"Come sing a song of joy my brothers." The Bee Gees

I have a friend who for all her positive qualities has trouble telling stories. Not that her stories aren’t entertaining but she does tend to think every detail is equally important. Which can bog the stories down a bit, or muddle the point. Still it’s a minor fault, particularly as I don’t see her too often and I enjoy her company. Indeed, as she is aware of this aspect of her story telling it’s often charming and fun.

I thought of her as I waded through The Ultimate Biography of The Bee Gees: Tales of the Brothers Gibb by Melinda Bilyeu, Hector Cook, and Andrew Mon Hughes, with assistance from Joseph Brennan and Mark Crohan. It was with some trepidation I took this book down from the shelf in the library. There are three Bee Gees and they have had a long career from early teenage years to the death of Maurice in 2003, which effectively ended the band, but still the book seemed inordinately large. Was there that much to be said about any pop group?

To begin with, I was pleasantly surprised. Before the second chapter was over, both Barry and Maurice had almost been killed in childhood accidents, both before they were two.  Later on, Robin is almost wiped out by a truck. And they become youthful vandals and troublemakers. This was evidently a story fraught with incident and accident and who knows what else.

But then the story slowed down bogged in unimaginable detail. The Bee Gees started performing as children and their career continued for five decades. They also had a career as song writers, a career that started early and continued alongside their performing careers. It’s an important facet of their story. More than once, Barry Gibb and the others have said they would rather be remembered as a songwriters than pop stars. If you doubt me, read this book. This gets stated at least five times.

In addition we get a potted history of just about every band that ever recorded a Gibb Brothers song. Or played with the Bee Gees. Or musicians who played a gig in the Bee Gees band then went on with their own lives.  Not potted in a sentence but in at least two or three paragraphs. And the vast majority of pop bands disappear without trace, so this is tedious detail on bands you never heard of. 

And all incidents seem to require the viewpoint of all three brothers at least, if not their wives, families and business associates. Which might be useful if these views were substantially different but often they’re not. It’s more often reiteration than clarification or diversification. It’s like watching those all-star films where the contract states they all get equal screen time.

And we get press releases and statements, not summarised or effectively quoted but quoted in full. For example, Robin moves to the country with his wife and buys a dog, and as pop stars do, makes a statement about it. This may be of interest to fans, and the private life of one of the Bee Gees is fair fodder for a book like this. But do we need three paragraphs quoted in full on the dog taking to the country life? Wouldn’t one sentence do?

Not that this is not a story without interest. Three brothers creating a band and a sound that lasts for decades, producing some of the great pop songs, with break-ups, arguments, triumphs and low points, personal tragedy, there is a lot to be enjoyed here. (And compared to another family band, the Beach Boys, the Bee Gees are the Brady Bunch.) Meanwhile, their song-writing abilities alone deserve respect. They once wrote three number one hit songs in a fifteen-minute session. We learn their method of working, keeping rhythm by slapping their thighs, they set the melody first and never deviate from it, which may account for the tortured syntax some of their lyrics can have. This should be a scintillating and insightful read. But the book betrays its origins. It’s written by a committee (this approach worked once, with the King James Bible, and never since) and started life as a blurb for a program for one of their concerts. You’ve read one of those blurbs. Now imagine that going on for 700 pages. Not that it’s a hagiography. The band and its individual members get criticised and this is reported fairly.

Its major fault is a lack of editorial nous. There is no sense of what the authors are trying to do except get every thing they know about the Bee Gees into one book. Statements and information is repeated. One wonders if there was a final edit. This book is probably very useful as a reference book but as a read it’s tedious. The index is quite good. This is not damning with faint praise – lack of a good index has ruined many a good non-fiction book.

I wish this book was better than it is. I enjoy the Bee Gees’ music and in interviews they come across as entertaining and fun. The ultimate biography, despite the title here, is yet to be written.