COMING A week after the death of disco singer Donna Summer, the passing of Robin Gibb on Sunday from colorectal cancer at the age of 62 delivered yet another body blow to pop music.
Robin Gibb was born on December 22nd, 1949, in Douglas, Isle of Man. Along with his twin brother Maurice (who died on January 12th, 2003) and his older brother Barry, Gibb co-founded the Bee Gees, one of the most acclaimed pop acts of the past 50 years. Their younger brother Andy, also a pop singer, died in 1988 aged 30.
The trio were second only to The Beatles, Lennon and McCartney as the most successful songwriting team in British pop music and had accrued record sales in excess of 200 million.
Following a return to their native England after some years in Queensland, Australia, hit singles such as New York Mining Disaster 1941, To Love Somebody, Massachusetts, Words, I’ve Gotta get a Message to You, First of May, Don’t Forget to Remember, Lonely Days and Run to Me ushered in a golden period of harmony-driven pop that focused on themes of loneliness and emotional despair.
In the late 1960s, Robin Gibb enjoyed a brief solo career outside of the Bee Gees, with the high point being his 1969 hit single, Saved by the Bell. He soon returned to his brothers in the early 1970s to forge what was for a time a highly efficient pop unit.
Yet this moderate success was eclipsed by the reinvention of the Bee Gees in the mid-1970s from toothy pop group to falsetto-voiced disco/RB act.
Reinvention? They were virtually a different band.
Between their golden era of 1975-1979, the Bee Gees, as much due to their innate pop sensibility as to the global cultural impact of the movie Saturday Night Fever, for which they wrote the soundtrack, enjoyed immense international success.
Their hit singles included such songs as Jive Talkin’, You Should be Dancing, Stayin’ Alive, Night Fever and the fondly recalled slow-dance favourite, How Deep is your Love?
While still remaining a successful proposition, and increasingly offering their services as songwriters to the likes of Barbra Streisand, Dionne Warwick, Dolly Parton and Diana Ross, the Bee Gees were never to emulate the commercial success of their 1970s heyday.
From the 1980s onwards, Robin Gibb enjoyed moderate success as a solo singer, and was, until late last year, working on a classical piece of music, The Titanic Requiem.
Married for almost 30 years to Dwina Murphy, from Co Tyrone, he was a vegan and teetotaller.
Former British prime minister Tony Blair, a long-time friend of Gibb, said that the singer was “not only an exceptional and extraordinary musician and songwriter, he was [also] a highly intelligent, interested and committed human being”.
