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The
Bee Gees are three brothers: Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb; three
outstanding songwriters, singers, producers and musicians. In the music
business for over 40 years and with world-wide record sales exceeding 180
million, they are in the top five of the most successful recording
artists of all time. |
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What they gave to the world and why ..... ALONE
(1997) BLUE ISLAND (1993) BARRY GIBB: The other side, what we call heaven, in fact is blue and it's an island. And from there we are processed before we move on to our next reality. Good or bad, this is where we all end up. So we wrote 'Blue Island' and dedicated it for the children of Yugoslavia, because even though they may not survive, the hope is that they, as well as us, are all going to this beautiful place.
EDGE OF THE UNIVERSE (1976) BARRY GIBB: A humorous flight of fancy about an alien and his pet dog. Baffling really.
FIRST OF MAY (1969) BARRY GIBB: 'First of May,' that was my dog's birthday. When Linda and I first moved into an apartment near St Paul's Cathedral, we got ourselves a Pyranian mountain dog and named him Barnaby. The idea came from then. Sad to say, Barnaby's gone but the song lives on.
HOW CAN YOU MEND A BROKEN HEART (1971) BARRY GIBB: Fifteen months after we broke up, Robin dropped into my place in Kensington. It was a cold, wet day and this song was born. We finished it with Mo, and the Bee Gees were reborn.
HOW DEEP IS YOUR LOVE (1977) ROBIN GIBB: Personalities are examined in this tune, but female or male aren't even mentioned. It has universal connotations and it clicks with everyone. Before we cut the song we knew we could fuse some of our own personalities into the track. Love is the anchor, it's a foundation.
I STARTED A JOKE (1968) ROBIN GIBB:
The idea for the song came when I was sitting on a plane over Germany,
and I heard a melody in the droning of the engine. As soon as I got on
the ground that night I completed the song with Barry and Maurice. To
me, that was a very spiritual song, about faith and survival in life.
It wasn't a love song, it was one of the first songs we wrote about struggling
to survive emotionally alone in the world.
BARRY GIBB: An irresistible force meeting an immovable object. That is life, isn't it? That is really a way of saying that life just never really is a good, clear, luck-filled path. There's an obstacle at every turn. It's a like a fantastic video game. And there's always going to be an immovable object.
I'VE GOTTA GET A MESSAGE TO YOU (1968) BARRY GIBB:
It's about a person who is about to die. He's going to his death because
he has committed a murder.
I WILL (1997) BARRY GIBB: This is a three-person song. A triangle is also a lot of fun to write about. If this person doesn't stand by you, then I will. I'll be there. And you can reject me, and that's okay. And I'll go away, but I'll come back because I don't believe the guy you love is really the right person for you. I believe am, and I'll come back if he disappears. I can take it. You can have a two-person song, three or four personalities which maybe you don't want to write about.
JULIET (1983) ROBIN GIBB: The story is about a man really having his fantasies. It's a love fantasy and she doesn't really exist in the song.
JUMBO (1968) BARRY GIBB: Mo playing the Beatles mellotron, a very experimental period. I think it's about a child's fantasy elephant, but when I listen again there are some very phallic overtones.
MASSACHUSETTS (1967) BARRY GIBB:
It's basically antiflower power... Don't go to San Francisco, come home...
We wanted to write the opposite of what it's like to lose somebody who
went to San Francisco. The lights all went out in Massachusetts because
everybody went to San Francisco, because they left. MY THING (1969) A song dedicated to Maurice's Pyrenean mountain dog Aston.
NEW YORK MINING DISASTER 1941 (1967) BARRY GIBB:
It's about some people trapped in a mine. The song itself was really about
the Aberfan mining disaster in Wales, killing over two hundred children.
Quite sad really. ORDINARY LIVES (1989) BARRY GIBB:
It's a reflection about ourselves before we became famous –our way
of saying we're just ordinary people. The lines 'Say goodbye cruel world
/ No pity no gain tonight / Whatever the cost all is lost' is also a reflection
on Andy... that's what he did. PAYING THE PRICE OF LOVE (1993) BARRY GIBB: It's about a wonderful relationship that's gone wrong, and the person singing the song is, as always, paying the price... the person who's most in love.
SAVED BY THE BELL (1969) ROBIN GIBB: It was a song about sacrifice, about really giving yourself to somebody, almost completely. The relationship was about to come to an end and he was rescued by his own awareness on whether the relationship is working, or by the other person, and you hear that line, 'Saved by the bell' SINCERE RELATION (1970) Robin Gibb's tribute to George Hullis, his first wife's father, who died when they were recording the album 2 Years On.
SMOKE AND MIRRORS (1995) BARRY GIBB: I think this is a really important statement. The world of illusion, the idea that none of us are really what we seem to be. All of these songs are not just songs as such. There's a lot of examination of yourself in these songs. We write from life observation. So, we'll go away and just observe the culture. And just for me, the one phrase that epitomizes the whole of last year [1995] is 'Smoke & Mirrors.' The way we sort of sit and around and talk about, 'What do we do about starvation in Zaire?' We all sit down and talk. And you see all these people around big tables talking about starvation in Zaire instead of actually doing something. And meanwhile, thousands more children have died within the last hour, and no one really gives it that kind of level of thought. To me, that's the way this last year has been on a world level. You observe the culture, you take it in and things ferment and ideas come from that. And I kept hearing this phrase all year, and that is really how life is today, it's all smoke and mirrors. That's what the song is. TOO MUCH HEAVEN (1978) ROBIN GIBB:
The starving children of the world was the genesis of this song. 1979,
early in the evolution of music charity efforts, we donated this one to
Unicef and its worldwide work which we felt strongly about.
TRAFALGAR (1971) MAURICE GIBB: It's a song about a very lonely guy who lives in London and spends a lot of his time feeding the pigeons in Trafalgar Square.
STAYIN' ALIVE (1977) BARRY GIBB:
Everybody struggles against the world, fighting all the bullshit and things
that can drag you down. And it really is a victory just to survive.
THIS IS WHERE I CAME IN (2001) BARRY GIBB:
The title is a sardonic remark about ourselves. It's our way of saying
that nothing ever really changes. It's very honest and it reflects our
feelings about everything that's happened to us in the past 30 years. WEDDING DAY (2001) BARRY GIBB: That was one of our titles, and we thought, let's write a song about people getting married... Nobody really does that anymore, and I thought it would be nice to have a nice song on the album so that everyone may sing it or any couple may dance to it on their wedding day.
WISH YOU WERE HERE (1988) BARRY GIBB:
A song written for Andy, unconciously, a week after he died. WITH MY EYES CLOSED (1997) BARRY GIBB: The song is basically about love at great distance. When you can't be with the person you love. And you want to tell them, and you want to send a message. When I was a kid, I would lie in bed at night, and I had a crush on this girl, and I would talk to her going to sleep. I would always make believe that she could hear what I was saying. And she used to say the same thing to me. So that little thing, that little relationship that I had when I was fourteen years old has always sort of stuck with me. I guess we all did that, you know, the first time you fall in love. But to me, that's what the song means. I can touch you. You don't have to be bad. Sex isn't just it. There's all kinds of feelings. [reciting the lyrics] 'I can touch you with my eyes closed. I can feel you when you're near me. I can see you with my eyes closed. I can touch you with my hands tied' And all of those feelings are really what goes through your head when you're really in love, and the person you love is very far away. WORLD (1967) BARRY GIBB: It goes 'Now I've found that the world is round and of course it rains everyday.' What we are saying is that you can't live in your own little world, because somewhere there's trouble -rain- and you must face up to it. It may be sun, flowers and beauty in England today, but it's rain and misery somewhere else. It's always raining somewhere in the world for somebody.
WORDS (1968) ROBIN GIBB: It reflects a mood. It was written after an argument. Barry had been arguing with someone, I had been arguing with someone and happened to be in the same mood. The arguments were about absolutely nothing. They were just words. That is what the song is all about, words can make you happy or words can make you sad.
YOU SHOULD BE DANCING (1976) BARRY GIBB: You can't take songs like this too seriously. It was actually a very exhilarating time, settling in Miami. We had a great band and this song came from that
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Maurice Gibb: "Contrary to popular belief, we have no leader. We call it a democratic dictatorship." (Daily Express, 2001) Barry Gibb: "We now own all of our own work, we own all our publishing, we own all of our record masters. Today, times are extremely good and we are in control of ourselves." (Mojo, 2001) Barry Gibb: "The three of us don't spend time together when we're not working. That keeps our minds fresh." (Performing Songwriter, 1998) Maurice Gibb: "We'll keep doing what we love to do until we get to the point where we don't love it anymore. If people still want to hear us then we'll continue." (OK On Air, 2001)
Robin Gibb: "We're a proper band more in the Beatles sense rather than the boy band sense." (Reuters, 2001) Maurice Gibb: "[We see ourselves as] three brothers trying to be bigger than Beatles." (In Conversation, 2001) Barry Gibb: "We are brothers first, a pop group second" (1997)
Maurice Gibb: "We're persistent little buggers. We keep on trying and trying and trying. We've had pitfalls, we've had valleys, we've had mountains. And if you didn't have the valleys you wouldn't know about the mountains." (In Conversation, 2001) Barry Gibb: "It's hard to be an individual. We don't really hang out except when we're working. But we work so much that that's social for us, too. So we don't need to go to each other' s houses.'' (Denver Rocky Mountains News, 1997) Robin Gibb: "I'm very proud of being a Bee Gee and am always aware that I'll be identified as a Bee Gee. All my solo projects have been 'along with' Bee Gee commitments, rather than 'instead of'." (Top of the Pops, 2003)
Barry Gibb: "We’re all boss of this band at one time or another. If I get really dogged about something and I don’t want to do it and everyone else does, my wife Linda will turn ‘round and say, ‘Get your pants on and go and bloody do it and shut up moaning.’ In fact, all the Bee Gee wives are good like that. They have no time for our egos. They’ll say, ‘This is that showbiz ego thing – get rid of it, act your age.’ So we’re like that with each other, as brothers. We drive each other." (Mojo, 2001) Robin Gibb:
"We didn't really live in each other's pockets. We were only together
when we were writing or talking about our career and things. I don't think
we were ever like other family-orientated artists where you're part of
a family structure. We never had that. We were songwriters first and foremost
and he (Maurice) had the same interests and goals in writing, which has
kept us together. More so than being brothers." (Saturday Magazine,
2003) |
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Lyrics - for all to read and understand !
Alone I was a midnight
rider on a cloud of smoke I could hear
you breathing with a sigh of the wind And all the
wonders made for the Earth So I play,
I'll wait 'cause you know that love takes time Well since
I got no message on your answer phone I'm on a
wheel of fortune with a twist of fate And is there
glory there to behold? So I play,
I'll wait and I pray it's not too late And all the
wonders made for the Earth So I play,
I'll wait and I pray it's not too late Gone but
not out of sight Shine and
search for the light Gone but not out of sight...(repeat to fade) |
Closer to Close She'll read
your mind I tell myself I just wanna
get closer than close to you Your soul
is naked I just wanna
get closer than close to you |
Deja vu This is my
dedication I'm not a
saint but stand accused It's my deja
vu, sweet deja vu The silent
nights, I cry your name It's my deja
vu, sweet deja vu And cherish
what they've lost It's my deja
vu (memories of you) How deep is your love I know your
eyes in the morning sun And you come
to me on a summer breeze Chorus: I believe
in you Chorus |
E.S.P Dark is the
night Somewhere,
out across the nation Oh baby you,
you give, me (CHORUS) Danger, suddenly
an early warning Baby you,
give, me E.S.P Be prepared
to make your sacrifice, tonight And we got
love (Repeat Chorus) |
| FOR
WHOM THE BELL TOLLS Written by BARRY, ROBIN and MAURICE GIBB I stumble in the night
All the tears and
the turbulent years CHORUS Seen you in a magazine
Now I know but a little
too late CHORUS Now I know there'll
be times like this CHORUS |
I
Surrender
From the highest tower,
I will call you home Live or Die Ain't it time that
you believe in someone (CHORUS) Take one breath Now is the time we
show each other (CHORUS) Live or die Take one breath
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| Man
In The Middle
You've got a plan
that could never go wrong I played the fool
and I went off the track I've been telling
lies I'm just the man in
the middle I know I let you down
in so many ways I've been in disguise I'm just the man in
the middle I'm just the man in
the middle I'm just the man in
the middle I'm just the man in
the middle I'm just the man |
Sacred Trust I meant to
fight it to the finish but you made me forget You know
I twist around and turn around and then I give in And baby
I can't last another night I follow
my heart right up to the end You take
me and you break me and you do what you please I tell you
I can't wait another night I follow
my heart that leads me to you I follow
my heart right up to the end I follow
my heart that leads me to you |
She keeps on coming back Front and
centre She keeps
on coming back for more Oh no She ain't
no Cleopatra She keeps
on coming back for more Oh no Midnight She keeps
on coming back for more |
Staying Alive Well, you
can tell by the way I use my walk, Whether you’re
a brother or whether you’re a mother, Well now,
I get low and I get high, Whether you’re
a brother or whether you’re a mother, Life goin’
nowhere. somebody help me. Well, you
can tell by the way I use my walk, Whether you’re
a brother or whether you’re a mother, Life goin’
nowhere. somebody help me. |
| The
Extra Mile
ALBUM · This
is Where I Came In (2001) I want to go where
no one’s gone before I’m ready to
walk that line In all the years,
you suffer for your love I’m ready to
walk that line Ready to walk that
line |
SONG:
The Longest Night ARTIST: The Bee Gees You know a love so
fine (CHORUS) You know it breaks
my heart We don't talk about
it In your darkest hour Nobody cries (Repeat Chorus) |
Voice in the Wilderness It's another
woman Watch her
glide She's got
the power that I can't explain I don't want
to live like that Stick with
me forever Live on stage I give you
something you can talk about I don't want
to live like that Walking through
the fire Watch me
fly I don't want
to live like that |
Wedding
Day
We both acknowledge
what we came here for And the world that
I used to see is gone without a trace And funny when the
time is right We'll be together Oh, now is the hour,
now is the sowing of the seed You know I will remember
well the mission bell We'll be together This is my pledge
to you We'll be together |
You Win Again
(my comments : I know, I always do)
I
couldn’t figure why
You couldn’t give me what everybody needs
I shouldn’t let you kick me when I’m down
My baby
I find out everybody know that
You’ve been using me
I’m surprised you
Let me stay around you
One day I’m gonna lift the cover
And look inside your heart
We gotta level before we go
And tear this love apart
(chorus)
There’s no fight you can’t fight
This battle of love with me
You win again
So little time
We do nothing but compete
There’s no life on earth
No other could see me through
You win again
Some never try
But if anybody can, we can
And I’ll be, I’ll be
Following you
Oh
baby I shake you from now on
I’m gonna break down your defenses
One by one
I’m gonna hit you from all sides
Lay your fortress open wide
Nobody stops this body from
Taking you
You
better beware, I swear
I’m gonna be there one day when you fall
I could never let you cast aside
The greatest love of all
(repeat
chorus)