BEE GEE ROBIN GIBB, A HOLY
PLACE FOR LOVE
(Original text in German by Julia Ulbrich, Neue
Revue, September 2004 - Excerpt)
Posted by Marj L / Marion Budde
He is the man who creates trends. With him we all sang the Disco anthem Stayin alive. He is the man who lost two brothers. We met him in an old monastery...
Is it cosy? Are you happy to live here?
"If the sun doesn't shine, one shivers."
Scene change: We are in the Disco era, in the 70's. We all danced and we sang to "Ah, ah, ah, ah Stayin Alive!" We all dreamed with "How Deep Is Your Love". He wrote the songs. He was the head of the Bee Gees. And we wonder: What happened to those three shiny men? Today Robin Gibb is 54. A thin man wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses.
Maurice, his twin brother, died two years ago. It was a second death, his younger brother Andy died in 1988 due to a heart failure. He had just turned 30. He had depressions, and fought them with alcohol and other drugs.
Robin Gibb felt the cold breath of fate. He could not bear it in the sunny Miami, where it all reminded him of the old times, when his two brothers were still alive. He sold his white mansion near the beach. He moved away, away from Florida, away from America, and went to England [Not too accurate], into the proximity of Oxford.
He bought the former monastery called "The Prebendal", nearly 800 years old. "This place is a holy place; it gives me peace."
Six buildings, 25 halls and cells, and a 20,000 square-meter garden. Robin Gibb is a Pop God in the monastery. He is writing songs again, and in September he toured Germany.
He needs this aura of the old walls. If he enters the small monastery chapel, he can feel its history. In this Gothic building English bishops condemned the virgin from Orléans (Jean d'Arc) to death in 1431.
"At night strange things happen here in the house," says Robin Gibb. "I hear the steps and the wooden floor before my door creak. I believe in spirits." But perhaps he was drawn here for a completely different reason. Perhaps he did it for his wife Dwina. She is his second wife. He says: "She is a genuine Druid. Druids are Celtic priests and healers. She descends from the historical Merlin." In the monastery Dwina feels "as if I had come back home". The Gibbs have been married for 20 years and have a son, Robin John (21), also a musician.
Sometimes in the evening, says Dwina (55), her ancestors celebrate their Celtic cults. Absolutely seriously she asks: "Have you seen the circles outside? They are magic. Sorcerers dance around them." In addition the fire-place sizzles - and one is suddenly in another time...
