At night, the Julia Tuttle Causeway arcs from Miami to the beach like the top half of a Ferris wheel. It splits the black bay, bright and hard-sell, a concrete shove toward hotel row. The Bee Gees have traveled this route every night since they arrived in Miami to work on their new album, "Main Course." It's a quiet car that heads back to their rented Ocean Boulevard home. They have left the studio later than usual; the sessions are not going as well as Barry hoped and, after the failure of their first collaboration, "Mr. Natural," he is beginning to doubt both himself and Mardin. Barry, Lynda and Maurice are in the back scat; Ashby and Robin are up front. As they hit the causeway, the metal bridge supports bop the tires in an irresistible rhythm. Ch-ch-ch. Lynda has never heard it before; after all those late-night rides, she begins to tap her foot in time. "You should write a song to this rhythm," she says, laughing at her husband. Ch-ch-ch. Barry closes his eyes and listens to the funky bridge tattoo their wheels. Before they reach home, the three brothers are singing in sweet, soulful, million-selling harmony: "Ch-ch-ch--Jive Talkin'."
Playboy 1978 by Mitchell Glazer
The Rise And Fall Of The Brothers Gibb Continued....
"It was a revelation." Mardin says during sessions at New York's Atlantic studios. "We had already heard Nights on Broadway, so I could see the new direction. But when Barry walked in with Jive Talkin'..it proved we were on the right track. Those were some of my most memorable sessions; some of the touchiest, at least in the beginning, but also the most rewarding. It was exciting to see Barry and his brothers coming up with all these new songs."
Robin bitterly remembers the early days of Main Course. "Ahmet [Ehrtegun] was so quick to turn off to us. You know, to say, 'This is it?' We thought, Fuck it. They aren't even going to give us a chance. They were burying us. Only Arif, of all thee Atlantic people, kept faith in us.
"We'd been doing this new sound for years; in dressing rooms, planes. Just never on record. The black influence was our original one. Long before the pop ballads. It's the way we thought and felt, so we were, in a sense, going back to our roots. To Love Somebody was written for Otis Redding. Otis came to see Barry at the Plaza in New York one night, said he loved our material and would Barry write him a song? After he left, Barry sat up all night and wrote To Love Somebody .
"We were stuck in a niche; and after a couple of ballads--Lonely Days, Mend a Broken Heart--went to number one, we couldn't get out of it. But first and always, we are songwriters; we explore all avenues."
"I've got to finish these string over-dubs," Maurice sighs as I walk into his paneled study. He hits the tape, intently hunching over the synthesizer. The opening lines of Yesterday spill from the speakers. I think he has made a mistake. Instead, he begins to add orchestration to the song, listening for an open spot and then filling it with sweet strings. "This is something I've always wanted to do," he says casually. Over his head bangs a mirror with a classic picture of the Beatles stamped in black. It has been 14 years since the Beatles touched down in New York City in February 1964. First The Ed Sullivan Show; then America cried, squealed and made them kings. Fourteen years later and John Lennon slips between Japan and the States, dodging his talent. Ringo Starr is dropped by his label (a Beatle dropped!), George Harrison struggles with halting success for a top-20 album. Only Paul McCartney retains his influence. And the Bee Gees, the other band on Epstein's Nems Enterprises roster, dance all over the charts. Creamy ballads, wailing double-tracked falsettos. More than Stayin' Alive, soaring.
Ironies crowd one another out. As Stigwood says, "The brothers suffered greatly during the late Sixties from the Beatle thing. When their first single, New York Mining Disaster 1941, was released, everyone thought it was the Beatles. That hurt them badly."
Barry admits, "We were very Beatlish in the early days. Our melodies lent themselves to that style. Thank God we got away from them. It could have led us further and further astray."
"In '67, we came off the powerful Beatle hype machine. It was all publicity,'' Robin insists. "Everybody thinks we were so successful, we never had a number-one record in those days."
And now the Bee Gees star as Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, performing Beatle songs written the year they arrived in London.
"Kids today don't know the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper," Robin continues. "And when those who do see our film and hear us doing it, that will be the version they relate to and remember. Unfortunately, the Beatles will be secondary. You see, there is no such thing as the Beatles. They don't exist as a band and never performed Sgt. Pepper live, in any case. When ours comes out, it wiIl be, in effect, as if theirs never existed." Could that happen? Will Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees be remembered for, perhaps, the epochal rock-'n'-roll album?
"When you heard the Beatles do Long Tall Sally or Roll Over Beethoven," Robin reminds me, "did you care about Little Richard's or Chuck Berry's version? The only credit the Beatles get on this film is for songwriting." End of era.
"Can you see the speed in Robin's eyes?" Barry asks as we examine the nine-year-old promo shot. The three stand in a wood, wearing fashionable Edwardian gear--solemn and separate. Robin has the lost expression of a Keane child. °We thought the Bee Gees had gone as far as they could," Barry says, laughing dryly. "We were obviously wrong. It was '69 and the Beatles, everybody, was breaking up. We were in total chaos. The pressure for those two years--'67 to '69--the whole teen-idol bit. There was too much money and then the pills took hold. The speed took Robin hard and he was seriously ill for a time." This is painful for Barry to talk about. Even with the gilded success they have now, a shadow crosses his face at these memories. This is a Passion play and he delivers it as a survivor.
"We stayed to ourselves, surrounded by hangers-on. Each had his own camp of 'friends' who said he was the real star, he should go solo. When we became isolated, the problems started. We stopped seeing one another as brothers--we were three stars unto ourselves. The pressure and fame got to Robin the most. He's a very deep thinker with a very serious, sensitive side to him. He gets in moods that last quite a while. I remember when things were coming apart in '69, I went over to his house to talk to him, try to straighten things out. All these people were sitting around him. And every time I said something, they'd Iook at him like, 'Don't listen to him.' This was happening to a family, not just to a rock band. It was terrifying.
"And I couldn't go as the big brother and tell everyone to calm down, It was impossible with that speed going around. We didn't need it to work, but we liked the high. We were too green to see the dangers, the paranoia and illness."
But Barry was the oldest brother, and when things began to disintegrate and those in the blossoming group spun into their own speed-soaked worlds, it was his responsibility. They were his brothers--or so said the gossip-hungry British papers. "Maybe I was guilty." Barry shakes his head at the thought, unable to free himself after a decade. "They all said I was responsible. Maybe I could have kept us in line. Maybe."
For Christmas, Hugh Gibb bought his eldest son a guitar. Nine-year-old Barry began miming to records until the day the younger twins bought plastic banjos at the five-and-dime and began miming with him. They set up broom handles and tin cans in the living room as microphones. Barry built bis brothers their own guitars from round cheese crates and baling wire. It happened suddenly; one day they sang without the supporting record and discovered their perfect natural harmony. Still, their first paying gig at tbe Gaumont Theater in Chorlton-cum-Hardy was to be miming Tommy Steele's "Wedding Bells.' On Saturdays, the manager would let the local kids perform during the matinees and all you needed was your own 45. On the way to the show, the brothers' record fell and cracked. But the Gibbs troupers all, decided to debut their own act. It was 1955 and they were in the music business.
"We'd sit on one another's beds and plan our careers all night. We decided when we got to the top we'd have our own office. We'd give it a fancy name and make important decisions," Barry says, chuckling. "We wanted to get to a point where we'd never have to work again and we'd sit back and enjoy what we'd done. I think sometimes, after all that's happened, I'm living that dream now. A few years ago, that seemed always and forever out of reach."
The couch is crowded with pistols and holsters of all shapes and sizes; Lugers, .38 police specials, antique Colts. "All are unusable," my host, Maurice, assures me. Framed on the wall are police badges from all over the nation. His favorite is an official White House guard badge. I admire the Beverly Hills patch (triangular with a goofy palm tree in the middle). Now I am into police patches. Maurice leads me over to a desk drawer. It overflows with police I.D. wallets, the kind Broderick Crawford flashed on Highway Patrol.
"I was almost arrested in a hotel bar once," Maurice exclaims. "Some cool off-duty cop saw my I.D. and tried to have me arrested for impersonating an officer.'' Fact is. beyond the collection, Maurice does own a very functional revolver. Even isolated in a wealthy enclave, strange things can happen.
"My mum and her friend met a man in a record store," Maurice explains, and he said he knew Tom Jones or some such nonsense. We're a trusting family; our background doesn't include kidnaping and mugging. Anyhow, they disappeared for a while and we were worried sick. We must be more careful."
Maurice does seem attracted to spontaneous cheap thrills. He recently spent the night with Miami Beach's Mount Sinai Emergency Rescue Team, handling suicides, heart attacks, O.D.s--a serious reality tester.
"The 15 months we were split up was the best thing that could have happened to us," Maurice says, walking over to the bar for a Pepsi. His attractive blonde wife, Yvonne, brings their 18-month-old baby, Adam, in from the neighbors'. "We were OK separately, but together we're something else. In the old days, when the publishing credit said, 'B., R. & M. Gibb,' and I had nothing to do with it, they would say, "What's Maurice's name doing on it? Why's he getting paid?' We went through all the little stupid crap. 'Who sings lead?' Who cares, as long as it's a hit? I don't care if I don't have a solo track on the entire album. It's still a Bee Gees record. All the bullshit is past; now we can handle it. I don't need any fancy cars in the driveway that nobody can drive. After almost a year and a half apart, we immediately had our first number-one hit in America, Lonely Days. We wrote the next single, How Can You Mend a Broken Heart, in the studio and cut it right away. The roadies were clapping; it was all happening again."
"Those songs happened too fast," Barry insists. "We wrote them on speed. Because of those two consecutive number ones in 1971, the power took hold again. We thought, God, we're at the top again; we've made it. Crap, we
weren't at the top of anything." Bailey's Variety Club is smoky, jammed with weekenders. The bar disappears under half of Leeds, all jockeying for a drink before the show starts. Waitresses juke between tables, eager to make the most of their time. The Bee Gees are headlining tonight and, yes, ladies and gents, they're gonna sing all those marvelous hits you fell in love to. Robin feels sick. Physically ill. He sees the bouffants shimmy up front, hears the squeals at the oldies, and he feels faint. In the middle of "Words," a waitress drops a tray of drinks; some people in the back applaud. It is 1972 and Barry is only 26 years old.
The show ends and the brothers run backstage. Barry slams the door behind them, pacing the length of the cut-rate Vegas dressing room to turn on the TV set. "This is it," he says. "We've hit bottom. We are has-beens. We have to get back up there. It has to happen. I want us to be a force again." Robin nods, thinking, We've got to make the people care about us again.
We'd lost the will to write great songs. We had the talent, but the inspiration was gone," Barry intones. He perceives that moment in their dressing room as a turning point. "We decided right then we were going to do it and, honestly, it look us five years to get to know one another again. That had to come first.
Those five years were hell. There is nothing worse on this earth than being in the pop wilderness. It's like being in exile." Barry sits that out, hating even to speak those thoughts. "And the other artists treat you like crap. They say, 'Hey, I didn't know you were still together.' It's then you realize they haven't thought of you for years. It's all ego. This whole business is ego.
"Mr. Natural was a transitional album. Arif and the Bee Gees had to learn one another. But when I heard Nights on Broadway, I knew there was nothing wrong with this band. We were going to make it."
The Brothers Gibb, through necessity, evolved their version of the power of positive thinking, the belief that there is nothing they can't do, no self-imposed limitations or barriers to block their talent. And it isn't success-bloated egotism, it's confidence. Robin says, "We always had the talent, of course, but it was suppressed. We had convinced ourselves we'd gone as far as we could go. Who says you can't break barriers and go beyond the stars? Positive thinking is electric. It can make things happen and there is no such thing as failure. Barry and I can sit down and write a top-five hit like Emotion--for Samantha Sang--in an afternoon."
Perhaps the model for this born-again fervor is Stigwood. His career has been built on instinctive gambles and an almost stubborn faith in himself. Stigwood has ridden his talent to the peak of the entertainment world. (Both the Saturday Night Fever package and Sgt. Pepper are his projects.) A living testimony to positive thinking, he says, "I imagine by my belief and actions I communicated the positive attitude to them. I felt they should feel their feet on the ground and enjoy what they were doing; at the same time, not screw up their lives. You see, they got a lot of tensions, conflicts, which most creative people go through, out of their lives early on. I've always said to them there's nothing in their lives they can't do." Yet, when the brothers sank deeper into the out of-date ballads, Stigwood absorbed the loss on a completed album (still unreleased in the RSO archives) and demanded they re-enter the pop mainstream.
Criteria's cavernous orange Studio C breathes tension. Ehrtegun and Stigwood have just arrived from New York, eager to hear some progress in the Bee Gees' "Main Course" tapes. Ehrtegun, hearing a rough tape of some Gibb ballads (innocently sent to him by Mardin), intends to check out this new tune, "Nights on Broadway," personally. Stigwood has already heard it and for the first time in years is ecstatic about his boys' sound.
"Barry, can you give me some really wild ad libs to use on the fade?" Arif asks. Barry tries some controlled screams and then walks behind the double-thickness window. The tape rolls and Barry begins his ad libs. "Blamin' it all," he echoes the verse, over and over. He pushes his voice still higher and suddenly, for the first time in his life, breaks into falsetto. "Can you do that again?" Arif quickly asks over the intercom. Barry sees the faces at the sound board. They all seem to be leaning toward him, listening almost openmouthed.
He tries the falsetto again, whipping over and through the lyrics, chasing his taped voice all over the song. When it is over, he sees Ebrtegun and Stigwood miming a toast through the window. "Congratulations." Stigwood's voice rolls over Barry, standing alone at the microphone. "This is the beginning."
Barry and I walk through the cool back yard to the sea wall. It is just after sunset and the bay and the sky merge slick gray at the horizon. Barry points to a windowless tower across the water. "Do you see that house? That's my dream right now." The mansion, isolated and medieval, dominates a tip of the next island.
"People crying out for help. Desperate songs. Those are the ones that become giants," Barry muses. "The minute you capture that on record, it's gold. Stayin' Alive is the epitome of that. Everybody struggles against the world, fighting all the bullshit and things that can drag you down. And it really is a victory just to survive. But when you climb back on top and win bigger than ever before--well, that's something everybody reacts to." Barry turns from his sleeping dream house and says, laughing, "Everybody."