Solo Bee Gees

The Bee Gees seem to be the prime example of the sum being greater than any of the individual parts. NONE of The Brothers Gibb enjoyed much of a solo career ... yet together they've been radio staples for over 40 years.

Brother Barry, most often featured as lead vocalists on The Bee Gees' hits, and certainly the most prolific writer in the bunch, managed a couple of Top Ten Hits thanks to a couple of duets that he recorded with Barbra Streisand ... but these were really Barbra Streisand records. His only Top 40 solo hit, "Shine Shine", crapped out at #37 in 1984.



Maurice ... "The Quite One" ... (as Beatles-comparisons followed them throughout their career) never really had a solo hit ... but a while back we featured an INCREDIBLY powerful video of Maurice performing with his ex-wife Lulu on one of her British Television Specials. Sadly, we lost Maurice in 2003, shortly after this was filmed. It's an absolutely BEAUTIFUL version of The Bee Gees' hit "First Of May", which we featured earlier in this series.
Click here: YouTube - LuLu & Maurice Gibb - First of May
(And remember that it was Maurice who produced the Tin Tin "Forgotten Hit" that kicked this whole thing off in the first place!)

When it comes to Bee Gees music, Maurice rarely took the lead ... he was more of a musical and vocal arranger for the band ... but in 2001 we were very fortunate to be one of the first in the country to premier the brand new Bee Gees album "This Is Where I Came In" ... and ON that CD was a track called "She Keeps On Coming" that I said at the time the band should have sent around to radio stations with a blank label in the hopes of getting them to play it. The reason for this was that it sounded like a VERY contemporary cut ... something along the lines of Talking Heads meets Robert Palmer meets Jeff Lynne of ELO ... what it DIDN'T sound like was ANYTHING else The Bee Gees had ever recorded!!! (Unfortunately, by this time The Bee Gees were pretty much blacklisted by radio ... NOBODY was going to take a chance on playing a new Bee Gees tune ... which is why Forgotten Hits proved to be an interesting outlet to premier this track.) Of course, nobody at the time had any idea that this would be the LAST album The Bee Gees ever recorded ... a couple of years later, Maurice was dead, and Barry and Robin have yet to return to the studio for anything that might be considered a Bee Gees project.

Give a listen to "She Keeps On Coming" and see what you think. My guess is you NEVER would have believed this to be The Bee Gees at the time ... and, in 2001, I'm also guessing that this one could have been a pretty big hit ... and who knows ... maybe kicked off Phase FIVE of their career!!!

Robin tried the hardest to get a solo career off the ground, dating back to the first break-up of the band in 1969. Proof again that the public wasn't accepting ANY of The Bee Gees as solo acts is the fact that Robin's biggest hit was a slowed-down remake of The Beatles / Abbey Road song "Oh! Darling" ... which hit #15 in 1978. It came from the soundtrack to the DISASTOUROUS film "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", which starred The Bee Gees, Peter Frampton and an assortment of other guest stars who have spent the last 30+ years trying to forget the experience. But in 1984, Robin recorded a techno-pop song called "Boys Do Fall In Love", which I actually LOVED at the time. Unfortunately, not too many other folks out there felt the same way, and "Boys Do Fall In Love" stopped at #37.





Baby brother Andy ... we could probably do a week-long feature on the tragedy that was HIS life ... scored nine straight Top 40 Hits written and produced with his brother Barry. "Shadow Dancing" topped the charts for seven weeks back in 1978 at the height of Bee Gees-mania ... and "I Just Want To Be Your Everything" and "Love Is Thicker Than Water" gave him THREE #1 Singles in a row. Other hits included An Everlasting Love (#5, 1978); Our Love, Don't Throw It All Away (#7, 1978); Desire (#4, 1980); I Can't Help It (a duet with Olivia Newton-John that peaked at #12 in 1980); Time Is Time (#15, 1981) and Me Without You (#40, 1981). His duet with then gal-pal Victoria Principal, "All I Have To Do Is Dream", stopped at #51 in 1981. While you still hear "I Just Want To Be Your Everything" and "Shadow Dancing" quite a bit on the radio, two of Andy's BEST ballads have joined the ranks of the forgotten and ignored ... so today we're featuring a couple of OUR favorites, An Everlasting Love and Our Love, Don't Throw It All Away.


(Our Love) Don't Throw It All Away


An Everlasting Love

The Bee Gees - Part 4

Although most of you probably never heard most of them, The Bee Gees continued to release new music throughout the 1980's and 1990's. (The Brothers Gibb ... always prolific songwriters ... kept afloat by writing songs for OTHER artists during this era, too ... Samantha Sang, Celine Dion, Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton, Dionne Warwick, Diana Ross, Barbra Streisand and baby brother Andy Gibb ALL enjoyed HUGE hits on the charts, supplied by the songwriting team of one or more of The Bee Gees brothers.)

One of my favorites, "You Win Again' SHOULD have been a much bigger hit than it was ... it peaked at #75 in 1987. Then, in 1989, The Bee Gees scored their first Top Ten Hit in ten years when "One" went to #7.

Their last "official" Top 40 Record came in 1997 when "Alone" reached #28 on The Billboard Chart ... and it sounds as good as anything else they ever recorded during their "falsetto period" some twenty years earlier.

Finally, AGES ago we treated you to one of the tracks off the last album all three brothers recorded together, "This Is Where I Came In" from 2001. Maurice would leave us two years later.


You Win Again


One


Alone


This Is Where I Came In

By the way, if you ever get the chance to see the "This Is Where I Came In" Bee Gees Documentary, try and catch it ... it's one of the best, most entertaining, well-done artist portraits I've ever seen. It was recently repackaged as a 2-DVD Set with their INCREDIBLE Concert Film "One Night Only" ... both WELL worth the musical investment!

The Bee Gees - Part 3

The Bee Gees' Disco Era has been played to death ... it got to the point that radio actually used to promote "Bee Gees Free" Weekends to entice their listeners to tune in without fear of hearing those SAME songs over and over and over again.

Honestly, some of the disco stuff has worn pretty well ... tracks like "How Deep Is Your Love" and "Stayin' Alive" have proven to be amongst the strongest songs of the rock era.

Jive Talkin', Nights On Broadway, You Should Be Dancing, Night Fever and Too Much Heaven still receive a fair amount of regular airplay ...

But when was the last time you heard "Love So Right" or "Love You Inside Out" on the radio??? Even LESS familiar would be something like "Boogie Child", which went all the way to #12 in 1977 and then vanished forever. (In all fairness, it's gotta be the weakest in the bunch!!!)

How 'bout "Edge Of The Universe" ... or our PERSONAL favorite "Fanny"???

Hopefully we've picked a few of The Bee Gees' Disco Era songs that you're NOT already sick of and featured them today. (Some of you may already be experiencing "The Heebie-Bee Gees" this week!!!)

Give these a listen and let us know what you think!


Love So Right


Love You Inside Out


Boogie Child


Edge Of The Universe ("Live" Single Version)


Fanny (Be Tender With My Love)

The Bee Gees - Part 2

As promised, here are a couple more Bee Gees tracks that you very well may have forgotten about!

From 1972 (aka "Phase Two") ... we bring you TWO Top 20 Hits that just NEVER seem to get played anymore:

My World (#15)

and

Run To Me (#11)

The Bee Gees

Yesterday we mentioned the early 1970's era of Bee Gees music when we featured the Tin Tin hit "Toast And Marmalade For Tea" ... and the truth is that MOST of the music The Bee Gees created during that era has been ignored and forgotten about by oldies radio.

The Bee Gees' career can really be broken into four separate categories ... the first phase would include their early hits that first crossed over to our charts in the late '60's like New York Mining Disaster 1941 (#14, 1967); To Love Somebody (#17, 1967); Holiday (#12, 1967); Massachusetts (#11, 1967); Words (#15, 1968); Jumbo (#40, 1968); I've Gotta Get A Message To You (#3, 1968); I Started A Joke (#6, 1969); First Of May (#18, 1969) and Tomorrow Tomorrow (#32, 1969), MOST of which you RARELY hear on the radio anymore ... despite the fact that nearly ALL of these were Top 20 Hits and considered classics at the time. (The focus on the Disco-Era of their career has virtually wiped away the memory of THESE lush productions from those early years.)

After a break-up, they came back "Two Years On" and gave us back-to-back #1 Hits with Lonely Days and How Can You Mend A Broken Heart (both 1971). But their OTHER hits from this era: Don't Wanna Live Inside Myself (#39, 1971); My World (#15, 1972); Run To Me (#11, 1972) and Alive (#26, 1972) NEVER get played anymore. (In all fairness, SOME of these really haven't aged well ... in many cases, they're SO slowed down ... and lushly produced ... and repetitive ... that they just haven't been able to sustain any kind of lasting affection with most listeners.) This would be Phase Two of their 40-year career.

Then, in 1975, all hell broke loose when The Bee Gees released their first disco track. Phase Three kicked off with a bang when Jive Talkin' went straight to #1 ... and for the next four years you literally couldn't turn on your radio and NOT hear a Bee Gees song. The soundtrack to "Saturday Night Fever" only helped to fuel the fire. In quick succession, The Brothers Gibb scored MONSTER hits with tracks like Nights On Broadway (#4, 1975); Fanny (#9, 1976); You Should Be Dancing (#1, 1976); Love So Right (#3, 1976); Boogie Child (#12, 1977); Edge Of The Universe (#26, 1977); How Deep Is Your Love (#1, 1977); Stayin' Alive (#1, 1978); Night Fever (#1, 1978); Too Much Heaven (#1, 1979); Tragedy (#1, 1979) and Love You Inside Out (#1, 1979).

And then the backlash hit. Suddenly The Bee Gees couldn't BUY a hit. Radio held Bee Gees-free weekends and they were pretty much universally blamed for the entire disco era. As such, MOST of their releases were ignored for the next 20 years ... and that's a shame because there were some EXCEPTIONALLY good tunes written and recorded during this period (aka Phase Four).

Over the next few days, we're going to feature some Bee Gees tracks that you probably haven't heard in AGES ... some that you may have forgotten all about ... some that you maybe never heard at all during their radio black-out.

We kick it off today with "I Started A Joke" and "First Of May", both from 1969. When's the last time you heard THESE songs on the radio???


I Started A Joke
(This was a HUGE hit ... SOMEBODY should be playing this!!!)


First Of May
(You know the First of May is just around the corner ... maybe you could use THAT as an excuse to feature this one on your program!!!)

Tin Tin

Here’s a One Hit Wonder that has TRULY become a Forgotten Hit.

Despite peaking at #16 in Cash Box Magazine and #20 in Billboard Magazine in the Spring of 1971, "Toast And Marmalade For Tea" by Tin Tin has been all but ignored and forgotten by oldies radio.

Sounding an awful lot like The Bee Gees of this era … and for good reason: the track was produced by Maurice Gibb ... Tin Tin would never have another American Top 40 Hit.

Keyboard Player Steve Kipner would go on to enjoy some personal success in the ‘80’s … he wrote "Hard Habit To Break" for Chicago and both "Physical" and "Twist Of Fate" for Olivia Newton-John ... and all three of those records would go on to make The Top Five on The National Charts.