Come già anticipato qualche giorno fa, Robin Gibb ha registrato insieme alla popstar russa Valeriya una nuova versione di "Stayin'alive". La canzone, registrata agli Spirit Studios di Londra il mese scorso è prodotta da George De Angelis (Pet Shop Boys, Seal). Su youtube (vedi sotto) è disponibile un video in cui si può ascoltare un clip della canzone (con Robin). Valeryia si è esibita dal vivo in uno dei più esclusivi night club di Mosca lo scorso 15 marzo per promuovere il suo nuovo album, che sarà pubblicato in russo ed in inglese. Robin ha preso parte al concerto cantando insieme a lei appunto "Stayin'alive"
Fonte:russiatoday.ru 

"Russia's Valeria aims for pop stardom"
Valeria is a well-known Russian singer, who's been in the country's pop music industry since the early 1990s. And now she's aiming to conquer international audiences.

Valeriya's new album has been released both in Russian and English, involving work with musicians and songwriters who've previously contributed to the success of many global superstars, including Queen, U2 and Gwen Stefani.

To promote the release she gave a concert in Moscow, with Robin Gibb from the legendary Bee Gees coming especially to sing the 1977 worldwide hit, "Staying Alive", with Valeriya.

Many of the British press were invited to attend Valeriya's concert in Moscow.

They were quite impressed with the performance itself and life in the Russian capital in general.

"I really liked her sound, which is quite funky... big rock! I knew nothing of Moscow before, and I came here and it's so fun and really cool! And I think I'll tell the British people: come to Moscow, it's a cool place, this is where it's happening!" said Mark Hudson from The Sun.
Source:russiatoday.ru

Una cover della canzone dei Bee Gees "Islands in the Stream" è stata registrata dal gruppo post-punk canadese Constantines, insieme alla cantante (canadese anche lei) Feist.
"Islands in the Stream" fu portata al successo nel 1983 da Kenny Rogers e Dolly Parton, raggiungendo la vetta della classifica dei singoli in USA.
La versione (che viene preannunciata alquanto "insolita, "rallentata" & intima") sarà pubblicata come singolo (in edizione speciale), dalla casa discografica canadese "Arts & Crafts", e sarà disponibile a partire dal prossimo 1 aprile. 
Leslie Feist aveva già registrato nel 2004 una cover di un altro brano dei Bee Gees ("Love you inside and out", da "Spirits Having Flown", 1979), inserita nel suo album "Let it die".
La sua versione, intitolata "Inside & out", oltre a riscuotere un buon successo commerciale, è stata acclamata dalla critica, che ha mostrato molto riguardo nei confronti della cantante canadese, che recentementeha ricevuto ben quattro nomination ai Grammy Awards, gli oscar della musica (di cui una per "migliore nuovo artista").
Fonti: arts-craft.ca &   punknews.org

"Constantines and Feist to release limited edition 7""
Toronto post-punks the Constantines and critical darling songstress Feist have recorded a cover duet for an upcoming 7" to be released by Arts & Crafts.
The Canadian artists are tackling the Bee Gees' "Islands In The Stream," particulary the version made famous as a duet between Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers.
The b-side of the release will feature the new Cons track Trans Canada from their forthcoming full length Kensington Heights.
Jeff McMurrich, producer of the new Cons record, also recorded the new cover.

(Release Date: April 1, 2008 )
Made famous in 1983 as a duet by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton, Islands In The Stream was originally written by the Bee Gees. A favorite of Constantines and Feist, the song was recorded together in Toronto one chilly day in early February following a game of ice hockey and a round of hot chocolates.
Their decelerated and intimate version of "Islands In The Stream" was produced by Jeff McMurrich, who also worked with Constantines on their new album, Kensington Heights, due for release on April 15, 2008.
Sources:arts-craft.ca and punknews.org

La nuova versione della chat di Bee Gees Italy è finalmente online!
E' necessario possedere un indirizzo email effettivamente funzionante, in quanto la registrazione, che avviene mediante conferma volontaria (contenuta in un link da attivare incluso in un messaggio che si riceverà subito dopo la richiesta di registrazione).
Per evitare gli inconvenienti segnalati in passati da tantissimi amici chatters di Bee Gees Italy  , la nuova chat include, tra le altre caratteristiche, la possibilità di segnalare in tempo reale ogni tipo di violazione e/o abuso, commessa da qualsiasi partecipante durante le conversazioni online. 
Proviamola tutti al più presto!
http://www.beegees.it/chat

The brand new Bee Gees Italy Chat is finally online In order to chat, you need to register, getting a valid e-mail address. You  will receive a message including a link. Clicking on it, you will active your registration. To avoid any form of abuse, ,  in the new chat there's a feature enabling to signal any knid of violation committed by any chatter. Lets' test the chat as soon as possible
http://www.beegees.it/chat

“The Heart Knows” è il titolo della canzone che Barry Gibb ha inciso insieme ad Olivia Newton John. Il duetto sarà inserito nell'album " THE GREAT WALK TO BEIJING - A CELEBRATION IN SONG", Olivia Newton-John & Friends."
La canzone è stata scritta da Barry, insieme ai figli Ashley e Steven, nell'agosto del 2007
Barry ed Olivia, da sempre grandi amici, hanno duettato per la prima volta nel 1984 in "Face to face", inserita nell'album di Barry , "Now voyager".
Le collaborazioni fra Olivia Newton-John e i fratelli Gibb sono molteplici.
La storia inizia nel lontano 1976 quando Olivia incide una cover di "Come on over" (canzone dei Bee Gees inserita in "Main course") per inserirla nel suo omonimo album. La canzone riscuote un ottimo successo nelle classifiche country USA.
In seguito, nel 1980, Olivia canterà con Andy Gibb le canzoni "I can't help it" (#12 in USA) e "Rest your love on me". Le due canzoni sono inserite nell'album "After dark" di Andy Gibb.
Nel 1981 incide la splendida "Carried Away" scritta da Barry, e la include nel suo album di maggiore successo, "Physical".
Il nuovo cd di Olivia, di cui si prevede la pubblicazione nelle prossime settimane, accompagna il progetto di beneficienza "The great walk to Behijng", che raccoglierà fondi per il centro di ricerca contro il cancro creato da Olivia Newton-John nel 2003.
Il progetto consiste in una marcia simbolica di 256 km sulla famosa grande Muraglia Cinese che Olivia intraprenderà in 21 giorni, a partire dal prossimo 7 aprile, insieme ad altre celebrità del mondo dello spettacolo (musica, tv, cinema e teatro), intellettuali, artisti e sportivi.
I "camminatori" sono circa 200, e tra gli altri ci sono Cliff Richard, Danni Minogue e la famosa conduttrice statunitense Joan Rivers.
Nell'album correlato al progetto (ed i cui introiti saranno interamente destinati appunto all "Olivia Newton-John Cancer Centre"), troviamo a duettare con Olivia, tra gli altri, oltre al già citato Barry Gibb, artisti come Cliff Richard, Richard Marx, John Farrar, Delta Goodrem , Jann Arden e Keith Urban.
(Fonte: http://olivianewton-john.com/ )

 Olivia Newton John and Barry Gibb duet for "The great walk to Behijng"
"The heart knows" is the title of the song recorded by Barry Gibb and Olivia Newton-John, to be included in the forthcoming album THE GREAT WALK TO BEIJING - A CELEBRATION IN SONG", Olivia Newton-John & Friends."
The song was written by Barry, together with his sons Ashley and Steven, in august 2007.
The album is due in the next week and all the sale profits will be donated to the "Olivia Newton-John Cancer Centre", founded in 2003 by Olivia.
The album will coincide with the walk on the famous "Great Wall of China", that will take 21 days (beginning on 7 april) and cover 228 kilometres. Olivia and many other celebrities (music, tv, arts, culture and sports) will be the walkers. A million steps symbolises the journey cancer patients take in their fight against cancer.
Barry and Olivia has always been great friends, their fist duet was in 1984 in "Face to face", included in album of Barry, "Now voyager".
The collaborations between Olivia Newton-John and brothers Gibb are manifold.
The story begins way back in 1976 when Olivia records a cover of "Come on over" (song originally included in the Bee Gees' album "Main course") to insert it in his homonymous album. The song was an excellent success in country chatrs in USA.
Then, in 1980, Olivia with Andy Gibb sing the songs "I can not help it" (# 12 in USA) and "Rest your love on me." Both songs are included on the album "After dark" by Andy Gibb.
In 1981 Olivia records "Carried Away" written by Barry, and includes it in his most successful album, "Physical."
"The great walk..." album features duets of Olivia with (among others) Barry Gibb, Cliff Richard, Richard Marx, John Farrar, Delta Goodrem , Jann Arden e Keith Urban
(Source: http://olivianewton-john.com/ )

A distanza di vari mesi Barry Gibb ha chattato nuovamente con i fans lo scorso 19 aprile.
La principale notizia che traspare (anche se è solo un'interpretazione delle alquanto criptiche affermazioni di Barry) è che il suo nuovo lavoro potrebbe non essere un album country.
Infatti durante la chat, rispondendo alle domande sullo stato di avanzamento nella realizzazione del suo nuovo album (inizialmente previsto per il 2007, poi rinviato all'autunno del 2008), Barry ha dichiarato: "Creativamente ci siamo in qualche modo allontanati dalla categoria di album che avevamo pianificato. Ci vorrà del tempo, ma sentiamo che sarà molto speciale".
Barry ha inoltre confermato (con qualche pentimento) che non sarà presente a Londra il prossimo 10 maggio per la cerimonia riservata alla scopertura di una "Blue plaque" dedicata ai Bee Gees.
Parlando poi della canzone nella quale duetta nuovamente con Olivia Newton-John ("The heart knows", inserita nell'album "Celebration in Song", in uscita in Australia il prossimo 6 maggio), Barry si è detto felice di avere rivisto Olivia ed orgoglioso di avere contribuito al suo progetto benefico, rivelando che la Newton-John è stata due giorni a Miami per registrare insieme la canzone (che è scritta da Barry con Ashley e Steve).
Barry ha inoltre detto che non vede l'ora di esibirsi nuovamente dal vivo ed ha velocemente espresso una valutazione (negativa) sulla cover di "Stayin alive" di Robin e Valeryia.
(Fonti: Barrygibb.com, Bee Gees World, "Words" mailing list)

"Barry: not a country album?"
"WE HAVE SORTOF MOVED CREATIVELY BEYOND WHAT CATEGORY THE ALBUM IS GOING TO BE FROM WHAT WE WERE PLANNING. ITS GOING TO TAKE SOME TIME BUT WE FEEL ITS GOING TO BE VERY SPECIAL", said Barry Gibb during his last chat with the fans (19 april).
Barry also said that he was very glad and proud to work again with Olivia Newton John. Olivia went two days to Miami to record the duet with Barry. (The album "Celebration in Song", which includes "The heart knows", the duet with Barry, is due to be released in Australia on 6 may).
Barry also stated that he will not be in London for the Bee Gees "Blue plaque ceremony" (10 may).
(Sources: Barrygibb.com, Bee Gees World, "Words" mailing list) 

Nella mattinata di ieri, 10 maggio, è stata "svelata" al pubblico la targa che la città di Londra (in particolare la "city of Westminster") ha dedicato ai Bee Gees.
La targa è stata piazzata al numero 67 di Brook Street, nell'edificio che ha ospitato per tanti anni la sede della RSO, la casa discografica di Robert Stigwood.
In quella sede Barry, Robin e Maurice hanno scritto tanti dei grandi successi dei Bee Gees e di altri artisti. Ad esempio "Chain reaction", la canzone di Diana Ross che raggiunse il #1 delle classifiche britanniche.
Alla cerimonia di scopertura della targa era presente Robin, che si è detto "enormemente onorato di ricevere un riconoscimento per avere fatto qualcosa che amiamo" ed ha dichiarato che il riconoscimento è anche un tributo a Maurice Gibb, scomparso nel 2003.
Erano presenti centinaia di fans e, secondo quanto riportato dal portavoce del consiglio comunale di Londra, Robin è stato particolarmente gentile e felice di fermarsi con loro a chiaccherare ed a posare con loro per alcune foto. "Una di loro si era lamentata di non essere riuscita ad incontrarlo e Robin, che nel frattempo si era già allontanato, è tornato di proposito per incontrarla", ha dichiarato il portavoce.
Durante la cerimonia, ai giornalisti presenti Robin ha dichiarato che un musical sulla musica e la vita dei Bee Gees è in avanzata fase di realizzazione e che il debutto (a Londra, West End ed in seguito a Broadway) è previsto nei prossimi 14-16 mesi.
La targa in onore dei Bee Gees è l'ultima (ce ne sono al momento 78) che Londra ed in particolare Westminster ha dedicato ad importanti figure e personalità del mondo culturale ed artistico. Tra le targe già piazzate in altri storici edifici di Westminster troviamo quelle dedicate ad Oscar Wilde, T.S Eliot e Jane Austen. 
Il consigliere Robert Davis ha dichiarato: "siamo molto orgogliosi di commemorare i Bee Gees per il loro grande contributo alla musica pop ed al rock'n'roll. I Bee Gees hanno avuto una associazione vitale con Westminster e questa targa è un ricordo al fatto che la città possiede un ricco patrimonio di straordinarie figure ed edifici storici"
(Fonti: BBC, Press Association, Ireland On Line )

"Alan Freeman days" è il titolo della nuova canzone di Robin Gibb, della quale una sample è disponbile nel sito ufficiale di Robin.
La canzone (testo e musica di Robin) è prodotta da Peter Vettese, ed a quanto pare è una di quelle che Robin ha scritto nell'agosto del 2007, e che, in aggiunta alle canzoni frutto della sessione di lavoro dello scorso mese di aprile, dovrebbero essere il contenuto del nuovo progetto, che potrebbe vedere la luce il prossimo ottobre.
Intanto, secondo quanto dichiara il sito di Robin, "Alan Freeman days" sarà pubblicata in tutto il mondo la prossima settimana in "un progetto di album digitale di terze parti, al quale Robin darà il suo supporto".
(Fonte: robingibb.com)

Il "Times" e l' "Independent" pubblicano in questi giorni due interessanti interviste di Robin Gibb, in questi giorni più che mai attivo.
L'intervista del Times rivela tra l'altro che il primo ministro inglese Gordon Brown è un fan dei Bee Gees, mentre nell'intervista all'Independent Robin dichiara con forza di pretendere più rispetto per i Bee Gees e per le altre grandi star che contribuito alla grandezza della musica pop e rock inglese nel mondo. Interessante anche il commento (che sottoscrive le affermazioni di Robin) contenuto in un articolo dell'Indipendent , successivo all'intervista.
Inoltre in questi giorni Robin ha registrato una video intervista come testimonial di una campagna lanciata dal governo inglese per incoraggiare i padri separati a restare sempre vicini ai figli. Il sito web del "Times" riporta la sintesi e la trascrizione della video-intervista, che sarà disponibile sul sito http://www.dads-space.com/ a partire dalla fine di maggio.
(Fonti (Timesonline, www.independent.co.uk)

Gordon Brown’s secret to stayin’ alive - listen to the Bee Gees
How is the Prime Minister surviving a grim period in office? By listening to the Bee Gees every day, the ever so well connected Robin Gibb reveals

Robin Gibb counts prime ministers past and present among his friends
Will Hodgkinson, (The Times 16-05-20089

Not everyone hates Gordon Brown. “He listens to our music every day,” says his friend, the Bee Gee Robin Gibb. “Gordon likes our music and I like Gordon. I was with him at a dinner recently” – Gibb says this with the air of a man for whom dining with the Prime Minister is all in a day’s work – “and he was asking: who is creating the big song catalogues of today? The answer is no one. Record companies today don’t see the need for creating big catalogues because that involves investing in careers, which they are no longer doing. But great songs are the backbone of music. They transcend the artist and the record and become part of the culture.”

It is not hard to see why Gibb is passionate about the craft of the pop song. The Bee Gees, the band he formed in his teens with his late twin Maurice and their elder brother Barry, are one of the most successful acts of all time. A fair chunk of the world’s population can sing along to Tragedy, Jive Talking and Stayin’ Alive.

The Bee Gees recently became the first band to be made fellows of the British Academy of Composers and Songwriters, for which the flagship event is the Ivor Novello Awards next Thursday. Since the ceremony is all about celebrating the art of the song, Gibb is one of its most vocal supporters.

“The Ivor Novellos [are] the beacon of the songwriting establishment in Britain,” says Gibb, a remarkably thin man with a gentle if slightly cadaverous air about him. “I come from an era when artists wrote their own songs, when people like Paul McCartney and Elton John created a huge body of work. We are in real danger of losing that tradition.”

Gibb lives in a 1,000-year-old former monastery in Oxfordshire with grounds equivalent to a reasonably proportioned London park. And he counts prime ministers past and present among his friends. “Tony Blair is a great friend,” Gibb says of our former leader, who took a holiday at Gibb’s Miami house in 2007. “I respect him tremendously. In this business you have friends from all backgrounds, including prime ministers and princes, and we get on like a house on fire.”

Brown likes the Bee Gees music, Gibb says, “because it talks about human relationships and experience, rather than specific events, and reaches out across the decades.” Brown has told Gibb: “Your music is absolutely timeless.”

Gibb is in fine form, talking rapidly in a Mancunian twang. Interviews have suggested that he feels the Bee Gees are not taken as seriously as they should be – there was the incident in 1998 when all three stormed off the set of Clive Anderson’s television show after the presenter made a joke about their once being called Les Tosseurs – but if this is still the case, he’s not showing it.

“We’re not just performers but also songwriters, which is the important thing,” he says. “I love Mozart because of his emphasis on melody, but in his time he wasn’t taken seriously at all. Now nobody listens to Mozart and says, ‘That’s so 1780s’. What you are left with is the music.”

“The music” has been Gibb’s saviour. He grew up in a poor family in Manchester until he was nine, when the family moved to Australia. The Bee Gees formed soon after, inspired by the broad variety of music they heard on Australian radio. “We didn’t have a pot to piss in when we were growing up – my dad couldn’t hold down a job – but we didn’t feel we were missing out because we had a lot of fun writing songs. We would hear our favourite bands on the radio and then try and write in their style, pretending that we were coming up with their next hit. We never thought about fame or anything like that.”

Does it bother him that the pop song is frequently dismissed as teenage trash? “That’s just an attitude and it doesn’t impact on the quality of the music,” he replies. “Writing a simple melody that people remember and that can be interpreted in different styles is one of the hardest things to do. Look at Islands in the Stream. We wrote that as an R&B tune but Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers turned it into pure country. A lot of classical composers worked in the same way. It’s rumoured that Beethoven sat in Bavarian taverns and stole melodies from travelling folk singers, so concepts of what is high or low art are irrelevant.”

The Bee Gees were writing songs at a farmhouse in France in 1976 when their manager, Robert Stigwood, approached them to provide music for an adaptation of a short story by Nik Cohn called Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night. “We weren’t at all sure about it,” Gibb says. “It’s a dark film about what was really going on in New York at the time, and it has gang rape, suicide . . . Robert Stigwood came over to listen to our new songs while crickets chirped and cows mooed in the background, and he talked about this thing called disco we had never heard of, and between us we came up with this marriage of film and music that eclipsed everything. It was a low-budget film with no marketing at all and yet it captured imaginations.”

At the height of their powers the Bee Gees couldn’t help but write smash hits. “We wrote Tragedy and How Can You Mend a Broken Heart? in one afternoon at our house in Addison Road in Kensington. Both went to No 1, so that wasn’t a bad afternoon’s work,” he says. “We would sit around with a tape recorder and a keyboard and bash out ideas, and I think it worked because we had fun. If you think too hard about what you want from a situation it never works. The secret is to enjoy it.”

Since Maurice died in 2003 a return to that golden age of fraternal hitmaking is impossible. But Robin and Barry are in talks about writing a musical based on their back catalogue, and there are always mainstream pop stars ready to look to a Gibb brothers composition for material – Barbra Streisand, Diana Ross and Destiny’s Child are a few that have already done so.

Gibb’s main concern for the future is that the songwriting culture is in danger of dying out. “Programmes like The X Factor turn the song into a vehicle for celebrity rather than the other way round,” he says. “Our whole lives have been made up of projects that went into creating a catalogue of songs that the world has embraced. I just wish that the world today [was] more like the world we started out in.” 

"Jive talkin': Why Robin Gibb wants more respect for the Bee Gees "  - Tim Walker meets a famously prickly musician (The Indipendent, 12-5-2008)

Gibb says the Bee Gees should be celebrated for what they've achieved

 Interviewing a Bee Gee can be a tricky business. There was the notorious incident on Clive Anderson's talk show when all three brothers Gibb strode off after tiring of their host's wisecracks. And there was the time Robin Gibb, invited on to Radio 4's Front Row to discuss his last solo album with the probing but hardly combative Mark Lawson, peeled off his mic in mid-conversation.

The Gibbs would have made good guests for Graham Norton, but the comedian scuppered that prospect by making a tasteless joke about the death of Robin's twin brother Maurice in 2003. At the time, Robin, perhaps understandably, expressed a wish to rip the presenter's head off.

It's no surprise, then, when our first appointment, due to take place at the star's converted monastery in Oxfordshire, is broken. A second meeting is cancelled, too. Third time lucky: we meet at a private members' club in Cavendish Square in London.

In March, Gibb, 58, was made President of the Heritage Foundation. The organisation, he explains, is devoted to "the recognition of achievement by people across the spectrum of British cultural life", with activities including tribute events, concerts and the unveiling of blue plaques.

Now, Gibb is heading the foundation's Bomber Command campaign. "It's 63 years since the end of the Second World War," he says. "We want the 56,000 guys who lost their lives protecting the freedoms of all of Europe to be honoured with a statue in the centre of London."

Gibb is bothered by Britons' lack of pride in their history. "We whinge about our past, but we're a greatly admired culture. We're the country that produced Shakespeare, for Christ's sake, the Brontës, Winston Churchill."

His home in Oxfordshire is "a microcosm of British history. It's 1,000 years old – older than Westminster Abbey. It survived the dissolution, and during the Civil War it was used by both Royalists and Parliamentarians. In the Second World War, the American army had a base there."

Gibb and his twin Maurice were born on the Isle of Man in December 1949; Barry, the other surviving sibling, was three years their senior. The trio were brought up in relative poverty in Manchester until 1958, when their youngest brother Andy was born, and the family relocated to Australia, where the Bee Gees first found fame.

"As a teenager growing up in Australia," Gibb says, "I realised that the Australians value British history more than the British do. Tony Blair spent a few years growing up in Adelaide and I had the same conversation with him."

Blair, "a good friend", holidayed at Gibb's mansion in Florida last year, sending the tabloids into a tizz. In 1992, Gibb's wife Dwina had been inaugurated as patroness of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, a British neo-druidic order. She and Gibb were also candid about the openness of their marriage, a mistake he learnt from. "I don't understand why the press went crazy over that," he says. "They made very unnecessary jibes at my wife. It was a personal attack on her."

Unnecessary jibes are what have riled the band in past interviews: Anderson making the obvious joke about their former moniker, "Les Tosseurs", and Lawson asking Gibb how he felt about the lack of respect afforded the band. The Bee Gees are often treated without seriousness, mocked for the big hair, dismissed as men of the Seventies.

"Nobody ever says, 'Mozart? That's so 1780s!' I think we should see people for what they've achieved. Mozart was a womaniser and a drunk, but we evaluate him on his works," Gibb says. "We've got one of the biggest catalogues in the world. There are songs we wrote in 1968 that people are still singing. Ronan Keating did 'Words', Destiny's Child did 'Emotion'. There's very few artists with that kind of history."

The Bee Gees' record sales top 220 million. The only people who have outsold them are Elvis, The Beatles, Michael Jackson and Garth Brooks. Their compositions have shifted more units than The Rolling Stones, Abba, Elton John or U2. It's unlikely that the Bee Gees will ever be toppled from that top five, even now that the name has – probably – been retired.

Since Maurice's death in January 2003, Barry and Robin have performed together only a handful of times at charity events. The old tales of animosity between the pair are quickly dismissed. "Retiring the name is an emotional decision. We'll decide what we want to do in the next couple of years. We are planning to work together, but what shape or form that will take, it's too early to tell."

The album Gibb is recording for release later this year will, inevitably, be infused with the experience of losing his twin. "In many ways I don't accept that he's gone," he says. "I miss his presence, but it's something I have to live with."

Maurice wasn't the first family member to die unexpectedly. Andy, the youngest Gibb, was a Seventies star in his own right with a string of US solo No 1s. During the Eighties, the prospect of Andy joining the Bee Gees was much discussed, but in March 1988, he died from a heart condition. He was 30. His brothers didn't hide the fact that past abuse of drugs and alcohol had probably contributed. "Losing two brothers at a very early age is one thing, but the fact that both their deaths were unnecessary only compounds it," says Gibb.

Thirty years after its release, Saturday Night Fever is still the best-selling soundtrack of all time. Until then, the Gibbs were best known for their late 1960s ballads, like "Massachusetts". But, says Gibb: "We were dying to get into our soul influences. We wanted to do more than just ballads."

In 1976, they released Children of the World, complete with the No 1 blue-eyed soul single "You Should Be Dancing". They were working on new songs at a farmhouse in France when they got a call from Robert Stigwood. "He called from LA," Gibb recalls, "and said, 'We're making a film with this new guy John Travolta, and we're rehearsing to 'You Should Be Dancing'. Do you have any more songs?'" The rest is history.

"All those songs – 'Night Fever', 'How Deep Is Your Love', 'More Than a Woman', 'If I Can't Have You' – were written in a three-week period at five o'clock in the morning, with the only view from the window being of the cows that needed milking. They were the first to hear 'Stayin' Alive'."

Saturday Night Fever still overshadows the Bee Gees' long career. "Fever was a very important project, but the Gibb brothers were responsible for a wide range of songs," Gibb says, "from 'Islands In the Stream' for Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton, to 'Chain Reaction' for Diana Ross, to 'Heartbreaker' for Dionne Warwick, to 'Woman In Love' for Barbra Streisand. There's only a handful of people with catalogues like ours – the Stones, Elton, Abba and The Beatles.

"I get together with Paul [McCartney] a lot," he continues. "We talk about how we used to record. When we and The Beatles were recording we had no reference points. We just went into the studio and did what came into our minds. Many artists today just go into the studio and try to copy what's in the charts. We saw what was in the charts and said, 'Let's try to do something different.'"  

Terence Blacker:  These elderly pop stars have a right to feel miffed (The Indipendent, 13-05-2008)

The prejudice has less to do with the music than the way its performer looks, or his views

On the face of it, there are few sillier or unseemly sights in public life than a pop billionaire stroppily complaining that he is not taken seriously enough. Sir Cliff Richard does it every other week. Sir Paul McCartney seems to exude dissatisfaction with his lot. And that high-pitched, perfectly harmonised sound you can hear in the background almost certainly comes from one of the Bee Gees, those perennial chart-toppers in the moaners' hit parade.


A few years ago, they walked when Clive Anderson made a disrespectful, unfunny joke about them. A Mark Lawson interview with one of them, Robin Gibb, on Radio 4 was also terminated abruptly. This week, in The Independent, Gibb complained that it was odd that a group whose records have sold over 220 million and whose compositions exceed the sales of the Rolling Stones, U2, Elton John and Abba (and, he might have added, have suffered their share of misfortune) are still a byword for jokes about hair, teeth and the 1970s. "Nobody ever says, 'Mozart?' That's so 1780s!' I think we should see people for what they have achieved."

He is right to be miffed. By the simplest and most persuasive criteria of artistic success – how much lasting pleasure a work has given – pop musicians like the Gibb brothers deserve respect and gratitude, perhaps even from those who are not particularly fans of their music. The music that they wrote is in the bloodstream of a generation. People grew up, fell in love, married and had children to it. Their songs were taken for granted precisely because they were so ubiquitous.

Music is probably more vulnerable to snobbery than any other art form. For every talented pop composer, there are a thousand Clive Andersons, waiting on the sidelines to say how naff they are. More often than not, the prejudice has less to do with the music than the way its composer or performer looks, or his clothes, hair, views or sexuality. Almost always, the popular success of a musician confirms his lack of coolness to more sophisticated people.

Judgements as to which musicians are culturally acceptable are utterly subjective and, in the long term, meaningless. In the 1950s, when Gerry Goffin and Carole King were writing hits for Bobby Vee and The Drifters, the songs were dismissed as bubble-gum music for kids; a few years later, by some strange alchemical process which only rock journalists will understand, the same songs had become pop classics. A couple of decades later, Abba were seen to be the height of musical vulgarity. Only after they stopped writing and performing was it decided that, in fact, they were rather innovative and ahead of their time.

It must be annoying for someone like Robin Gibb, who has contributed so much to national life, not to mention to the national exchequer, to find that he is still a joke for the usual gang of scoffers. The state now and then attempts to recognise the work of pop musicians by handing out baubles and honours but, as poor old Sir Cliff and Sir Paul have discovered, a knighthood can often merely confirm a person's naffness.

Yet there is something which could be done to strike a significant blow against musical snobbery. Last year the Government announced that a national songbook would be introduced to encourage the nation's children to share and enjoy music. There would be 30 songs which would be the focus of a campaign called "Sing-Up". The project is now in all sorts of trouble. The list was thought to be too short and too prescriptive. Songs from different cultures were introduced in response to accusations of cultural imperialism. When last counted, there were about 600 songs in what has now become the National Song Bank.

Yet the idea was good. If the list had been increased to 50 songs and revised once every two years with the help of teachers and children, it could have engaged schools in understanding what made songs last. Because music has the power to unify, there would surely have been a case for putting the emphasis on songs from the main culture.

The list, as it stands, is dull: too many nursery rhymes and traditional songs. The national songbook should include the best popular songs of the past, whether they are naff or not. The Beatles' "Yellow Submarine" should be there, and so should Ralph McTell's "Streets of London" and Cliff Richards' "Congratulations". Something by the Bee Gees – "Stayin' Alive", perhaps – would certainly be a contender.

There will be discussions and rows but the songbook would be a great, self-renewing celebration of the power of music. It would also be the best way to pass on to future generations songs that have brought us pleasure – however unfashionably – in the past. 

"Stayin’ in touch: Bee Gee tips for absent fathers " (The Times , 6-5-2008)

The government has enlisted Robin Gibb, the Bee Gees singer, and Gary Lineker, the sports presenter, to encourage fathers separated from their children to stay close to them.

In an interview to be shown at a launch event this week by Ed Balls, the children’s secretary, Gibb, 58, speaks of having been “very, very nervous” and “horrified” at the prospect of seeing his children, Spencer and Melissa, for the first time after he divorced his first wife, Molly Hullis, in 1980. “‘Out of control’ is the first emotion alienated parents feel when they’re separated from their kids,” says Gibb. “They feel threatened. They feel as if they are not dictating events.”

Gibb says that one of the most difficult parts of reestablishing the relationship with children is knowing there might be another man in their home. “That’s what a lot of fathers can’t deal with,” he says.

The singer, whose interview was filmed for the website dads-space.com, which has received funding from Balls’s Parent Know How programme, has long had links to the government. He lent his Florida mansion to the former prime minister Tony Blair after noticing he looked “haggard” following the invasion of Iraq.

Transcript of an interview with Robin Gibb
This is a transcript of an interview with Robin Gibb conducted by www.dads-space.com, a service helping separated fathers communicate with their children. The full interview will be uploaded on to this website this month.

Quotes from interview with Robin Gibb on Dads Space

Emotionally, you tend to feel like swings and roundabouts; you don’t know what you want to do. You want to take action. You want to take action on your own, you want to take action with lawyers, you want to do this, you want to do that; you feel out of control.

I think that “out of control” is the first emotion that alienated parents feel when they’re separated from their kids. They feel threatened. They feel as if they are not dictating the course of events, someone else is, so it is very, very hard.

Related Links
Stayin’ in touch: Bee Gee tips for absent fathers
This is a very emotional period and this takes a while to settle down and see the wood for the trees. I think that once you let go of that emotional thing, things happen that become positive.



I became a father at a very early age by comparison to a lot of men – I was 22 years old when Spencer my first boy was born and I was in LA at the time, because in… this was about 1972 – it wasn’t always the thing… it was just… at the dawn of the time when men were supposed to be in surgery watching the child being born. But I was on the plane straight back… and he was premature. He was in an incubator …

I remember seeing him for the first time. It’s an incredible feeling actually producing life and having a child for the first time. And at 22 – I was still a bit of a kid myself. It kinda made me grow up a bit.



I think what you have to do… is that you’ve got to be a friend to your kids and you’ve got to be always there for them and I think more so when you are separated. I think you become more valuable as a father and friend once you’ve been separated. Because there are other people who come into the family structure that may be seen as father-figures – and so therefore you’re competing with that as well.

I think that’s what a lot of fathers can’t deal with as well – that there might be someone else at home who might be a father to the kids, who may spend more time with them and might replace them. In my case that did not happen. I feared it – but it didn’t happen. I’ve always been dad and we’ve always had a very close relationship.

And I think you’ve got to be first and foremost got to be a friend, a confidante to your kids. And not say… dictating too much, disciplinarian and always on their back… but a friend and a confidante – that’s the most important thing.



When I first saw my children afterwards I took them to pantomimes and things like that in Windsor, the usual quality moments, museums, all the things that parents do with kids to try and look for quality bonding moments.

The feeling I had when I first knew I was going to see them was great anticipation, very, very nervous; what would they think of me? Would they see me as Dad and how would their views be formed of me and what’s my role with them. You’re starting from a different reference point. I think a lot of parents go through this; you feel like a stranger with your own kids.

With those nerves that I had about seeing them, I turned them into “well, why don’t I just treat myself as a guy who’s getting to know some other people, like a friend and turn them into friends?” which is what I did, and I think, after a while I gained their respect and their friendship, which is probably something maybe I wouldn’t have had if we’d stayed together.

I think it developed into something more meaningful. All I know is that I was horrified at the time because I hadn’t seen them for a while. I think that any parent who’s going to see their kids after a long, long time is going to feel this, and it’s quite normal. You get over it. It’s just a moment in time but it is very, very nerve wracking.

La colonna sonora del film "Sex and the city", tratto dalla celebre omonima serie televisiva, conterrà ben due canzoni dei Bee Gees: "How deep is your love" (nella versione dei "Bird and the Bee" ed "How can you mend a broken heart" di Al Green, nella quale c'è la partecipazione della splendida star del soul britannico Joss Stone.
La Stone ha specificatamente registrato una parte della canzone per "duettare" con il grande Al Green nel classico dei Gibb. Il film esce in questi giorni anche in Italia, e la colonna sonora sarà pubblicata qualche giorno dopo (il 26 maggio), e può gia essere ordinata su amazon.co.uk

In un'intervista rilasciata alla BBC, Robin Gibb si è dichiarato "molto aperto" alla possibilità di ritornare a suonare dal vivo con Barry.
"Dipende da Barry, se e quando lui sarà a suo agio con questa idea. E' una cosa personale, si farà quando lui se la sentirà. Quindi non è un no. E' ancora oggi una cosa molto impegnativa a livello emozionale, i Bee Gees eravamo noi tre. Quando Maurice è morto, decidemmo immediatamente ed emozionalmente che il nome Bee Gees non sarebbe più esistito."
Alla domanda "stai lavorando con Barry?", Robin ha risposto: "Stiamo lavorando molto da vicino sul musical sulla nostra vita che il prossimo anno debutterà a Broadway. Questo è il prossimo grande progetto"
Robin ha poi parlato della scena pop attuale, della sua campagna a favore dei combattenti della Royal Air Force, per la quale si sarebbe dovuto esibire a Windsor il prossimo 13 luglio.
(N.D.R: il concerto in questione è stato rinviato.)
(Fonte: BBC)

 "Bee Gees may return, singer says"

Robin Gibb has said he and brother Barry may return to the stage as The Bee Gees, five years after their brother and bandmate Maurice died.

Robin Gibb told the BBC he is "very open" to a comeback if Barry "feels comfortable with it".

"When or where is to be decided at a time when he says yes," he said.

Robin Gibb is currently preparing to release a new solo album and is also campaigning to honour members of World War II's RAF Bomber Command.

When Maurice Gibb died in 2003, his brothers said they would no longer use the Bee Gees name.

"We decided that on an emotional level at that point," Robin Gibb said.

"Whether or not that will change, we don't know. It's a personal thing and we'll do it when the time is right."

He added: "So it's not a no, it's just emotionally when it's right."

The pair did perform on stage in Miami in 2006, their first show together since Maurice died.

Robin was due to play his first UK solo gig next month to support the RAF memorial campaign, but that has now been postponed.

The singer is chairman of the Heritage Foundation and is calling for a permanent memorial in London for British airmen.

"These people were heroes to me," he said. "They were seen as the guys who won the war, and the war had to be won.

"Our backs were against the wall and we could have been occupied any day in this country. And these guys risked their lives."
(Source: BBC)