Bee Gees Free Ringtones

No popular music act of the '60s, '70s, '80s, or '90s experienced more ups and downs in popularity, or attracted a more varied audience across the decades than the Bee Gees. Beginning in the mid- to late '60s as a Beatlesque ensemble, they quickly developed as songwriters in their own right and style, perfecting in the process a progressive pop sound all their own. Then, after hitting a trough in their popularity in the early '70s, they reinvented themselves as perhaps the most successful white soul act of all time during the disco era. Their popularity faded with the passing of disco's appeal, but the Bee Gees made a successful comeback in virtually every corner of the globe. What remained a constant through their history is their extraordinary singing, rooted in three voices that were appealing individually and comprised so perfectly and naturally by melding together that they make such acts as the Beatles, the Everly Brothers, and Simon & Garfunkel -- all noted for their harmonies -- almost seem arch and artificial.

The group was also rock's most successful brother act. Barry Gibb, born on September 1, 1946, in Manchester, England, and his fraternal twin brothers Robin Gibb and Maurice Gibb, born on December 22, 1949, on the Isle of Man, were three of five children of Hugh Gibb, a bandleader, and Barbara Gibb, a former singer. The three of them gravitated toward music very early on, encouraged by their father, who reportedly saw his sons at first as a diminutive version of the Mills Brothers, a '30s and '40s black American harmony group. The three Gibb brothers made their earliest performances at local movie theaters in Manchester in 1955, singing between shows. Their intention was merely to mime to records as a novelty entertainment act, but when the records got broken, they sang for real and got a rousing response from the delighted audience. They performed under a variety of names, including the Blue Cats and (reportedly) the Rattlesnakes, and for a time, fell under the influence of England's skiffle king, Lonnie Donegan, and proto-rock & roller Tommy Steele.

Their early lives were interrupted when the family moved to Australia in 1958, resettling in Brisbane. The trio, known as the Brothers Gibb -- with Barry writing songs by then -- continued performing at talent shows and attracted the attention of a local DJ, Bill Gates, which led to an extended engagement at the Beachcomber Nightclub. They eventually got their own local television show in Brisbane, and it was around this time that they took on the name the Bee Gees (for Brothers Gibb). In 1962, they landed their first recording contract with the Festival Records label in Australia, debuting with the single "Three Kisses of Love." The trio was astoundingly popular among the press and on television, and performed to very enthusiastic audience response. They eventually released an LP, The Bee Gees Sing and Play 14 Barry Gibb Songs, but actual hit records eluded them in Australia. They were witness during 1963 and 1964 to the explosion of British beat music half a world away with the success of the Beatles, whose harmony-based approach to rock & roll and reliance on original songs only encouraged the three Gibb brothers to keep pushing in those directions.

By late 1966, however, they'd decided to stop trying to conquer the Australian music world, or to reach the rest of the world from Australia, and return to England -- which, thanks to the Beatles, was now the center of rock and popular music for the whole world. It was while on the boat, in mid-ocean, that the Gibb family learned that the Bee Gees had finally topped the charts back in Australia with their final release, "Spicks and Specks." Just as the Seekers had done upon leaving Australia, the group had sent demo recordings ahead of them to England, and "Spicks and Specks" had attracted the interest of Robert Stigwood (an associate of Brian Epstein). The trio was signed by Stigwood to a five-year contract upon their arrival, and they began shaping their sound anew in the environment of Swinging London in 1967. Barry Gibb and Robin Gibb alternated the lead vocal spot, harmonizing together and with Maurice Gibb. Barry played rhythm guitar as well, while Maurice, in addition to his backing vocal spot, was the triple-threat musician in the core lineup, playing bass, piano, organ, and Mellotron, among other instruments. The brothers soon expanded the group with the addition of guitarist Vince Melouney and drummer Colin Petersen, whose presence turned them into a fully functional performing group. Their first English recording, "New York Mining Disaster 1941," released in mid-1967, made the Top 20 in England and America and established a pattern for the group's work for the next two years. As an original by the group, it had a haunting melody and a strange lyric; it wasn't so much psychedelic (though it could pass for psychedelia in a pop vein) as it was surreal. They had successful follow-ups with "Holiday" and "To Love Somebody."

Robert Stigwood arranged for Polydor to release the Bee Gees' records in England and Europe, and for Atlantic Records to issue their work in America. Atlantic had missed out on the entire British Invasion and now they had a group whose music resembled that of the Beatles at their most accessible. The Bee Gees' records had gorgeous melodies and arrangements and were steeped in romantic yet complex lyrics, many of them containing a strangely downbeat mood that no one seemed to mind. One curious offshoot of their appeal was that Stigwood was able to convince Atlantic Records, as part of the deal for the Bee Gees, to accept and release the recordings of a relatively unknown trio called Cream. At the time, Eric Clapton was not much more than a cult figure in the United States, more "rumor" than star (his recordings with the Yardbirds had never even appeared in America with his name mentioned on them), but Atlantic -- which recorded Disraeli Gears -- helped change that, selling millions of records in the bargain.

The Bee Gees single "Massachusetts" was a chart-topper in England and launched the group on their first wave of stardom. Their music was made even more attractive by the fact that their albums were unusually well put together. Reflecting the influence of the Beatles, a lot of attention was lavished on the group's LP tracks rather than relying on the presence of a hit or two to justify their existence. Bee Gees 1st, cut in early 1967, had its weaker spots, but not a throwaway track on it, while Horizontal and Idea were strong LPs filled with beautiful and unusual songs and lush arrangements (courtesy of conductor Bill Shepherd), all carefully recorded, mixing electric instruments and orchestra. What made their work even more impressive was that after Bee Gees 1st, which was produced by their Australian friend Ossie Byrne, the three Gibb brothers took over producing their own records; even more surprising, as is now known from various bootleg releases of live performances of the period, the group -- with Melouney and Petersen in the lineup -- was also able to perform their music note-perfect, with spot-on vocals while on-stage, something that the Beatles had never even attempted seriously with their post-1965 efforts.

The group enjoyed two major hits in 1968, "I Started a Joke" and "I've Gotta Get a Message to You," both from Idea. Whatever they put out seemed to work, including the delightful psychedelic pop ode "Barker of the UFO," a B-side that is a spot-on perfect example of late-'60s English freakbeat, hardly a genre on which the Bee Gees are commonly thought to have contributed. It was easy, amid the sheer beauty of their records, to overlook the range of influences that went into their sound -- the Bee Gees may have been making pop/rock, but their underlying sounds came from a multitude of sources, including American country music and soul music. Indeed, one of the group's biggest hits, "To Love Somebody," had been written for Otis Redding to record, but the Stax/Volt singing legend didn't live long enough to record it himself. At this point in their history, they were most comfortable deconstructing elements in the singing and harmonies of black American music and rebuilding them in their style, as the Beatles had done with the music of the Shirelles and various Motown acts.

It was in 1969 when the trio lost all the momentum they'd built up, ironically over a dispute involving their most ambitious recording to date. They'd just finished a double-LP set, called Odessa, a lushly orchestrated, heavily overdubbed, and thoroughly haunting body of music. The seven-minute-long title track was filled with eerie images and ideas and gorgeous choruses around a haunting lead performance and it was only the jumping-off point for the album. The brothers, however, were unable to agree on which song was to be the single and in the resulting dispute, Robin decided to part company with Barry and Maurice. They held on to the Bee Gees name for one LP, Cucumber Castle, while Robin released the album Robin's Reign, on which he was producer, arranger, and songwriter, and sang all of the parts himself.

Eventually, even Barry and Maurice Gibb parted company. Melouney had left at the outset of the Odessa sessions and Petersen left the two-man group behind a few days into Cucumber Castle, though not without a good deal of legal squabbling. (At one point the drummer, in a bizarre twist, filed a lawsuit claiming that he owned the Bee Gees name.) Without a group to tour behind or even make television appearances promoting it, the Odessa album never sold the way it might have, even with a hit, "First of May." Cucumber Castle was at least peripherally connected to a British television special of the same name -- sort of the Bee Gees' better (and funnier) answer to the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour movie -- and generated several singles that were successful in England and/or Germany, including the reggae-influenced "I.O.I.O." and "Don't Forget to Remember." Ironically, even during a period with their music partnership in tatters, the Gibb brothers were writing and recording profoundly beautiful songs -- Robin Gibb's "Saved by the Bell," with its lush, ornate multi-layered vocals, justifiably topped the British charts, and...read more