Barry Gibb's Wild Ride

00:00:15 Speaker 1: Pushkin. A few bands have experienced such extreme highs and lows as The Beaches Throughout their decades long career, the Band of Brothers managed to be both grossly underrated and also one of the best selling live acts of all time. M Barry Gibb and his younger twin brothers Maurice and Robin started out in the late fifties as a teenaged pop group in Australia. Their impeccable three part harmony caught the ear of the prominent UK manager Robert Stigwood, but a heavy hand and molding the Beegis into a world renowned grew By nineteen sixty nine, though the band and imploded due to power struggles and battles with addiction. A year and a half later, the Bags were back together, and after a few fits and starts, in nineteen seventy six, Barry Gibb discovered his famed false set up. Their classic run of disco hits followed, including the Saturday Night Fever soundtracks, which was the highest selling soundtrack of all time until The Bodyguard in nineteen ninety two. On today's episode, Rick Ruban talks to Barry Gibb about his new Dave Cobb produced Appum, which features country music inspired renditions of the Gibbs Brothers Brilliant Songbook with guest features on every track. They also talked through them making as some of Rick's favorite big songs, and Barry recalls what it was like producing Barbra streisand who wouldn't sing a single note before two am? This is broken record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmondson. Here's Rick Ruman with Barry gibb. I have a question about songwriting. Yeah, Historically, do you write songs with a purpose in mind? Or do songs just come all the time? Well, they come more often than not in the middle of the night, you know. So if there's an idea or a chorus, you know what the chorus is, you know what the message of the song. I think that's the key is knowing what the song is about and then working backwards, you know. So you've got the chorus. And what I've always done is, okay, make sure you've got the chorus recorded, because I have a little thing next to my bed, and I if I love it, I'll record it and tomorrow it may be nonsense, but I got to record it. Anyway. Is it both melody and lyrics or is it just melody? No, No, it's it's it's all of the above. You've got to know where you're going, You've got to know, you've got to work. I like to work in levels because Roy Orbison is my freak. I just love him and all of his songs build all the time. And that was the greatest lesson for me. Songwriting is to keep keep rising, keep rising, reach some kind of climax, And to me, that's a great song, you know. And that's why I love Nashville because people are still writing great songs and I really don't get too much of that anywhere else. Yeah, do you remember the first time you heard Roy Orbison? Yes, the first record I ever bought was Crying Wow. Just destroyed me. And it wasn't just the song in itself, it was the way he just kept slowing it down, taking the tempo, not the tempo, but the mood down, and then bringing it up again. And so for me, that's the greatest songwriter, pop songwriter I've ever known, you know. In Dreams Blew by You, Jesus unbelievable. And the voice, the voice is just it was otherworldly and very spiritual. And my father always said, yeah, but he's not in tune. I'm feeling what. That doesn't matter, dad, You know, it doesn't have to be bing Crosby, you know, it just has to move you. And and Roy Orbison moved me beyond anything I've ever known. Was was your dad a musician as well? I mean he was a drummer. Yeah, so I got a Yeah, so I got a lot of my rhythmic senses from my father, you know. So I was always, you know, I was always doing something rhythmic. I even had paint cans in the garden upside down so I could play them, and I didn't I don't know what the neighbors ever concerned about it, but it was noisy. But that's you know, that was my father's influence on me. There's an interesting history of great singers who come from a more rhythmic background, you know, drumming, like Steven Tyler, for example, was a drummer. And yeah, it's often the case. It's it definitely adds something. Yeah, It's it's something that's deep inside you and at some point somebody says something about that and you rise to it, you know. So the discovery of the falsetto and and the nonsense that came from all of that was so much rhythm involved, you know, and we had to kick it up. We were told to kick it up or we were gone, you know. So you know, I love them all. I love I love record companies that tell you they're gonna drop you. Wow, thank you. It's it's amazing that you've had the most roller coaster ride maybe of any artists I could think of, in terms of how high the highs were. It's it's really unusual. And I was thinking about it earlier. And the Bags are one of the most successful groups in the history of recorded music. Yeah, it's not arguable. It's you know, top three, top you know, right right up there. It might have been arguable in the past. But I think people, some of our people who've always followed us come back around and some of those songs really mean something now. And I don't understand that. But that's okay. But what's interesting about it is to be as successful as that and still be underrated. There is no explanation for it. You know. I think you can have maybe that you can have too much success. Maybe that's got something to do with it, and you can be overexposed and not know it. And I think that's happened to other artists apart from us, and we didn't really embrace that. You know. We were raising children and life changed, and yeah, we were a little pissed off, that's the right term. But you know, it didn't change us. It didn't change us from who we were. And really it wasn't me, it was the It was the three of us, and the three of us were determined and that's how it worked. And it's more than a pulp group. It's a family, you know. So pulp groups break up, families don't really break up, you know. Yes, that's another part of it that's interesting is that, yes, we've seen other artists reach tremendous highs and then have a backlash, but then they very rarely survive, and they very rarely come back to reach even the higher peaks. Almost none. That's it's really an unbelievable trajectory. And I'm just so happy that you did it. I don't I don't know what happened, you know. I think the connection with Dave Cobb and my love of Nashville music and bluegrass music, My god, I still love the Dixie Cheeks. I don't know what happens that I love them and I love the record you made with them, And I don't understand any of that crap, because that's freedom of speech, you know. Tell me about Besides roy were their other the earliest musical influences you can remember. The first thing that hit me hard was teenage queen Johnny Cash and his own legacy really affected me in a lot of different ways. He was like the voice of America, you know, and at that point and the real story, the real story about all of that is it's all stems from people like Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby, and there was no rock and roll, there was no pop music. It was something that they led us all into in their time, you know. But once mister Robison, the big Oh, once he arrived, that was it changed me forever. It's interesting how how much of a royal country music played in your life when it didn't make some I mean, there were songs along the way that gave a clue, but it was never a feature in the beg oh. I know, I know, because someone else was always telling us what we should be recording. There was always somebody telling us what direction we should be going in, And I don't think we ever became independent in that in that respect. In life now you can be, but in those days you really couldn't. There was a stage where the guy from the record company would be sitting in the sound proof room making notes on what we were recording. And that was a pure aggravation. You know, you you just can't make it records like that. And I heard that, I've heard other people say that, you know, how can you be how can you be creatively independent if someone's telling you what's wrong and what's right about what you're doing. So that's part of it. With the Everly Brothers, ever in influence, Oh, come on, the Everly Brothers most powerful influence in our lives them and Royal Orbison. But I met Phil Eveley a few years back at BMI and I nearly fainted, you know. And the thing was he was standing with Dwayne Eddie and I went and grabbed Stephen and I said, Dwayne Eddie and Phil Eveley are in the other room standing to go. Come on, listen, let's go take a picture as fast as we can. So I have this picture of Phil Evily you're Duane Eddie in my study and an unforgettable moment. How great is it to be a music fan? Isn't it great? It's wonderful And you don't always have to be about yourself. You know, you can love a lot of other things, a lot of other artists, and it's okay. What would have been the first place that you guys heard three part harmony as opposed to Everley's two part harmony? Well, that the two part thing came from Robin really not wanting to sing socially. He would never sit in the lounge and sing with Morrison. It was just something that he just wasn't comfortable doing. But Morris and I, under those circumstances, became the elderly brothers and we would sing all of those songs, and my favorite is still let It Be Me and devoted to you, And you could not help it. If you couldn't be exactly like them, you could try. Do you remember the first influence of hearing three part harmony? Mills Brothers, Mills Mills brother Yeah, And it was our father, who is a real Mills Brothers fan, and he would bring these records home and we got to know songs like till then and up a lazy River and these amazing harmonies, and then they would impersonate instruments and do things like that, and the father was always on guitar at the back, and it was a family beautiful. The vocals were remarkable for that time. So I was in love. And eventually I met Donald Mill who was the who was the very soft vocalist, and Harry's brother was the rock and roller. You know. Tell me about Robert Stigwood. I never got to meet him. Well you better, Rath. Robert was a little bit um. He was a little bit of a dictator, you know. He was very very much believed in what he was saying. He's very aristocratic. I've seen Robert throw absolute tantrums just to get his own way. So oh yeah, he was. He was an angry man, but he was creatively on fire. And so I think that maybe was that one of the last great managers that we've ever seen anyway, and it did it did seem like he was really on your side and really for it for you. Well, I think Robert was on the side of great business, you know, and that's the deal. That's how it is, and you're better off just looking the other way and getting on with what you do. But he was a businessman down to the core, and we were lucky and fortunate to be signed to EMS because that was the Beatles Company, and so it all rubbed off on us in some way. But I remember the days when you could dress anyway. You felt like dressing flower power dictated everything. And my favorite memory is being in the elevator at nem's going up to Brian Epstein's offices with Eric Clapton, who was dressed as a cowboy and I was dressed as a priest. So you know, it's like I both looked at each other and maybe we both send something crazy about all of this, you know, fantastic. Was there something about growing up in Australia that you think had an effect profoundly? I don't know if you're aware of all these people, but Johnny O'Keeffe, Cold Joy and eventually Billy Thorpe dominated Australian radio and dominated Australian pop, and it was Cold Joy and his brother Kevin Jacobson that got us our first record contract. So the link is powerful, you know, and the influences were powerful, and I could I could name a dozen artists that influence does in Australia, but you can't. You're better up being influenced and not really dealing with all of it. But I love Carl and I love all I love his family. We actually stayed with his family and this was the biggest pop star in Australia. You know, it's their own world. It's their own world, and they don't take much notice of anything else. Yeah, if you wouldn't mind when we finish, if you could make a list of the songs from then, Yeah, because we could share a playlist of Australian music that most of the people listening have never heard anywhere. I love I love it when we get to hear new music, you know. Yeah, it will be a pleasure to do that. And I can already think of half a dozen songs that you might hear and go, oh wow, that's actually really good, but no one ever heard of it outside of Australia. Great. What were your first impressions when you went to London. We were just delighted to be able to get into the race. You know, we wanted to be We just wanted to be famous. You know, it sounds really silly, but that's what we wanted, you know, and whatever we needed to do creatively to become famous. We were ready, and that's not true. We were very naive, but at the same time we were ready to learn. We were ready to learn and grow, and so we arrived in London a thrill of our lifetime. Personally, I would have been just as happy to stay in Australia. I really were the most incredible country, and we were growing up there and I was still growing up there when we left, so I missed that. When you went back to Australia with the BGS, how was the welcome, Well, it was always great. I mean, you know, sometimes you sold out and sometimes you didn't. But that was early days, about ninety seventy one, seventy two, and eventually over time after Fever, we did the new Olympic Stadium and that was the thrill of a lifetime because this was where we came from in a way amazing beautiful. Yeah, great days. So there's a beautiful song about to love somebody that you wrote it for Otis Redding, Yes, sir, after he passed and you had the song, was there any question whether or not you should record it for yourself? Well, only because we lost Odish Redding, you know, and we wouldn't have touched it because it wasn't written for us, were written for Otis Redding. And the only reason we actually came around, oh let's just record it ourselves, you know. And I missed the fact that he would have blown it away, you know, and we all loved Odish Redding. So that's another that's another incredible influence. It's it's such an interesting thing because the song is such a quintessential Beiji song. The idea that you might not have sung it is a radical idea, right, But you can hear me trying to sound like Otish Redding. Yeah, you know, you can sort of hear that influence, you know, only after hearing the story. Though I've never heard it until hearing the story. Okay, I always heard that. And we love Dotis reading, and Robin particularly love Dotish Reading. And he had that kind of voice where he could deliver that kind of thing, you know, Robin was unique. The problem for rob was he didn't believe in it enough. He didn't believe in his own voice enough, and so over the years he tried to sound differently than he really should have sounded because if he'd been honest to him, if he'd been him, I think he would have seen a lot of mileage, a lot of mileage. But he didn't. He didn't believe in it enough. Wow, he's got one of the most beautiful voices in the history of recorded music. It's unbelievable. No argument from me. Would you mind if we listen to a song? I don't mind it at all. I'm gonna play you. I want to play one of my favorite of your songs. It's not a well known song, but it's one of my favorites. It's wanted to see what it brings up, and then you can tell me about it after. Could you please listen to lamp Light? Oh my goodness, Yeah, II they am she to bye, I close my hide and I die, said she, And she said she lies. Keevy Wild is my lies? Keevy like yoursis. I sat thelone with my ble li and saw your face in the crime Rise keep on bur wild, mind Rise keeper to. That's brilliant. It's incredible. I haven't heard that since nineteen sixty nine. Wow, isn't that amazing? It's epic majesty, It's monstrous, and it should have been a single. There's no question about it. It's just brilliant, and he was brilliant. And I think Robert was always choosing singles. We didn't choose singles. Roberts chose choosing singles, and that that was where it really became rivalry between us, because he wanted that to be a single, and you know what, he was dead right and Robert was dead wrong. And it's just the way it was. You couldn't you couldn't really make Robert put out something he didn't believe in. But that was just madness. It's interesting, I'll say from as a listener. Yeah, I don't always know who sings what, and I never questioned who does what. It's just like this is coming from the group and it's brilliant and I didn't know, but it's I wanted to ask about, just like the writing first of all, hearing the day for this conversation, I would have never made the connection to Roy Orbison, right. I do not claim any any credit for the song. Robin came in with it, and when Robert didn't choose it as a single, he was really angry. And I think that we just didn't have control over those things and so I think the single became first of May, and now that I hear it again, my god, there's no question that that should have been an aside. I really want to know, how does this song exist? Because it's just so beautiful. Well, it had a lot to do with them, the fact that the group had become really popular in Germany, and Robin loved that whole aspect of music, and that, you know, the the virile in type of song, the wartime types of songs. He loved all that. So as long as Robin was happy singing something, he blew it away. It was when he tried to adapt to other kinds of music that wasn't rub It wasn't wrong, but this was wrong. We'll be back with more from Barry Gibb and Rick Rubin. After a break, We're back with more from Barry Gibb and Rick Rubin. Should we listen to I can't see nobody? Would that be a good one to listen to? Oh? Sure, I'll walk below this streets. I'll watch the people I used to smile, follow the far off dust a popping up but still it bok. I'll just comple myself. I guessing all just time to pay I can't see by it now. I can't see now body. My eyes can't out. Only love got you you. I used to have the play. I used to thin opennything. I watch the ball, Holy boad, I listen to sleep PU see, don't ask me why I love you time I told I can see every breath that I'm doing. You are my months on my hand. I dan't see now body now, I can't see no body my eyes you you now. I can tell you now how that came about? Yes, that that was written in an Australian returned soldiers clubs in a room with strippers. That should tell you something. It's amazing and they were all changing and we're both just sitting there and that's a song I can't see nobody became an obvious title. It's amazing that it's it's got this tremendous R and B melody. It's got almost like a breakbeat drum pattern and strings. It doesn't really sound like anything else. It sounds like the Beg's But yeah, one, what I'm hearing now and that's a long time stuff heard that. What I'm hearing now is too much orchestra. But I would have loved no orchestra until at least the first chorus. So, like Roy Orbison, it needed to take its time and build and build, and so that that would be my only thing. But boy, what a voice, what a song, Just a beautiful song. And did you guys get involved in the orchestration. And I always did the strings with Bill Shepherd, who first worked with us in Australia, and when we came back, I did. I did things like Massachusetts with Bill. Wow. I did a lot of different orchestrations because Robin loved it, but he really didn't want to be bothered with that. I understood, So that's I did some of that stuff. But Bill, you know, he was You couldn't control what Bill was going to do until the day of the orchestra, day of the session. So what I hear now is we would have been real wise to have left the strings out until maybe the second version. Well I love it. I love it just the way it is. I tell you, it takes me away. I love it. You know I do too, It's just that I haven't heard it in what forty years? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, wow, there's oldish reading for you right there, you know. Yeah. His influences were strong beautiful. Do you remember any of the other R and B singers that might have influenced some of the singing Marvin Gay, No question, a lot of the other people that were making records in those days. Because once, once I met Armad Urchikin in New York, he took me along with Robert to the Apollo and I saw, for the first time in my life a full black show, and Tammy Terrell and Marvin Gay and Otis Redding blew my shocks off, you know so, and I was sitting right in the middle of the theater, so it couldn't have been more powerful to me than it was. And I know that Robin Robin would have loved it. Do you think Ahmed brought you with the idea of potent soul for writing in that style, or do you just bring you because he thought you'd enjoyed the show. He did come to Miami when we were recording Nights on Broadway and we our title was Lights on Broadway, and he said, no, you can't call it Lights on Broadway, but you can call it Nights on Broadway because it's more sensual. It just has more meaning to it. So he was good. He was good at saying things like that to us. And he was a great man, so he would come into town even if he didn't need to. He was he was very dedicated to his artists. And but he's the guy who said it through Robert, if they don't kick it up and we're going to drop them. Wow. So that's that's the record industry, and it's it can be really angry at it can be really ruthless if you're not doing what they want you to do. Do you remember the first time you met Ahmed my visits New York to meet the Emperor people to meet Nat Weiss and Armored and a Sue his brother. Yeah, I do. And we went to his apartment and Robert insisted on playing bags first, and I think it was all about making making Armored happy to sign us up and represent us at Atlantic Records. And that's how it worked. That's that's what happened. But we were never in the light, we never we never saw these things happening, and they just happened. Yeah, tell me about a Reef Arif was wonderful. He was like our uncle, you know, but he always played that role. He was a genius and he started out with us on an album called Mister Natural and it didn't pan out, it wasn't successful, but bless his heart, he said, well, let's do another, you know, let's do one more. And of course he was the in house producer for Atlantic Records, and main Course was the album and jive talking and all this stuff. That was the album that we first really worked with Armored. Well, we worked with him before, but this was different, and I think he was taking his instructions from Armored and at the end of main Course, if I could be wrong, I don't think I am. But I think that Saturday Night Fever featured jive talking, but not the record, the live version, and I think that that was maybe underhanded, and I think that Armored was really upset about it, and so was a Reef. So that caused a lot of friction between Robert and Atlantic and Armored. We never saw it, but we knew it, you know. And suddenly Armored canceled a Reef being our producer. So, you know, if you want to get back at at a manager hit the artist, you know, And that was the way that the business worked then, that was the way. But we never saw it. We never We didn't know what anybody was unhappy about until until we figured out what had happened. That Robert was trying to avoid paying Atlantic royalties on the record, I understood, and they used the live version, which made everybody really angry. Yeah. Also interesting that it led to some of your most successful work, Yeah, even without our reef and that. And that's interesting too, because you know, you can't tell, like what seems like a bad thing in the moment leads to something different and it turns out great. It's like, we don't know, we can't predict, don't know. You don't know what's going to happen with any records you make, and we didn't know. We just we were asked to write a certain amount of songs for this film. We never saw the script and we just we had to reinvent ourselves because of what Armord said. And the Falsetto was discovered basically on Nights or Broadway, so didn't even know it existed. That's very strange, but that's how it was. What was your first introduction to disco music as disco music, Well, we didn't know what disco music it was. I'm just telling you exactly how we felt about it all. We didn't know how the word disco never entered our heads until afterwards. I actually agree with you that you should be dancing and night fever word disco records, there's no question about that. But there were party records to us, There were records that were made in fun, you know. And and we had to run away a little bit from the big Pathos ballads because the record company didn't want us to do that anymore. And that must have affected Rob, affected all of us. But the discovery of this other voice was in a way an incredible thing, because that's all everybody wanted after that, including Rob, because Rob Rob's obsession was hit records, hit records, he should Yeah, I don't have to sing them, but I want to hit. I want another hit, And so he would always say, along with other people, go and do that voice again, go to that voice again. So I think we were all victims with the same thing. And we loved it. We loved the adventure of it. We loved coming up with things that people hadn't heard before. We loved the embellishment, the multitracks. The new game was slaves and masters, you know, and you know, you can have a tape full of glee guitar and you bound what you like onto the master that would be that had become the new norm at that point. So I think we got trapped, accorded into the adventure, you know, and we never knew what was going to happen. And at some point we were selling a million records a week, but it was a double album, and it was a compilation album, so you could never really say, oh, that's ours, you know, never really affected us that way. We couldn't believe what was happening because we were trying to make this movie called Side from Pepper with Peter Brampton, and suddenly the dancers in the film were dancing to Saturday Night Fever and in the lunch breaks, what are they doing? You know, and we all had you've probably heard it before. We all had one win a bagel, and Peter Frampton had his own win a bagel, and after about two weeks we each had a winner bagel. So there was the only reflection of success that we understood at that point. It's interesting that you've some ways the bags have come to define disco when it was never really what you It's never really what you did and you and it's it's also interesting that that people who were making disco records while they were dance records tended not to be song based records. I agree, I agree, And we didn't know what we were doing or where we were going, but we were loving the adventure of it. We were loving doing something different, and I think the whole concept of reinventing yourself came to us. Every Beatles album had a different call it cover. They looked different every time they didn't. They didn't think of music as something you heard. They thought of music is something you saw. And that was my lesson, that that a song has to be visual, you know, and you have to know, you have to be there to love a song. And that's where Royalbison touched me. That's where the Beatles touched me. Eleanor Rigby is probably one of my favorite records of all time, not just because it's a great record, but because there was a vision, There was a there was a storyline, there was people in the story. And I loved all of that and we may have even tried to imitate that, but they were they were the only people who could do that. Tell me about criteria, the studio criteria, Well, we spent about five or six years between Main Course and Fever and then Children of the World before Fever and You Should Be Dancing and songs like that ended up in the movie, So it wasn't like Fever was directly written for the movie. There were songs taken from like you Should Be Dancing was taken from Children of the World. So I think, yes, we were very influenced by whatever disco was, but we didn't understand that. We didn't know about the word. It was only when disco became bad a bad word. Yeah, about a year later, maybe two years later, it became a bad a bad word, and we just had to swallow hard and keep going and keep trying. And it was always for us, it was always well back to the studio, you know. Yeah, were the Eagles recording at the same time as you were recording that they did one of these nights a criteria and that really triggered a lot of things for us because they were using falsetto as well, so it didn't feel like a sin. It didn't feel like we shouldn't something we shouldn't do, and they didn't do it much after that, so it was just one of these nights and Hotel California was totally different type of record. Do you think they were influenced by you guys in the making of that song. No, I think it was the other way around. Feel it. Yeah, we thought, well, if they can do that, we were already doing that, so we shouldn't be We shouldn't be concerned about it. We should just make music. So while the breakups of the group are famous, right, the reality is you're only apart very little time wise, really over the years for ninety five percent, ninety eight percent of the time that you were a band with the look a look at how life was in those days, and there were all kinds of substances, There were all kinds of ways of getting high. We never could get hold of anything the Beatles were taking, but that's become a truth. So, you know, but we certainly had our fun. You know, we had emphetamines and we had I think Morris was he loved to drink. Robin and I both loved emphetamines, and I particularly love grass. So these things come and go, and you know, you grow. But I certainly remember that that was a source of inspiration. But interesting that the breakup that the time that you were a part was ended up being short in the big picture, Yeah, about fifteen months, fifteen to sixteen months. And I would say that's what it was down to. That's what it was down to. Those substances and an inability to understand each other, and that there isn't one of us that's responsible for that. It was all of us. And then you had management, which was pretty crazy anyway, you know, And that's that's just what happened. You can't, as you said, you don't know. You just don't know what's going to happen in splitting up lead vocal parts. Yeah, would it always be obvious who would sing what? Or was the person who wrote a part the person who sang it. Yes, always the person who came in with the idea would be the person who sang the song. And that's because that person has already made a commitment to singing that song emotionally. So you didn't take a song from away from each other. No, if Robin came in with a song like Holiday or like Saved by the Bell, which he eventually did as a solo artist, but he did he did do it with Mo, so it wasn't really it was twins, you know, And that's how you had to deal with it. Well, I was going to ask it often was the case that you guys sang together as well? Oh, run to me? We would have been apart. We've been apart for about sixteen months, fifteen or sixteen months. And suddenly Robin. We were living in Kensington, and Robin turned up at my front door and we just got on immediately, and he sat down in the kitchen with me and I said to him, how I'm working on this song at the moment, you want to do it with me? And he went, yeah, of course, and that was how can your mend a broken heart? And wow? And I said to him at that point, why don't you sing the verse verse? Because I was trying to reach out. I was trying to say, you know what, I don't want to sing this whole song. We're writing it together, let's sing it together. That's how that one came about. So Robin sang the verse verse. I sang the second verse, and it proved to be something that was just interesting because it was varied, it wasn't the same person all the time, but the message was strong and really it was a personal message about the three of us. Yeah, It's one of the secrets of the Beatles as well, the fact that there were multiple voices. Yeah allowed it. If you hear one person sing twelve songs in a row, it has one effect. Whereas if people take turns, even if you don't always know who's singing, there's something in you that feels like something new is happening all the time and it's exciting, right, And that same thing applies to when you're not singing, that something has to take over, something, some instrumental form or some little riff or something or other that that replaces the vocal for just ten seconds or five seconds. And that worked really well for us, and we just learned and learned and grew from that. But that's how we came back together. We'll be right back with Barry Gibb. After this quick break. We're back with the rest of Rick Rubens conversation with Barry Gibb. They jump back in by talking about Guilty, the album Barry co produced for Barbara streisand in nineteen eighty tell me about working with Barbara. Oh incredible, Well, you know you can you can imagine what Barbara's likes. Very strong willed and very intentional about what she's doing. But the issue was always for me is when she wanted to sing. And of course, if you're dealing with Barbara and you can't just say, okay, it's time to sing Barbara, you know, it just never worked that way. So the last record remade, you would say, well, I don't like singing at two o'clock in the morning, I said, I want to go to the last two nights. If you do that, you know, Oh well I like doing it that way. Okay, Well we still didn't and and so what was a two week session became a three week session because she didn't really feel like singing until she felt like singing. But that's Barbara. She's unique and special and there's a reason why everybody loves her, and I'm one of them. I went to an event that was a friend's passing right, and some of the greatest artists of all times sang at this event, and Barbara was the final person to sing. And this was after all of the people who we consider the greatest singers of all time. And I had not known much about Barbara at that time. I mean, my mom loved Barbara, but I didn't know much about her. And from the moment she opened her voice before there from the first phrase, she was the only person who existed. It was like from another planet. It's it's magical. But when she decided to commit to it, it was amazing. When we first did guilty, she sang it once and I said, well, can you give us like five takes so that we can, you know, choose and pick and all that stuff. And she said, well, I just sang it. I know you did, Barbara. It's wonderful, but we need five takes because I don't know. We want to amplify what you're doing. We want to make it more, more passionate. And so she went out and sang it five more times. But she didn't understand that until I said, can you do it more than once? Well, I just did it. I'm amazed. I'm amazed that you got her to do it. Yeah. Well, we had well to getting a cough sitting in the soundproof room and Charles Copperman, so I think that you know, her clothe, the closest people to her understood what we were doing. And the only time she ever said anything about guilty was when she didn't like the word battle. A battle in that particular sentence. So we had to go find another battle, and we did. Can we listen to a woman in love? Would you mind? Not at all? Let's hear that space when the dream is gone. It's a lonely place. I kissed the morning good bye down inside. You know, we never know why the road is narrow and lone when eyes melins and the feeling strong. I turned away from the wall. I stumbled at far, but I gave you in O. I am no woman in love and you waity to get you into my mind and hold you with these Wow. Incredible, Yeah, what a monster's vocal? My god, just incredible. Tell me about the writing of the song. We were in a few houses down the road, the three of us, and we were in a spare bedroom, and we just found out that Barbara wanted to do that album, and I was to come up with five songs and I was to go to La and play them to her. And that was basically how it came about. That was the first thing we wrote, actually, was guilty and then woman in Love. Yeah, And then we took him to La and she sat on a big pillow and everyone sat around and listened to the first five songs and at the end she said okay, said okay, let's do it. She said, can you give me another five? I couldn't do that, and she just said, well just give me another five. You know. But that's Barbara and you went ahead and did it. So so it was written specifically for her to sing. Yeah, if if if you weren't tasked with writing something for Barbara, that song might not have ever come it. Well, it wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been for the falsetto. Because what was what was what worked great for me was that I could always do something in a woman's key. And so if you're writing for a woman and you happened to sing it in her key, it's much more attractive to the person who you want to sing the song, you know. So I was lucky in that respect. So, but you don't want to hear me sing woman in Love? You know? I think I'd rather hear Barbara do it. Let's listen to another song that is um that we might argue, is you singing a woman's part? Let's hear love? So right? No, I did. It's beautiful. Oh I love it too. She can't unlike the night and she held on time and the world was right. When she made love to me, we were and like a prayer starting love and me and a thought of from my heaven in her. But the morning when I I was here and she was gone. Now hanging on so oh my God. And so this is really what is it memory laying for me Jesus. That's just that's the steal phonics and the stylistics and all the people at that moment in time that we're really influencing us. And so well, thank you man, thank you. But you know, I heard that Stevie Wonder likes that song the best, so that's a huge compliment. Absolutely. That's also a different version of the falsetto because usually I think of your falsetto as as sort of a allowed it's essentially a rock falsetto. But this was very tender ballad. Yeah. I mean I was experimenting all over the place, so so you could we could go from you should be dancing to love so right, And they're all different, they're all different. Love so right was our R and B passion. Did you ever get to meet the people from t K Disco, because I know you're in Florida in Miami and it's like, oh no, no, I got to know Casey and the Sunshine Band and we've been bumped into each other over the years, and a really nice guy. And I love those records. And they were party records, you know, they were made for fun and great news astounding. The same with Nile Rogers, I mean that was that was same era, you know, and they just wanted to have They wanted to make people downs, They wanted to make people. They wanted accuracy, and so our mission became, how do we make the drums exact? How do we get that accuracy and get a groove? And that's how we came up with the two track tape that was just a downbeat and a backbeat, and it just repeated itself over and over again, and we were able to vary the speed. So Woman in Love more than a Woman Staying Alive is the same based drum and back and what we would do is we would just change the tempo and put the fills in after the fact because that gave us accuracy. And then the Roger Lyn drum machine came along. We never thought that was as good, Yeah, but I know we've used it a couple of times, But I'm overall that I really love people playing. I love to hear people playing. Now I'm not interested in programming at all. Interesting though, that that was really before there was such a thing as sampling. You guys were doing it well before. It's experimenting. And once we realized that making a record that was fun or fun to dance too, or just fun in itself, we needed to create a way to have accurate drums or a drum groove. And Dennis always did a fantastic job of doing the turns on top of that. But that's that was our basis of it. Do you remember the first time you saw Saturdayight Fever with all the music in it? Yeah, at the Chinese Theater standing at the back of the audience with John Travolta and and if I remember it well, I remember the two of us not really enjoying the fact that you could hear people. You could hear the people's feet dancing louder than the music. Wow. And so we went up to Stiggy and said, you know, the music should be the loudest thing you hear. You never hear people dancing in the club. The music's always the dominant factor. You know, turn up the music and turn down the feet. So that's what they did great, and I think that was something that John and I both felt really strongly about. You can't you can't dance to something you can hardly hear. What was the audience reaction to that first screening? As far as I could tell, you know, they all loved it. John and I loved it, and that was our only critique, if you like. And that led to things like Greece and you know, so between between seventy five and maybe eighty one, starting with maybe main Course and ending with Grease or Emotion and things like that. So it was just one record after another, and we became a little tainted because everything we were doing was going to number one and we just couldn't focus. And these records as well, you know, we were dealing with that as well at the same time. So they were incredible records as well. Incredible, yeah, but you know, we were also pretty dazed. And so about six years in we were having this incredible success, but we were getting dazed. We were getting dazed and confused and I'll be wanted to I want to want to salute I'll I'll be a Carl because they were fantastic co producers. In my opinion, we was a team, but that wore itself out too. So Carl wanted to didn't want to have to travel the studio every day and wanted to have a happy life with Candy, and i'll be wanted to go to California because he loved windsurfing, and they had their own personal things in life that were becoming more interesting for them. And that's just how it worked out. You know. It was a six year span of incredible records in my opinion, but everything has an ending to it. By the way, congratulates it's on the documentary, which is spectacular. Well, thank you. Yeah, you know, I've never heard a negative word about it, except from one person, and I won't even mention his name. Yeah, it's I think it's magnificent. It's interesting to see that that period is following a real fall. Oh absolutely, the rise and fall and rise are shocking. Absolutely, And it also what it negated for you, It was it negated the idea of having an ego, because every time you had success, your head would blow up and then something bad would happen and you just came down to earth again. You know, so everything I do, I often say to my son Steepe, I'm just waiting to get dropped on my head again, you know, because because that's the nature of what we do know and something really works or something really doesn't. And that time period what everyone calls the backlash. I don't like the word, but there you go. You know, once again, I really believe more than anything else that we were over posed. And I've seen it with other artists. Yes, I've seen it with Michael, and I got to know Michael pretty well, but he began to become dazed. He became dazed by all of it. And you can have too much success, you know, it affects your head. Yeah, well, it's like a lack of reality because, yeah, it's so unnatural. Yeah well, you know, you're throwing the dice every time you go in the studio and you don't know what's going to happen. But you know, I think about Elvis, and I think about the Beatles, and I think about that period, that end period where things just fragmented, you know, for any kind of reason, and the choosing a material also became an element where the artist wasn't choosing, wasn't doing the right songs anymore. They were just trying to do something that wasn't quite working the same way. And I think that that's what happened to Michael, and I think that's what happened to Elvis, and I think that's probably what happened does and we had to come back around and kick ourselves in the backside and get back in the studio and do something, do something exciting again. You know, have you ever been surprised in either direction with either a song that you thought, this is the best song we've ever wrote it and it doesn't work, or a song that you don't think much about that really takes off. Oh, my favorite song is Immortality that Selene did So I can't I can't critique that because the fact that she recorded it was an enormous compliment. You know. So, but that's my favorite song because it reflects how we feel about our lives no matter what. So this is who I am, This is all I know. You know, that's my favorite. A lyric, Wow, the whole song is my favorite. It's a it's a it's coming to a conclusion about yourself. Beautiful. So let's talk about the new album. How did it come about. Well, it's a it's a fantasy that that's gone on for a couple of years for me, not knowing about a pandemic. You know that it was which I found us. And then one day my eldest son, Stephen came to me and played me a Chris Stapleton song and I went, oh, Jesus Christ, you know that's that's people actually playing and people someone actually singing, you know, So that became our dream. He made a point of going to Nashville meeting with different people. Jay Landers came on board and helped us put there, put the artists together, and everyone nobody said no, a couple of people, Chris being one of them. He was the inspiration. So he's like involved in spirit, Yes he is, and there's no question about that. But you know, from Brandy Carlyle, Tolivan Newton, John to Jason Isabel j. Buchanan, beautiful, all of these amazing artists and Gillian Welch and Dave Rowling has come on and they didn't want to do a well known song, so they chose Butterfly, which was something we wrote in ninety sixties. So this album was recorded all live in the studio, yeah, probably most like the very first recordings you ever made. Yep. Yeah, it was totally live and there was no multi tracking. But it really this whole album made me fall back in love. Not that I was ever out of love, but I fell back into the idea that people just play you know beautiful. I'm so glad you get to have this experience now was it Was there ever a choice to write new songs for it, as opposed to using classic songs. There was only the idea of doing words of a Fool adjacent. I played that to Dave and he listened to maybe six bars and he said, let's cut that great. Okay, don't you want to hear the song? You know? He said no, no, he said, I love I love where it is, I love what you're doing. Let's do it. And those two songs that that one on Butterfly were the only songs that I didn't think anyone had ever heard. And that was the that was the target for me, is to feature a couple of songs that were really abstract and very well known. And if we ever do another one, you know, maybe maybe it'll be time. And I would love to write with Jason, and I would love to write with Jay because their voices are just amazing, and singing with Gillian and Dave is sort of like singing with my brothers. I would love to hear that album. I would love the next album to be all original material written by you and the collaborators. That would be That would be a beautiful thing to put in the world. I think that's the only way to go. I agree with you. I don't think we should try to do the same thing again in any way. Yeah, great idea, I'll do that. We want to hear it. We want to hear it's by popular demand. That's why you know who you are. You know that's a great idea, and that's what we should do. Well, it's a pleasure seeing you again, Yes, sir, you want You wanted Robin and I to make an album, but I knew that Robin wasn't well. But I couldn't say that to you. I understood, you know, but I knew. I felt like I just felt like there was potential for something that there was I don't know. Again, I wanted to hear it. I wanted, Yeah, I know I did too, but he was just too sick and he would never admit to that you know, yeah, and so you know, we never really knew there was anything wrong. We were up until about six months before you passed. So that's just the way it was. Some people don't want to be ill, they don't want to they don't want to tell anybody the earl. Yes, so you get to it. You get those two things. But that's what happened, beautiful. Well, it's great seeing you and I hope to see you in person and can give you a hug as soon as we're allowed to do that. You too. I love you, my friend. I see you soon. Thanks to Barry Gibbs for sharing so much of his incredible story with Rick. To hear a playlist of Barry gibbs favorite Australian songs from growing up head to Broken Record podcast dot com. We also find a playlist we put together of our favorite BG's cuts. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast, where you can find extended cuts of new and old episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is producers help from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrell, Martin Gonzalez, Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez with engineering help from Nick Chaffee. Our executive producer is Maylam. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries and if you like the show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app Our theme music's by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond face