Disco seemed to be catching on maybe they should try a more dance-oriented sound? Their manager, Stigwood, and the producer of the new album, Arif Martin, suggested that they take a stylistic detour away from their usual ballads. That changed, and the second, even bigger, phase of their career began in 1975 when the brothers went to Miami to record their next album. The group struggled for a few years after that, releasing an album each year to generally indifferent response. Their next album, Trafalgar, gave the Bee Gees their first #1 hit in the US, “ How Can You Mend a Broken Heart.” Their comeback album, 2 Years On, was released in October, and “Lonely Days” was a big hit. The split didn’t last for very long, and the Gibb brothers announced their reunion in August 1970. It didn’t make much of an impression in the US, but the single “Saved By the Bell” was a #2 hit in England. Robin’s solo project, Robin’s Reign, was released. If Odessa had been a disappointment, Cucumber Castle was an outright flop, and even before it was released in 1970, Barry and Maurice announced the end of the Bee Gees.īarry and Maurice went to work on solo albums that were never released.
Robin left the group, leaving Barry and Maurice to record the next Bee Gees album as a duo. There were problems within the group, too, as Robin grew frustrated at Stigwood’s determination to make Barry the group’s sole lead singer, and the brothers argued over which songs should be released as singles.
The ambitious 1969 double album Odessa was a commercial and critical disappointment. Horizontal featured another hit ballad, “Massachusetts,” and Idea gave them their first top 10 hits, “I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You” and “I Started a Joke.” The Bee Gees' career kept growing with their next albums. The album Bee Gees 1st was a top ten hit, and generated two more hit singles, “Holiday” and “To Love Somebody.” The latter had been written for Otis Redding, who died in a plane crash before he was able to record it it’s become one of the most covered Bee Gees songs, recorded by (among many others) Nina Simone, Kim Carnes, Janis Joplin, and Michael Bolton. The group’s success went beyond that stunt, though. The stunt helped “New York Mining Disaster 1941” reach the top 20 in both the UK and the US. A lot of DJs thought it was a new Beatles single the no-band-name release seemed like something the Beatles might do, and it sounded enough like them to be plausible. The first single they recorded under their new manager, Robert Stigwood, was shipped to radio stations with a blank white label bearing only the name of the song. That success helped them to quickly get a recording deal when they arrived in England. They made the trip by ship, and they were still at sea in January 1967 when they learned that the single they’d released just before leaving, “ Spicks and Specks,” had made it to #5 on the Australian charts and been named Single of the Year by Australia’s major music magazine. None of those were huge hits, but they did well enough that their label gathered them into an album in 1965.īy the end of 1966, though, the brothers were growing frustrated by their failure to break through with a genuine hit record, and they decided to return to England and try their luck there. The Bee Gees got their first recording contract in 1963 and began releasing 2 or 3 singles each year. Gates named the group The BGs-later changed to The Bee Gees-for the initials shared by Gates, Goode, and Barry Gibb despite the widely held belief, the group’s name doesn’t stand for “Brothers Gibb.” By the time the family moved to Australia in 1958, they knew that they wanted to be musicians.īy 1960, they were appearing on Australian television, and they were hired by a Brisbane radio DJ, Bill Gates, and racetrack owner Bil Goode, to perform at Goode’s track. In Manchester, the Gibb boys were already performing and forming their first bands as pre-teens. The brothers were born on the Isle of Man, and the Gibb family moved to Manchester, England in 1955. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, they sang Beatlesque ballads in the late 1970s, they dominated the music industry as the kings of disco. With their brother Barry (born September 1, 1946), they were The Bee Gees, a pop act who had two distinct periods of success. Maurice & Robin Gibb were born on December 22, 1949.
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