Barry Gibb: Back On Stage
(CBS SUNDAY MORNING) - "Lonely Days" was a huge hit for the three Brothers Gibb, the Bee Gees, in 1970. Today that title could well describe the situation of Barry Gibb, the only one of the brothers still alive. Before hitting the Sleep Train Pavilion stage in Concord on Saturday, May 31, Gibb looks back with CBS Sunday Morning's Anthony Mason For The Record:
Barry Gibb has never done this before -- never taken the long walk to the stage by himself.
"Is it important for you to do this?" asked Mason.
"Yeah. It's everything to me," Gibb replied. "It's all I've ever known. I don't know how to do anything else. I can't get a job!"
At 67, he is the only surviving member of one of the 20th century's greatest vocal groups. And this night, at the TD Garden in Boston, he's about to begin his first-ever solo tour.
The last of the Bee Gees is going it alone.
Mason said, "I don't think anyone thought at this point in time that there would be one Bee Gee left."
"None of us. I could've never imagined being sort of that last person," said Barry. "We were glued together, those three kids in bare feet, that knew something that nobody else knew, that one day we would make it.
"I remember saying to one of my first girlfriends at 14 years old that if she dumped me she was making a mistake 'cause I was going to be famous. I actually said that!"
"But more importantly you believed it."
"I believed it, yeah," said Barry. "And I don't know why."
Even in the early days in Australia, the three Gibb brothers -- Barry, and younger twins Robin and Maurice -- had their own distinct sound. The Bee Gees went on to perform, write or produce 15 No. 1 hits. Their "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack was a pop masterpiece that spent six months at No. 1, and sold some 40 million copies.
That album was recorded in Miami, where Gibb and his wife Linda had moved to in the late seventies.
"We fell in love with the sky," Barry said.
"Reminded you of Australia," added Linda.
It was Linda who recently pushed her husband to get back out on the road: "Well, I was fed up with him sitting on his ass!" she laughed. "He was miserable. I think after Maurice died he kind of went into a bit of a depression and he just moped around."
Read more at CBSNews.com
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