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28.06.13 Music Week 13
that really care about our music and care about the songs because I think that’s what we thought we were, which is songwriters so I see that. I see parents with their children. I see the different generations coming to terms with, “Oh, this is what the Bee Gees were,” because for the life of me I never knew what we were. We were always surprising ourselves with success and failure so we never really got to understand it.
You’ve already played some dates, appropriately enough starting in Australia. That was an emotional thing. We grew up there. We became the Bee Gees in Australia. I don’t know what attracts, especially men, to the South Pacific and Australia and New Zealand, but it’s a magnet for me and I love it and I love being thought of as an Australian, but I’m also British and I’ve lived in America for 35 years so I’ve lived everywhere really. I’m a sort of renaissance global fool.
What’s it like being on stage without Robin and Maurice? That must be a strange feeling. I always see them there. I always see them next to me; that never goes away. I always feel their presence around me, especially when we were at one microphone and their personalities are right there and I miss them. I miss them more so now than I probably did a month ago. It seems to roll up and roll up as time goes on and I hear their opinions in my head. What would Maurice have thought? What would Robin have thought? What would Andy have thought because we lost him, too? And we lost Dad. The whole thing is quite ridiculous because it’s really mum that feels it more than anyone.
There is probably no better way of paying tribute to your brothers than by being on stage playing those songs. It’s a celebration of my brothers and I think perhaps down the line I hope there will be a tribute where I can invite other artists to take part, but right now it’s me celebrating the lives we had. We always had that dream and everything panned out so it was never everything and it was never nothing. It was always something, but we saw a lot of things we would never have imagined seeing and we did a lot
of things we never would have imagined doing. We were never actually a band. We were three brothers who just hustled our way through it all.
Is it purely the classic songs you’re playing or is there any new material that creeps in? Not new material yet because I want to go in the studio, but right now this is ideally the celebration of how these songs came together and how we put them together and the fun it is to perform them. I think anyone who comes to the show will leave with a smile. I know that, I know that. I would go see it! I would sit in the audience.
“I always feel [Robin and Maurice’s] presence around me, especially when we were at one microphone and their personalities are right there” BARRY GIBB
So you’re thinking about going back in the studio? What are your thoughts there? As everything occurs, I try to make things as effortless so every day for me is going to be a great day and what’s going to happen that I didn’t know about and I look forward to all that, so I think that getting some more shows under my belt, playing in Britain is great because the audiences tell you if they love it, they tell you if they don’t. I like that so I’ll go from there into the studio and then maybe do some US dates if they’ll have me.
Are you one of those songwriters who write all the time or do you write when there’s a project to write for? I write better when somebody puts me on the spot. That’s how it always worked with Robert Stigwood. The perfect example was probably Grease. He called me up and said, “I want a title for this film. Nobody has come up with a title for Grease” and I was put on the spot so I work good under pressure, but at the same time I’ve got songs hanging out of drawers and bits of songs. I wrote a song for Robin and just little things everywhere I haven’t pulled together yet, but I’m always trying to come up with
ABOVE
Spirits Having Flown: Barry Gibb is paying tribute to his brothers on his solo tour
something no matter what, but I like to be put on the spot.
You’ve written away from your brothers before, but I wonder what the different experiences are when you are writing alone as opposed to writing with somebody else? They’re very different because you’re not asking each other for opinions all the time and it becomes something you have to do and nobody else can help you do to it, so there’s a certain kind of fun in that and we all did that. Robin would come up with something. Maurice would come up with something. I think Mo wrote with Lulu’s brother at one stage way back and we enjoyed that because it brought something back to the group. Islands In The Stream, songs like that, really were collaborations where it was like the three of us would form an opinion, but nobody ever saw us write a song. Nobody ever saw that, so that’s something I keep inside. I know how we did it.
Would you write now with other people? Would you consider doing that? Yeah, and I have done in the past, but I really enjoy writing with my sons right now. I like writing with Stephen. He’s a great lead guitarist and great rock voice so that influences me. That gives me a harder edge and Ashley I love writing with so my two eldest boys they like to do it with me and I like to do it with them, but there may come a point where somebody…you know I’ve always dreamt of writing a song with Burt Bacharach. I’ve always dreamt of maybe writing something with Paul McCartney, but those are dreams. That’s a different kind of harvest if you like.
One of the surprising things for me is that it’s such a long time since you made a solo album, the last being New Voyager in 1984. Is there any reason for that? No. Life just gets in the way. I’m not very good at spending 10 hours a day in the studio anymore. I used to do it and I was missing so much outside. I don’t really enjoy being in the studio that long. My ears don’t like it either. Live music, analogue music, a real band playing a real song is where it’s come down to for me. It’s no longer programming
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