The Story of The Bee Gees: The hitmakers with multiple comebacks from the brink

[00:00:00] Dave Anthony: Hi there. I'm Dave Anthony, and this is the Garage to Stadiums Music History Podcast. On each episode, we tell you the story of how one of our music legends rose from obscurity to fame, and play some of the songs that marked that journey Firstly, we want to thank you, our loyal and growing audience. We've just received word that our podcast, Garage to Stadiums, is now in the top 3% of podcasts globally.

[00:00:26] Dave Anthony: So thank you for passing it on, leaving reviews, and helping to grow the nation of music history fans. Welcome to Garage to Stadiums. Today's episode is the story of The Bee Gees. Born in the British Isles and raised partly in Australia, The Gibb brothers burst onto the international music scene in the late 1960s with an extraordinary run of radio hits.

[00:00:54] Dave Anthony: But their path from obscurity to fame would be anything but straightforward. This is the remarkable [00:01:00] story of three brothers whose career appeared finished, not once, but several times, and each time they adapted, reinvented their sound, and found a way back. Along the way, they survived breakups, fading record sales, family tragedy, and cultural backlash against the music that had made them the biggest group in the world.

[00:01:21] Dave Anthony: The result was one of the most successful acts of the 20th century: 15 Billboard Top 10 hits, 43 songs on the Billboard Hot 100, and more than 220 million records sold worldwide. Here to tell this extraordinary story is author and filmmaker David Leaf, who first joined Garage to Stadiums for our episode on Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys.

[00:01:45] Dave Anthony: David's relationship with The Bee Gees stretches back nearly five decades. In 1979, he worked directly with Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb to write Bee Gees: The Authorized Biography. He later wrote, produced, and directed the [00:02:00]A&E documentary The Bee Gees: This Is Where I Came In, in the year 2000, and then served as a consultant on a follow-up documentary, the 2020 HBO documentary The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?

[00:02:16] Dave Anthony: Few people are better positioned to take us inside the triumphs, tragedies, and astonishing reinventions of The Bee Gees. Welcome back to Garage to Stadiums, David.

[00:02:26]David Leaf: It's, it's great to be back. I, I would kinda like wish I were in the garage with you right now.

[00:02:33] Dave Anthony: That'd be fun. Hey, let-- tell us how your passion for The Bee Gees began.

[00:02:38] Dave Anthony: I know we did a previous episode on Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys, and that was an incredible story how you came to find them, ultimately to write the bio. Tell us about The Bee Gees side of things.

[00:02:51]David Leaf: The Bee Gees was very simple and straightforward. Literally in 1967, when I heard the first [00:03:00] notes, In The Event of Something happening to Me, from New York Mining Disaster, it was like, "What is this sound?

[00:03:05]David Leaf: I love this sound." And I was an instant Bee Gees fan, '67, '68, '69. I wasn't reading rock magazines in those days, so I didn't know anything about them. I remember in college buying The Best of the Bee Gees, which my roommate and I would sing along to these great, great songs. I was a big Beatles fan, a big Beach Boys fan, and the Bee Gees became third in what I like to call the Killer Bs.

[00:03:38] Dave Anthony: Did you meet them prior to writing the authorized biography that you did on

[00:03:42]David Leaf: them? No, I knew nothing about them other, other than through this remarkable good fortune. I, I had done the, the Beach Boys and the California Myth for a company called Delilah Communications in New York.

[00:03:55] Bee Gees: Uh-huh.

[00:03:56]David Leaf: And they, and they had gotten the rights to do an authorized Bee [00:04:00] Gees biography.

[00:04:01]David Leaf: And RSO Records, which was the Bee Gees' label and their manager, was looking for a writer, and Delilah sent them the manuscript for, for my book before it had come out. He was like, "Yes, this is the guy we want to, to write the Bee Gees book."

[00:04:19] Dave Anthony: Huh.

[00:04:19]David Leaf: And, and I said yes instantly.

[00:04:24] Dave Anthony: And so you met them?

[00:04:25]David Leaf: Yes. I flew to Miami.

[00:04:27]David Leaf: Um, I did extensive interviews with the brothers, with their wives. I hadn't spent a lot of time in recording studios prior to that. And it was either my first or second day in Miami. I was in the studio, and everyone was going home for the day except for Barry and, a- and the engineers, producers. And Barry said, "Well, you're welcome to stay if you want."

[00:04:51]David Leaf: And it was like, "Yes, I want." And I sat there on a couch right next to the glass, and Barry's on the other side, [00:05:00] and behind me is, is the, is the engineering desk, and he sang the lead vocal for Too Much Heaven.

[00:05:15]David Leaf: And I'm sitting there thinking, "Okay, is this the most beautiful song I've ever heard, or is it just because I'm here And I'm experiencing it in this incredibly beautiful song. And it turned out to be the former. It, it was one of their greatest songs ever. And, and I get goosebumps truly just talking about being there and watching him.

[00:05:40]David Leaf: It was as if he were making love to the microphone.

[00:05:45] Dave Anthony: That's amazing.

[00:05:46]David Leaf: And, uh, it, it, it was amazing.

[00:05:49] Dave Anthony: The Bee Gees' story began in the British Isles. Barry Gibb was born on September 1st, 1946 on the Isle of Man to Hugh and Barbara Gibb. Three years later [00:06:00]on December 22nd, 1949, twins Robin and Maurice arrived, with Robin born roughly half an hour before his brother.

[00:06:08] Dave Anthony: The family later moved to Manchester, England, where the three boys first began singing together, and eventually the family relocated to Australia. The boys' childhood in England and Australia, what was their family life like? And there was a key figure in there, their father.

[00:06:25]David Leaf: They grew up i- in Manchester, like a lot of the great groups that would come out of England and the British Invasion, but this is well before the British Invasion.

[00:06:35]David Leaf: They're little kids, and Barry had a guitar, and he would strum it, and they would sing pop songs. '

[00:06:42] Dave Anthony: Cause this would've been, what, late '50s?

[00:06:43]David Leaf: It was in the '50s. They were singing pop songs, the Great American Songbook kind of stuff. They just loved doing it, and they would do it at the drop of a hat. Their family life in Manchester was disrupted because apparently, as I was told, R- Robin [00:07:00]was a firebug.

[00:07:03]David Leaf: It wasn't so funny. He was setting fires.

[00:07:05] Dave Anthony: Oh.

[00:07:06]David Leaf: And so the, the, the local officials came to, to Mr. Gibb and said, "We're either gonna put him in reform school or reformatory, or you're gonna move." And for whatever reason, they chose to move to Australia.

[00:07:21] Dave Anthony: And so the father, Hugh Gibb, he becomes effectively their manager.

[00:07:24]David Leaf: Th- these little boys, you know, maybe Barry's nine, and the, and the, and the twins are six, so they were on TV, and you could go to YouTube and, and google Bee Gees on Australian TV, and you'll see these... And they're almost comical performances of songs like My Old Man's a Dustman.

[00:07:44] Speaker 4: Helps to pass the time. Oh, my old man's a dustman.

[00:07:47] Speaker 4: He wears a dustman's hat. He wears god blimey trousers.

[00:07:51]David Leaf: I mean, it's just, it's just very, very charming. They're cute kids. It would've been something that would've been on the Ed Sullivan Show, and then when everyone would've said, "Oh, [00:08:00] aren't they adorable?" Yeah. So what happens is while they're down under, The Beatles happen, and so there's now, "Okay, this is what we wanna be."

[00:08:08]David Leaf: And they're gr- they're growing up. They're teenagers. They're learning to play. Maurice is playing keyboards, and Barry is playing guitar, and, and Robin is singing, and they get a drummer, and they have a band. Now it's time, "Dad, we need to move back to England. That's where everything's happening."

[00:08:23] Dave Anthony: Next, with his sons still unknown, their father and manager Hugh Gibb takes an extraordinary gamble.

[00:08:30] Dave Anthony: He writes directly to the manager of the biggest band in the world, asking if he would represent the young Bee Gees. Would the letter even be answered?

[00:08:41] Announcer: Garage to stadiums. The performers we cover come from all over the world, and so do our listeners. We have listeners in over 100 countries. Join us from wherever you are.

[00:08:53] Show Promo: I'm Alan Kozinn, a former music reviewer for The New York Times and co-author with Adrian Sinclair of The McCartney [00:09:00] Legacy, a multi-volume biography of Paul McCartney focusing on his career after The Beatles. You're listening to the Garage to Stadiums music history podcast, telling the stories of our music legends.

[00:09:17] Dave Anthony: The father writes a letter to Brian Epstein, manager of The Beatles

[00:09:21]David Leaf: Mr. Gibb writes this letter to Brian Epstein thinking, "Well, if they wanna be a group, who better to manage them?"

[00:09:29] Dave Anthony: Why not go to the best manager in the business?

[00:09:32]David Leaf: What can he do but say no? And that's not what happens.

[00:09:35] Dave Anthony: According to the HBO documentary, The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart, on which David Leaf served as a consultant, Brian Epstein did read Hugh Gibb's letter.

[00:09:45] Dave Anthony: His response was simple: "Well, they're from Australia. Give it to Robert Stigwood. He's Australian." Stigwood was a relatively new figure within Epstein's organization, but he was about to become one of the most important figures in the Bee Gees' story. [00:10:00]

[00:10:00]David Leaf: And, and so they take a boat back to England. Nothing was going to stop these boys.

[00:10:05]David Leaf: The partner of Brian Epstein, which really a few people know, was Robert Stigwood, was a partner in that organization, and he's looking for his Beatles. He's not involved with what The Beatles are doing. He's looking for a group that he can mold the way Brian did with, with The Fabs.

[00:10:26] Dave Anthony: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:27]David Leaf: He wasn't a full partner.

[00:10:30]David Leaf: But, but, uh, uh, clearly an ambitious man, and, and having seen what Brian did, it was like, "Okay, I wanna do this. Where, where's my group?"

[00:10:41] Dave Anthony: Mm.

[00:10:41]David Leaf: And in relatively short order, he becomes, uh, the, the Bee Gees' manager.

[00:10:48] Dave Anthony: Uh, '67 to '69 is the relocation to UK, and these guys start releasing a slew of hits. New York Mining Disaster 1941.

[00:10:58] Bee Gees: Have you seen [00:11:00] my wife, Mr. Jones?

[00:11:13] Dave Anthony: To Love Somebody, uh, Massachusetts

[00:11:29] Dave Anthony: I've gotta get a message to you My

[00:11:31] Bee Gees: turn to die. I just-

[00:11:43] Dave Anthony: I started a joke

[00:11:45] Bee Gees: I started a joke which started the whole world

[00:11:54]David Leaf: They, they were unbelievably successful instantly. And, [00:12:00] you know, one of the things that, I don't say, think it wasn't a regret, but it was a disappointment 'cause the Bee Gees had been desperate to have a hit Down Under. And as they're on the boat coming home, they, they learn that Spicks and Specks is a hit in Australia.

[00:12:16] Bee Gees: Away-

[00:12:23] Bee Gees: The sticks and the spheres

[00:12:27]David Leaf: And it's almost like we're now successful down under. Should we be leaving? But no, they, they've got their mission in mind. Stigwood supposedly did, and I've never been able to prove this in a documentary sense. Supposedly, he pressed white label versions of New York Mining Disaster and gave it to New York disc jockeys and said, "It's just a new single from a group whose first letter is B."

[00:12:53]David Leaf: And there hadn't been a Beatles single in a while, so the New York DJs listened to it and said, [00:13:00]"Could that be the new Beatles single?" Wow. And s-

[00:13:02] Dave Anthony: That's brilliant.

[00:13:03]David Leaf: It was very clever, and that's how it got on, on the, the program director's attention. And when they heard it, whether it was The Beatles or not, this is a great record.

[00:13:11]David Leaf: They, and they did have a string of hits that was remarkable, and all self-penned in The Beatles model. You didn't, you didn't mention Words when you listed those hits

[00:13:35]David Leaf: which is the one that the girls would scream for at the concerts. Uh-huh. Barry would, would draw, draw out, you know, ♪ It's only words ♪ I mean, he was a master performer as well as the leader of the group.

[00:13:52] Dave Anthony: Despite what you might assume, the Bee Gees didn't originally stand for Brothers Gibb. The name emerged through a happy coincidence in [00:14:00]Australia.

[00:14:00] Dave Anthony: The boys had begun singing for tossed coins at a Brisbane speedway owned by Bill Good, who recognized something special in 12-year-old Barry and his younger brothers. Good invited his friend, radio DJ Bill Gates, to hear them perform, and Gates heard it too. Then someone noticed the coincidence. Barry Gibb, Bill Good, and Bill Gates all shared the initials BG.

[00:14:28] Dave Anthony: The boys became the Bee Gees, eventually spelled B-E-E G-E-E-S. The name would later get retrofitted to stand for the brothers Gibb

[00:14:41]David Leaf: Barry as the older brother, as the leader, as this kind of leonine presence on stage. I mean, he's just, um, a, a gorgeous, gorgeous man when they started out. So they had these great records, and then if you went to see them, they could sing [00:15:00]live and sound like the records, and there's this guy who, if he had gone solo, could have had, like, a Neil Diamond-like career.

[00:15:08] Dave Anthony: For sure, and it certainly comes through in those documentaries. The guy's just incredibly magnetic, talented. He can write a song at the flip of a switch. It's incredible.

[00:15:19]David Leaf: It's incredible, and, you know, the only thing that kind of bothers me is he has a certain insecurity in his talents 'cause he's comparing himself to The Beatles and Brian Wilson.

[00:15:32]David Leaf: So he feels like, oh, did I live up to that? Well, guess what? He's... I think he's the second most successful songwriter of the 20th century, so after Paul McCartney. So that's, that's a pretty good accomplishment to say the least. For

[00:15:48] Dave Anthony: sure. How would you describe that style of music, that first part? Is it British orchestral pop?

[00:15:53]David Leaf: I think, you know, orchestral pop is a great way to describe it.

[00:15:57] Dave Anthony: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:57]David Leaf: Um, you know, very quickly they, they, they, [00:16:00] they weren't just a four-piece or a five-piece playing hits. The, the records were, were really quite extraordinary, and their fourth album in a very short time but was Odessa, this very, very ambitious double album with a velveteen cover.

[00:16:17]David Leaf: They went from having a hit to an extraordinarily ambitious piece of music in, what, 24 months?

[00:16:25] Dave Anthony: Huh. Uh-huh. Now's the time to establish the personalities of each man, Barry, Robin, and Maurice, Robin and Maurice being the twins and Barry being the older brother, 'cause we wanna understand the chemistry for what's about to come and the dynamics of this trio.

[00:16:40]David Leaf: I think it was Maurice who in the documentary that- We wrote, directed, produced called This Is Where I Came In. He said we were pilly, potty, and pissy. And what he meant was Robin took pills, Barry smoked pot, and Maurice drank. And so they're, they're coping with this overnight [00:17:00] success. And, and something Barry said to me many years after all this happened was the most difficult thing to do is survive first fame.

[00:17:10]David Leaf: They were teenagers when this explosion happened and, and they didn't really ha- how do you deal with this overnight madness? Barry said that when, when when they were touring, he would carry a pocket full of fake rings, no real stones on them. And so when he would meet a girl, he would meet a girl backstage and spend the night with her and give her a ring.

[00:17:33]David Leaf: Right. Now, that was-- Barry was, you know, having the time of his life as, as he should. Robin, I think his personality, while he's very funny and clever, h- it was reflected in his voice. I mean, there's just kind of a hurt quality to his sound.

[00:17:49] Dave Anthony: Mm-hmm. Um- That sort of quivering sound.

[00:17:52]David Leaf: Th- that's a good description.

[00:17:53]David Leaf: I looked at the sky. Whatever that is hit me. It hit a lot of people.

[00:17:59] Dave Anthony: [00:18:00]Mm-hmm.

[00:18:00]David Leaf: Maurice is kind of the third wheel. So they're three young men navigating this crazy world.

[00:18:08] Dave Anthony: Next, the Bee Gees have barely reached the top when the unthinkable happens. After that remarkable run of early hits, success begins pulling the brothers apart, and suddenly the future of the group hangs in the balance

[00:18:24] Announcer: How do we give you the real stories of music history?

[00:18:27] Announcer: Because we talk to the insiders, rock journalists, authors, and filmmakers who live and breathe music.

[00:18:34]David Leaf: Do you love Garage to Stadiums? We'd appreciate if you left a review on your favorite podcast platform They all get married. As we saw with The Beatles, once you're married, now you're not living together, you have separate lives, you have wives who are kind of whispering in your ear.

[00:18:54]David Leaf: And there are people whispering in Barry's ear, "Why don't you go [00:19:00]solo?" There are people whispering in Robin's ear, "Why don't you go solo?"

[00:19:04] Midnight Special: Uh-huh.

[00:19:05]David Leaf: And Robin leaves the group and goes solo. He has a European hit, For Whom the Bell Tolls.

[00:19:12] Dave Anthony: Was it just disagreement? Was it philosophical differences?

[00:19:15]David Leaf: I just think it, I think it was just jealousy.

[00:19:18]David Leaf: I don't know that there were creative differences really. I think maybe Barry was the one getting the most attention. Mm. Maurice's hair was already thinning by, you know, early on.

[00:19:27] Dave Anthony: Yeah.

[00:19:27]David Leaf: Robin, you know, looks like he sounds. He, it's like he's otherworldly, and, and Barry is the one that the girls are probably throwing their panties at.

[00:19:39] Dave Anthony: So that leads us to, I guess you said that Robin had that hit, but then brothers being brothers, reconciliation and recovery, 1970 to '72. They come out with Lonely Days[00:20:00]

[00:20:05] Dave Anthony: "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart," which went to number one in the US in '71

[00:20:24] Dave Anthony: "Run to Me"

[00:20:40] Dave Anthony: These are soft rock, soul pop, dramatic ballad type of music. Who would be their contemporaries at that time in that kind of style? Would it, would it be someone like The Carpenters? I think The Carpenters is a good comparison because of Karen's voice.

[00:20:59] Bee Gees: [00:21:00]Some can Rainy days and Mondays always get me down

[00:21:08]David Leaf: Karen's voice is so spectacularly, heartbreakingly distinctive that, you know, you could say the Bee Gees' sound with Robin in particular- Mm-hmm ... has that kind of feeling. And th- these are, you know, How Can You Mend a Broken Heart is as autobiographical as a song can be. But they very quickly kind of fell into a morass of it, and as the albums tumbled out in '72, '73, '74, they were not great albums.

[00:21:33]David Leaf: Ah. Th- there could be a song like Saw a New Morning that you would listen to and go, "Oh, that's a great one."

[00:21:51]David Leaf: But there was too much maudlin pop, I guess would be the feeling of it. So we look at their career as a [00:22:00] rollercoaster

[00:22:01] Dave Anthony: Next, by 1973, the Bee Gees' hit-making formula had stopped working. Their ballads were fading from the charts. And by 1974, their career was at a crossroads. To survive, they would gamble on an R&B producer and an entirely new sound.

[00:22:19] Dave Anthony: But could the Bee Gees convincingly become a different band?

[00:22:24] Announcer: Garage to Stadium's Music History podcast, now in the top 3% of podcasts globally. Wanna go deeper? Head to Garage to Stadiums online for more from this story

[00:22:38] Dave Anthony: Like you said, the decline '73, '74, they're searching for a formula solution. Arif Mardin, he starts to influence them.

[00:22:48]David Leaf: He's an R&B producer.

[00:22:49] Dave Anthony: Right. And he encourages them to immerse themselves in that style of music?

[00:22:54]David Leaf: Well, they, they already were immersed in it. For example, uh, circa [00:23:00] '68, before Otis Redding died, Robert Stigwood said to Barry, "I want you to write a song, To Love Somebody, for Otis Redding."

[00:23:08]David Leaf: And Barry wrote the song almost overnight, but Otis died before he could record it. So, so they are soulful in their own way, so you can hear it in To Love Somebody

[00:23:33]David Leaf: It was just a different kind of soul music. I mean, you've got all these great Philly groups, and A- Arif was, was at, at Atlantic Records, and then there was Stax Records, and of course Motown. Yeah. So there's all this soul music permeating the charts. The- The charts had become less and less segregated.

[00:23:49] Dave Anthony: Mm.

[00:23:49]David Leaf: I mean, if we go back to, you know, 1960, the- they w- you know, for a long time there was the R&B charts and the, and the pop charts.

[00:23:56]David Leaf: It was very difficult for African American artists to, to [00:24:00] cross over. Terrible phrase, but Motown is really what brought, brought the Black sound to, to, to popular music, and there was kind of no looking back at that point. But there was still stuff on the R&B charts that was not going to make it to, to the pop charts.

[00:24:14]David Leaf: Anyway, the Bee Gees re- reemerge, uh, only with Nights on Broadway.

[00:24:31]David Leaf: But with a, a dance song called "Jive Talk," Barry said the rhythm from it came from the sound of a bridge they would go over on Miami Causeway on their way back and forth to the studio, and he just liked that rhythm

[00:24:50] Dave Anthony: How creative is that? So the clickety-clack of the bridge, him going over it- Yes ... every day to the studio, he's like, "That's an interesting sound," which totally- Yep ... sounds like Jive Talkin'.[00:25:00]

[00:25:12]David Leaf: And, and so it becomes a gigantic hit and leads them to You Should Be Dancing, which is another gigantic hit

[00:25:33] Dave Anthony: This brings them back to the number one, number three spots of the charts, which is an incredible comeback.

[00:25:39]David Leaf: It was, in a sense, their third bite of the apple, '67 being the first, early '70s being the second, and then they kinda disappear after Run to Me, and now they're back.

[00:25:50] Dave Anthony: And I got a sense in your works, which I did not know, was their association through Robert Stigwood with Eric Clapton.

[00:25:56] Dave Anthony: I found that interesting.

[00:25:58]David Leaf: Yeah, Clapton had the studio in [00:26:00] Miami, and, and I think the conversation was, "Why don't you get out of England and go somewhere else to record?" Yeah. So they went to Miami and recorded it at Clapton's, was it 461-

[00:26:11] Dave Anthony: Ocean Boulevard ...

[00:26:12]David Leaf: Boulevard studio. And now they're working with different musicians.

[00:26:16] Dave Anthony: Did you get a sense- So- ... David, how the actual songwriting dynamic came about in the studio? Did you get a sense that they each noodled away, or one guy sort of led, or was it hard to discern?

[00:26:27]David Leaf: It's really hard to discern. My, my sense is that much if not most of the time, it would just be Barry strumming some chords and starting to sing over it.

[00:26:43]David Leaf: Oh. Or maybe Robin starting to sing over it. It's not that they weren't thoughtful songwriters, but they didn't dwell on the songwriting process. How much each one of them contributed to those songs, Barry's the only one alive who could tell us, and, and I don't [00:27:00] think he's talking. Oh. I think he's just letting it be, so to speak, because what difference does it make?

[00:27:05]David Leaf: They made these records. And Maurice would contribute, like on Lonely Days, he might play the piano figure that opens the song when they recorded it, and that, that hook. The same way, like, you know, a, a Motown bassline would be the hook of a song to get you to listen. So, so how do you, how do you measure contributions?

[00:27:26]David Leaf: One guy wrote 60%, one guy 30, one guy 10. It doesn't matter. They typically wrote a song in a half hour, and so they clearly had a, a, an ability to write great love songs, whether up-tempo or, or ballads, very, very quickly.

[00:27:43] Dave Anthony: Which makes sense, 'cause in the documentary, it talked about they were adding lyrics literally in the studio.

[00:27:50] Dave Anthony: Well, if you write a song that fast, I guess you are.

[00:27:52]David Leaf: They, they were, they were fast, and then the albums came quickly. And at the same time this is all happening, they're, they're having [00:28:00] this resurgence. They're now on tour and playing Madison Square Garden-type venues. Yeah. 'Cause the tening, touring industry has changed dramatically since when they had toured in the '60s and early '70s.

[00:28:12]David Leaf: You know, they, they're still doing things like Midnight Special and, and the Mike Douglas Show.

[00:28:17] Midnight Special: This year, they put out a soulful album, and from it, a great song called Nights on Broadway. Would you welcome now to the Midnight Special, the fabulous Bee Gees.

[00:28:33]David Leaf: They're going on mainstream American television because they're asked to. Stuff that The Beatles never did after '65, they're, they're doing. If you go to YouTube again and watch these clips, it's amazing. They do a medley of Beatles songs, and their singing, just their pure singing is perfect.

[00:28:54] Dave Anthony: Would you compare them to The Beach Boys in that regard, the relationship of brothers singing together?[00:29:00]

[00:29:00]David Leaf: Well, they certainly had what somebody called blood harmony. There's something about the genetics that made it sound the way it did, as opposed to, say, Crosby, Stills, & Nash.

[00:29:12] Bee Gees: Helplessly hoping her harlequin hovers nearby, awaiting a word.

[00:29:22]David Leaf: Who are great harmony singers, but they're not brothers. Compared to The Beach Boys, other than The Beach Boys got lazy from '76 on, w- the Bee Gees never got lazy.

[00:29:32]David Leaf: The Bee Gees always did their best from what I could see.

[00:29:36] Dave Anthony: Speaking of voices and such, how did that crazily high falsetto that we associate with Barry Gibb come about? It came at this point. Yes. We Should Be Dancing was kind of the-

[00:29:47]David Leaf: Yes ...

[00:29:47] Dave Anthony: turning point?

[00:29:48]David Leaf: So Arif Mardin in the studio says, "I think a, a falsetto scream in this part of the record would be great.

[00:29:55]David Leaf: Who can do it?" And Barry says, "Well, I'll give it a, I'll give it a go." And, and he does, and he's [00:30:00] obviously great at it. It's very much of an R&B signature sound, which, which carries over to the next batch of songs that they write. I'm from New York, and for many years after I moved to LA, I continued to subscribe to New York Magazine, and there was a fascinating article called Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night.

[00:30:20]David Leaf: And it was a world I knew nothing about, but it was a really interesting article, and Stigwood buys the article to turn into a movie and asks the Bee Gees, who are at work on their new album, to write songs for the movie. They've got a song called Stayin' Alive, which they actually tried to change it to Saturday Night, Saturday Night.

[00:30:43]David Leaf: But, but that doesn't work, so they, they keep it at Stayin' Alive. And th- so they take the songs from their, what's gonna be their new album, and they give them to their manager, Stigwood, to have these songs in what's gonna be a little movie. Nobody expects this movie to be [00:31:00] anything other than a niche film.

[00:31:03] Dave Anthony: Uh-huh.

[00:31:03]David Leaf: And I remember a, a, a, a journalist friend of mine, Harvey Kubernik, taking me to a pre-release screening. And when the movie starts and Travolta's walking down the street to Stayin' Alive, I'm like, "Oh my God, the Bee Gees. Somebody's using Bee Gees music in a movie. This is exciting."

[00:31:33]David Leaf: Little did I know that they were gonna be in the movie over and over again[00:32:00]

[00:32:10]David Leaf: And there'd be other people singing new songs that they had written

[00:32:27] Dave Anthony: Give the audience a sense, 'cause a lot of them are young, they won't, they weren't there. Give the younger members who cannot remember that era just how powerful that movie and soundtrack were in the zeitgeist.

[00:32:40]David Leaf: Well, I guess the two biggest things of that era were Fleetwood Mac and the Bee Gees. Fleetwood Mac with the Fleetwood Mac and Rumors album were, were just staggeringly big.

[00:32:50]David Leaf: The Bee Gees, because of the songs on the soundtrack, that soundtrack became the biggest selling album of all time.

[00:32:57] Dave Anthony: 40 million copies worldwide.

[00:32:59]David Leaf: It [00:33:00]was everywhere.

[00:33:02] Dave Anthony: Next, another Gibb brother is about to step into the spotlight. At just 18, Andy Gibb dreams of joining his brothers as the fourth Bee Gee. But the family has another plan.

[00:33:15] Dave Anthony: Make him a star all his own.

[00:33:19] Announcer: Do you have playlists for all the bands that matter? Well, we do, and you can download them for free by visiting the bonus content section of our website for a link to each performer's curated playlist. If you like Tom Petty, Stevie Nicks, The Eagles, or Elton John, check out our full episode list now streaming on all podcast platforms.

[00:33:39]David Leaf: Barry is so overflowing with creativity that when Andy Gibb comes of age and wants to be a Bee Gee, it's like, "Well, no, let's just make records with you, Andy." And Andy has a string of gigantic hits like I Just Want to Be Your Everything.[00:34:00]

[00:34:09]David Leaf: "Love is Thicker Than Water," all written by Barry for Andy. And Andy is, we used to sort of kiddingly call him a giblet. He's, he's, he's like a tiny version of Barry.

[00:34:22] Dave Anthony: He's a heartthrob.

[00:34:23]David Leaf: Absolutely a heartthrob. Younger set. Um, and, and Barry told me that he and Andy were the closest the way Robin and Maurice were the closest as twins.

[00:34:35]David Leaf: So they're writing songs for Andy. They've got their own hits. There are other hits from the soundtrack of Saturday Night Fever, like Tavares' version of the Bee Gees' More Than a Woman.

[00:34:57]David Leaf: Great song for Samantha sang that becomes [00:35:00] a gigantic hit

[00:35:14]David Leaf: Their sound is everywhere because they don't just write the song for somebody, they end up singing backgrounds on these records. And this movie and, and the soundtrack become a phenomenon, um, and, and a curse. Because the movie is about a guy who goes to a disco, the music is labeled disco music. Ah.

[00:35:36]David Leaf: There's nothing disco about it. Barry will, will go to his grave, which I hope isn't for a long time, claiming, "This was just dance music we're writing." It wasn't the thump, thump, thump of the disco beat. They were just writing R&B dance music. Yeah. And so the, the radio becomes saturated with Bee Gees. Now, at the same time this is happening, punk music [00:36:00] is coming to the fore, punk rock, which was the exact antithesis of beautifully written, beautifully sung songs.

[00:36:09]David Leaf: And critics responded to punk music. It's like, "Okay, we've heard that Bee Gee stuff. We've got enough of that Bee Gee stuff. I'm much more interested in the Sex Pistols and The Clash." That, that was the critical reaction

[00:36:33]David Leaf: They're saying something important. The Bee Gees are just talking about love, as if that's not important. And yet, despite all of that, the Bee Gees, when they go in and make their next album, Spirits Having Flown, the first three singles from it go to number one. And so they go on tour, and it's a spectacular tour, playing places like Dodger Stadium.

[00:36:55]David Leaf: This is, this is the Bee Gees becoming the Beatles, if you will. That's how [00:37:00] big they are.

[00:37:01] Dave Anthony: In July 1979, the Bee Gees appeared untouchable. On July 7th, they performed before 56,000 fans at a sold-out Dodger Stadium. Across North America, their Spirits Having Flown tour was filling stadiums and arenas with record-breaking crowds.

[00:37:19] Dave Anthony: They were arguably the biggest group in the world. And then just five days after their Dodger Stadium triumph came one of the strangest and most consequential nights in modern music history On July 12th, Chicago radio DJ Steve Dahl invited fans to bring a disco record to a Chicago White Sox double header at Comiskey Park.

[00:37:46] Dave Anthony: In return, they could enter the ball game for just ninety eight cents. The records would be piled together and blown up on the field between games. A local radio stunt called Disco [00:38:00] Demolition Night. No one anticipated what followed. Tens of thousands of people overwhelmed the stadium, and after the records were detonated, fans poured onto the field, setting fires, tearing up the turf, and forcing police to make dozens of arrests.

[00:38:17] Dave Anthony: The damage was so extensive that the White Sox had to forfeit the second game. But the repercussions went far beyond baseball. Vince Lawrence, a young African American usher working at Comiskey Park that night, later recalled in the HBO documentary, The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart, that many of the albums being brought in for destruction weren't disco at all.

[00:38:38] Dave Anthony: They were soul and R&B records by Black artists. That connects with what rock journalist Peter Ames Carlin, our guest on the R.E.M. episode, has observed, that the anti-disco movement also carried undertones of racism and even homophobia, a backlash against music rooted in Black, Latino, and gay communities, [00:39:00] as well as against the supposedly effeminate image associated with disco culture.

[00:39:05] Dave Anthony: And that exposed another painful irony. The Bee Gees had never set out to become the kings of disco. Their new sound had been carefully developed with the legendary R&B producer Arif Mardin, drawing heavily upon American soul, funk, and rhythm and blues. Their songs crossed into the R&B charts and were featured on Soul Train, a program created primarily to showcase Black music and culture.

[00:39:29] Dave Anthony: But after Saturday Night Fever, those musical distinctions disappeared. To much of the public, anything with a dance beat, a falsetto, or the Bee Gees name attached to it was simply, quote, disco, and no group was more closely identified with disco at that time than the Bee Gees. The irony was extraordinary.

[00:39:48] Dave Anthony: Even as the brothers were performing for record crowds, the sound that had made them the biggest group in the world was becoming a liability. Disco Demolition Night did not [00:40:00] single-handedly end their success, but it crystallized a backlash that would haunt them for years. The Bee Gees retreated from the spotlight as a performing trio and redirected their talents towards writing and producing for other artists.

[00:40:13] Dave Anthony: Once again, the brothers would have to reinvent themselves if they hoped to survive in the music business. The disco backlash was only part of the damage to the Bee Gees' reputation. To understand the full story, we need to rewind one year when their trusted manager, Robert Stigwood, convinced the brothers to become movie stars The result would be one of the most notorious failures in Hollywood history and another blow the Bee Gees would struggle to escape.

[00:40:41] Dave Anthony: Under the category of we can do no wrong, Stigwood and the Bee Gees attempt to do the movie Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band with Peter Frampton and others. Describe how this was received.

[00:40:52]David Leaf: The thing that I think made critics hate them forever was the movie, uh, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.[00:41:00]

[00:41:00]David Leaf: Again, thinking back to 1966, we wanna be The Beatles. We get somebody in Epstein's office, Stigwood, to be our manager. We become really, really big, and he comes to us with this idea, uh, to, to be Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Peter Frampton had just had the biggest live album of all time with Frampton Comes Alive.

[00:41:26]David Leaf: He was beautiful and playing to stadiums.

[00:41:43]David Leaf: Maybe the idea seemed good-

[00:41:46] Dave Anthony: Yeah ...

[00:41:47]David Leaf: the Bee Gees realized this was a disaster.

[00:41:50] Dave Anthony: Ah.

[00:41:51]David Leaf: I'm interviewing them in 2000, so it's, you know, more than 20 years after, and they're telling me, "We knew on [00:42:00] the first or second week, this is horrible. We're begging Robert to let us out of the film."

[00:42:07] Dave Anthony: Of all things to pick, the Beatles' seminal album.

[00:42:13]David Leaf: I was invited to, to the world premiere at the, at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood. Uh-huh. And I, and I rode in a limousine with the Bee Gees to the premiere. And, and I remember thinking, "Why is everybody so depressed?"

[00:42:35] Dave Anthony: And then about 90 minutes to two hours later, you knew why.

[00:42:39]David Leaf: I'd never been to a movie where I knew the guys who were up on the screen, but it was like, "Is this as bad as I think it is?"

[00:42:45]David Leaf: And the answer was, was yes. It was the flop of all flops.

[00:42:51] Dave Anthony: Yeah.

[00:42:52]David Leaf: Pay attention. And of course, nobody really cares to pay attention. They just wanna hear the next thing, and the Bee Gees were no longer the next [00:43:00] thing. After the American tour, the rest of the world tour is canceled. I think Maurice was having a substance abuse problem.

[00:43:08]David Leaf: I think that's why, why it was canceled. And so now after this rise and fall, and rise and fall, and rise to, to unimagined heights, the Bee Gees kinda disappear.

[00:43:19] Dave Anthony: This is, like, 1980-ish.

[00:43:21]David Leaf: 1980-ish. "And what do we do? We write songs for other people, like Kenny Rogers, and Dolly Parton, and, and Diana Ross," and these become big hits.

[00:43:32]David Leaf: Their songwriting ability never deserts them. Now, in Europe, people aren't sick of them the way they are in America, so they continue to have big hits in Europe, bigger than, bigger than in the States. And then there's another comeback in the States eventually.

[00:43:45] Dave Anthony: Yeah, after about, what, six years of writing for Dionne Warwick, Heartbreaker.[00:44:00]

[00:44:02] Dave Anthony: Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton, Islands in the Stream

[00:44:19] Dave Anthony: Barbra Streisand's Woman in Love

[00:44:36] Dave Anthony: They have the comeback then, and they score an international comeback with the song You Win Again that reached number one in Britain in '87, making them the first group to achieve UK chart-toppers in the '60s, '70s, and '80s, and then one reached the US Top 10 in 1989. So it's just the rollercoaster comebacks.

[00:44:56] Dave Anthony: You said it well. Unbelievable.

[00:44:58]David Leaf: It's, it's-- It was unbelievable. I [00:45:00] remember seeing them in concert. I think it was at the Universal Amphitheatre. They gave the audience what they wanted, what they expected, and it's just a s-staggering slew of hits in this one-night only concert. It really was amazing.

[00:45:14] Dave Anthony: The rollercoaster comebacks.

[00:45:17] Dave Anthony: I mean, these guys- Mm-hmm ... have had more comebacks than Rocky. When people sit back and tell the history of music, the Bee Gees will be described how?

[00:45:25]David Leaf: Well, they should be described as this unbelievably successful group who wrote more great songs that have, that live today as great songs than The Beatles.

[00:45:35]David Leaf: They're not one-hit wonders. They're not 10-hit wonders. They had an ability to write great melodies with lyrics that appealed to an audience way beyond generations. I sound like a Swiftie now. They're just great.

[00:45:52] Dave Anthony: How about the comeback aspect? How would they describe that?

[00:45:55]David Leaf: In my courses at UCLA, one of the things I came up with, 'cause [00:46:00] I'm not an academic, so one of my goals was to teach my students how to be successful after they leave, leave the university.

[00:46:08]David Leaf: And, and so I came up with what I called the four Ds of success. Mm-hmm. Discipline, dedication, devotion, and determination, and with determination being the single most important factor. That's assuming you've got talent. And, and there's no question that their determination from the time they were kids had carried them through the '60s, the '70s, the '80s, the '90s into the early 2000s when they made, made their last record together.

[00:46:36]David Leaf: They, they just never gave up. They n- they never stopped believing that what they were doing was worth people listening to.

[00:46:45] Dave Anthony: The fact that they were brothers sticking together through hard times must have been a key factor to facilitate these comebacks.

[00:46:52]David Leaf: Well, it certainly was, was the major factor in, in the first comeback.

[00:46:57]David Leaf: If Barry and Robin hadn't been [00:47:00] brothers, Barry would have gone off and done a solo career. 'Cause the way Barry describes it, Robin leaves the group, so Maurice and I carry on, and then one day I come to the studio and Maurice doesn't show up, and he's gone off to do his solo thing. So I figured, I guess I better make a solo record.

[00:47:16]David Leaf: And he does, but before it can come out, Robin comes to him and says, "Can't we get back together?" There's a whole story behind that that only Barry can tell.

[00:47:25] Dave Anthony: I almost got the sense that Barry was the patriarch of this threesome. Well, maybe foursome if you include Andy. It's almost like he's the old- older by a lot in maturity and just overseeing the care of the group.

[00:47:37]David Leaf: He is indeed the patriarch. That's a great way to describe it, and he felt, maybe because when they were little kids and it was his idea to do it from the beginning, and they went along with it, maybe he felt a certain responsibility to keep doing it.

[00:47:51] Dave Anthony: Yeah.

[00:47:51]David Leaf: And, and, and help them through their troubles. And- '

[00:47:54] Dave Anthony: Cause he's remarkably only three years older than they-

[00:47:57]David Leaf: You know, Barry and Linda have been together [00:48:00] for, you know, since the late '60s, and they have a bunch of kids and a bunch of grandkids.

[00:48:06]David Leaf: So patriarch, he's certainly the patriarch of his branch of the family. But, you know, I remember going to see him when he did his solo tour, which I guess is what, 2017 or something like that, and backstage, Maurice's widow was there. So he is the glue that kept it all together regardless of what was going on in the others' lives.

[00:48:31] Dave Anthony: Yeah. Obviously, we're gonna ask you the question that's the hardest. Give us three songs, three of your favorites.

[00:48:37]David Leaf: Three of my favorites. Well, How Deep Is Your Love.

[00:48:40] Bee Gees: And it's me you need.

[00:48:55]David Leaf: A- and too much heaven[00:49:00]

[00:49:10]David Leaf: are, are two of my absolute latter-day favorite Bee Gees ballads, and probably New York Mining Disaster 1941. Hmm. Because that's the song that, that brought me into the group. There are 10 or 15 or 20 others I could easily put on that list. I'm a melody and harmony guy, and goodness, the amount of melody, great melodies and, and great harmonies they, they sang, it's enough to sit back and listen to their box set and drown in it.

[00:49:41]David Leaf: But, you know, Barry was not a trained musician. He didn't have a lot of chords in his back pocket, but with just a few chords, came up with a lot of distinctive melodies. As I said earlier, and Sir Paul, no- nobody has come up with more. Part of my passion and mission with the Bee Gees has been is, "Hey, [00:50:00]people, would you look at how many great songs these guys wrote and recorded, how many great records they had?"

[00:50:04] Dave Anthony: Absolutely. We've been talking today to David Leaf. He's a returning guest. He was on our Brian Wilson Beach Boys episode. This man knows harmonies. He follows The Beatles. He follows the Bee Gees. He follows the Beach Boys, the Killer Bees, as he calls them, and he's an incredible insight giver to these bands.

[00:50:24] Dave Anthony: And David, we wanted to thank you for telling us the story of a band that's had a ton of comebacks, survived through various eras. Just an incredible story of talent, and- Thank you ... you've chronicled it well in your books and your documentaries about them, and thank you for coming on.

[00:50:38]David Leaf: You're welcome. It's my, it's my pleasure.

[00:50:40]David Leaf: I- almost nobody ever asks me about the Bee Gees. This is great. I think at YouTube, there's a link to the, to the film we did, This Is Where I Came In, and if you watch that, you'll get a sense of who they are, what they did, and how remarkably they rode that rollercoaster.

[00:50:59] Dave Anthony: Thanks for coming [00:51:00] on. We'll post a link to David's Bee Gees doc in our bonus content section of the website, garagetostadiums.com, where you'll also find our curated Bee Gees playlist as well, as well as playlists for every other act that we've featured on the show.

[00:51:17] Dave Anthony: Some closing notes on the Bee Gees. The Bee Gees developed their famous three-part harmonies in an unusual rehearsal space, public washrooms. As children in Manchester, the brothers discovered that tiled walls created the perfect echo. Their favorite location was the men's room inside Lewis's department store.

[00:51:37] Dave Anthony: Proof that legendary harmonies can begin in some very unglamorous places. We talked about Andy Gibb, the fourth Bee Gee brother's meteoric 1970s rise to the top of the charts. Here's how it happened. Andy was married at the age of 18, and during his Bermuda honeymoon, Barry pulled his younger brother into a bedroom to write.

[00:51:59] Dave Anthony: Within about 20 [00:52:00] minutes, Barry had created I Just Want to Be Your Everything, and then he immediately wrote Love Is Thicker Than Water. Two songs, roughly 40 minutes, and both became US number one hits That enormous explosion near the end of the Bee Gees song Tragedy wasn't dynamite or even a conventional sound effect.

[00:52:24] Dave Anthony: Barry Gibb cupped his hands around a microphone and made an explosion noise with his mouth. Engineers combined it with several low piano keys struck together, transforming Barry's homemade blast into something suitably catastrophic. A parody album based on Saturday Night Fever was made called Sesame Street Fever, and Robin Gibb agreed to sing on it, largely because his children, Melissa and Spencer, wanted to meet Cookie Monster.

[00:52:55] Dave Anthony: Robin sang with the Sesame Street characters while his children visited the set. [00:53:00]The liner notes acknowledged the real deal makers. Quote, "Robin Gibb appears courtesy of his children," unquote. Before the fame and millions of record sales, the Gibb family frequently struggled to pay the rent. Barry recalled that during their years in Australia, the family lived in perhaps 20 different houses, sometimes packing their suitcases and disappearing during the night before the landlord came looking for his money.

[00:53:27] Dave Anthony: In 1967, a power failure plunged the Bee Gees' London studio into darkness. Sitting beside an old lift shaft, Barry and Robin noticed its eerie echo and began improvising a song about miners trapped underground. That blackout produced the song New York Mining Disaster 1941, the Bee Gees' first American hit.

[00:53:50] Dave Anthony: We discussed the personalities of the Gibb brothers in our Bee Gees episode. The next note seems to confirm what we discussed. In 1968, the Bee Gees [00:54:00]recorded two Coca-Cola commercials, and they could not have sounded more differently. Barry's Sitting in the Meadow commercial was bright and cheerful.

[00:54:09] Dave Anthony: Robin opened his with Another Cold and Windy Day before suggesting that a Coke might free his troubled mind, perhaps the most melancholy soft drink commercial ever recorded. In July 1979, Barbra Streisand watched the Bee Gees perform before 56,000 fans at Dodger Stadium. She initially wanted the brothers to write and produce half of her next album.

[00:54:32] Dave Anthony: But she and Barry worked so well together that they completed the entire record. Guilty became the best-selling album of Streisand's career. The Saturday Night Fever soundtrack sold approximately 40 million copies and produced four consecutive US number one songs written by the Gibb brothers: How Deep Is Your Love, Stayin' Alive, Night Fever, and Yvonne Elliman's If I Can't Have [00:55:00]You.

[00:55:00] Dave Anthony: For months, escaping a Bee Gees composition on American radio was nearly impossible. Before they became the Bee Gees, Barry, Robin, and Maurice performed with two friends as the Rattlesnakes. For their first public appearance, they planned to mime along with a record, but dropped and shattered it on the way to the theater.

[00:55:22] Dave Anthony: Forced to sing live, the young brothers discovered that the audience loved them. We want to thank our listeners for making us now one of the top 3% of podcasts in the world, and we're listened to in more than 100 countries. So join the Garage to Stadiums nation. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube, and follow us on Instagram, YouTube Shorts, and X for bite-sized music history.

[00:55:47] Dave Anthony: It'll surprise you every time you scroll. Special thanks to our production crew, Scott Campbell, Chad Raymond, Amelia Medieng, and Nigel Campbell. I'm Dave Anthony. Thanks for listening. See you next time for another Garage to [00:56:00]Stadium story.