Robin Gibb, soaring voice behind Bee Gees
Robin Gibb during a 1989 concert at
Paris Bercy. AFP
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Robin Gibb, whose soaring vocals formed part of the unique Bee Gees
sound, has died at the age of 62, leaving Barry as the sole surviving
member from the band of brothers. The high-pitched close harmonies,
sharp songwriting and disco-defining sound of elder brother Barry, Robin
and his twin brother Maurice made them one of the biggest-selling groups
of all time.
Robin lost his battle against cancer of the colon and the liver on
Sunday, a month after confounding doctors by emerging from a coma after
suffering pneumonia.
He underwent surgery in August 2010 for a blocked intestine -- the
same condition that killed Maurice in 2003 -- but a tumour was found and
he was diagnosed with cancer.
The singer looked gaunt in his last few months as he struggled
against the relentless disease.
Andy Gibb, their younger brother who was not in the Bee Gees, died in
1988 from cocaine addiction.
“I sometimes wonder if all the tragedies my family has suffered --
like Andy and Maurice dying so young and everything that’s happened to
me recently -- is a kind of karmic price we are paying for all the fame
and fortune we’ve had,” he told The Sun newspaper in March.
Robin enjoyed a musical career spanning six decades, from humble
beginnings in the 1950s singing with his brothers in cinemas, to his
recent first classical venture, “The Titanic Requiem”, penned with his
son Robin-John.
Gibb was too ill to attend the April 10 premiere, where he had been
due to perform the song “Don’t Cry Alone”.
“It’s not about how complicated music is; it’s about how simple and
relative to the human spirit it is,” Gibb said on his new composition.
The singer and his wife-to-be Molly Hullis survived the 1967 Hither
Green rail crash in southeast London that killed 49 people.
“I do think it is easier for me to walk in the shoes of the people
who were on the Titanic,” he wrote in The Mail on Sunday newspaper in
January.
“I know what it is to live through a mass disaster... it haunts me to
this day.” Robin Hugh Gibb was born on December 22, 1949 on the Isle of
Man, the British crown dependency, about half an hour before Maurice.
Soon after the twins were born, the Gibb family moved to Manchester,
northwest England, and then to Brisbane in Australia in 1958.
The Bee Gees soon became child stars and had their first hit in 1963,
“The Battle of the Blue and Grey”, performed on national television.
“We used to say that we were one soul in three bodies. We worked with
such spirit between us, able to read each other’s thoughts when we wrote
together,” Robin said.
The trio returned to Britain in 1967 where they soon had several more
successes, including the UK number one “Massachusetts”.
“How Can You Mend a Broken Heart”, the group’s first US number one,
along with “Jive Talkin’”, “Nights on Broadway” and “You Should be
Dancing” established them as big stars.
But the disco soundtrack “Saturday Night Fever” (1977), which sold
more than 40 million copies, was their biggest success.
One of the best-selling albums of all time, its songs included
perennial favourites “Stayin’ Alive”, “Night Fever” and “How Deep Is
Your Love”.
They wrote hit songs for others including Diana Ross (“Chain
Reaction”), Barbra Streisand (“Woman In Love”), Kenny Rogers and Dolly
Parton (“Islands In The Stream”) Dione Warwick (“Heartbreaker”) and
Frankie Valli (“Grease”).
Their last studio album was the 2001 record “This Is Where I Came In”
and the group has notched up more than 200 million record sales.
Robin mostly sang lead in the 1960s, while Barry’s falsetto took the
foreground in their 1970s disco period.
The Bee Gees were made Commanders in the Order of the British Empire
-- one step below a knighthood -- in 2004.
Robin Gibb was a friend of former British prime minister Tony Blair,
who was criticised for taking “freebie” breaks with celebrity pals after
holidaying at the singer’s Miami mansion in 2006.
He appeared on a charity version of “Islands In The Stream” which
topped the British charts in 2009, making the Gibbs the first
songwriters to pen number UK ones in five successive decades.
AFP |