give me a bee, give me a gee, give me a million seller
Playboy 1978 by Mitchell Glazer
The Rise And Fall Of The Brothers Gibb - Part I
ALBHY GALUTEN looks like he's been stuck in an elevator for a couple of years. He's got the half-mad, blind smile, the dilated pupils of someone who's been trapped a very long time. Albhy is barefoot (always is) and his toes clench the thick shag carpet. His eyes and the shadows that circle them are one. Albhy survives on quarts of Red Zinger tea, avocado sandwiches and his share, as coproducer, of the 12,000,000 albums the Bee Gees have Sold in 1978.
"It's out of control," he mutters, shredding his beard with mandarin fingernails. "The fuckers just keep selling.., a million a week these days. The Bee Gees are the charts." A woman pads into the Studio with fresh Zinger. "Most guys, and believe me, I've worked on a lot of records, get so-o-o paranoid when you ask them to do a track over. They think, Jesus, my cock's too small." Galuten's beard-tangled face breaks into a grin. "Not the Gibb brothers..No way, those guys know exactly what they got."
Barry Gibb leans heavily on the throttle, swallowing yards of bottle-green Biscayne Bay. Gibb's lovely Lynda II takes the light chop like a straightedge, leaving the residential islands that litter the bay quickly behind. Turning from the Miami dockyards, he heads for the choice waterfront strip known locally as Millionaire Row. During Miami Beach's early baroque boom years, Spanish mansions complete with sculpted grounds and imported marble patios sprang up along certain sections of the bay. The ocean front was sacrificed to the hotels, but the bay, sprawling the length of the island (and separating it from the Miami mainland), belonged to the rich. Where once the old money settled in lush pockets, now the new ruling class - Anita Bryant, the Bee Gees and their producers - thrives. We take air over a wave and Barry, digging the extra jolt, laughs out loud. He looks as if he might inhale the whole bay. His once-brown hair, after a year in California and Florida, is sun-baked blond. It coils in thick waves over the South American sweater he is wearing. The boyish face that sent Sixties teens spilling into their album jackets is covered by a closely cropped beard. Once tight and all teeth, the face has grown handsomely into itself. As has Gibb himself. At 31, the man is at the top of his game: The Bee Gees' Saturday Night Fever sound track might well be the best-selling album of all time; during a few weeks this spring, the brothers--Barry, Robin and Maurice--had written, produced or sung a historic five of the nation's top ten singles; they co-star (with Peter Frampton) in the extravagant Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band film; and are preparing for a three-day stand in late August at Madison Square Garden. The Bee Gees' financial dominance of the recording world is unmatched. And these days, Barry heats the air around him with the grace and pure rightness of stardom.
Four-year-old Stephen Gibb lurches over to his father's pants leg. Clutching two cans of potato crips and keeping his balance proves too much. Barry feels desperate tugs and looks down. "Hello, sailor," he says, picking Stephen up in one arm. As the two bounce along toward Miami Beach, Barry screams over his shoulder, "I don't want to stop."
"Don't," his wife, Lynda, whispers to herself. She shifts, cat-comfortable in the sun. Lynda's a heart-breaker--the Technicolor, plush beauty James Bond would have picked up in a casino. Dark hair, light skin, a sculpted body, Lynda is also the mother of Barry's two children, with the hands and humor to prove it. "Soon Barry will disappear again," she sighs. "During the last album, Stevie asked if he was getting a new daddy." Deadly cheeks flash with her smile. "The studio is his drug. But to Barry, the family is everything. His parents live five minutes from us. His brother [Maurice] lives six blocks away with his in-laws and their kids. And, "she touches my arm for emphasis, "Barry moved my family here from Scotland. Quite honestly, I couldn't see it. I love them and all, but I'm a 28-year-old married woman; living with my parents seemed a bit odd. But Barry really wanted it and he's been right. For him, having the family around is vital."
Lynda II eases to an idle as Barry pulls her close to the house. An impressive coral mansion (flush on the tour-boat route), it's part of the Barry Gibb compound that spills out to the bay with a pool, tennis courts, dock and cabana. "I'd never sell this place," Barry says as personal manager Dick Ashby ties us up, "Between buying and fixing it up, we spent about $500,000. Already, some Frenchman has offered us more than twice that." He laughs, shaking his head. "That poor guy keeps calling and offering us more and more. He thinks we're playing for the cash; I guess he can't understahd. "This is my home." Lynda lifts a squirming Steve over the fence to Dick and then climbs out herself. Barry and his father-in-law clip on the wire winch lines to pull the boat out of the water. To do this, Gibb leans down and reaches for the ladder to steady himself. In what seems like slow motion, Barry's face freezes in panic and the ladder and the superstar tumble Jerry Lewis style into the water. Spraying bay water, he jumps back onto the boat. Ashby hangs on the fence, gasping with laughter. Barry surveys himself--soggy sweater, jeans and all--and announces, "People say to me, 'Hey, what is it like to be Barry Gibb?' Well, I will tell you. I am just a wi-i-ild and cra-a-azy guy."
Her shirt says Foxy Lady, but she's just a little girl. The T-shirt and those tight French jeans bind, rather than shape her, her young body to fashion. She wears stacked, open-toed platform shoes and red nails. She nervously flicks Marie Osmond bangs from her baby face. "I'm just their sister," she says shyly, motioning around the living room at the missing Bee Gees. "My name's Beri, I'm just their little sister.'' We both watch her brother Robin, newly arrived from England, tie up his boat. "It's very nice here," Her voice a soft blend of accents. "I'm 14 and this fall I'll start school in Miami Beach. I've even found a good friend here. Her name is Donna. She's great. I tell her who's in town, you know, when my brothers are in, and she'll come over and tell me about her dates. She's 18; I tend to like older people." Beri drums a rolled-up record trade paper on the coffee table and talk naturally turns to music. "I tell you, I've been wasting a lot of time." She is serious. "I've never gotten to a studio, never cut a song." Robin appoaches us, the sun setting dramatically behind him. "Really," Beri continues, "you can't be too young to start. I remember wrestling on the floor with Andy [Gibb] only a couple of years ago. Now look at him. Maurice and Robin were six and Barry nine when they started."
Robin has a fragile, gun-shy quality. His pale face and delicate bone structure contrast with Barry's athleticism. Fittingly, it was Robin who sang the quavery, tender ballads swamped with strings--Holiday, I Started a Joke, How Can You Mend a Broken Heart--that locked the Bee Gees' early career. He was the one with the finger in his ear. Robin may be the most eccentric brother; he draws imaginative pornographic sketches and during the long nights in the studio, writes descriptions of every session in tiny, undecipherable handwriting. He has been known to unsheath a vicious sense of humor on unwary interviewers.
Robin rests on the couch and begins playing with a Polaroid instant-movie camera given to each brother by manager Robert Stigwood. Watching Beri walk to the kitchen, he leers, "She's grown up quite a bit, she has." Through the window, a veritable sitcom is being enacted - kids and boats; grandparents and roadies. Stephen, naked except for a Batman mask and a towel cape, chases his father to the swings.
"I've got a place something like this back in Surrey," Robin says. "I fish in the river, play tennis. I spend lots of time with my wife and kids. A quite sane life. You see, we never had this as kids. Maybe never had a real childhood. We were always too busy working, singing on the road." The doorbell rings and Stephen walks in, still the naked Batman. Robin lets him back into the yard. "We had to make our own lives stable. In the early days, we practically had to work to live. Our family didn't have much money, so I think they had to make it on us. My father was 41 when we moved from Manchester to Australia. We left nothing behind, except Manchester, and I wouldn't want to die there.
Barry walks in and puts a video cassette of a recent Midnight Special interview into the Betamax. As the camera zooms in on the three brothers sitting at some anonymous L.A. poolside, Robin says quietly, "I suppose I've got to look back fondly on my childhood. I got no other life."
Engine noise steams the air brown. Stock cars chew up the track, raining burned dirt and rubber into the grand-stand--and they love it. British welders, miners, truckers, raw drunk at the Red clif]e Speedway on a Sunday in 1956. Fueled by the gas fumes and ale, they manage a few mongrel cheers for the three local boys who will sing while the midget-car race is arranged. These brothers call themselves The Rattlesnakes: Maurice and Robin Gibb, seven, and big brother Barry,, ten. Their father, a natty ex-drummer on the Liverpool ferry, points them toward the infield's grassy patch. In wavering harmony, they sing a couple o! originals: "Let Me Love You" and their favorite, "Twenty Miles to Blueland." The last chorus is drowned in the midgets' mosquito drone, but the crowd cheers the boys' cuteness. A few shillings flash through the air onto the dirt oval. The boys bow (pros to the end) and scramble onto the track to dig for their money. The next race is announced.
"So you strap on these boots that are bolted to the ceiling. Right; and you're wearing these leather suits all slits and zippers, and then, if you want, they roll out the dull guillotine. Those quaint L.A. sex shops are quite a laugh." Maurice doesn't give you time to laugh. He'd rather rock into some twisting, high-speed conversation with himself. "That way, I cut out the middleman. And, besides, no one listens to me anyhow."
Miami's permanent mercury-vapor-light sunset keeps the ghettos pink as we head for Criteria Studios. The expressway skirts the ghetto, which, bathed in the high-intensity crime-prevention light, just might be the funky source of the whole Miami music business. Liberty City, they call it. A tough, sad and totally soulful few blocks that rock with a unique blend of straight R&B and loping Caribbean junkaroo. T.K. Records, the dirty old bastion of the Miami Sound, grabbed home-grown marvels like George McCrae, Betty Wright and K. C. and the Sunshine Band and built an industry power. T.K. simmered in its Hialeah warehouse while Criteria Studios in North Miami strutted into the picture. Attracting producers like Tom Dowd, Arif Mardin and Jerry Wexler, all legends in R&B, Criteria gained the reputation of a solid-gold soul factory. In the mid-Sixties, it was practically an Atlantic studio; Aretha Franklin, Brook Benton, Ray Charles and the upstart Allman Brothers might be there in the same week. Rumors of tighter-than-a-soul-shake sessions filtered to England, and Eric Clapton came to record his cry of love, Layla. Chicago, Crosby, Stills & Nash and the Average White Band moved in. And when the Eagles needed a punch, they came down to record One of These Nights.
Another band in search of a new sound, the Bee Gees, latched on to Miami funk and now little brother Andy is finishing up his new album there and Maurice intends to liven up the proceedings. With almost rehearsed timing, Maurice turns the radio on and Andy's Thicker Than Water is beginning. He leans toward the dial and mock-sneers, "So now our baby brother's sneaking up to knock us off. I'll kill 'im, I will." He turns the song up. "It's funny; years ago, we'd been furious if Andy bumped us from number one. Jesus, the three of us were fighting amongst ourselves to be the biggest star. Now, like Barry says, it's all in the family. Barry wrote and produced the bloody song, anyhow."
Maurice fights a cold that's been wasting Miami. "You make that noise in L.A. and the fools say, 'Got any left?' The old L.A. sniffle. It got so if I wanted something to drink, I'd order Pepsi; otherwise, I'd get a rolled-up $20 bill and a mirror, and I don't even mess with drugs anymore." Maurice, since early in their career, has been painted in the press as the reckless Gibb brother. Once married in true pop-star fashion to British singer Lulu, Maurice caromed around the English music scene with a vengeance. These days, with stability and maturity, the Bee Gee role model, he is eager to erase the old image.
"I know you've heard the old stories of me bein' a real loon. You've heard that rumor that I drove an Aston Martin off a pier and left it in the water." I'd never heard that rumor anywhere. But Maurice, stone-serious for the first time, confesses. "It honestly never happened. What you got to understand is that I had my first Rolls at 18. By the time I was 21, I'd had five Rollses and six Aston Martins. So, naturally, at that age, you'd get subjected to drink and all kinds of drugs and things." It is easy to imagine the carefree teenage Maurice, even though his prematurely thinning hair ages him beyond his 28 years. There is a warmth in his eyes that is often lost in his furious routines. His handsome tan face, even in mid-joke, seems shaded by sadness.
"I tried grass and it only made me sick . . . so I drank. Mostly beer and such, but even that didn't mix with the driving. I swear, I never had all those accidents everyone says I had." He seems almost apologetic for the frenzy of the times, for the boundless rock-'n'-roll rush of being a teenager in late Sixties London. "Imagine. We arrive after three weeks on a boat from Australia, where we'd had 13 flops in a row and one hit [Spicks and Specks], and almost immediately are signed by Brian Epstein--Brian bloody Epstein--and his partner, Robert Stigwood. And all of a sudden, the singles happen. So it's, 'Here's the advance money, boys.' You go wild. Buy a Rolls, a Playboy Pad in Belgravia. You're boozing it up with the Beatles. It was too much." Even after the tolls and emotional battering, when Maurice re-creates those days, his speech shifts into high gear. It's almost as if, to compensate, he has to remember the confusion, straighten himself out with the pain of that era. "I dunno,' he half laughs. "The strongest drink I touch now is a Pepsi, but I guess I'll probably have that image of being a lush for quite some time." He ends the manic soliloquy with memories of his childhood. It somehow justifies everything.
"We lived a real showbiz life as kids. My father never called me son or good lad; it was always, 'Ya sang that flat.' But I can honestly say our father taught us professionalism: No matter how miserable or depressed I feel When we get onstage, the audience gets a happy show. That's what being a pro is about."
Harper Dance, Criteria's receptionist/ traffic cop, greets Maurice and directs him to the newly finished Studio D. Criteria--home of Eric Clapton, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Aretha Franklin--has never witnessed anything like this Bee Gee assault. Main Course, Children of the World, Here at Last... Bee Gees...Live and Saturday Night Fever, all recorded or mixed here, are platinum sellers or better. There is an electric sudder when the band is around. Tonight, Andy puts the vocals on a possible single for his next album, Shadow Dancing.
The studio, even with it's inlaid wood, stained glass "skylight" and multicolored couches, looks severely lived in. Brown bags from the 7-Eleven, teacups, soda, cans, ashtrays full of butts--all attest to the months of recording.
Andy pulls out a piece of pink paper and almost defensively reads aloud: "Dear Andy, your last album is never out of my mind. I love you so. Have you named your new album yet? I think Dusk would be nice."
"Stop, please stop." Barry shields his face in feigned horror: "Enough of this teenage idol worship. I've heard it all."
"That's right," Albhy agrees. "Barry's only interested in chicks who collect chest hair." Barry rears back in his chair and, laughing helplessly, yanks the headphones hanging around his neck.
The studio rolls with the ease of a true family. Coproducer Karl Richardson, Albhy and Barry have worked as a production team ever since that moment in 1976 when they knew Mardin was being made unavailable. Mardin (R&B producer extraordinaire, with, among others, Aretha, Average White Band and The Rascals to his credit) had worked the Bee Gees' image-shattering, platinum Main Course LP. It was naturally assumed he would do the follow-up, Children of the World. But RSO Records (Stigwood's and, therefore, the Gibbs' company) had switched distribution from Atlantic (staff producer Mardin's company) to the German-based Polydor. "We panicked," Barry admits. "We knew we had the material for a great album, but we didn't have the faith in ourselves to get that feeling out. We originally went to Richard Perry, who's a good producer, but the communication wasn't there."
"That's right," Maurice adds. "He was always on the phone."
Barry continues, "Then we knew we would come back here to Miami and work with Karl, who's a genius engineer and knows us from Main Course. But the problem was, we needed ears in the box. Someone to listen and give us help while we were recording----- "
Maurice picks up the tale. "Karl knew this guy Albhy, who'd worked with Clapton and such. At first, I saw him barefoot an' all, eating his bloody grease tree sandwiches, and I was a bit frightened."
Barry shrugs off the interruption and explains his fear about the new relationship. "When I walk into the studio, I have a complete picture of what the song will be like as a record. I know when and where the strings will be, what the horns should be like; the finished product. So you try to share your picture. Well, to a certain extent, because whoever wrote the song can't give the picture away; it's impossible." He smiles at my confusion. "My original struggle with Albhy was about this. I would play him a song on the guitar and he couldn't hear how it would come out. He'd say, 'I just can't see it.' But what made it work was, he trusted me and went along blind in some cases. That's how our production started. On a song like Stayin' Alive, I could hear the choir and the orchestration, but I couldn't put it into practice, translate it for the musicians. That is what Albhy does."
Karl has the forest of levers arranged for another go at the tune, so Andy walks back into the soundproof room. He asks for the lights to be lowered, until all that remains is a slight halo above his blond hair. Barry pushes the SPEAK button. "Now, Andy, come closer to the mike and get a little sexy with these lyrics."
Andy's voice fills the room: "It's hard to get horny in a hospital."
The studio is Barry's environment. He rocks slowly to the song, eyes closed. When the take is finished, he leans over and says to Andy, "Give me more fire." Barry is the master here. He cocks his head, sifting imperceptibly different versions of the same line, doubling and tripling some to create a seamless living lead vocal. Barry's confidence pervades the whole session. There is no rush. "And again," he says mildly when a word is bungled. When a take appears perfect and everybody in the studio smiles in unison, Barry still asks his younger brother, "Can you beat it, mate?" Each phrase is taken apart, tested on its own and then refitted into the whole, until all the pieces are polished into one achingly perfect hit record. To watch this process is to watch success. Barry's control of this art is awesome. "We overdubbed a breath once," he says. "The song was right, but there was a breath missing, so I went in there and put it in."
It's all part of his picture. As Mardin said recently, "Somewhere along the line, Barry became completely in tune with the times. That's the phenomenon. It hasn't happened many times before, but he has totally locked into what people are hearing. And what they want to hear. This is surely his time."
Barry agrees. "It's a matter of arriving at now. We had always done things out of time. All our lives. When we were kids, we had a sound similar to the Beatles, very melodic, with harmonies. So they came along first and it was their story. We worked in nightclubs when we should have played to kids. We've always done things strangely. At last, we are now doing things for now in a whole sphere of now." Zen rock. Inner R&B. The ability to seize the musical moment and make it your own. When Mardin first came to produce the brothers, he found them frighteningly out of step with their own industry. As Barry says, "We were locked into those dreary love songs." They became convinced that was all they were capable of. . .
Robin says, "We began to play it safe and people got bored with us. If you try to stick to the secure, you stagnate. And, besides, believe me, nothing lasts long in this business. As long as we can keep ahead of the ball game, we'll be all right."
The first thing Mardin did was insist the Gibbs buy and really study the top 20 records. And they did.