Hugh Gibb, his wife Barbara, daughter Leslie and sons Barry, Maurice and Robin were scheduled to move from Manchester, England, to Brisbane, Australia, Barbara gave birth to the fourth Gibb son, Andrew Roy, on March 5, 1958.
Billboard Magazine #1's
"Andy Gibb--I Just Want To Be Your Everything"Nine years later, the Gibb family headed back to England in search of recognition for their three older sons’ band, the Bee Gees. Moving into a two-family house in the London suburb of Hendon, the family’s routine lifestyle was soon interrupted by the Bee Gees’ first hit, "New York MiningDisaster 1941."
"I was going to a little school there," Andy said. "I knew they were sort of popular in Australia before we left, but to come home from school and find five or six hundred kids in the street, around the front door, and that was going on every day. And, actually, at the point of being 10 years old, you really don’t think ‘show business,’ with the glitter and the stardom and the whole thing. I just accepted it. My brothers had to leave the house eventually". It was unheard of, what was gong on."
After three years in England, Hugh and Barbara Gibb took their youngest child and moved to the island of Ibiza, off the coast of Spain.
Older brother Barry had given Andy his first guitar. At 13, Andy made his debut at a local tourist club. Because of his age and British citizenship, he received no salary, but he began to familiarize himself with performing publicly. Andy recalled, "That’s when I met Tony Messina, my personal assistant. He got me my first gig, so to speak, playing in a wine bar to Swedish tourists, which was fun. The majority of these Swedish people, 90 per cent, were girls between 16 and 24 years old. Ah, yes. That was really fun. But I certainly became more aware vocally of what I could do and what I was suited to do, playing music." Gibb performed the current hits of the day and covered his brothers’ hits of the ‘60s and early ‘70s.
Feeling uncomfortable under the repressive Franco regime, the Gibbs left Ibiza and moved to the Isle of Man in 1973, where Andy performed at the island’s two main clubs. In 1975, brother Barry and manager Robert Stigwood suggested Andy return to Australia to gain greater attention for his music. He signed with ATA Records and released one song, "Words and Music." It became a huge Australian hit.
On the other side of the world, Stigwood and the Gibb family were impressed with 18-year-old Andy’s instant success and summoned him to North America. In Stigwood’s Bermuda home, Andy signed a contract and started writing songs for his first RSO album.
"It was Barry who came up with the tune ‘I Just Want To Be Your Everything,’" Andy is reported saying in "The Top Ten" by Bob Gilbert and Gary Theroux. "We needed a single and locked ourselves in a bedroom at (Stigwood’s) big estate. I think we wound up writing four songs in two days. The first day we came up with a nice ballad that was never used. Then, that afternoon, on his own, Barry came up with ‘I Just Want To Be Your Everything.’"
During this Bermuda writing session, Barry and Andy also wrote "(Love Is) Thicker Than Water," which Stigwood wanted to issue as the first single. Three days before the scheduled release date he changed his mind and put out "I Just Want To Be Your Everything." It was the lowest-ranking new entry on the Hot 100 the week of April 23, 1977, debuting at number 88. Ascending slowly, it made number one 14 weeks later. After three weeks it submitted to the Emotions’ "Best of My Love." Dipping to two and then three, it made a startling return to the top four weeks after beginning its chart descent.
