The Bee Gees have used books' titles for their songs (Hemingway's Islands In The Stream and For Whom The Bell Tolls). But writers have also used the Bee Gees in their novels. For example, the Bee Gees are mentioned in Norwegian Wood (1987), a novel by Haruki Murakami. The scene (chapter 4) is set around 1969 and the main character, Watanabe, is reading a book in a café while Bee Gees music is being played in the background.

In 1969 Barry got the Best Dressed Pop Star award. In the photo he presents the award to the 1970 winner.

In the repertoire of more than 1500 songs in the bmi ,over 1000 have achieved million air status ,that is titles that have been broadcast over 1000000 times in the United States. With each song averaging 3 minutes ,this is equal to more than 50000 hours of broadcasting.,or 5.7 years of continuous airplay..,a graphic reminder of the colossal and ongoing royalty income of the Gibb Brothers.

• Over 5 million airplays:
-How deep is your love
-To love somebody

• Over 4 million airplays:
-How can you mend a broken heart
-Islands in the stream

• Over 3 million airplays:
-Too much heaven
-Emotion

• Over 2 million airplays:
-I just want to be your everything
-Woman in love
-Stayin alive

• Over 1 million airplays:
-Massachusetts
-Words
-I've gotta get a message to you
-I started a joke
-Lonely days
-Jive talkin
-Nights on Broadway
-Fanny be tender
-Love so right
-Night fever
-More than a woman
-Love is thicker than water
-Shadow dancing
-(Our love) Don't throw it all away
-If I can't have you
-Come on over
-Grease
-Guilty
-What kind of fool
-Heartbreaker
(BMI & Juan Cristobal Guzman)

Barbra Streisand remembers in Just For The Record: "Barry did most of the instrumental tracks in Miami before we got together to record my vocals... Barry's lyrics were much more abstract than those that I usually gravitated toward, but the melodies were so compelling that I decided to go along with them, and with him... I had the best time ever making this record, as well as the easiest." Barry Gibb, who developed the songs especially for Barbra, recalled, "I called Neil Diamond to ask what it was like to work with her... My wife told me to do it, or she'd divorce me." In 1980 Gibb told US magazine, "We set out to make the great Streisand LP that she never made...." The album Guilty has sold over 20 million copies worldwide.  (BJS Music)

It came in 1965 when Barry Gibb got the 'Composer of the year' award from Adelaide's radio 5KA  (NME)

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The Song 'Ellan Vannin' is the unofficial anthem of the Isle of Man. It means "Isle of Man" in Manx -the Celtic language that was once spoken on the island- and was originally written as a poem in 1854; the tune was added to it the same year. The Bee Gees in 1998 wrote a new final verse and slightly altered the words in their adaptation of Ellan Vannin.

In 1966 the Bee Gees and their father had a car accident in Australia when driving back from a concert. Robin recalls it: "Somehow, and to this day I don't know how, the word got back to Sydney that The Bee Gees had been killed. The radio stations started playing all our records and reading out messages of sympathy. When we got home safe and sound, it was almost as if they were annoyed to see us after crying their eyes out for nothing." (Fab 208)

Wembley One Night Only concert was originally planned to be 50,000. Finally 52,000 attended the show.

Dublin One Night Only concert was originally planned to be 27,000, but demand far exceeded their expectations and the final attendance was 40,000.

On October 22, 1997 The Bee Gees appeared on Clive Anderson's chat show. The interview ended when Barry Gibb stalked out followed by Maurice and Robin.

Anderson had introduced The Bee Gees on his All Talk show and revealed they were once curiously called Les Tosseurs. He joked: 'I think you will always be tossers to me.' The brothers sat stoney-faced and things went from bad to worse when Anderson cracked his next gag about a song they released called Dont forget to remember. He said 'I've forgotten it already.'

Barry stood up and fired back, 'This is a set-up. If anyone is a tosser round here, it's you, pal.' The trio then stormed out after just five minutes on camera.

On September 22, 2001 Barry and his wife Linda helped the American Red Cross raise funds for victims of September 11th, assisting to a benefit dinner at the Hotel Astor in Miami Beach which raised more than $10,000 for the American Red Cross.  The dinner which attracted more than 100 guests, let South Floridians of all races and religions ban together to show their support for those lost in the horrific events of September 11th. (TMG)

Robin Gibb lives in a centuries-old Oxfordshire house where once priests of the church trained to become bishops. His son Robin-John is said by his mother Dwina to see the phantoms of their house's ex-inhabitants. When Robin-John was 4 years old he described a 'John and Mary who lived there and their friend Elizabeth. He had no framework for historical costume, but he told me Mary wore a dress down to her ankles. He also said one of the children had never grown up. I discovered a very detailed account of a John and Mary Rose who once lived on the site. They had two children, one of whom died in infancy.'

Retired Tamworth and Narrabri jeweller Alan King has an anecdote of an event which occurred back in the early 1960s.

Mr King had bought a high standard (well, for its day) stereo-recorder with more valves, buttons and dials than he could comprehend. Within a year the machine was used for playing background music in his Narrabri shop.

A musician who had a gig in town had happened to be in the store to buy some photographic equipment and spotted the recorder. The musician was Lucky Starr, who made his name with a song called I've Been Everywhere.

A short while later, Mr King related, Lucky returned with another young man and asked if they could record a demo track on the machine. The young man wanted to send the track off to EMI.

"I couldn't do the recording in the shop, so we packed the recorder in the car and took it home," Mr King said.

"We spent half an hour recording and singing with guitars and I think he paid me about 10 pounds for the seven inch reel of tape.

"I found out later that his name was Barry Gibb, which meant very little to me at the time. But apparently the recording must have been pretty good." (The Northern Daily Leader)

After leaving the band, Colin Petersen sued the Bee Gees for the rights to the name Bee Gees. Judge ruled in Bee Gees favour.

According to Heat magazine, the Bee Gees were the tenth biggest earners in the 2001 British Pop Rich List, with £ 4.7 million.

ROBIN Gibb called it 'a joke,' but his gentlemanly restraint didn't disguise the disgust and anger he still feels for the Robbie Williams version of 'I Started a Joke.' In a previous interview with Billboard, Gibb called the rendition 'the kind of thing you'd hear in a lunatic asylum.' Explaining his anger, Gibb said, ''I Started a Joke' is one of our really great songs and he f - - - ed it. That song deserved a lot better treatment. We've never talked about it, and I even saw [Williams] the other day. He's a nice guy, he's a good artist and he's a big fan of the Bee Gees, but he didn't have to do the song that way. It only reflects badly on him.'
More successful in their interpretation of Bee Gees songs, says Gibb, were Elvis, who covered 'Words'; Al Green, who did 'How Can You Mend a Broken Heart'; and Janis Joplin, who tackled 'To Love Somebody.' More recently, Wu Tang's ODB with Mya and Michel Pras tried on 'That Is What You Are,' renaming it 'Ghetto Supastar'; *NSYNC worked up a 'Saturday Night Fever' medley and Destiny's Child has just recorded a version of 'Emotion'. (rw-hk.com)

When Robin left the band in 1969, his sister Lesley replaced him on stage one night: She appeared with Barry, Maurice and Colin Petersen on the TV show Talk of the Town. It was May 1969. Lesley was 24, married to Keith Evans and already had 4 kids.

The three Gibb brothers, known as the Bee Gees, live in a wealthy enclave in Miami Beach. Barry Gibb's wife Lynda had her purse snatched. The trio's father Hugh Gibb was mugged. "No woman should be alone in this city," said Barry. "Or man," added Bee Gee Brother Robin.
[Source: Time Magazine,  Nov 23, 1981]

Images and Voices of Hope is an international conversation about the impact of images and stories on people, families, communities, cultures and the world.
People from all over the world gather together to discuss the potential of the media forging positive change in society and the world.
Robin and Dwina Gibb gave their home in Oxford for an IV of Hope dialogue in 2002. Journalists, artists and media professionals participated in a day of talks, interactive discussions, silent reflections and inspirations, and Robin spoke passionately about the importance of music for world transformation. -

"Miami's own celebrities and philanthropists, Linda and Barry Gibb, joined with friends and family from around the world to celebrate the marriages of two of their sons, Stephen and Ashley.

"[On November 7, 2002] Stephen and his wife, Gloria, had their nuptials at Sandy and Sid Levy's magnificent beach house with Sandy officiating at the ceremony. Two days later, Ashley and Therese exchanged vows at their own home.

"To top this, the following Monday, Linda Gibb gave a baby shower in honor of their upcoming grandchild. How wonderful -- all in 5 days! That is the way to do it!"

In 1980, the Bee Gees filed the largest lawsuit in showbiz history against their manager and the head of their record label, Robert Stigwood. They accused him of fraud, conflict of interest and unfair enrichment at their expense. The suit, for $125 million from Stigwood and his companies and $75 million from Polygram (the mulitinational conglomerate which owns Stigwood's label, RSO), cited 'grossly inadequate' contracts that Stigwood had made, apparently featuring royalty rates significantly below the industry norm, alleged that he registered their song copyrights in his name and pocketed money that was rightfully theirs. Stigwood's public resopnse to the Bee Gees' suit was to call it a 'cheap stunt'. But within weeks of this comment the group and their manager had achieved a reconciliation apparently as sweet as the split had been bitter.'

In July 2001 undergraduate students at Cambridge University were asked to write about Bee Gee lyrics in their final exam.

The question, one of 27 on a three-hour English finals exam, asked students to discuss: "Tragedy, when you lose control and you got no soul, it's tragedy,"   with reference to characters and plots from Biblical and Greek stories. They were also told to make use of the writings of Nietzche, Dostoevsky and Racine.

John Kerrigan, the chairman of the English finals examination board, said that the question was intended to examine the forms tragedy takes in the modern world.

He said: "We wanted to see how far tragedy survives into modernity; whether it has died in the face of science and rationalism. Tragedy is essentially an archaic form. We wanted to see if it had metamorphosed into different forms.

"There are elements to the Bee Gees songs that could have directed you to the great central canonical texts. The line in the Bee Gees song where he sings 'the feeling's gone and you can't go on' is a fair summary of the end of King Lear," he added.

A spokesman for the Bee Gees said the brothers would be proud at being compared to great literary figures. "They have been compared with songwriters such as Bob Dylan and Burt Bacharach, but never Ibsen and Shakespeare."
(The Telegraph)

Robin Gibb loves history so much, he's bought his own slice of it in Oxfordshire to calm his mind. One third of the enduring pop group the Bee Gees -- with his twin, Maurice, and their brother, Barry -- Gibb is resident in America for tax purposes. However, he is a British subject and loves to spend as much time as possible in his mansion in Thame.

The Prebendary was built in the 12th century and was used as a place to train monks. Roughly 400 years later, Henry VIII is said to have visited it with Anne Boleyn. It is one of the few properties in Britain of this age that is still intact -- with a resident ghost.

"I have this desire to go into the past, like a time machine -- it calms my mind," says Gibb, 53. He has preserved all the historic features of his home and added a few as well.

Walking through the gates of the front lodge, one can easily believe it is haunted -- with its 4ft-thick walls made of Cotswold stone, the place oozes a sense of the ancient. The first thing you see on entering is a 100- year-old gyspy caravan on the front lawn next to a wooden throne. The house also has its own chapel (now a dining room), built in 1174 and connected to the house by a ruined wall still carrying the stains of an ancient fire.

The downstairs part of the chapel has been converted into living quarters for the chef, but upstairs Gibb has preserved an altar, complete with an old Bible, wooden rail and font. From time to time, he says, the font fills itself with water.

"There's no set timing to it -- it just does it willy-nilly," he tells me. "It could go two years without filling up and then suddenly there's water there. Then it will empty and maybe six months later be back again. I don't feel spooked by it, though, because this was a place of prayer going back 500 years before the Reformation."

The back garden runs for 16 acres down to a river and fields. Gibb removed a tennis court installed by the previous owner and laid a new lawn five years ago, which he filled with stones imported from the West Country to create a scaled-down model of Stonehenge. His wife, Dwina, is a patron of the druids and loves to meditate there.

Gibb bought the property in 1985 from Charles Harding Rolls (as in Rolls-Royce). "I got it for a song -- £800,000," he says. "I probably would have had to pay a lot more if he didn't need the cash so badly at the time. Mick Jagger had been looking at it five years earlier and also Prince Charles, but maybe they weren't cash buyers," he laughs.

The house was in need of renovation so he hired an interior decorator who had done a lot of work at Windsor Castle to bring out the medieval and Tudor features. Completed in phases, the work cost nearly £100,000.

The living room is now sited in what used to be the main hall, resulting in an interesting contrast between old furniture, wooden candelabras and a large state-of-the- art flat-screen television. To the left is the Coronation Room, in which four bishops apparently sat to pass sentence on Joan of Arc while she was still in France. Here, Gibb has installed a set of old church pews in a square arrangement (cosier than it sounds) to mask the size of the space. Upstairs there is a library and four four-postered bedrooms.

"I love living here," he says. "It's a very different thing altogether from living at my property in Miami, which is much more of a sun-drenched experience." (Times Online)

Roy Orbison: Cryin'
Beach Boys: God only know
Beach Boys: Good vibrations
Carole King: It might be as well rain until September
Bobby Vee: Take good care of my baby
The Shirelles: Will you still love me tomorrow
(Performing Songwriter)

Maurice Gibb: The first song we wrote for Saturday Night Fever was 'If I can't have you', and we imagined ABBA doing it.' (Sydney Morning Herald)

Maurice Gibb once told that a very hot day when shooting the film Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band he asked if anyone had Coke and what happened was that he got packets of cocaine tossed toward him.