CityLife

Bee Gees - ties that bind the brothers Gibb

Robin Gibb - proud of his Manchester origins

IT is part of pop music lore that, for the Bee Gees, one broken record led to a string of hits. 

It was the late 1950s in Manchester, and three brothers, Barry, aged 11, and twins Robin and Maurice, aged eight, would while away their time listening to the hits of the day at home in Keppel Road, Chorlton. 

“We would sit in the basement, listening to the radio, and we’d imagine what their next record would be like, and go out and write it,” says Robin. “We were quite a poor family, so we didn’t have much.

''We weren’t interested in sports, and other kids weren’t interested in hanging around with three brothers who were just interested in writing songs.”

Lip-sync to a current hit

Long before the cult of Saturday morning kids’ TV, the many thriving cinemas in Manchester would be packed with youngsters for film matinees. And many cinemas allowed the children to make their own entertainment. 

“It was a fun thing for kids to go to the Gaumont in Chorlton and lip-sync to a current hit record,” says Robin, now 59. 

So the three brothers set off for the Gaumont one Saturday, clutching an Everly Brothers record. The boys made it there safely, but the record didn’t, and the rest is history.

“It never entered our minds that we’d sing for real,” says Robin. “But the record was broken on the road, and one of us – I’m not sure whether it was me, Maurice or Barry – said, look, let’s do Lollipop, and we did. We weren’t scared. We just did it.”

Mother was horrified

The brothers had got a taste for live performance, so decided to look further afield for gig opportunities. 

“We walked a few miles down the road to Whalley Range and did the Odeon Theatre,” says Robin.

“Our parents did not know anything about it. We were allowed to sing before the matinee started, and there was a photographer in the audience who took our picture, and it ended up in the Manchester Evening News. 

“My mother saw it on the Monday and was horrified because we were so young and were doing things she was not aware of. I think today it would be a much more dangerous thing to do.”

Family tradition

After the shock wore off, the three boys were encouraged in their ambitions by their parents.

After all, they were only following in the family tradition. Mum Barbara had been a singer, and father Hugh was a drummer with his own swing band.

The two had married in 1944 and left wartime Manchester for the Isle of Man, where Hugh Gibb and his band would play in a Douglas hotel.

By the time the family returned to Manchester, they had four children – daughter Lesley, born in 1945, Barry, born the following year, and the twins, born in 1949.

Arriving in 1958 was brother Andy – who died aged 30 of inflammation of the heart muscle, possibly as a result of drug and alcohol abuse.

Stomach operation

When Andy was a few months old, the family moved to Australia, where a radio DJ, Bill Gates, styled the singing brothers after his own initials – the Bee Gees – and they got their first record contract in 1963.

Today, Barry and his mother live in Miami, Florida, and Robin divides his time between Miami, Oxfordshire and the Isle of Man. Maurice died in 2003 from complications following a stomach operation.

As they racked up record sales of around 200m, the three brothers never forgot those early days in Manchester.

When the old family home in Keppel Road came up for sale in 2002, Barry bought it. Robin and Barry were happy to accept honorary degrees, and a posthumous degree for Maurice, at Manchester University in 2004.

Had the same goals

“It was a unique start to life,” Robin says of their childhood in Manchester.

“The three of us challenged each other. We threw down the gauntlet. People sometimes say we stayed together for so long and did so much because we were brothers.

''But I think it is because we were interested in the same things, had the same goals, were friends. That was the glue that kept us together. Most brothers don’t stay together; they go in different directions.

“I see it as one soul in three bodies, wanting the same thing.”

Great things happening

After Maurice’s death, Robin and Barry decided not to record under the Bee Gees’ name.

But a BBC One documentary about the brothers is to be screened in “a matter of weeks”, and, asked today whether Robin and Barry may work together, Robin says: “I’d love to tell you, but there’s a lot of things I can’t say right now. There are a lot of great things happening.”

The Bee Gees Variety Club tribute dinner – attended by Robin and Barry Gibb, their mother Barbara and a host of family members – is on July 24 at the Palace Hotel, Manchester.

To book tickets, call Judi Davies at the Variety Club on 0161 236 0500, or email varietyclubnw@btconnect.com