All language subtitles for Bee.Gees.In.Our.Own.Time.2010.720p.BluRay.x264.AAC-[YTS.MX]

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I just think we were intensely affected
by the beginning of rock 'n' roll,

by Elvis Presley and Lonnie Donegan,

Tommy Steele, The Don Lang Five...

But I really felt the love, the real love of it

is when I heard... Wake Up Little Susie...

by the Everly Brothers.

And I kept on playing it over and over again,

and I kept on hearing these harmonies.

So, when we were singing songs...

heard any Everly Brothers songs,

the three of us would just add a third harmony,

so it would be three-part.

We perfected it from listening...

to those guys and Neil Sedaka,

where he'd actually triple with himself.

So, these three-part harmony songs,

anything like that, we could sing.

We just wanted to get up and play.

Yeah. We just wanted to have fun.

In that degree, it was a hobby.

When did you first get together
and discover you could harmonize?

The first time I remember,

Robin and I were about six,

Barry was nine,

and we sat in the little lounge room

and Barry'd got his first guitar for his birthday

and the first thing we sang was Lollipop.

Which is...

The Mudlarks sort of thing.

We just automatically harmonized.

Don't ask me where we got Lollipop,

but it was the only one...

that helped us harmonize.

Can you remember it?

We would just sing songs like Lollipop.

We would just sing them
and just try and get them better.

I remember Dad coming in and saying,

"I thought you had the radio on."

That was the beginning of the harmonies.

They became instinctive for us...

because we loved the oldies.

It's incredible, considering how young we were.

I was about nine
and Maurice and Robin were about six.

We often thought we were triplets at one time

because we all had the same goal,

the ultimate goal of just singing together.

I would say we'd be more three brothers...

than twins and an older brother.

Musical creativity ran right through our family.

Our father was a band leader during the war,

and he then led the band on the ferry

between Liverpool and the Isle of Man.

Work was pretty difficult in the late '50s...

for my dad to come up with.

He needed a fresh start,

and he was still young enough to do that.

And he had a responsibility for us,

So we... It was a natural move, to Australia.

He was a very ambitious man and I liked that.

And we all went.

And it was like a six-week trip across the world.

For us, it was an adventure.

We didn't know where we were going.

We got on a ship called The Fairsea...

with our parents, and baby Andy, and our sister,

and traveled for five weeks to Australia,

with very little money.

We had a ball.

We were singing every day
on the front of the boat...

in the sun.

- And you crossed the Indian Ocean...
- We went on the Fairsea.

...Went through the Suez Canal, the Red Sea,

and you saw things children our age would...

- It was great!
-.. never have seen.

Where we settled was Brisbane,
which is quite tropical,

passion fruit on the streets...

and banana trees in everybody's garden.

And then we started working.

We found different places to go and sing.

We got the opportunity to sing in a racing arena.

We got to know a driver called Bill Goode.

He said, "You can come and sing."

We sang at the Redcliffe speedway...

on the back of a flatbed truck

and collected about 14 pounds off the track.

People threw money on the track.

That was our first public engagement.

The racing driver who got us the gig...

knew a disc jockey called Bill Gates,

and he told him about us.

And he came, he heard us sing,

and he invited us to the station.

He was a drive-time DJ.

He christened us the Bee Gees
as a sort of temporary name,

his initials, Brothers Gibb, Barry.

And he asked us to go into his radio station...

and record some songs,

original compositions

Barry had written.

It was Let Me Love You,

Time Is Passing By,

and The Echo Of Your Love.

And he recorded these on acetate.

I n those days, the acetates were the thing.

They didn't have tape...

He played it on his drive-time show...

for a while.

We didn't have a recording contract,

but we were on the radio.

We were only kids and we got the bug,

and we wanted to keep going.

My father then got an agent...

because were getting work...

in the pubs in Brisbane.

And our lives changed, I think, at that point,

because we worked...

and did two to three shows per night.

It sustained our family,

but we never thought we'd get rich doing it.

- You all sing together, right?
- Right.

And your brother Barry plays. Come on up here.

Our first television shows,

I had become very lanky,
very tall and lanky and thin,

and Maurice and Robin were still the same height.

So, what they decided to do
was to get two tea chests

and put Robin and Maurice on each tea chest,

so we'd be the same height for the camera.

You're going to stand up on the higher level.

That's the thing.

Now, is it true you write your own pieces, Barry?

Yes, that's true, Desmond.

- And what was the song we sang?
- Time Is Passing By.

So, we stood there.

I remember Robin and I were stood like this...

with our hands behind our backs going like this.

We didn't know what to do with our hands.

And just standing there going... and singing away.

We used to do all these pop shows,

but they were very live,

and there was no such thing as taping shows.

We did various songs...

we'd either written or heard,

songs that were hits at the time.

There was Lollipop, of course,

and songs that people sang in harmony.

We were quite regulars on those shows

for a while as kids,

but we weren't by any means
a really professional act.

And it was great experience...

because you were on the spot.

Nothing was pre-recorded.

You picked up your guitar,

and you went on, and you played, and you sang.

Between 1960 and 1965...

was the era of rock-'n'-roll in Australia.

With its own environment,

its own TV stars,

its own pop stars, rock stars,

totally unknown to the rest of the world.

We were on an adventure together,

loving everything we were doing.

We were just hoping we could get more recognition,

but I don't think
it was till the Beatles came along...

that we realized...

how much we wanted to have the approval they had.

When the Beatles came to Sydney,

the magic was unbelievable.

The whole city was,
like, in this mood of Beatlemania.

I'd never seen anything like this before.

I remember going down Pitt Street

and getting a Beatle Fan Club book,

and looking through what gear they'd got,

what boots they were wearing,
what outfits,

what clothes, the amps, the guitars,

the recording session pictures, all this stuff.

I was mesmerized by them

because they were doing something
that we loved to do...

and they were successful at it.

So we began to believe in ourselves.

We began to believe,

"OK, if they can do it,

then we should be able to...
have a go at doing it."

It was not born out of arrogance,

but it was just a blind belief that,

"Hey, you know..."

"Why can't we have a shot at that?"

So, we felt a little bit left out
of the Mersey boom.

We wanted to be a part of that.

There was so much energy
and so much excitement about it.

That was our world.

We wanted to be apart that...

We're from Manchester. As far as we knew,

we knew we were Isle of Man born,

but brought up as kids in Manchester,

and we were Northern, just like the Beatles.

"What are we doing here?"

Righto, chaps, let's have a check. Flaps?

Check.

- Rudder.
- Right.

You have to remember,

this was an era where the U K
was dictating what happened in the world...

What happened in the world.

Culturally, musically.

And we had to be where the action was.

London was the hub.

As much as we loved Australia,

we'd had 13 records in a row...

not doing that well at all, record-wise.

So we released our last record,

Spicks And Specks, in Australia,

and we decided to go back to England.

We didn't want to miss out on the Mersey boom.

We didn't know it was coming to an end.

We were going to make a shock.

- I was about 18.
- Maurice and I were 16.

We told our mother and father that.

We remember that night as being fairly turbulent.

They weren't completely in agreement
or in disagreement.

So it was very difficult for Mum and Dad to think,

"Hang on, we're going to have to..."

"Give up making a living"

"in order to take this chance..."

"To get back on a ship..."

"And sail five more weeks"

"back across the world to England"

"on the chance that our three sons think"

"they can be stars or be famous."

But we told them,

"This is what we're going to do, Mum and Dad."

"This is what we're going to do."

"And you've got to go with us."
"You've got to do this with us."

We left, but a week out we found out

that Spicks And Specks...

had gone to number one in Australia.

It just blew us away,

and we're a week out now.

We're thinking, "Great."

The only people who knew it...

were the rest of the Australians on board,

going, "Great, nice one,"

"you got a number one."

"Yeah, great for us now."

So we ended up going back.

So we came back to England,

and kissed the docks of Southampton...

when we got off.

There was a pop group standing on the docks

dressed like the Beatles were dressed in Help!

And they said to us,

"Don't go any further, go back to Australia."

"Go back. Groups are dead."

"Clapton lives."

- "Groups are out..."
- "Groups are out."

And that became the main... the mantra...

that we heard no matter where we went,

"Groups are out."

"You haven't got a chance."

We ended up in Hendon, in February of 1967,

sleeping on floorboards

with the dream of somebody discovering us.

We'd been round to managers...

and they were all saying, "Groups are out."

"It's all solo artists now."

The comment that was made to us was,

"It's all Eric Clapton now."

So, we got home

and Mum had said, "A Mr. Stigweed called."

We'd never heard of Mr. Stigweed.

When Dad returned the call,

it was N EMS,

which was Brian Epstein's organization.

We sent tapes and records...

to the Beatles' manager Brian Epstein

and his partner Robert Stigwood.

We didn't know...

whether or not they would hear them.

Robert Stigwood spoke to us.

He had heard the record...

He had heard the tapes and he wanted...

Brian had played the songs to him...

that we'd sent from Australia.

He said, "You write your own songs."

"I like what I hear."

"Can we do business?"

So, we go to the Saville Theatre in London.

Robert came in supported by two gentlemen.

He looked a bit weary-for-wear,

and he'd had a late night, obviously.

And we were still performing our nightclub act...

Even the Peter, Paul And Mary section.

We did this whole act,

and he said, "Right, be in my office at five."

Got up and staggered out.

So we thought, "OK..."

"I wonder if he liked us?"

So, that afternoon we went in

and then he offered us a five-year contract...

to be signed to N EMS.

And I remember walking in there...

and we saw Ringo for the first time.

We weren't full-fledged rock stars.

We were a pop group
and there was only three of us,

so it wasn't really a band,

and Robert Stigwood brought in Vince Melouney...

and Colin Petersen to help us...

become a band.

Two months after that,

we were in the American Top 20

and the British Top 20 with our first single,

New York Mining Disaster.

Robert Stigwood was actually the champion in...

and the jewel in our crown...

as far as our career goes,

because if we hadn't met Robert
at that particular time,

I don't know which way we'd have gone.

I remember doing the demo first of...

New York Mining Disaster.

Robert thought it'd be a good idea...

before we actually go in and make the album,

"If you've got any more songs to write,

go in and use the studio."

To see what we'd written since what he had heard.

And we came up...

with about eight to ten songs,

and there was still that missing song...

that he thought he could turn into a hit.

All of a sudden there was a blackout.

We had no power.

So we went outside,

and while we were
waiting for the power to come back on,

in the area where the elevator goes down,

there were steps on either side,

we just sat on the steps

and Barry was playing his guitar,

and this was so echoey,

a wonderful echo in this place,

and it was like being in a mine.

And the premise was...

the Aberfan mining disaster.

It had broken everyone's heart.

It was only six months
before we wrote the song.

Years later, we found out
there was a New York mining disaster,

in 1939, I think, in the state of New York.

But that was just the title.

A lot of people referred to it as Mr. Jones.

"Have you seen my wife, Mr. Jones?"

But that was the birth of that,

the total echo effect,

the hauntingness of it.

But it also started us writing about drama

and pulled us away from the Beatles...

Me To You syndrome.

And, like them, we started writing in abstraction,

we started writing
about situations and characters.

We were working at I BC Studios,

which was the place
where the Beatles used to record,

- I believe, up to Abbey Road.
- Yeah.

And, on its own stage,

there was the Mellotron.

And for the first time in our lives,

we'd ever seen a Mellotron.

Well, Maurice, of course,

was immediately on the Mellotron

and the song Every Christian Lion

Hearted Man came from that sound,

and that was on the Bee Gees' first album.

But we were in the same studio

and we were in the same space.

Robert allowed us to do what we wanted to do.

He put us in the studio...

with great engineers,

knowing our voices,

and knowing what we liked to do...

and knowing our level,

where we'd reached experimentally,

where we were gonna move from there.

And we would do that,

and Robert allowed us to do that.

And at the end of a week,

he would come into the studio

and listen to what we'd done.

He wouldn't say, "Do this" or "Do that."

He would just listen to what we'd done.

And his opinion would be,

"Yes, OK, but maybe this needs that..."

"Or this needs that."

Or the opposing opinion would be, "Stupendous."

But he was always right.

We remember a time at 2am,

Robert had come in...

and To Love Somebody was playing,

and he would call up New York

and play it in the speaker to...

Ahmet Ertegun, the head of Atlantic Records.

Down the phone. "Listen to this."

"This is their next single."

And that's how it was done.

It was very organic, it was very gut instincts.

It's so different to the way things are done now.

What was really fantastic about that first year

is that New York Mining Disaster...

and then To Love Somebody

were charting in the American Top 20,

which, you know...

which was very unusual even by today's standards

for first-time records and British artists.

That was due to Robert Stigwood...

and Ahmet Ertegun...

working together.

We had the N EMS team.

We had the Beatles' team behind us.

That's what kicked it all off for us.

To crack America was the ultimate dream.

You've got to remember,

when you're from that generation of kids

growing up in Liverpool
or Manchester, or wherever,

America's pavements are gold.

Everything is two cars per family,

huge houses.

I mean, television like, five, ten channels,

you know? We had two.

To Love Somebody...

started with Otis Redding.

Barry and Robin wrote that...

with Otis in mind

in hope that we could get it to him to record.

We were going to do it anyway,

but we felt like,

"Wouldn't it be great
if Otis Redding could sing this?"

We were influenced a lot in our writing
in those days,

even today sometimes,

by the artists that were around us,

of, "Who could do this song?"

We'd write the Beatles' new record,

the Rolling Stones' new record,

the Hollies' new record,

whatever groups that were out there.

"What would they release? What would they do?"

And we'd sing it and it would be us.

I think our career's built
out of jealousy and envy.

"We gotta beat that." It's not a bad thing.

It was a sense of desperate need
to be acknowledged.

And when anyone rejected what we were doing,

that would make us work harder.

Because we felt that we could do something better.

"Let's try and beat that one."

Tonight, Massachusetts from the Bee Gees!

I remember doing Top Of The Pops
for the first time.

It was a great dream,

because that's the show to do.

You're made...

if you do Top Of The Pops.

There became a melodramatic element in our songs

as opposed to an up, celebration type record.

Massachusetts was like that.

We began to love melodrama,

and we began to love what the Beatles
were doing with orchestras.

We began to recognize that a full orchestra

was just as important to rock-'n'-roll
as an electric guitar was.

It was the first time we'd ever had
a number one record.

I remember being told...

Massachusetts was number one.

We did such a bad show that night.

We were in one of those places up north where...

they had the... the turning stage that goes around,
the revolving stage.

We're on the other side getting ready,

plugging in and getting set up.

Dick runs up and goes,

"Massachusetts has just gone to number one."

"What?" And we all looked at each other.

"Oh, my God, it's number one."

And just as that happened,
the stage started going round,

and we weren't all plugged in or set up.

We just started the show and we sang
what the hell we wanted to.

We couldn't believe it.

We were so over the moon,

we thought we could get away with murder.

To have a number one in England,

you have no idea...

how much we'd dreamed of this in Australia,

to have a number one in the U K charts.

We felt like we'd arrived.

The Bee Gees, the most exciting
sound in the world.

We were very, very ambitious...

and we were very anxious to make our mark.

If it was a choice between partying
and being in the studio,

it was definitely gonna be the studio.

It wasn't about having a good time,

a good time to us...

was being in the studio.

- A good time to us was a good woman.
- Yes.

And in those days the idea of women...

crept into our lives.

- And... up to that point...
- Still is.

Yeah!

And up to that point, women had not.

It began in Australia just before we left,

that women became a sort of...

Music, women.

So women became a confliction...

between the two subjects.

It was going out with a girl...

or writing a song

or it was being a group or going out with a girl.

So we began to fall in love.

We began to have girlfriends.

Actually, you need that to be an artist,

to get that extra sentiment.

So, suddenly, we were no longer kids.

There was a lot of hits in that short time.

All the things were happening.

There was a lot of money all of a sudden,

and cars, and girlfriends,

and love interests were happening,

and jealousies were happening,

so, the drink came more. The money became more.

And when you're 18, 19 years of age,

and after all the work we had done,
through clubs and everything,

I felt grown up,
I felt like I'd been through the mill.

In 1967 we became...

members of a club called the Speakeasy

which was an underground club

which was only for the Beatles and the Stones...

and the Who

and Otis Redding and Sam & Dave...

Yeah, Ahmet Ertegun...

and Robert and Brian Epstein.

It was virtually a closed club.

You went downstairs and there was a coffin,

and if you were allowed in,

if you were somebody they knew...

and you were supposed to go in,

the wall would turn round
and the coffin would turn round.

And in you would go, and there'd be...

George Best playing the machines

and the Stones would be lying
around all over the place.

- And...
- Great days.

It was one of those days
that I met John Lennon from the back.

I never met John Lennon from the front.

It was Pete Townshend
who introduced me to John Lennon

and what I remember is,

"Barry, I'd like you to meet John Lennon."

"John Lennon, pleased to meet you."

And carried on talking to somebody else.

So I thought to myself,
"Well, I've met John Lennon."

I had John Lennon's...

black-windowed Mini Cooper S.

I bought that car off him.

And so I was involved,

I became part of the inner circle
of all those guys,

and I was going to parties...

and the Magical Mystery Tour and...

it was like a wild world for me.

When you think that five months
before all this was going on,

I was in Pitt Street buying
the Beatle Fan Club book,

the same time,

and now here I am partying with these guys,
my heroes.

Let's have a wonderfully warm reception

for the attractive Bee Gees...

and soloist Barry Gibb.

We did Ed Sullivan.

Dick Cavett and Mike Douglas.

- Merv Griffin.
- Johnny Carson.

We did eleven Johnny Carson shows...

over the years.

There wasn't any decisive point
where we moved to America,

because it was an international scene...

from 1967 onwards.

Wherever you were based, you had to go to America.

- It was England or America.
- Yeah.

It had to be one of the two.

No other country in the world...

could give you international fame.

It's hard to speak about Odessa
in any coherent way,

because it wasn't actually a planned album,

it was just a collection of songs.

We thought we were going to do a concept album...

Yeah. Because of Tommy

and because of Robert's connection
to these types of things,

he wanted us to do a rock opera.

And we wanted to put it on the stage.

And instead of writing a rock opera,

we just came up with a mish-mash.

We just came up with a bunch of songs

that we thought we were going somewhere with,

but I think we were extremely weary.

I think even at such a young age,

we'd been through
quite a number of albums very quickly.

We could no longer deal with each other,

could no longer deal with each other.

And... the three of us drifted apart.

In fact, I'd say the four of us drifted apart,

including Robert.

Robert went off to make his movies...

There were distractions.

All the distractions that success brings
for someone like him.

And so, we... we let that lie.

That album never really got finished,

never really got finished.

Everyone was doing real well,

and there was the jealousy thing going on.

What happened is First Of May, the record,
was coming out,

and everybody went for First Of May as the A-side,

and Barry was singing the lead on that.

On the other side was Lamplight,

with Robin singing lead,

and everybody
thought Lamplight should be the single.

Robert chose First Of May,

and thinking he was biased towards Barry,

Robin said, "I've had it."

He thought it was done on purpose.

And following that,

I think we went through about two or three years
of being unable to communicate,

being unable to be brothers
or friends or... unable.

We've heard rumors that the group is splitting up.

Would you like to verify those rumors?

If I were to say that was true,
then I would be the premier of Russia.

Then Robin decided to leave,

while we were doing the Cucumber Castle film.

Then Barry left after that...

and I was all of a sudden The Bee Gee.

But it was all part and parcel,

that part of it,
we had to go through all that crap

'cause, you must remember,

we'd been together for so long

by the time we were 19, 20, 21,

it's like, "We need a break."

We'd been together
since Robin and I were five, singing.

I don't think there was actually a design
in the breakup in itself.

We just wandered off and...

It was a crazy period.

We didn't know what we were each doing...

unless we read the trades.

We sort of tried to get together,

but every time we tried,

we knew it was the wrong time.

It was inevitable that this would happen,

it was something that was growing anyway.

But being young, you don't know how to handle it.

We were excited.

We were very high on ourselves,

and it was a dream come true.

Yeah. I mean, I had seven Aston Martins

and six Rolls-Royces...

before I was 21.

I don't know where they are now,

but that's how crazy it was.

The "first-fame" syndrome, we call it,

when you go through that, and if you survive it,

it's great.

We had the foresight...

and strength to say, "This is stupid,"

"let's get back together."

The first time we got together
after the breakup was...

Addison Road in Kensington.

How Can You Mend A Broken Heart

and Lonely Days.

That, basically, is the story,

because How Can You Mend A Broken Heart...

really does reflect how we felt.

Yeah.

We had about 15 months apart.

I ended up doing a musical,

but it was a very strange situation.

Barry had left and the group was over.

But what happened is that Robin had called him...

and said, "Let's get together and talk."

We eventually did.

I remember the time
that Robert Stigwood's company...

was going public,

and the three of us were in this room,

I had my lawyer, Robin had his lawyer,

Barry had his lawyer,

and all we were talking about...

is what we can do together,

when the lawyers were thinking about,

"I represent my client privately
and separately from the others."

And the three of us were planning our next album.

And no one knew about it, in the room.

It was nervous working together again

and getting used to each other again,
the writing process.

Lonely Days was an instrumental...

I was playing on the piano.

Barry and Robin came round,

and we started singing it,

and before we knew it, the song was taking shape.

So, those first times together,

we knew it was inevitable.

Look what we've done in these
few days we've been together.

I felt like we'd never done it before.

We were like new. It was, like, fresh.

The energy that each one had on
expressing what they'd learnt by being apart,

it all came out in that week.

And it was brilliant.
It was a wonderful session, wonderful.

Thank you all very much and good evening.

How does a song get written?

It's usually one person who will walk
into the studio or the room...

and say, "I've got an idea for a song."

And any one of us...

would play that idea,

and if everyone looked at each other

and went,

"OK,"

"this can go somewhere,
this could be something..."

Many times, Barry will have an idea for a song,

and I'll have an idea for song,

and we'll put them together...

and marry them.

- And marry the two songs.
- And it'll become one song.

So, Run To Me was a form of two songs.

So, we would play that kind of game,

that two songs can become one,

and that collaboration is
what creates a great song.

One person writing a song, on their own,

is a tremendously lonely game.

We all become one mind.

That's what we automatically all do.

And we've been doing that for years.

So I don't know how we do it,

but it just happens that way.

I call it the greatest form of meditation...

you could ever have,

when the three of us are in the room,

when we're doing the music, and I'm playing,

and we usually write the lyrics
after we write the melody

and we have the mics on
and we just sit there and create.

You're not concentrating on anything else

but what's happening right now,
and that's a trip on its own.

It's wonderful when you hear it taking shape.

And I may go somewhere,

and Barry, "Yes, yes,

go play there, go there."

And I go, "Yes, go there."

We'll wake each other's little instincts up...

and the melodies come.

Maurice was either guitar, piano...

and some form of stimulating sound.

I'm Mr. Fix-It. Still comes from...

where I've always been in the middle

of some discrepancy between Barry and Robin

or if we're gonna make a decision,

"What does Maurice think?"

I become the deciding vote, if you like.

After Run To Me, we went into a valley, totally.

Our career was in a valley.

No record company wanted us,
management didn't want us,

nothing.

At the end of every decade, there's a tendency

that the business tries to reject artists
from the last decade.

So, you know,

you're either the artist of the '60s,

or an artist of the '70s,

or an artist of the '80s.

And it still goes on now.

And so, we were suddenly...

out of favor by the beginning of the '70s.

You think it's gonna last forever...

and it doesn't.

And that's when the s♪♪♪♪
hits the proverbial fan.

Because all of a sudden,

you turn
to maybe drinking a bit with your friends.

"Oh, you'll do it again."

Then you turn to drugs.

Before you know it,

you're on a collision course with death.

That's it.

And to us, we thought,

"Well, maybe that's it."

"Maybe that was our career."

Oh, yeah. I mean your ego is deflated enormously.

But that was meant to be too.

I mean, it wasn't good stuff.

It was OK.

We were trying to be very experimental.

Sly And The Family Stone

were huge with hits and...

It was a different kind of period,

it was like early disco, or something,

there was something going on
that was really strange.

And we just were off the mark.

We were so off the mark...

we released an album, To Whom It May Concern,

because we didn't know
who the hell was gonna buy it.

I mean, that's how totally,

"Where are we going?"

We needed to have bigger records
than we were having.

We weren't moving that well at all.

Robert had become acquainted
with Arif Mardin,

who had done some of the Aretha Franklin...

early records,

and suggested that we explore those roots,

which is how we ended up...

doing Mr. Natural with Arif.

Arif was so instrumental
in producing black artists.

He produced a lot of people,

and we wanted that input.

- We always loved black music.
- Yeah.

Always, even in the '60s,

it was just ways of...

Sam Cooke and Otis Redding

Wilson Picket.

The influences had been there,

we just explored them more.

We felt it was a time we needed,

and Arif was the ideal tool.

He encouraged, more so.

That's when, as I said,

for To Whom It May Concern...

before we had no direction.

Arif went,

"This is the way you go."

Yes, we'd given up on the psychedelia.

We'd given up that,

"Everyone has to be
like the Beatles in order to succeed."

We thought we were on the right track,
we thought we were doing the right things.

We were moving into that R&B vein,

but we weren't really succeeding.

Mr. Natural was a total disaster,

but it was like a rehearsal for Main Course,
working with Arif for the first time.

Fortunately for us, Arif said,

"Well, this was a good start,"

"let's do another album."

And we didn't expect that,

and...

That was the opening
of 461 Ocean Boulevard, isn't it?

And that's when Eric Clapton said,

"I've just done this album called"

"461 Ocean Boulevard."

"Why don't you go and rent the same house"

"and record in America instead of England"

"and see what that does for you spiritually?"

He said, "It really worked for me."

"I feel like a totally different artist"

"having moved away from
that whole English syndrome."

When we got to Miami, all of a sudden, sunshine.

This is paradise...

compared to where we just came from.

And we got Arif Mardin...

because we wanted Arif after Mr. Natural.

When we worked with him on Main Course,

he knew us,

and he brought out the best in every one of us.

He taught me bass...

I didn't know I could play.

That's how much I admire that man.

He wouldn't play himself. Brilliant pianist.

But he didn't believe
in playing on his own records.

He would come up with these little things,
suggest them to the band...

He was like a little boy, wasn't he?
His enthusiasm.

Working with the band.

Arif knew exactly where we needed to go.

He taught us everything we know about production.

He'd been a great teacher, great mentor.

We spent about three or four weeks...

writing about three or four songs that were...

three of which were rejected

and one which was accepted,

which was called Wind Of Change.

When it came to dubbing the bass
on Wind of Change,

I came in,

and Arif said "OK?"

I said, "Yep."

So, we started the track

and I did one take,

and he went, "Wonderful,"

without changing a part,

and I said,

"You don't want to change this?"

He said, "No! that was brilliant. Wonderful."

And I knew I'd made it in his eyes,

because he never told me to change anything.

Because of what he taught me,

from all the previous tracks I'd played bass on,

I was with him, I was behind the beat.

He was going, "Great, great."

And I was chuffed.

I went home laughing my head off.

I couldn't believe it.

I'd played the way he loved it.

The next thing after Wind Of Change

was Nights On Broadway,

'cause Ahmet said,

"I want more like that."

And so, Nights On Broadway,

or rather Lights On Broadway,

which is what it was called in the first place,
became the second accepted track,

and it just moved on from there.

Jive Talkin' happened during
the middle of the sessions

when we were driving home one night...

over a bridge.

I just remember going in the car...

and hearing this...

every time we crossed this bridge.

And Barry had noticed it...

and he was going...

Thinking of the dance.

"You dance with your eyes."

That's all he had.

And we were going...

At exactly 35 miles an hour,

that's what we got.

We played it to Arif,

and he went,
"Do you know what jive talkin' means?"

And we said, "Well, yeah."

"It's, you know, you're dancing."

He says, "No."

I'm putting on this Turkish accent...

because this is how he talks.

And he says, "No."

"It's a black expression for bull****ing"

And we went, "Oh, really?"

"Jive talkin', you're telling me lies..."

And changed it.

But he gave us the groove, the tempo, everything.

He said, "This is your groove."

Because we were English,

we were less self-conscious

about exploring the no-go areas

that a lot of American artists and groups
would have done.

Especially white ones.

They were always saying,

"Don't go in the black area."

"You've got to be, you know..."

If you were white, you just stayed out.

People were scared that,

if they did, they would make fools of themselves.

But we did it...
because we were serious about it.

We didn't think that there was any no-go areas.

It was music.

Robert Stigwood wanted...

Jive Talkin' as the first single.

And Jerry Greenberg at Atlantic...

and Ahmet Ertegun said,

"We think Nights On Broadway,"

"because we don't think people"

"will actually accept this from the Bee Gees"

"because, first of all, you haven't
done anything like this before,"

"and secondly, it's very black,"

"it's not something that would be accepted."

Robert said, "That's exactly why..."

"I want this to be the first single."

When Jive Talkin' came out,

everybody went, "Who?"

"The Bee Gees 'Broken Heart' Bee Gees?
Are you kidding?"

"You mean, the same group that did...

Whoa." Nobody knew.

And that changed our whole career.

And it became a number one record.

And we knew that was the start of the...

our black music influences with Arif Mardin

being expressed to its full potential.

We were completing Nights On Broadway,

we'd just done most of the vocal tracks...

and all the harmonies and stuff,

and usually, at the end...

you have some ad libs

to take us away from the original melody...

and have some fun.

Arif wanted us to sort of sing,

or try to scream like Paul McCartney...

would sometimes scream in falsetto.

So, Barry said, "I'll have a go."

So, he did the "blaming it alls"...

ad lib on the end of...

Nights On Broadway.

He screamed, and it's the first time...

I've heard him scream in tune with the melody.

And in doing so,
I discovered I had a falsetto voice.

I knew it was back there somewhere,

because we'd tried things like that early on.

And we thought, "That's brilliant."

So, after that, actually,
we wrote "Fanny Be Tender"

'cause we wanted
to do a whole song in falsetto.

'Cause we loved the Stylistics,

we loved the Spinners, the Delfonics.

They were coming out
with these records like...

they were all falsetto lead singers.

And that was black, R&B, at the time,

that's what they called it at the time.

We were into all that stuff.

Fanny Be Tender, I think, convinced us

that we were now recording...

the kind of music that was going to take us
to the next plateau.

For the first time also, apart from
going onto the Billboard Pop Charts,

we were actually on the black charts as well

where there were no white acts,

and that was telling us something,

that we were in an area
we would never have gone into before.

We just felt tremendously happy.

We were just so knocked out
hat we had an audience again,

and to have that success,

'cause even before that

we weren't even looking for a thing like a Fever,

or anything like that,

we were just making music.

And Children Of The World,

which followed that,

we had You Should Be Dancing,

which is the only obvious dance song
we ever wrote,

and Love So Right were two number ones off that.

They were, like, triple platinum.

We were just coasting along here.

"We're having a ball. This is great."

We were having a great time,

and it's only till the Fever thing happened,

that's when everything exploded,

when the world just went crazy.

We had a phone call from Robert

saying Paramount was making a movie
and he was producing.

He told us it was about this guy...

who works in a paint shop in Brooklyn,

he blows his wages every Saturday night
in a club...

and wins a dance competition.

We thought, "Nice one, Rob."

John Travolta was dancing in the film to...

You Should Be Dancing,

which had been a hit off...

Children Of The World, the previous album.

And Robert wanted to know if we had anything,

or if we could write more songs for the film.

We went OK,

so we had Staying Alive,

How Deep Is Your Love,

and If I Can't Have You,

were the first three ones that he heard.

And he said, "Great, this is fantastic."

And to us, this was most likely
to be our new album.

So he came back about a month later
and asked for some more.

"Our album's gone now."

So we ended up with about eight
of our songs in the film.

But in those days, you thought,

"God, you'd pay people
to put your songs in a film."

"It's a great promotion."

There was a suggestion that...

Stayin' Alive should be called Saturday Night,

and Robert said, "No, you should keep it."

"Stayin' Alive? It's like buried alive."

No, the opposite.

It's actually staying alive.

And Robert dug his heels in,

because they thought it was
a very sophisticated title...

for a popular song,

but we wouldn't budge,

because there are
so many songs called Saturday Night.

But we did have a song called Night Fever,

and the compromise was

that we suggested the title of the film
should be...

Saturday Night Fever,

but we would have the song Night Fever
on the album...

without Saturday on it.

So we stayed on the path
that we'd always stayed on,

and that is, "Let's just make
what we believe is a great record."

And we continued with that...

for about six or seven songs,

never really knowing whether or not
they were going to be used in the movie.

We didn't go near the film.

The only time
we went near the film was the premiere

where we stood
at the back of the theatre listening,

and at least being able to say to Robert,

"It's wonderful, but when you're in a club,"

"you can't hear people dancing."

- That's right.
- The music was too soft.

And if you're in a club,
you don't hear people going like...

You don't hear their feet.

You don't hear all this stuff.

Robert got the point, pumped the music up,

took out all the noises of the feet,

and that's what you have now.

Being in Miami, you're in a sort of goldfish bowl.

You don't see much of what's going on out there.

When we were here writing for the Spirits album,

we didn't think about what Fever was doing,

we didn't really know that much.

We were locked away for about a month...

before How Deep Is Your Love came out,

and that was a number one
before the film came out.

I remember everyone saying,

"What a great R&B ballad."

And as soon as the film came out...

they said, "What a great disco ballad."

It was so opposite, it was so funny.

The one thing that still affects us...

is How Deep Is Your Love.

No matter how it's sung,
it's still a beautiful song.

So it wasn't all what you would call dance music.

But then of course we became
the biggest disco band around,

which totally amazed us,

because we always thought KC was the disco thing,

and Donna Summer.

It was all great fun stuff,

it was party music,

but we never regarded ourselves as that.

All I know is when we were recording these songs,

we didn't think about dancing,

we were just thinking about songs.

We didn't even know...

the word disco music existed.

It was coined after the film,

because of the film's success.

None of us expected the success that Fever had.

And the album started doing a million a week.

This was pretty shocking for us.

We couldn't even look at those numbers,
we couldn't understand it.

Such a phenomenon,
other record companies were printing it,

our record company couldn't keep up the pace.

It was an incredible feeling,

it was like being in the eye of a storm.

You didn't have a real sense
of what was going on around you.

You couldn't answer your phone and you
had people climbing over your walls.

So, it was extremely crazy...

and something we weren't used to

because we'd never experienced...

that kind of fame or good fortune.

It actually has affected, in many ways,

the culture in a very sort of subconscious way

that very few vehicles have.

And that's an amazing thing
is it still gets played,

and we don't even understand that.

We just... we're bewildered by it.

There's something magical
about when something happens,

you just don't know where this is,

where this captures the imagination
of millions of people at the same time.

It goes beyond being just a hit album.

Disco is a bad word

if you're not the group
that disco is built around.

And we're the group that disco was built around.

And so, based on that,

we're very, very happy with the word disco.

Absolutely.

It was an amazing experience
in the recording industry.

There was no radio station...

that wasn't playing back-to-back
Gibb brothers songs.

And of course, the record business
was pretty angry

'cause they couldn't get records on the playlist.

It was number one on the Billboard Chart
for six months unbroken.

Fever did around 30 to 35 million.

Thriller did approximately 50 million

and we're quite happy to be second to Michael

and we've had a lot of giggles about that.

Ladies and gentleman, our brother Andy!

The door was always open for Andy.
It was not like ever closed off.

Andy wanted to be one of us,
always wanted to be part of us,

and the difference in the age was quite radical.

So, it never quite worked out.

As time went on, Andy watching, listening,

witnessing what we were doing,

began to feel this was something
he could do too as an individual.

And that's really how it came about.

The first time I ever saw Andy perform
in the way that we had performed...

was onstage in Ibiza.

We were living in Ibiza at the time...

and frequenting a certain club,

and Andy would get up on stage and sing.

And we'd also strum a lot at home

and sing old Mills Brothers songs
and all that stuff.

And I began to realize that Andy was doing...

what the three of us were doing.

And realizing that herein is another
young artist waiting to come out.

Any resemblance between this next fella

and the Bee Gees is purely intentional...

it's their younger brother Andy.

Andy Gibb and his debut single release,

already a hit in America,

called I Just Wanna Be Your Everything.

We were like twins.

His voice was very much like mine.
It was uncanny.

We had almost the same kind of voice.

Robin's voice, much higher than mine or Andy's,
but we were very much alike.

We even had the same birthmarks,

which we could never figure out.

We were alike in so many ways,
it was unbelievable.

We were the only two brothers who loved tennis,

and we shared all the same ideals,

all the same opinions about things.

We never differed on anything.

I made sure Robert heard what Andy had been doing.

Andy invited Robert and I to Bermuda.

We'd convinced Andy to get together with me

to see if we could come up with something.

The first thing was...

I Just Want To Be Your Everything,

the second was Thicker Than Water,

and the third was something all four of us
wrote together...

called Shadow Dancing.

He started writing more...

and he was getting better.

He was doing very well in terms of number ones...

and consecutive singles.

If it was an artist today,

it would be loud and proud.

Andy had great strife in life,

not unlike Maurice's.

And perhaps, perhaps not,

that's what ended his life.

But with the drugs and the cocaine abuse

that he had done in LA
and stuff over his young life,

he had been involved
with a lot of people who were doing drugs.

So, about six months before he died,

he went back to England to stay at Robin's house.

Then we'd heard he was hitting the liquor store,

and he did it for 48 hours,

I believe, he was drinking,
when he was taken into hospital.

The day before was his 30th birthday.

I called to wish him happy birthday

and Robin said "He can't come to the phone,"

"he's out of his skull."

And I said, "Oh, well, tell him to sod off."
"Go away."

And I put the phone down, and I got very angry.

And I thought, "When will he learn?"

And it was three days after that.

Ken, who works for Robin, called us

about six in the morning, seven in the morning,

and said that Andy had passed away,
and I just dropped the phone.

The last thing...

that happened between me and Andy,
was an argument,

which is devastating for me,

because I have to live with that all my life.

There was a phone call between him and me.

I was saying, "You've got
to get your act together, this is no good."

Instead of being gentle about it, I was angry,

because someone had said to me at some point,

"Tough love is the answer."

So for me it wasn't,

because that was the last conversation we had.

That's my regret, that's what I live with.

We approached him to be a Bee Gee,

we would've loved him to have been a Bee Gee.

I think if he had've been,

he may still be with us,

but then, we don't know.

Michael Jackson, for instance,

I think if people had said all the nice things

they did on the day he died,

when he was alive, he may still have been alive.

That's just the irony, but...

some people need to hear it when they're alive.

We had to go in the studio the week after.

We thought, maybe if we got back to work...

we can get re-centered, or something.

And I had to...

I was playing the strings,
and it was very beautiful.

Barry and Robin just started crying,
and I just started crying.

I said, "I can't play."

We went home,

and about a month later we came back in...

and then we did Wish You Were Here for Andy.

And that was difficult to sing, very difficult,

but we wanted to sing it, we wanted to do it.

But there was such a hauntingness on
the sound I was getting on the keyboards,

it was so pretty.

And I was just playing these chords...

that just went into beautiful melodies

and Barry and Robin just... "Maybe next week,"

and we left.

- No.
- Hang on.

- It's too slow.
- The way we rehearsed it last night.

We'll go straight again.

- Go on, now.
- Go on, now.

- No, hold it. Hold it.
- One more.

It would be nice

if we could find a bigger sound for that solo.

- Great.
- Bigger, rounder. All right.

Yeah, just like that, yeah, beautiful.

Let's do it again, second half of the chorus,

but bring that sound in, that's great.

Yeah. OK. One, two, three, four...

When somebody stops singing something
really interesting, as soon as he stops,

an instrument takes over doing something
that's equally interesting.

When that instrument stops
and the voice comes back,

the voice has to be equally interesting

as the instrumental before it.

So, anywhere there's a space,

you make an interesting situation happen.

When we were doing Tragedy, for instance,

we wanted the sound of an explosion

to come at a certain point,
to accentuate the track.

So we all gathered in the control booth,

and listened to the track back.

- It might work.
- Now, listen.

- Right in that slot there.
- An explosion.

- Perhaps a little earlier.
- You will find it?

That's the place...

- What might work...
you always sang it.

Yeah, just like I did then,

just go to the mic and go...

Maybe we can turn it into an explosion.

Let's try overloading it.

Try it first, just so we find the place,

see if you can find that beat.

- What about a real explosion?
- The air force base?

Where do we find one?

Max has got some dynamite in his office.

- Let's go.
- Let me give it a go...

- before we go to get the dynamite.
- OK.

- This will be interesting.
- Hope everything comes out all right.

See if he finds it.

Yeah. He's got to get it in the right spot.

Feed me some track. Let's give it a shot.

Sorry about that.

I think... Barry, loosen your shirt.

It was a prank.

Maybe you should just close your eyes
and really concentrate on the meter.

- I'll be counting.
- OK. I'll be counting.

I'll be counting!

- Yeah, that was it.
- Yeah.

- Thank you. Great.
- Fabulous.

That was a hair early

but I think when we're all together...

Let's hear it back.

It's gonna work with three of them together,

and maybe you could do something
soundwise with them

-...that's gonna make them work as well.
- Shut up and get in here.

Where was I? Yeah... You know that guy...

Let's hear it back.

You told me about him.

Was he still the same guy

as he was before? Really?

- There you go. Fantastic.
- Very nice. Very nice.

In retrospect, we could've
actually waited another year

or so before Spirits came out because it was...

Saturday Night Fever was still in the top ten...

even when we brought Spirits out.

Well, that was the "30-Ton Tour", I call it.

A lot of gear.

We had, like, six semi-trailers,
and we had the 707 plane.

It was huge.

I mean, Dodger Stadium, places like that.

We used to dream of this.

Having people in the audience
like Barbra Streisand

watching your show and loving it.

I mean, these are fantasies.

These are all dreams.

And to have a 707, black with red bottom

and our three heads on the tail and all this.

You're going, "Whoa!"

Even getting bomb threats, it was great,

because if you weren't important...

they wouldn't bomb you.

It was a great tour...

and Andy joined us on that tour

in a few shows, even John Travolta.

It was just a fabulous experience.

To go on stage and see the audience...

'Cause I love... That's the only way you can...

say thank you, really, by going on stage live,
for putting you there.

That was our way of thanking people...

because that's the only way you can do it.

Because if it wasn't for the audience,
we wouldn't have been up there.

The 50-city tour that we did for Spirits

was really the beginning
of Maurice's alcohol problems...

But, you see, I was always very protected.

I didn't get all the arrests
that people would have got arrested,

'cause I was always protected
by people looking after me, so...

"Oh, he's just having a good time."

And they'd take me up to my room.

I wouldn't worry about getting to bed,

because they would take me to bed.

So we had security and people...

looking after us and roadies and things...

Saved me from a lot of driving and
speeding fines and drunk-driving tickets.

The only time I got the real first one
was in the Isle of Man

because I was the only guy in a blue Rolls-Royce

driving around the Isle of Man drunk.

I sort of stuck out like a sore thumb.

It was more of a question of denial.

It was more, "Let's keep writing, Moe will be OK."

And the reason
that the Streisand Guilty album

doesn't really involve Maurice
on more than one song,

which is Guilty, was because at that very point,

Maurice had reached the razor's edge,
he really needed to be in rehab.

And so this was really the whole family
coming to the same conclusion.

Robin and I confronting Maurice at his home,

with Yvonne, his wife,

basically having to lay down a law...

which we did not want to lay down,

which was, "Moe, it ends now,"

"or it ends forever."

And at that point Moe went into rehab
and took the step.

And Robin and I waited for about six months...

for him to come back around.

Then we went back in the studio together

and carried on as we had before.

We weren't functioning as a group in the '80s.

We were concentrating on songwriting.

The whole "It's time to kill Fever,"

"it's time to kill disco" period came in,

so we just sort of took a back seat.

The saturation point was ridiculous.

That's why we had to sit back,

and produce other people
and write for other people.

When we heard they were having...

"Bee Gee-free weekends" in Chicago

and places like that,

it was scary stuff.

We thought, "We'd better take the Bee Gees
on the back burner for a while"

"until this dies down or something."

So we couldn't do anything
as the Bee Gees at all.

We didn't make an album till '87.

We'd done so much in the studio,

over so few years...

that I think it all caught up with us.

Personally, I thought,

"This will give us a chance to write..."

For other artists."

We got offered Barbra.

I called Neil Diamond and I said,

"What's Barbra like to work with?"

He said, "She's fantastic, just go for it."

I remember me and Barry writing in his bedroom.

We'd do a song each day...

and then the following week

we'd do the lyrics to the respective song
that we'd written.

And we sent the seven songs that we'd finished...

at that point to Barbra Streisand.

We had an immediate yes,

she wanted to start right away.

So that was a very enjoyable experience.

From then, it was...

like Dionne Warwick's album,

Kenny Rogers and Dolly,

we all worked together and wrote.

I did solo stuff with Robin, which was great.

So everybody was doing something.

We were all sort of scattered at that point.

We all wanted some time away.

Robin wanted to live in New York for a little bit,

Maurice was having back surgery,

and all of these opportunities opened up,

we had nothing else to do.

That led to the Diana Ross album...

Chain Reaction

and the Kenny Rogers album with Dolly Parton...

and Islands In The Stream.

Islands I n The Stream started out as a soul song.

We came up with Islands In The Stream...

in our writing room upstairs.

We all looked at each other,

we knew we had a monster song,

we just didn't know who was going to record it...

We viewed it as an R&B song...

and not a country song.

And in the end it just came to show

that those two types of music
are very close together.

And Islands In The Stream became a country song.

Really, we're talking about two careers here,

composers and artists.

And the two go together,

but then they're separate as well.

They are both very, very meaningful
to us in their own way.

We see ourselves as composers first
and artists second...

because we you can't have
the second without the first.

We've always enjoyed writing for other people.

The greatest thing
about being a writer, a songwriter,

is when you write a song...

with someone in mind that you really love,

and then that person ends up singing it,

there's no reward like it.

We wrote a song for Céline Dion,

called Immortality,

she inspired the song, she inspires us,

probably the finest
female pop singer in the world.

It was a dream that she might
sing one of our songs one day.

And the dream came true.

We wrote Immortality for
the Saturday Night Fever musical

and they wanted one big song at the end,

so the guy could come out... do the whole thing.

There was a guy that sang it in the show,

but we wrote it with Céline totally in mind.

When we write for girls,

Barry sings it
in falsetto, because that's the girls' range,

so when they play the demo...

they can sing along and it'll be in their range.

When you hear the demo, you can hear Céline.

Then she said she wanted to record it.

Blew me away.

When we first heard Céline sing it,
we burst into tears.

- Tissues were going everywhere.
- It just destroyed us.

And that's how we left the building,
completely in tears,

that this girl had done this with this song.

I always keep a little Dictaphone next to the bed.

About four in the morning,
I woke up with this melody which was...

And that was it. I thought, "If I lose this..."

"It'll be gone forever," because...

the next day it's gone, it's just gone.

So I checked the machine,
there was no cassette in it.

It's always the same.

So I was running round the house
trying to find a cassette.

I found a cassette, got whatever I could down,

and played it to Robin the next day.

It was funny.

Unfortunately the record was never released here.

You Win Again, when it came out in 1987,

we'd just signed with Warners for a new deal

and this was the first record
and everybody went gung ho on it.

And really did well.

And I remember we had these stomps put on it.

It was something in my studio,
my garage that we'd come up with

and got it all together,
there's no drums on there at all,

it's all just sounds that we made.

And Arif was producing the album with us,

and he said,
"Great, when you come out to New York"

"we'll do You Win Again again."

'Cause we'd done the demo in my garage.

We got to New York and I'm thinking,

"They're gonna do the whole thing again."

"Where do we start?"

We had some programmers in there...

and he went, "Have you got the stomps?"

And I went, "No."

"I thought we were gonna do
the whole thing again."

"No, you've gotta get the stomps,"

"the stomps are what makes the record."

"The sound is part of the backtrack,"

"we've got to have that."

So I had to get them sampled on my drum
machine in Miami...

and the disc sent up...

We got it and then we embellished on it
a bit more in the studio

and everybody at the record company
wanted them off.

And we went, "No."

"Well, can you take them off the intro?"

"No."

"Can you turn them down a bit in the mix?"

"No."

"It's as it is, that's the record."

And they didn't like that.
They weren't too happy about that.

And now everyone says,

"As soon as that record starts on the radio,"

"you know it's the Bee Gees."

That was such a great signal.

It signaled to everybody that this song's coming.

It became Princess Diana's favorite song,

it was just amazing, the success that record had.

I knew I'd made it in the sampling

when Phil Collins
came up to me at the airport and said,

"Can you give me a copy of the stomps?"

I think the Bee Gee sound...

I don't know how to describe it.

I guess it's just a mixture.

It's us.

You've got to remember,

we come from an era where...

everybody was experimenting with sounds

and it was almost a rite of passage.

So it's a real mixed bag,
and I think we were very fortunate...

it wasn't just one lead singer.

We could all alternate,

and sometimes sing the same song together.

When we sing songs like...

It's Barry and Robin singing in unison.

But it sounds like one guy.

"Bit more Robin, bit more Barry.

Are you sure? Which one is it?"

But it's a sound of the two.

Then the three of us go into harmony on the...

And it's...

It's just Barry and Robin.

But they mesh together so well,

that it sounds like one voice.

But it's a different voice from them separately.

To us it was like the Beatles,

it was having that alternative lead

and being able to mix it up.

I think people today in the world of music

are far, far more conservative in what they do,

they don't use harmonies like they should,

it's because they're just too lazy.

It's hard work. Because there's no technology

that can create a human voice in harmony.

Or even a machine that can create a melody.

You've got to do that yourself.

Those are the basic vehicles of all popular music.

That's what's gonna make music what it is...

and the songs what they are.

And there's still no technology for those,

and those are the principal ones,

and thank God there isn't.

That blend has been used quite a lot.

With harmonies,

we bank them underneath
with doubles and falsettos on top

so you get the full richness of the harmony,

which is what I love to do.

I love to arrange and get the records all...

this with that there and...

Paint the picture, you know, add the colors.

And they're like our children,

we send them out in the world,

we hope they do well.

I think people will always love songs...

about human relationships and melody.

These are the songs that will reach out
over the decades to the unborn.

Because they are perennial as the grass,

human emotion.

It is not ego that makes you write a great song,

it's the belief that you can't
that makes you do it.

Sometimes even envy and jealousy.

You hear a great song on the radio and think,

"I wish I could write a song like that."

I think you need things to motivate you,

but also there's that belief that you can as well.

- Damn the torpedoes.
- Yeah.

Robert said to us in 1967,

He said, "Write for 40 years from now,"

"don't just write for now."

I n other words, "Don't write for trends."

Which we tried not to do.

That's the one thing I remember him saying.

"Write for the future."

Every single award...

or every single citation or achievement

that's given to you has a different feel to it.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
was to us everything.

Please stand and welcome...

Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb
into the Hall of Fame.

The Bee Gees!

Being in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame...

was just a dream for us.

But not only getting inducted
into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,

but being inducted by Brian Wilson...

...to me was a knockout. That blew my night.

We are in fact the enigma with the stigma.

We know this.

We're aware of it.

We hear it every day.

We live with it.

We have suffered.

But tonight I think...

we've come home

and we thank you very much for this honor.

So, every single award you get

has a different kind of...

intense emotional experience for you.

The BRIT Awards, it's been a long time

since we've been even involved
in anything like that,

but to get the Lifetime Achievement Award...

was a wonderful honor.

Beautiful Quincy Jones giving us that award...

in the American Music Awards,

which was wonderful again.

Quincy I've known for a lot of years.

It's so sweet that he could do that.

Gentlemen,
let me just sum it up with this phrase...

on your International Award.

Their recordings have sold well over
100 million copies worldwide,

making them one...

making them one the top five
most successful artists ever.

Congratulations...

and good luck on your upcoming world tour.

- Barry!
- Thank you, Quincy!

How times change.

Ten, fifteen years ago...

you wouldn't have put on a Bee Gees record.

Now, it's sort of OK.

We stopped touring...

basically to concentrate
more on the writing and songs

and the work that was involved in that.

And if we did tour,

we wanted it to be special.

But we certainly didn't want to go out...

and do a nostalgia tour.

Just doing the old songs...

and saying, "Thank you very much. Cheers."

We wanted to at least have a good success...

under our belt before we go out again.

One Night Only was, only became a concept...

after we did the one show at the MGM.

It came about from back surgery.

Long-term, every-two-nights
or every-one-night tours

were no longer really feasible.

The pain was far too much for me,

my back has set into a place where,

if I did that every night,

nobody was going to insure us to do that.

And when you sing falsetto,
it's a hell of a high raise to go to,

that back needs... you need your back.

And it's agony when you do it,

'cause... you feel it before
you've even taken half a breath.

So, Barry was going through all that stuff.

I don't know how he did it...

but he didn't want to do a bad show.

So, we all made up our minds that

maybe it was a good idea
to do six shows worldwide

and put a price on each one of those shows,

and that way, people would travel
to places that we'd never been before.

And let my back settle.

So we did one almost...

every two weeks, three weeks.

I've seen him do shows
when his back's been in agony.

I know 'cause I've had back surgery too,

and I know exactly what he went through.

And he's persevered through
a whole two-hour show in agony.

And nobody would have known it.

We knew it 'cause he'd be singing...

and he'd turn around and look at us and go...

Like this and go... And back out again.

But all the time in agony.

"This Is Where I Came In"

takes me back to our Beatle period.

We sort of went back to the way...

we recorded in the late '60s.

We sort of went back to that stage

where it's the acoustics,

the piano, the bass, the drums, whatever...

A lot of live drums on this album.

We wanted that live feel.
Particularly on the opening track.

We just wanted to rock a bit more.

But This Is Where I Came I n...

is the harmony thing.

We just wanted the three of us around...

one mic, singing the harmony on this song.

And that's what we did.

And that was two takes. The whole song.

The whole record. For the vocals.

"OK. That's finished. Next."

And it was like, "Whoa!
This is good stuff. This is great fun!"

We were recording just like we used to.

I loved it. I still do.

I don't like the long hours in the studio anymore

because there's so much going on outside

and I don't have the attention span.

If I can make a record in two days,

then I'll do that. I'll do it in two days.

But I couldn't sit there for 12 hours a day...

for three months like we used to.

Not with five children.

Not reality anymore.

But I love it.

And I love the results of it.

When something sounds amazing...

and you don't know how you got there.

Yeah, we love that. We love that song.

It's... It's Maurice's turn now.
Brother Moe over here.

Maurice has done a lot more
individual music on this album.

It's really about himself, the song.

The song is called Man I n The Middle.

We hope you like it.

Yeah, I've sort of been the man in the middle.

It still comes from that business where
I've always been in the middle of things

between Barry and Robin...

At different times...

we've all been the man in the middle.

Robin and I hardly ever see eye-to-eye,

and yet, we gravitate towards
each other no matter what.

And Moe was always the sort of,

"Break it up, you guys."

"Don't argue."

Moe would always be that guy
that would take the middle ground

or calm things down if things got...

To that extent, yes, he was.

But I think over the years,
we've all done that.

Maurice Gibb, one third of the Bee Gees, has died,

age 53.

Here's Tamzin Sylvester...

with tonight's Liquid Lead.

Maurice collapsed at his beachfront house...

in Miami on Thursday

with severe stomach pains.

He was rushed to the nearby Mount Sinai hospital

but had a heart attack during emergency surgery.

His twin brother, Robin,
spoke to the media on Friday,

saying he was on the mend

but then Maurice slipped into a coma.

He died in the early hours of this morning

with his wife, children...

and brothers Gibb at his bedside.

It was shattering to both of us,
shattering to both of us

in countless ways, countless ways.

And the speed at which it happened as well.

I mean, so unexpected because he was quite young,

and he'd never really been ill,

and it happened in such... in a matter of hours.

And it still... It's mind-blowing,

from a Wednesday night
to the Saturday when he died...

It's just like nothing could stop it.

And the idea of us going on without Moe
became something that was,

"Oh, we could do that."

"But no, we couldn't."

"Yes, we could."

"No, we couldn't."

Well, we were in shock.

Ladies and gentlemen,

please welcome the 2003 Legend Award recipients,

Barry and Robin Gibb.

The Legend in the 2003 Awards
was bittersweet in the Grammys

because it was... Maurice wasn't there.

And you've got to remember
that Maurice died on January 12th.

Well, this was, I think, sometime in January...

And his family were there.

And so it became more of
everybody really dwelling on Moe

and the sadness of it,

and the fact
that we'd lost him at such an early age.

And it was incredible to receive it,

but we were sort of numb, you know.

We'd just come to terms with the fact that,

"Maurice has just died."

We were talking about hours, days.

And so, it was... It came right in the middle.

Our equilibrium was completely out of whack,

and if it had been another time,

we would have enjoyed it more.

And if Moe had been there with us,

it would've been the cream on the cake, you know.

But the idea that he wasn't there to share it...

was equally important...

but in a very sad way.

Even the most ardent fans...

will always know a different Maurice than I do.

There's a personality and a whole history...

that I know about Maurice
that people will never know,

and that's the person I miss.

But I... The music is there...

He lives on with music, and on the radio,

when I hear a song with him,

that's... he's still alive.

- Robin and I love music so much...
- Yes.

...And it's so ingrained in our souls

that we don't know how to move away from it.

I think it's important,
also, for Maurice's memory,

his legacy, just as much.

The legacy of the Bee Gees...

must go on, one way or the other.

It's been a few years...

since we've heard our voices together.

Maurice's death...

left a kind of emotional vacuum
between the two of us

because Barry had a way of dealing with it,

I have my way of dealing with it.

A few years have passed now,

we're able to see each other in a different way.

We're beginning to behave the way we always did,

before Moe died.

Because of what happened with Maurice...

Barry had a way of expressing his way...

I was pulverized.

I had no passion or interest in continuing at all.

Robin went the opposite direction
and had to keep moving.

I wanted to keep the Bee Gees as the three of us.

I wanted that to be
the only thing anyone ever saw again.

We still have a lot of music in us,

because we've already written
one song together this week.

I now know inside that
what we will do will be good.

It's time for us now to move on...

without ever letting go of Moe.

The blend of the voices is great.
Even I get nostalgic.

I feel more every day as I go,

fortunate to be born into a family
where Barry is my brother

because I get to work with him.

I mean, one of the greatest pop writers...

of all time.

I mean, there's no...
I n all the billions of families...

that are born in the world,

I got to be born in the family with him.

How good can it get?

- I mean that's... that's real.
- Well, it gets... what it gets is mutual.

What it gets is mutual.

What you draw from me,

I draw from you.

And I look forward to the next time
that we can concoct something

that we both look at each other and say,
"There, that's it."

- That's all I care about.
- Me too.