The Bee Gees Biography

Perhaps no sound better personified the era of 1970s disco music than that of the English/Australian pop group, the Bee Gees. With more than 100 million records sold worldwide, the Bee Gees are among the most successful recording artists in history. They are the only artists to write and produce six consecutive number one singles in the U.S.; they were the first composers to have five songs in the American Top 10 at the same time; and they have written chart-topping United Kingdom hits in four consecutive decades. In the U.S. alone, the Bee Gees had nine gold albums, three platinum, three number-one LPS, five singles that sold more than two million copies, and seven that sold more than a million. Among a multitude of industry honors, they've earned 16 Grammy nominations and walked away with seven Grammy Awards.

Barry, the eldest Bee Gee, was born in 1946 in Manchester, England, the second child to bandleader and drummer Hugh Gibb, Jr., and his wife, Barbara. Three years later followed fraternal twins Robin and Maurice (pronounced Morris), who was the younger by half an hour. Robin and Maurice claimed that they never felt like twins. "We are two different people altogether. The only thing in common is our humor and musical taste," Maurice commented in The Bee Gees: The Authorized Biography, by the Gibb brothers, as told to David Leaf.

Growing up on the Isle of Man and in Manchester, England, the three brothers were very close as children. "They never really made close friends with anybody outside the family. They've always been sufficient to one another," their mother recalled in the biography. They were first turned on to rock n' roll by listening to their older sister's albums of Elvis Presley, the Everly Brothers, and Bill Haley and the Comets. The brothers made guitars out of boxes and string and pretended to be the Comets. They soon discovered they had a knack for singing and harmonizing. The idea to become singers occurred to the brothers in 1956 at a Saturday afternoon cinema, when a kid miming an Elvis record with a toy guitar appeared on stage as a pre-movie attraction. Robin said the Gibb brothers thought, "Why don't we do that?" In December of that year, the Gibbs and two friends climbed a stage at the Gaumont Theatre in Manchester to mime an Elvis song. As fate would have it, the Elvis record broke, forcing the boys to use their own voices. Afterwards, they named themselves "Wee Johnny Hays and the Bluecats," and sang and mimed records at local theaters, eventually composing their own songs.

In 1958 the family moved to Australia. During the ship ride to the new country, the brothers performed impromptu acts for the other passengers. Wanting to get a show business career started, the brothers applied for a singing job at a local racetrack where they became regulars. They were quickly discovered by Bill Goode and his DJ friend, Bill Gates, who got the Gibbs airplay on a radio station in Brisbane, Australia. As attention from the airwaves grew, the Gibbs formed a new name for themselves--the B.G.s-- derived from the common initials of Barry Gibb, Bill Goode, and Bill Gates. A few years later the name was elongated to Bee Gees, which came to stand for the Brothers Gibb. Hugh Gibb took control of his son's singing careers for a while. By 1960 the Bee Gees were making appearances on Australian television. Still, the brothers were young and not always professional. Their mom said, "[They were] naughty. Before they went on to do [a] show ... they used to disappear. At one point, they climbed up the television mast. When all the executives arrived, they'd say, 'This place is lousy with Bee Gees.'" The young group also played in nightclubs, wearing tuxedos and singing songs that appealed to adults. At age 15, the brothers dropped out of high school to concentrate fully on their show business careers.