Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from My Heart Radio. It's summer, and that means
Speaker 1: it's time for our tradition at Here's the Thing, where
Speaker 1: the staff share their favorite episodes from our archives in
Speaker 1: our Summer Staff Picks series. Next up is producer Zach McNeice.
Speaker 2: Thanks Alec. There are a few musical acts in history
Speaker 2: less polarizing than the Bee Gees. I can't recall anyone
Speaker 2: at any time in my life saying they weren't a fan.
Speaker 2: It's impossible not to sing along with mega hits like
Speaker 2: Staying Alive, How Deep is Your Love? More than a Woman,
Speaker 2: Night Fever. The list goes on and on. I was
Speaker 2: excited to have Barry Gibbon with Alec and the conversation
Speaker 2: was wide ranging and full of surprises. Here's Alec with
Speaker 2: Barry Gibb from twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: As a man. The recently released HBO documentary How Can
Speaker 1: You Mend a Broken Heart mentions the term blood harmony
Speaker 1: or bio harmony, that unique blend when siblings sing together.
Speaker 1: Think The Beach Boys, The Jackson Five, The Everly Brothers,
Speaker 1: and The Beg's.
Speaker 3: Flag.
Speaker 4: So Love somebod.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Barry Gibb with his younger twin brothers,
Speaker 1: Robin and Morris. The Begs conquered the world with their
Speaker 1: ethereal harmonies. Today Barry misses his brothers. Morris died in
Speaker 1: two thousand and three, Robin in twenty twelve. I wanted
Speaker 1: to know if he'd ever considered what kind of solo
Speaker 1: career he might have had.
Speaker 4: Well, I don't know. I know what I wanted. I
Speaker 4: wanted to be a pop star or a rock star
Speaker 4: or whatever it is that goes through our heads at
Speaker 4: that point. At some point in your life, you wanted
Speaker 4: to be an actor, you know. All I know is
Speaker 4: that the moment that my brothers began to do individual
Speaker 4: things and I didn't know about them. Then I thought, well,
Speaker 4: it's okay. I can do individual things too, but I
Speaker 4: never did that before they did. And once that began,
Speaker 4: I thought, oh, oh wow, they've gone and done this
Speaker 4: on their own. Morris has done this, or Rob has
Speaker 4: done this. It's pretty good, you know. Wow. I didn't
Speaker 4: know that they did that without even a question, so
Speaker 4: I figured, well it was okay, And once Barbara Streisan
Speaker 4: came along, I just grabbed the bar. You know, I thought,
Speaker 4: this is a wonderful opportunity and I love her and
Speaker 4: the idea of working with her. I learned so much
Speaker 4: from that. And I think you learn things from just
Speaker 4: about everyone you work with. You just pick up something
Speaker 4: that you didn't know before.
Speaker 1: Who brought you in streisand together? Was it a produce?
Speaker 4: And no, it was Barbara calling me up about eighty
Speaker 4: one eighty two. And she just called up and said,
Speaker 4: will you make an album with me? And so after
Speaker 4: I got up off off the ground, I told my
Speaker 4: wife and I told everybody in my family that I
Speaker 4: just had this call from Barbra Streisen, and of course
Speaker 4: everyone's going, you got to do it, you got to
Speaker 4: do it. And I was terrified. So I came to
Speaker 4: the conclusion that if I call Neil Diamond you don't
Speaker 4: bring me flowers, that he might give me some advice.
Speaker 4: So I called Neil Diamond and I said, what is
Speaker 4: she like?
Speaker 1: What is it?
Speaker 4: What's the experience like working with her? He just said,
Speaker 4: don't worry about it, just go do it. You know,
Speaker 4: everything falls into place if the stars aligned. Don't worry.
Speaker 4: He said, She's terrific and she's changeable. But that's fine.
Speaker 1: Just go with her. You know when you recorded with her,
Speaker 1: were you in the same studio for some portion or
Speaker 1: all of it or not all of it?
Speaker 4: Cut all the tracks in Miami at Criteria, which is
Speaker 4: now the Hit Factory. The interesting thing about Barbara was
Speaker 4: that if she sang something, she considered it to be sung.
Speaker 4: She didn't think she had to sing it again. And
Speaker 4: that's old school, you know. It's like that's how she
Speaker 4: grew up. And I would say, you know, especially on Guilty,
Speaker 4: first song she sang, I said, can you give us
Speaker 4: about four or five tracks? She says, well, I just
Speaker 4: sang it. No, No, can you give us choices? Can
Speaker 4: you give us four or five tracks so that we
Speaker 4: can pick and choose which are the best moments? But
Speaker 4: I just sang it.
Speaker 1: Boy, I'm going to try that when I go to work.
Speaker 1: That's it. I'm like, Bob Hope, I'm like, that's one take,
Speaker 1: fellas Bobby God, I hope.
Speaker 4: So hit the spot say the words get out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you talk about, you know, wanting multiple tracks to
Speaker 1: choose from when you were recording with your brothers. Was
Speaker 1: that a rule you had where you had unanimity about
Speaker 1: what the take was and what worked or was there
Speaker 1: a there was there a producer there that you will,
Speaker 1: entrusted the decision.
Speaker 4: To myself but really also adhering to my brother's opinions.
Speaker 4: We never did anything where it was two out of three.
Speaker 4: It wasn't a democracy. You know. We had to be
Speaker 4: in total agreement about everything we were doing. So if
Speaker 4: we love something, we were all one, you know, and okay,
Speaker 4: what do we do next? What's the next step? Yeah,
Speaker 4: we need a lead guitar on this, We need something here,
Speaker 4: we need something there. But we were always in agreement,
Speaker 4: and real life is very different, so you know, we
Speaker 4: didn't live together, but we did have the van. We
Speaker 4: did have the minivan with the Beg's on the side.
Speaker 1: People talk about the documentary has introduced, at least as
Speaker 1: far as I'm concerned, it might have existed somewhere else,
Speaker 1: the term bioharmony. And when I first heard that phrase,
Speaker 1: I was like, my god, I never thought about that,
Speaker 1: that they sing differently and they interact differently because they're
Speaker 1: actually related. I believe that that's true.
Speaker 4: That I've never heard that, But yeah, I agree with
Speaker 4: all of that, and there are many different side stories
Speaker 4: to all of that. I mean, the Beetles sound my brothers.
Speaker 4: So there's a lot about where you come from. The
Speaker 4: Beetles come from Liverpool. They all have the same accent,
Speaker 4: the same tone, if you like, and so blending together
Speaker 4: was something special for them. You didn't really have to
Speaker 4: be brothers. And I was talking to a little big
Speaker 4: town yesterday and they are incredible and they all come
Speaker 4: from the same basic area of the country. So it
Speaker 4: wasn't that they were blood. It was that they all
Speaker 4: had the same dialect, the same kind of tonality. You know.
Speaker 1: That's Nashville when you're working with people that are your family. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and God.
Speaker 4: Knows, yes, you have brothers.
Speaker 1: I have brothers in that way that you want everyone
Speaker 1: to do well, you know, I want my brothers to
Speaker 1: do well and succeed and have what they want. And
Speaker 1: you realize that the business is fragile, you know, even
Speaker 1: when you're successful, when you're with your brothers and you're
Speaker 1: recording with your brothers, and they've been gone for a
Speaker 1: while now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, about eight years since Robin left.
Speaker 1: So it's eight years now where both of them are gone.
Speaker 1: And when Morris passed away, was it understood between you
Speaker 1: and Rob that you wouldn't continue just the two of you.
Speaker 4: No, Robin wanted us to wanted to continue, and I didn't.
Speaker 4: I didn't think it was the right thing to do.
Speaker 4: I thought we should suspend the group as it stood,
Speaker 4: and if we were going to work any more together,
Speaker 4: we would do it as the two brothers, you know,
Speaker 4: we wouldn't do it as the Begs. So. But but
Speaker 4: Robin didn't agree with me. He wanted to continue being
Speaker 4: the Beg's. But then lo and behold. What I didn't
Speaker 4: know is that Robin was getting ill, and as time
Speaker 4: went on he became more immorial. But he didn't tell anybody,
Speaker 4: and so you could you could see that some thing
Speaker 4: was wrong, but you didn't know what it was. And
Speaker 4: it wasn't like he was capable of really doing anything,
Speaker 4: because in my opinion, he wasn't, you know, he was.
Speaker 4: He was going very frail, very quickly.
Speaker 1: Did you guys when you went your separate ways, was
Speaker 1: there always a sense of like the Eagles and like
Speaker 1: Fleetwood Mac and like CSNY where they profess to have
Speaker 1: some tension between them, yet they always got back together
Speaker 1: because that band together whole was the cash cow for them.
Speaker 1: It was never going to be as successful as that did.
Speaker 1: The begs go through the same thing where where each
Speaker 1: of you had your respective and you had a very
Speaker 1: successful solo career.
Speaker 4: Well, the background to all of that, what you just
Speaker 4: said is really important. The cash cow was not the
Speaker 4: center of attention because because for us it was always
Speaker 4: tough to get paid. Always that's shock and roll, you know.
Speaker 4: And we didn't really make any real money until Saturday
Speaker 4: Night Fever. So success equals money that wasn't happening for us,
Speaker 4: so we didn't worry about it. What we worried about
Speaker 4: was getting more hits, making more records, writing more songs,
Speaker 4: you know, that was what preoccupied us. Crosby, Stills, Nash
Speaker 4: and Young When we were doing Children of the World,
Speaker 4: they would sitting along the wall, four of them, watching
Speaker 4: us do the vocals, and they were in the next studio.
Speaker 4: So the greatest thing about all of those days is
Speaker 4: that the Eagles Leonard Skinner were always in the next
Speaker 4: room or two rooms away. And in those days you
Speaker 4: could visit each other. There was no you know, you
Speaker 4: can't come in here, there was none of that, you know,
Speaker 4: and we enjoyed that I could go in and listen
Speaker 4: to them. I played with them all night without coming
Speaker 4: up with anything creative. We were just having a blast.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: Was there a sense from you or all three of
Speaker 1: you that you had something special and that was the
Speaker 1: hand and you wanted to play.
Speaker 4: Well it was a brand name. Well, you know, then
Speaker 4: you're dealing with the brand name which wasn't even called
Speaker 4: that when we were a group. You know, there was
Speaker 4: no such thing as.
Speaker 1: A brand name, you know, as branding.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, So I've had people come up to me
Speaker 4: at Clive Davis's dinner a couple of years back. I
Speaker 4: worked for Forbes magazine. I'd like to talk to you
Speaker 4: about branding. I don't know anything about branding, you know.
Speaker 1: He got me there.
Speaker 4: We just became a group, so it wasn't really this
Speaker 4: is the cash cow, this is what we got to do.
Speaker 4: I think it was that way for a lot of people.
Speaker 4: But I remember the time when Rso the company took
Speaker 4: away our song copyrights without telling us, and so suddenly
Speaker 4: they owned all of our songs.
Speaker 1: How were they able to do that?
Speaker 4: By forming a company in Holland and playing all kinds
Speaker 4: of tax games, they managed to acquire all of our
Speaker 4: copyrights without us knowing, And that caused really like World
Speaker 4: War three. I mean, so you look at the period
Speaker 4: when the b were in trouble, look behind the scenes,
Speaker 4: you know there was something else going on that was intense.
Speaker 1: Were you able to get the rights back?
Speaker 4: Got them all back, But that took a lot of
Speaker 4: energy out of me. It took me about a year
Speaker 4: or two to finally get things back in our own ownership.
Speaker 4: I told Robert Stigwood that I would never write another
Speaker 4: song if he didn't give back the songs. And Morris
Speaker 4: and rob they didn't really want to fight. They were
Speaker 4: still too naive. They just sort of, you know, it's
Speaker 4: having success, let's not argue with it.
Speaker 1: But did that fall on you to be the more
Speaker 1: the business mind in the trio would do? The other
Speaker 1: two were more pure artists, and they were like, hey man,
Speaker 1: I really don't have the stomach for that.
Speaker 4: Well. I couldn't stomach the idea that someone could take
Speaker 4: away your songs. I just couldn't live with that. So
Speaker 4: if they were okay with that, it wasn't really a
Speaker 4: matter of that's how they felt. It was more a
Speaker 4: matter that Robert Stigwood and Rso played divide and conquer,
Speaker 4: you know, so they would nurture and be nicer Robin
Speaker 4: and Morris, and Robin and Morris wouldn't worry about it,
Speaker 4: you know. So it's all about that. It's people whispering
Speaker 4: in your ears. It's the same with every group. You know,
Speaker 4: there's always going to be someone in the industry that
Speaker 4: thinks they can make something out of you if you
Speaker 4: don't have your brothers. And that was said to Robin,
Speaker 4: was said to Morris, and was said to.
Speaker 1: Me, I want to do a movie about your career.
Speaker 1: I'm going to do a narrative film, and I want
Speaker 1: to play the record executive who gets each of you
Speaker 1: alone in the same thing. It says, you know, Marris,
Speaker 1: if you just unloaded these two losers, you have no idea.
Speaker 1: That's right, the heights we could hit and listen to Rob,
Speaker 1: these guys are just dead weight around your I mean
Speaker 1: your brother. I mean, we've seen every color they have, Barry,
Speaker 1: I mean, come on, these guys are just dragging you down.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 1: You know all that stuff divide and conquer.
Speaker 4: But industrial Yeah, not the families, not the wives, but
Speaker 4: the people who sought to gain from something, or in fact,
Speaker 4: just through Robert Stigwood, you know. So it was. It
Speaker 4: was a huge industrial game. Armored Urtekin and who was
Speaker 4: the head of Atlantic Records, and Robert began to fall
Speaker 4: out because jive talking in the movie Saturday Night Fever.
Speaker 4: Robert only used the live version of jive talking so
Speaker 4: you wouldn't have to pay the extra, you know, and
Speaker 4: Areef Mardin and Armored went berserk because they didn't have
Speaker 4: a record in Saturday Night Fever. They didn't know it's
Speaker 4: going to be successful. In fact, most of the time,
Speaker 4: I think they doubted us anyway. So when that happened,
Speaker 4: they were unhappy. They were really unhappy, and so I
Speaker 4: think that was the cause of a lot of a
Speaker 4: lot of crisis points for us as well as Robert.
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin. You were listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: If you love conversations with legendary singers, be sure to
Speaker 1: check out my episode with the incomparable barbous diceand we
Speaker 1: shared lunch and talked about our love for food and
Speaker 1: Barbara's early dreams of fame.
Speaker 5: I read Nancy Drew Mysteries, I read movie magazines, you know,
Speaker 5: and dream that someday maybe I could be famous.
Speaker 1: Did you have that dream then?
Speaker 5: When you were here, I would have my pint of
Speaker 5: coffee ice cream Briers and sit in my bed and
Speaker 5: dream go to the movies sometimes on a Saturday afternoon.
Speaker 5: The Lowis Kings with had the greatest ice cream, and
Speaker 5: we also.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, here the rest of my conversation with Barbara
Speaker 1: streisand at Here'sthething dot org. After the break we talk
Speaker 1: about disco and how the Beg's soundtrack to Saturday Night
Speaker 1: Fever in nineteen seventy seven brought them near total domination
Speaker 1: of the music charts and the dance floor. I'm Alec
Speaker 1: Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. The bee
Speaker 1: Gees distinguished themselves vocally with their lush harmonies. Robin had
Speaker 1: his distinctive vibrato, Morris anchored the melody, and then, like
Speaker 1: an ace pitcher discovering a slider, Barry found his falsetto.
Speaker 4: Well. It first happened on a song call Please read
Speaker 4: me that I did a few different falsetto harmonies to
Speaker 4: that song, basically because of the Beach Boys and Brian
Speaker 4: Wilson and I forgot all about that. So we were
Speaker 4: nights on Broadway and a reef Mardenar, producer at that point,
Speaker 4: said can anybody scream like Paul McCartney. We all looked
Speaker 4: at each other and said, well, how do you mean?
Speaker 4: He said, well, you know, like I saw her standing
Speaker 4: there and how Paul suddenly screams a high note? Can
Speaker 4: anyone Can any of you guys do that? And I said, well, yeah,
Speaker 4: I done something like that way back, I said, but
Speaker 4: I became the volunteer. Nobody else really wanted to take
Speaker 4: a shot at that, so I went out there and
Speaker 4: just discovered it. At first, it was tentative and nervous
Speaker 4: and and I didn't know what it was. And then
Speaker 4: it just began to get stronger and stronger.
Speaker 1: With you and your brothers, there's such a quotient of
Speaker 1: beauty inside the music. There's so much sensitivity inside of
Speaker 1: the lyrics and the singing. And I'm wondering, when you
Speaker 1: would perform live, what was your ritual if you had one.
Speaker 1: On the day of a live show, did you coddle
Speaker 1: your voice? How did you prep for a show?
Speaker 4: I would wake up singing, because after a show you
Speaker 4: lose your voice. It's gone. So the next morning you
Speaker 4: just hope and pray that it's going to come back again,
Speaker 4: you know, so when you wake up, you start warming up.
Speaker 4: So I'd be doing a lot of this different range stuff.
Speaker 4: One set of principles for the falsetto another set of
Speaker 4: principles for the real voice. Check out your highest note.
Speaker 4: Do it all day and it comes back if you're lucky.
Speaker 1: And how much before you would do a live show,
Speaker 1: how much would you rehearse prior to going on the road.
Speaker 4: Rehearsal you would usually be about a month with weekends
Speaker 4: out so you could work at your chops back again,
Speaker 4: and that way you develop strength and you develop confidence.
Speaker 4: And these days I had these three ladies that are amazing,
Speaker 4: and so any song where Robin might have sung, they
Speaker 4: cover me and they do those things. But there's actly
Speaker 4: nothing like walking from the dressing room to the stage.
Speaker 4: Nothing like it in the world.
Speaker 1: Really.
Speaker 4: I think Bruce Springsteen said it, there's something magical about
Speaker 4: hearing the crowd two minutes before you walk on.
Speaker 1: The stake coming. You're getting closer to them.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, music occupies such a unique place in people's lives,
Speaker 1: and really dwarfs of film and television. Yeah, because film
Speaker 1: and television is something you have to make an appointment
Speaker 1: with you have to sit and watch it. Where music
Speaker 1: is something that you can have in your life any anywhere.
Speaker 1: You can be driving, you could be having sex, you
Speaker 1: can be at the gym, it could be jogging. Music
Speaker 1: is in your ears at will, whenever you want it
Speaker 1: to be.
Speaker 4: That's true.
Speaker 1: And therefore, and I think when people I always say
Speaker 1: the same line. When you die, you don't remember an
Speaker 1: episode of Seinfeld? You remember? How can you ment a
Speaker 1: broken heart? You know what I mean?
Speaker 4: Yes, I do. And then the question then becomes why
Speaker 4: why does music and harmonics and vibrations and means so
Speaker 4: much to us? You know, I love Frank Sinatra as
Speaker 4: much as I love Pavarotti. I love the Distant Past,
Speaker 4: the immigrant music, as much as I love country music.
Speaker 4: I don't have categories, you know, I just love what
Speaker 4: I love and it's not to any music. But why
Speaker 4: why do we all do this?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 4: What is the need in us? So I want to
Speaker 4: do something about that. I'd love to do a program
Speaker 4: about trying to understand that.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a corny question, but like have
Speaker 1: you ever stood there? And you were going to sing
Speaker 1: a lyric? There was a particularly exquisite lyric of one
Speaker 1: of your most famous songs, and you thought you were
Speaker 1: going to break down crying.
Speaker 4: Yeah, have you ever.
Speaker 1: Been almost overwhelmed by the music you're singing?
Speaker 4: Yes, we wrote a song called Wish You Were Here
Speaker 4: for Andy because he passed away at the age of thirty,
Speaker 4: and we wanted to do it on stage and we
Speaker 4: never could. So, you know, we got through about two
Speaker 4: or three lines and then looked at each other. We
Speaker 4: can't do this. We just can't do this. It's it
Speaker 4: makes it just makes me cry. I just can't sing it.
Speaker 4: At least the song is there, you know. But yes,
Speaker 4: that was a moment. That was a moment. It's all
Speaker 4: part of it. You're you're in a way, you're sort
Speaker 4: of acting, and you're pretending to be someone that you
Speaker 4: probably don't believe you are anyway. You know, the song's
Speaker 4: always moved Me? How deep is your Love Moves Me?
Speaker 4: And and immortality the song that's Celindian.
Speaker 1: I can't believe you said that. Every time I hear
Speaker 1: that song, I think I would break down if I
Speaker 1: sang that song because just the meaning of that song.
Speaker 1: You wrote that song? Yeah, yeah, what is that song about?
Speaker 1: In your mind?
Speaker 4: Well, I think it's it's at some point in your
Speaker 4: life you reflect on who you are and what you
Speaker 4: are and the culmination of your opinion, and if you
Speaker 4: can do that, then everything's okay, you know. So so
Speaker 4: for me, it's like, so this is who I am,
Speaker 4: this is all I know, and I must choose to
Speaker 4: live for all that I can and give the spark
Speaker 4: that makes the power grow.
Speaker 1: But I also find it's kind of a poem, if
Speaker 1: you will, about being a famous artist. You know, like
Speaker 1: inside some of those lyrics, I hear someone sitting there going,
Speaker 1: there's no turning back for me.
Speaker 4: Now that's right, you know, that's right. But we don't
Speaker 4: say goodbye, and that to me is the key part
Speaker 4: of the song. It doesn't matter whether I'm here or not,
Speaker 4: there are no goodbyes, you know. And it was written
Speaker 4: for Robert Stigwood wanting a song for the stage version
Speaker 4: of Saturday Night Fever, and we'd already come up with
Speaker 4: the song, but he wanted the guy in the show
Speaker 4: to sing it, and I thought, but this is a
Speaker 4: woman's song. It's a woman's song. Some songs are for
Speaker 4: women and some songs are for men, you know. So
Speaker 4: there's a masculinity in some music, and there's a femininity
Speaker 4: in music. That's why I work with Barbara. That's right
Speaker 4: with Diana Ross and the ability to to Selene to
Speaker 4: lock in to the feminine side, you know, and understand
Speaker 4: that Barbara Streisen still doesn't quite understand what woman in
Speaker 4: love means. You know, it's it's a right her and
Speaker 4: get a Rebuddal says it's a right at offend, which
Speaker 4: is in the song. She'ays what does that mean? It's
Speaker 4: a right at offend? And I did spend some time
Speaker 4: explaining before the Me Too movement that women can fall
Speaker 4: in love too without telling anybody. It's not all down
Speaker 4: to the guy, you know, and I had to sort
Speaker 4: of talk her through that. Kenny Rogers still doesn't know
Speaker 4: what I was in the streamers about.
Speaker 1: Come on, Kenny, well, let's let's let's throw your cards
Speaker 1: in the table here. What songs that you've immortalized do
Speaker 1: you not really know what they're about? Come on, it's
Speaker 1: it's time for you to fess about. What song are
Speaker 1: you saying you don't really get the meaning of.
Speaker 4: We never recorded a song that we didn't understand, you know.
Speaker 4: There were some very abstract songs Lemon's Never Forget. I
Speaker 4: think he's a very abstract song and not everybody's favorite.
Speaker 4: Everything had a purpose to it. We began to learn
Speaker 4: from the Beatles that you could write about anything. You
Speaker 4: could write about life itself. You know. So you had
Speaker 4: Paperback Writer or and you had Yellow Submarine, and it
Speaker 4: was okay, you know, you can write about these things.
Speaker 4: It doesn't all have to be about having your heart
Speaker 4: broken or falling in love or they went through that,
Speaker 4: but then they understood, they understood something about life. That's
Speaker 4: where Sergeant Pepper reached its point, the culmination of the
Speaker 4: peak create creativity that these guys were giving us.
Speaker 1: You know, well, when you mentioned Sargant Pepper, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I think when you go into Saturday Night Fever and
Speaker 1: when you're inside that experience and you're recording the music
Speaker 1: to that, did they show you cuts of the film?
Speaker 1: Did you see some footage of the film or the
Speaker 1: whole film to inspire you to go write the music?
Speaker 1: Or you had to write the music without any cinematic
Speaker 1: reference point.
Speaker 4: Robert Center's a script, but we didn't read it. We
Speaker 4: just we just listened to his verbal describing what it was,
Speaker 4: which is to him it was so you didn't.
Speaker 1: See the film finished and then write the music.
Speaker 4: No. Wow. He sent us a script, but we didn't
Speaker 4: read it, and we just said, tell us what you want,
Speaker 4: tell us what you think it is. Well, it's tribal
Speaker 4: rites of a new Saturday Night okay. And that was
Speaker 4: an article by Nick conn And in New York Magazine, right.
Speaker 4: And he said, but I need a better name for
Speaker 4: the film. And I said, well, what about night Fever?
Speaker 4: And he said, no, that's too pornographic. I said, okay.
Speaker 4: But then in the end it turned into Saturday Night
Speaker 4: Fever and I didn't know.
Speaker 1: So when you're inside that experience of making that music, yeah,
Speaker 1: do you kind of know that you're onto something or
Speaker 1: you had no idea what that was going to become.
Speaker 4: We had no idea what it was going to become.
Speaker 4: And we were trying to reinvent ourselves anyway. We just
Speaker 4: mixed a live album that we'd done in La and
Speaker 4: then Robert called up and said, I need five or
Speaker 4: six songs for this film with this new gentleman named
Speaker 4: John Travolta. So okay, all of that in itself is
Speaker 4: exciting enough. It sort of kickstarted the ideas and staying
Speaker 4: alive was one of those ideas. More than a woman.
Speaker 4: If I can't have you, how deep your love? Obviously
Speaker 4: a night fever. So we just started writing. We were
Speaker 4: fifty miles outside of Paris. We didn't have, you know, television,
Speaker 4: we didn't have any of those distractions, if you like,
Speaker 4: and we just got on with it. And about three weeks,
Speaker 4: two or three weeks, and then we got serious when
Speaker 4: we got back to Miami and made the records for real.
Speaker 1: Well, I just want to say as a reference point
Speaker 1: that I am in Washington, d C. I went to
Speaker 1: college down there first my then girlfriend who was very
Speaker 1: much of a nightclub dancing She and her roommate, I
Speaker 1: think there was like three couples. We go see the
Speaker 1: movie Saturday Night Fever, and we said to ourselves, and
Speaker 1: the guys are look at each other, going, Jesus Christ,
Speaker 1: look at this. You think I'm gonna get up there
Speaker 1: and do that in a room full of people, Like
Speaker 1: she wants to go to clubs and go dancing like this.
Speaker 1: I said, that's never happening. Right within two weeks, I
Speaker 1: had the platform shoes, I had my hair blow dried
Speaker 1: to death. My hair was blow dried like it was
Speaker 1: some French pastry. I put more hairspray. My hair was
Speaker 1: all poofed out and born out. And the shirt I got,
Speaker 1: the shirt opened right to I got the I'm ready,
Speaker 1: I'm ready to go. It was a tsunami Saturday night.
Speaker 1: Fever was a tsunami.
Speaker 4: Yeah, whether you liked it or not, it was gonna
Speaker 4: stay around.
Speaker 6: It was.
Speaker 1: We liked it. It was just everywhere.
Speaker 4: Well that my story is that we were starting to
Speaker 4: shoot Sogeant Pepper the movie, right and and we had
Speaker 4: Peter Frampton had his own Winter Bagel, and we had
Speaker 4: one Winter Bagel between us, and about two weeks into
Speaker 4: shooting the same time, Fever came out and all of
Speaker 4: the dancers in the movie were suddenly dancing to this
Speaker 4: music at the lunch breaks, and we could hear it
Speaker 4: from our winter a bagel, Like, what what are they doing?
Speaker 4: Why are they playing Southern feva? You know, because at
Speaker 4: that point it hadn't taken off, you know, And within
Speaker 4: about a week we had our own separate Winner bagels.
Speaker 4: So there's Hollywood right there.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't do that.
Speaker 4: We made that out, but we made that movie. The
Speaker 4: soundtrack to that movie we're the only other group to
Speaker 4: record the Whold of Sergeant Pepper with George Martin. Right,
Speaker 4: so there's something that's something I'm proud of.
Speaker 1: How would you describe that experience? You're performing somebody else's music.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, but we were learning sergendary music, yes, legendary music,
Speaker 4: and we wanted to perform that music, and George Martin
Speaker 4: was happy to show us the different tricks that that
Speaker 4: they would all get up to, you know, the song
Speaker 4: sun King or because they all sang the same melody
Speaker 4: once and then they would sing the harmony all together,
Speaker 4: the same thing again, all singing the same melody, and
Speaker 4: then they do the third harmony and they'd sing all
Speaker 4: that together, so that you've got three guys on three
Speaker 4: tracks singing each harmony, not three part harmony. And then
Speaker 4: you play that back and it's mind blowing. So we
Speaker 4: just learned stuff. We learned stuff.
Speaker 1: Whose idea was it to do the documentary?
Speaker 4: Well, it was Frank Marshall Nigel Sinclair, and they had
Speaker 4: done the Sinarchi documentary, they'd done a couple of others
Speaker 4: that they were very proud of. The Beatles eight days
Speaker 4: a week, I think they did that the day that
Speaker 4: we signed with Capital was the day I met Frank
Speaker 4: Marshall and Steve Barnett, the president at that point, introduced
Speaker 4: me to Frank Marshall. Frank Marshall said, we're going to
Speaker 4: do this documentary and tell us something about how it
Speaker 4: began for you guys, and I did. I told him
Speaker 4: a story and he went, Okay, we're going to do
Speaker 4: this documentary. That's how it began. But it was it
Speaker 4: was two years, two and a half years before we
Speaker 4: saw anything, and the Verse Cup didn't fly very well.
Speaker 4: Why there were too many on truths, too many misconceptions
Speaker 4: that everyone was saying, well, that's true, but it really wasn't.
Speaker 4: So I had to take issue with some of the things.
Speaker 4: And I know that in the end some of those
Speaker 4: things may still be there. But I could never watch
Speaker 4: it again because I can't watch my family pass one
Speaker 4: up to the other. That's not fun.
Speaker 1: Barry Gibb Subscribe to Here's the Thing on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there,
Speaker 1: leave us a review. When we return from the break,
Speaker 1: Barry talks about his regrets, and we'll also hear from
Speaker 1: his son Steve. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing that is, of course more than a
Speaker 1: woman from the soundtrack of Saturday Night Fever. It's been
Speaker 1: a busy time for Barry Gibb. There's the new HBO
Speaker 1: documentary about the Beg's, and earlier this year, Barry released
Speaker 1: an album of Beg's songs covered by some of Nashville's
Speaker 1: biggest names. It's called Greenfields.
Speaker 4: These are people I admired the most. These are countrilogists
Speaker 4: that have always been in my blood so ever since
Speaker 4: I was a child. Dolly Pardons has been a really
Speaker 4: important part of music for me.
Speaker 3: Inxting words take them to me.
Speaker 4: I wanted to get people I admired the most to
Speaker 4: sing our songs. And maybe it's volume two that it
Speaker 4: will happen in the future. I don't know. But this
Speaker 4: was great fun and I was more than intimidated. But
Speaker 4: it wasn't in my hands. It was in Dave Cobbs sense.
Speaker 1: When you say you were more than intimidating, absolutely, how
Speaker 1: so well, how many people do you truly admire?
Speaker 4: You know, so when you're in their company you just
Speaker 4: feel When I meet Paul McCartney. I don't know what
Speaker 4: to say. My mouth won't say anything. You know. All
Speaker 4: I can say is I feel fine.
Speaker 1: And you granted they must have been intimidated to sing
Speaker 1: your music as well.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, no, it was all the way aroun There's
Speaker 4: no question about that. The only person I think was
Speaker 4: not intimidated by any of us was Dave Cobb, the producer,
Speaker 4: So he was the decider, was the decider, he was
Speaker 4: the director.
Speaker 1: Well the cut you do with Dolly, Yeah, what a
Speaker 1: beautiful rendering that is of that song. When you hear
Speaker 1: other people sing your songs, yeah, what goes through your mind?
Speaker 4: It's a very flattering thing. It's like anytime over the
Speaker 4: years anyone sang one of our songs. If someone's covering
Speaker 4: your song, that's a huge compliment. So I have the
Speaker 4: same feeling every time, and that goes back a long,
Speaker 4: long way. So anyone singing our songs is wow, why
Speaker 4: did that person sing our song?
Speaker 1: Now, when someone wants to sing your songs, yeah, is
Speaker 1: it open to anybody.
Speaker 4: Anyone who records our song doesn't need to ask us.
Speaker 1: They don't.
Speaker 4: It's just the way it works. No one needs to
Speaker 4: ask us to sing one of our songs. If you're
Speaker 4: using one of our songs in a movie or in
Speaker 4: a sing license like a commercial, you have to ask,
Speaker 4: can you have to make it?
Speaker 1: Sure?
Speaker 4: But beyond that, anyone can record our songs.
Speaker 1: Would they pay you the royalties for you as the songwriter?
Speaker 4: Well, it we'd be paid indirectly by the system that works,
Speaker 4: like mechanical royalties and things like that. Sure. The only
Speaker 4: question I ever had was, I don't like commercials about alcohol.
Speaker 4: I don't like commercials about cigarettes.
Speaker 1: Is it true that you have a someone's making a
Speaker 1: feature film about the bechees?
Speaker 4: Yeah, the biopics in its own process right now. Graham
Speaker 4: King is in charge of that. He did the Bohemian
Speaker 4: Rhapsody movie, right.
Speaker 1: Are you going to have some participation in that?
Speaker 4: Absolutely? I'm sort of in agreement with Graham, and that
Speaker 4: is that sometimes the story can be a little different
Speaker 4: than the truth, but not too much.
Speaker 1: You more than your two brothers. I'll say this only
Speaker 1: because this is my recollection of it. You know, you
Speaker 1: guys would get out there and sing. When you watched
Speaker 1: you sing on film, you know, it's a different story
Speaker 1: when you're just listening to the music. But when you'd
Speaker 1: watch you sing. Your brothers are pretty straightforward musicians, and
Speaker 1: here you are, and the hair and the clothes. He
Speaker 1: was like this preposterously handsome guy. And then you'd open
Speaker 1: your mouth and you'd sing these like heart stoppingly beautiful songs.
Speaker 1: And I want to ask you that, when the Beegs
Speaker 1: were at the zenith, when everything was just clicking for you,
Speaker 1: what was the best part of it and what was
Speaker 1: the downside of it for you?
Speaker 4: You know, there's a lot of things I regret. Saturday
Speaker 4: Night Fever wasn't something I regretted. I didn't like people
Speaker 4: disregarding us after fever. I thought that was unfair. But
Speaker 4: that's the industry, you know, it's very fragile. As you
Speaker 4: said earlier, it will it will turn on you in
Speaker 4: a heartbeat. And so I think generally what I regret
Speaker 4: is that we became overexposed. And I think that that
Speaker 4: was from fever, Yeah, yeah, and everything else. Just having
Speaker 4: five songs in the top ten or three songs in
Speaker 4: the top five. We were becoming pretty tainted. You know,
Speaker 4: we were beginning not to really appreciate having a number
Speaker 4: one record, but we equaled the Beatles record. We are
Speaker 4: six number ones in a row, and that was all right.
Speaker 4: I can live with that. I can little work that'll work,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 1: But I mean my other thing is that I find
Speaker 1: that the business is that people tend to look at
Speaker 1: something that's super successful and say, well, if it's successful,
Speaker 1: then it's like potato chips. It can't be really that, right, great,
Speaker 1: it's like a snack food. If it's something that appeals
Speaker 1: to the general public. Two masses of the general publish.
Speaker 1: If you're selling tens of millions of records, it can't
Speaker 1: really be that it's.
Speaker 4: Too commercial, right right?
Speaker 1: Did you get it? You got a whiff of that.
Speaker 4: Yes, But you know, I look back a long way
Speaker 4: and I see the final year of Elvis's life, the
Speaker 4: final year of the Beatles, Michael Jackson, and how they
Speaker 4: began to fragment, you know, and because nothing ever really less.
Speaker 4: A group is not a natural state to be in
Speaker 4: unless you're relatives, unless you're brothers or sisters. So I
Speaker 4: see all that. I see that in the end, people
Speaker 4: like Elvis Michael Beatles began to make records that weren't
Speaker 4: quite up to the scratch of Sergeant Pebble.
Speaker 1: Was well when the Disco inferno, if you will dies down.
Speaker 1: What happens to your songwriting when you realize that's petered
Speaker 1: out that.
Speaker 4: Well because of the backlash, We didn't base our lives
Speaker 4: on Fever. We just sort of well back to the studio,
Speaker 4: you know, we were. You know, I've been married for
Speaker 4: fifty years now, last September it was fifty years, and
Speaker 4: I've had a wonderful time. You know, I love that
Speaker 4: woman and we've been together for that long, and so
Speaker 4: I always had her at my back. I always. I
Speaker 4: never I never had to be out there on my own.
Speaker 4: You had a home family. So at the end of
Speaker 4: FEVA we were starting to raise kids, you know, and
Speaker 4: so the distractions were plentiful. They were plentiful. And you know,
Speaker 4: even when that happened, you think to yourself. I know,
Speaker 4: I thought to myself, well maybe that's it. That was warm,
Speaker 4: that was great, that was wonderful. Maybe go back to Australia,
Speaker 4: maybe go back to England, and you start to question
Speaker 4: your life and if it's time to change your life.
Speaker 4: That was the moment that you could have done it.
Speaker 1: Speaking of family, your son plays with you from.
Speaker 4: Time, Yes, Steevie direct, Yeah, he's right here.
Speaker 1: Son, Stevie plays with you, and he also plays some
Speaker 1: other types of music. He's like into heavy metal or
Speaker 1: absolutely right, we need Stevie to come on just for
Speaker 1: one second. Tell us, yeah, does he get the bends
Speaker 1: when he goes from the music of Barry gibb to
Speaker 1: the music of Metallica or whatever you're doing. What's the
Speaker 1: scene in between that kind of music?
Speaker 3: You know, I grew up watching the Begs.
Speaker 6: I stood on the side of the stage as a kid,
Speaker 6: and I thought my dad was the coolest guy on
Speaker 6: planet Earth.
Speaker 3: You know, I really did. But what happened was is
Speaker 3: there was a band called Kiss that came.
Speaker 6: Out around the similar time, and that was my introduction
Speaker 6: into hard rock and heavy metal. And I was always
Speaker 6: fascinated with the guitar. So you know, when I saw
Speaker 6: a guitar that was on fire, I said, Okay, I
Speaker 6: don't know how or when I'm going.
Speaker 3: To get to do that, but I got to figure
Speaker 3: out how to do that.
Speaker 6: And I knew enough to know that being a musician
Speaker 6: and being Barry Gibbs' son was probably a terrible idea.
Speaker 3: And I knew that from a young age.
Speaker 6: So I followed my joy with the guitar, and that
Speaker 6: took me a lot of places. You know, I've played
Speaker 6: in a bunch of heavy metal bands over the years,
Speaker 6: like a Black Label Society, crow Bar, Kingdom of Sorrow.
Speaker 6: And the thing is is that I figured it made
Speaker 6: me different enough that I could maybe carve out a
Speaker 6: career and not be compared to my dad. You're singing good, now, Well,
Speaker 6: what happened is my dad and I have always kind of,
Speaker 6: you know, messed around a little bit, you know, writing
Speaker 6: songs and stuff like that. So you know, I got
Speaker 6: to learn about songwriting from the best, you know, and
Speaker 6: I got to watch the Beg's write many times over
Speaker 6: my you know, the course of my life.
Speaker 3: So I've been a student of theirs. But you know,
Speaker 3: when when Robin.
Speaker 6: Passed away, Dad was clearly struggling to figure out where.
Speaker 3: To go in life.
Speaker 6: And at that point I was like, Dad, you gotta
Speaker 6: channel this into music, like you can't sit here and
Speaker 6: mourn forever, you know. And he said, okay, well let's
Speaker 6: do let's do a show. And I said, yeah, you
Speaker 6: should do that, and he goes, well, I only want
Speaker 6: to do it if you do it with me. I mean,
Speaker 6: I definitely didn't feel like I could step into those
Speaker 6: roles that Robin and or Morris had. But over the
Speaker 6: course of a few years, you know, with his page
Speaker 6: and kindness, I found my place with him. You know,
Speaker 6: I sometimes joke that I'm his emotional support animal. But
Speaker 6: the fact of the matter is is we've come to
Speaker 6: understand it. Even especially recently, now I know how to
Speaker 6: harmonize with him, which I didn't really know how to do.
Speaker 6: I began to learn that really by being thrown in
Speaker 6: the fire with him, And to be honest, it's been
Speaker 6: probably the greatest gift of my life to come full
Speaker 6: circle and actually be with him making.
Speaker 4: Music toward Australia. Yeah, we toward England, we taught America
Speaker 4: and that was an incredible year of just finding yourself again.
Speaker 1: Stevie said that he thought his father was the coolest guy.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you something, stev your father is the
Speaker 1: coolest guy. Your father reminds me of Nat King Cole. Oh,
Speaker 1: your father reminds me of a guy that could sing
Speaker 1: and just bring you to tears. He was so beautiful
Speaker 1: and the songs were so beautiful, and he's sang them
Speaker 1: thank you perfectly. And then when you'd watch him on film,
Speaker 1: do it you go my god, he's also the coolest
Speaker 1: guy I've ever seen in my life. Look at this guy.
Speaker 6: You know, I don't know that anybody will ever be
Speaker 6: able to relate to this, because I do feel a
Speaker 6: little unique in that I've had this experience.
Speaker 3: But I think that for me, we all have great
Speaker 3: memories throughout.
Speaker 6: Our life, whether it's the you know, the birth of
Speaker 6: our children, or or you know, that first big accomplishment
Speaker 6: that you make, or whatever it is in life. But
Speaker 6: I have to tell you that I was talking about
Speaker 6: that show that we did after Robin died, and there
Speaker 6: was a moment where he was singing and I was
Speaker 6: off to his right on stage, and he was really
Speaker 6: in a I have to say, he was kind of
Speaker 6: transcending into another level in front of my eyes. I
Speaker 6: was like, I could not I was reduced to tears
Speaker 6: while I was on stage watching him sing, because you know,
Speaker 6: I remembered being a very small kid standing on the
Speaker 6: side of the stage going hey dad, you know, I'm
Speaker 6: over here type of thing, and then too, you know,
Speaker 6: thirty something years later, I'm standing on stage with him
Speaker 6: and there was a moment where he took a breath
Speaker 6: and just looked at me and it was he winked
Speaker 6: at me, and there was the most pure expression of
Speaker 6: love with no words between a father and son and
Speaker 6: that moment, and I remember thinking to myself, I'll never
Speaker 6: forget this moment for the rest of my life, because
Speaker 6: there are no words for that kind of love between
Speaker 6: a son and a father.
Speaker 3: And I tell him this all the time.
Speaker 6: I said, Dad, it's okay that you don't think you're
Speaker 6: the greatest of all time, but just don't ever forget
Speaker 6: that there is a second that I don't believe that
Speaker 6: you're the greatest of all time. Just be true to
Speaker 6: yourself and do what you love. Because his love is
Speaker 6: pure and his expression of it is incredible, and I'll
Speaker 6: never get tired of it.
Speaker 1: Listen, I say this only because it's true, and I
Speaker 1: feel that we all are seekers of the truth here,
Speaker 1: truth and beauty, and that is Stevie. Your father knows
Speaker 1: full well that he's the greatest of all time. Who knows?
Speaker 1: And this modesty thing, it's just a part of an act,
Speaker 1: it's a part of a public It's always like this,
Speaker 1: Oh oh thank you, Oh God, that's so nice of
Speaker 1: you to say that, Oh thank you. No no, please, no, no, please,
Speaker 1: Your father's fully aware of who he is and what
Speaker 1: his towering achievements in the music industry are. Himnist brothers
Speaker 1: and him on his ownA frozen for that matter, I
Speaker 1: want to say I have loved you, and I have
Speaker 1: loved your music. I mean, good music is good music,
Speaker 1: and I have loved you and I have loved your
Speaker 1: music forever. I mean, I have so many Beg's albums,
Speaker 1: so every now and then I got to hear I
Speaker 1: can't see Nobody. I play that song and.
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh my, you know, I con't see no Buddy
Speaker 4: was written in a dressing room with strippers.
Speaker 1: I thought it was you were like in church.
Speaker 4: It was one of my greatest memory bad bums. And
Speaker 4: here's a song.
Speaker 1: You know. Let's stop right there and let me just
Speaker 1: say I'm so grateful to you. You are one of
Speaker 1: the greatest musicians that ever lived and one of the
Speaker 1: greatest vocalists that ever lived. And I never get tired
Speaker 1: of listening to your music never.
Speaker 4: You're very kind.
Speaker 1: Thank you both for making time to do this. This
Speaker 1: has been a joy. This has been a real joy.
Speaker 4: This has been a real joy for us too.
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing,
Speaker 1: If shown you.
Speaker 2: SOB so you.
Speaker 1: We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Carrie Donahue and Zach McNeice.
Speaker 1: Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 6: Oh my odes to open up your eyes to