This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing from My Heart Radio.

It's summer, and that means it's time for our tradition at Here's the Thing, where the staff share their favorite episodes from our archives in our Summer Staff Picks series.

Next up is producer Zach McNeice.

Thanks Alec.

There are a few musical acts in history less polarizing than the Bee Gees.

I can't recall anyone at any time in my life saying they weren't a fan.

It's impossible not to sing along with mega hits like Staying Alive, How Deep is Your Love?

More than a Woman, Night Fever.

The list goes on and on.

I was excited to have Barry Gibbon with Alec and the conversation was wide ranging and full of surprises.

Here's Alec with Barry Gibb from twenty twenty one.

As a man.

The recently released HBO documentary How Can You Mend a Broken Heart mentions the term blood harmony or bio harmony, that unique blend when siblings sing together.

Think The Beach Boys, The Jackson Five, The Everly Brothers, and The Beg's.

Flag.

So Love somebod.

My guest today is Barry Gibb with his younger twin brothers, Robin and Morris.

The Begs conquered the world with their ethereal harmonies.

Today Barry misses his brothers.

Morris died in two thousand and three, Robin in twenty twelve.

I wanted to know if he'd ever considered what kind of solo career he might have had.

Well, I don't know.

I know what I wanted.

I wanted to be a pop star or a rock star or whatever it is that goes through our heads at that point.

At some point in your life, you wanted to be an actor, you know.

All I know is that the moment that my brothers began to do individual things and I didn't know about them.

Then I thought, well, it's okay.

I can do individual things too, but I never did that before they did.

And once that began, I thought, oh, oh wow, they've gone and done this on their own.

Morris has done this, or Rob has done this.

It's pretty good, you know.

Wow.

I didn't know that they did that without even a question, so I figured, well it was okay, And once Barbara Streisan came along, I just grabbed the bar.

You know, I thought, this is a wonderful opportunity and I love her and the idea of working with her.

I learned so much from that.

And I think you learn things from just about everyone you work with.

You just pick up something that you didn't know before.

Who brought you in streisand together?

Was it a produce?

And no, it was Barbara calling me up about eighty one eighty two.

And she just called up and said, will you make an album with me?

And so after I got up off off the ground, I told my wife and I told everybody in my family that I just had this call from Barbra Streisen, and of course everyone's going, you got to do it, you got to do it.

And I was terrified.

So I came to the conclusion that if I call Neil Diamond you don't bring me flowers, that he might give me some advice.

So I called Neil Diamond and I said, what is she like?

What is it?

What's the experience like working with her?

He just said, don't worry about it, just go do it.

You know, everything falls into place if the stars aligned.

Don't worry.

He said, She's terrific and she's changeable.

But that's fine.

Just go with her.

You know when you recorded with her, were you in the same studio for some portion or all of it or not all of it?

Cut all the tracks in Miami at Criteria, which is now the Hit Factory.

The interesting thing about Barbara was that if she sang something, she considered it to be sung.

She didn't think she had to sing it again.

And that's old school, you know.

It's like that's how she grew up.

And I would say, you know, especially on Guilty, first song she sang, I said, can you give us about four or five tracks?

She says, well, I just sang it.

No, No, can you give us choices?

Can you give us four or five tracks so that we can pick and choose which are the best moments?

But I just sang it.

Boy, I'm going to try that when I go to work.

That's it.

I'm like, Bob Hope, I'm like, that's one take, fellas Bobby God, I hope.

So hit the spot say the words get out.

Yeah, you talk about, you know, wanting multiple tracks to choose from when you were recording with your brothers.

Was that a rule you had where you had unanimity about what the take was and what worked or was there a there was there a producer there that you will, entrusted the decision.

To myself but really also adhering to my brother's opinions.

We never did anything where it was two out of three.

It wasn't a democracy.

You know.

We had to be in total agreement about everything we were doing.

So if we love something, we were all one, you know, and okay, what do we do next?

What's the next step?

Yeah, we need a lead guitar on this, We need something here, we need something there.

But we were always in agreement, and real life is very different, so you know, we didn't live together, but we did have the van.

We did have the minivan with the Beg's on the side.

People talk about the documentary has introduced, at least as far as I'm concerned, it might have existed somewhere else, the term bioharmony.

And when I first heard that phrase, I was like, my god, I never thought about that, that they sing differently and they interact differently because they're actually related.

I believe that that's true.

That I've never heard that, But yeah, I agree with all of that, and there are many different side stories to all of that.

I mean, the Beetles sound my brothers.

So there's a lot about where you come from.

The Beetles come from Liverpool.

They all have the same accent, the same tone, if you like, and so blending together was something special for them.

You didn't really have to be brothers.

And I was talking to a little big town yesterday and they are incredible and they all come from the same basic area of the country.

So it wasn't that they were blood.

It was that they all had the same dialect, the same kind of tonality.

You know.

That's Nashville when you're working with people that are your family.

Yeah, and God.

Knows, yes, you have brothers.

I have brothers in that way that you want everyone to do well, you know, I want my brothers to do well and succeed and have what they want.

And you realize that the business is fragile, you know, even when you're successful, when you're with your brothers and you're recording with your brothers, and they've been gone for a while now.

Yeah, about eight years since Robin left.

So it's eight years now where both of them are gone.

And when Morris passed away, was it understood between you and Rob that you wouldn't continue just the two of you.

No, Robin wanted us to wanted to continue, and I didn't.

I didn't think it was the right thing to do.

I thought we should suspend the group as it stood, and if we were going to work any more together, we would do it as the two brothers, you know, we wouldn't do it as the Begs.

So.

But but Robin didn't agree with me.

He wanted to continue being the Beg's.

But then lo and behold.

What I didn't know is that Robin was getting ill, and as time went on he became more immorial.

But he didn't tell anybody, and so you could you could see that some thing was wrong, but you didn't know what it was.

And it wasn't like he was capable of really doing anything, because in my opinion, he wasn't, you know, he was.

He was going very frail, very quickly.

Did you guys when you went your separate ways, was there always a sense of like the Eagles and like Fleetwood Mac and like CSNY where they profess to have some tension between them, yet they always got back together because that band together whole was the cash cow for them.

It was never going to be as successful as that did.

The begs go through the same thing where where each of you had your respective and you had a very successful solo career.

Well, the background to all of that, what you just said is really important.

The cash cow was not the center of attention because because for us it was always tough to get paid.

Always that's shock and roll, you know.

And we didn't really make any real money until Saturday Night Fever.

So success equals money that wasn't happening for us, so we didn't worry about it.

What we worried about was getting more hits, making more records, writing more songs, you know, that was what preoccupied us.

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young When we were doing Children of the World, they would sitting along the wall, four of them, watching us do the vocals, and they were in the next studio.

So the greatest thing about all of those days is that the Eagles Leonard Skinner were always in the next room or two rooms away.

And in those days you could visit each other.

There was no you know, you can't come in here, there was none of that, you know, and we enjoyed that I could go in and listen to them.

I played with them all night without coming up with anything creative.

We were just having a blast.

You know.

Was there a sense from you or all three of you that you had something special and that was the hand and you wanted to play.

Well it was a brand name.

Well, you know, then you're dealing with the brand name which wasn't even called that when we were a group.

You know, there was no such thing as.

A brand name, you know, as branding.

Yeah.

Yeah, So I've had people come up to me at Clive Davis's dinner a couple of years back.

I worked for Forbes magazine.

I'd like to talk to you about branding.

I don't know anything about branding, you know.

He got me there.

We just became a group, so it wasn't really this is the cash cow, this is what we got to do.

I think it was that way for a lot of people.

But I remember the time when Rso the company took away our song copyrights without telling us, and so suddenly they owned all of our songs.

How were they able to do that?

By forming a company in Holland and playing all kinds of tax games, they managed to acquire all of our copyrights without us knowing, And that caused really like World War three.

I mean, so you look at the period when the b were in trouble, look behind the scenes, you know there was something else going on that was intense.

Were you able to get the rights back?

Got them all back, But that took a lot of energy out of me.

It took me about a year or two to finally get things back in our own ownership.

I told Robert Stigwood that I would never write another song if he didn't give back the songs.

And Morris and rob they didn't really want to fight.

They were still too naive.

They just sort of, you know, it's having success, let's not argue with it.

But did that fall on you to be the more the business mind in the trio would do?

The other two were more pure artists, and they were like, hey man, I really don't have the stomach for that.

Well.

I couldn't stomach the idea that someone could take away your songs.

I just couldn't live with that.

So if they were okay with that, it wasn't really a matter of that's how they felt.

It was more a matter that Robert Stigwood and Rso played divide and conquer, you know, so they would nurture and be nicer Robin and Morris, and Robin and Morris wouldn't worry about it, you know.

So it's all about that.

It's people whispering in your ears.

It's the same with every group.

You know, there's always going to be someone in the industry that thinks they can make something out of you if you don't have your brothers.

And that was said to Robin, was said to Morris, and was said to.

Me, I want to do a movie about your career.

I'm going to do a narrative film, and I want to play the record executive who gets each of you alone in the same thing.

It says, you know, Marris, if you just unloaded these two losers, you have no idea.

That's right, the heights we could hit and listen to Rob, these guys are just dead weight around your I mean your brother.

I mean, we've seen every color they have, Barry, I mean, come on, these guys are just dragging you down.

Man.

You know all that stuff divide and conquer.

But industrial Yeah, not the families, not the wives, but the people who sought to gain from something, or in fact, just through Robert Stigwood, you know.

So it was.

It was a huge industrial game.

Armored Urtekin and who was the head of Atlantic Records, and Robert began to fall out because jive talking in the movie Saturday Night Fever.

Robert only used the live version of jive talking so you wouldn't have to pay the extra, you know, and Areef Mardin and Armored went berserk because they didn't have a record in Saturday Night Fever.

They didn't know it's going to be successful.

In fact, most of the time, I think they doubted us anyway.

So when that happened, they were unhappy.

They were really unhappy, and so I think that was the cause of a lot of a lot of crisis points for us as well as Robert.

I'm Alec Baldwin.

You were listening to Here's the Thing.

If you love conversations with legendary singers, be sure to check out my episode with the incomparable barbous diceand we shared lunch and talked about our love for food and Barbara's early dreams of fame.

I read Nancy Drew Mysteries, I read movie magazines, you know, and dream that someday maybe I could be famous.

Did you have that dream then?

When you were here, I would have my pint of coffee ice cream Briers and sit in my bed and dream go to the movies sometimes on a Saturday afternoon.

The Lowis Kings with had the greatest ice cream, and we also.

Well, yeah, here the rest of my conversation with Barbara streisand at Here'sthething dot org.

After the break we talk about disco and how the Beg's soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever in nineteen seventy seven brought them near total domination of the music charts and the dance floor.

I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.

The bee Gees distinguished themselves vocally with their lush harmonies.

Robin had his distinctive vibrato, Morris anchored the melody, and then, like an ace pitcher discovering a slider, Barry found his falsetto.

Well.

It first happened on a song call Please read me that I did a few different falsetto harmonies to that song, basically because of the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson and I forgot all about that.

So we were nights on Broadway and a reef Mardenar, producer at that point, said can anybody scream like Paul McCartney.

We all looked at each other and said, well, how do you mean?

He said, well, you know, like I saw her standing there and how Paul suddenly screams a high note?

Can anyone Can any of you guys do that?

And I said, well, yeah, I done something like that way back, I said, but I became the volunteer.

Nobody else really wanted to take a shot at that, so I went out there and just discovered it.

At first, it was tentative and nervous and and I didn't know what it was.

And then it just began to get stronger and stronger.

With you and your brothers, there's such a quotient of beauty inside the music.

There's so much sensitivity inside of the lyrics and the singing.

And I'm wondering, when you would perform live, what was your ritual if you had one.

On the day of a live show, did you coddle your voice?

How did you prep for a show?

I would wake up singing, because after a show you lose your voice.

It's gone.

So the next morning you just hope and pray that it's going to come back again, you know, so when you wake up, you start warming up.

So I'd be doing a lot of this different range stuff.

One set of principles for the falsetto another set of principles for the real voice.

Check out your highest note.

Do it all day and it comes back if you're lucky.

And how much before you would do a live show, how much would you rehearse prior to going on the road.

Rehearsal you would usually be about a month with weekends out so you could work at your chops back again, and that way you develop strength and you develop confidence.

And these days I had these three ladies that are amazing, and so any song where Robin might have sung, they cover me and they do those things.

But there's actly nothing like walking from the dressing room to the stage.

Nothing like it in the world.

Really.

I think Bruce Springsteen said it, there's something magical about hearing the crowd two minutes before you walk on.

The stake coming.

You're getting closer to them.

Yeah.

Yeah, music occupies such a unique place in people's lives, and really dwarfs of film and television.

Yeah, because film and television is something you have to make an appointment with you have to sit and watch it.

Where music is something that you can have in your life any anywhere.

You can be driving, you could be having sex, you can be at the gym, it could be jogging.

Music is in your ears at will, whenever you want it to be.

That's true.

And therefore, and I think when people I always say the same line.

When you die, you don't remember an episode of Seinfeld?

You remember?

How can you ment a broken heart?

You know what I mean?

Yes, I do.

And then the question then becomes why why does music and harmonics and vibrations and means so much to us?

You know, I love Frank Sinatra as much as I love Pavarotti.

I love the Distant Past, the immigrant music, as much as I love country music.

I don't have categories, you know, I just love what I love and it's not to any music.

But why why do we all do this?

You know?

What is the need in us?

So I want to do something about that.

I'd love to do a program about trying to understand that.

I mean, this is a corny question, but like have you ever stood there?

And you were going to sing a lyric?

There was a particularly exquisite lyric of one of your most famous songs, and you thought you were going to break down crying.

Yeah, have you ever.

Been almost overwhelmed by the music you're singing?

Yes, we wrote a song called Wish You Were Here for Andy because he passed away at the age of thirty, and we wanted to do it on stage and we never could.

So, you know, we got through about two or three lines and then looked at each other.

We can't do this.

We just can't do this.

It's it makes it just makes me cry.

I just can't sing it.

At least the song is there, you know.

But yes, that was a moment.

That was a moment.

It's all part of it.

You're you're in a way, you're sort of acting, and you're pretending to be someone that you probably don't believe you are anyway.

You know, the song's always moved Me?

How deep is your Love Moves Me?

And and immortality the song that's Celindian.

I can't believe you said that.

Every time I hear that song, I think I would break down if I sang that song because just the meaning of that song.

You wrote that song?

Yeah, yeah, what is that song about?

In your mind?

Well, I think it's it's at some point in your life you reflect on who you are and what you are and the culmination of your opinion, and if you can do that, then everything's okay, you know.

So so for me, it's like, so this is who I am, this is all I know, and I must choose to live for all that I can and give the spark that makes the power grow.

But I also find it's kind of a poem, if you will, about being a famous artist.

You know, like inside some of those lyrics, I hear someone sitting there going, there's no turning back for me.

Now that's right, you know, that's right.

But we don't say goodbye, and that to me is the key part of the song.

It doesn't matter whether I'm here or not, there are no goodbyes, you know.

And it was written for Robert Stigwood wanting a song for the stage version of Saturday Night Fever, and we'd already come up with the song, but he wanted the guy in the show to sing it, and I thought, but this is a woman's song.

It's a woman's song.

Some songs are for women and some songs are for men, you know.

So there's a masculinity in some music, and there's a femininity in music.

That's why I work with Barbara.

That's right with Diana Ross and the ability to to Selene to lock in to the feminine side, you know, and understand that Barbara Streisen still doesn't quite understand what woman in love means.

You know, it's it's a right her and get a Rebuddal says it's a right at offend, which is in the song.

She'ays what does that mean?

It's a right at offend?

And I did spend some time explaining before the Me Too movement that women can fall in love too without telling anybody.

It's not all down to the guy, you know, and I had to sort of talk her through that.

Kenny Rogers still doesn't know what I was in the streamers about.

Come on, Kenny, well, let's let's let's throw your cards in the table here.

What songs that you've immortalized do you not really know what they're about?

Come on, it's it's time for you to fess about.

What song are you saying you don't really get the meaning of.

We never recorded a song that we didn't understand, you know.

There were some very abstract songs Lemon's Never Forget.

I think he's a very abstract song and not everybody's favorite.

Everything had a purpose to it.

We began to learn from the Beatles that you could write about anything.

You could write about life itself.

You know.

So you had Paperback Writer or and you had Yellow Submarine, and it was okay, you know, you can write about these things.

It doesn't all have to be about having your heart broken or falling in love or they went through that, but then they understood, they understood something about life.

That's where Sergeant Pepper reached its point, the culmination of the peak create creativity that these guys were giving us.

You know, well, when you mentioned Sargant Pepper, Yeah, and I think when you go into Saturday Night Fever and when you're inside that experience and you're recording the music to that, did they show you cuts of the film?

Did you see some footage of the film or the whole film to inspire you to go write the music?

Or you had to write the music without any cinematic reference point.

Robert Center's a script, but we didn't read it.

We just we just listened to his verbal describing what it was, which is to him it was so you didn't.

See the film finished and then write the music.

No.

Wow.

He sent us a script, but we didn't read it, and we just said, tell us what you want, tell us what you think it is.

Well, it's tribal rites of a new Saturday Night okay.

And that was an article by Nick conn And in New York Magazine, right.

And he said, but I need a better name for the film.

And I said, well, what about night Fever?

And he said, no, that's too pornographic.

I said, okay.

But then in the end it turned into Saturday Night Fever and I didn't know.

So when you're inside that experience of making that music, yeah, do you kind of know that you're onto something or you had no idea what that was going to become.

We had no idea what it was going to become.

And we were trying to reinvent ourselves anyway.

We just mixed a live album that we'd done in La and then Robert called up and said, I need five or six songs for this film with this new gentleman named John Travolta.

So okay, all of that in itself is exciting enough.

It sort of kickstarted the ideas and staying alive was one of those ideas.

More than a woman.

If I can't have you, how deep your love?

Obviously a night fever.

So we just started writing.

We were fifty miles outside of Paris.

We didn't have, you know, television, we didn't have any of those distractions, if you like, and we just got on with it.

And about three weeks, two or three weeks, and then we got serious when we got back to Miami and made the records for real.

Well, I just want to say as a reference point that I am in Washington, d C.

I went to college down there first my then girlfriend who was very much of a nightclub dancing She and her roommate, I think there was like three couples.

We go see the movie Saturday Night Fever, and we said to ourselves, and the guys are look at each other, going, Jesus Christ, look at this.

You think I'm gonna get up there and do that in a room full of people, Like she wants to go to clubs and go dancing like this.

I said, that's never happening.

Right within two weeks, I had the platform shoes, I had my hair blow dried to death.

My hair was blow dried like it was some French pastry.

I put more hairspray.

My hair was all poofed out and born out.

And the shirt I got, the shirt opened right to I got the I'm ready, I'm ready to go.

It was a tsunami Saturday night.

Fever was a tsunami.

Yeah, whether you liked it or not, it was gonna stay around.

It was.

We liked it.

It was just everywhere.

Well that my story is that we were starting to shoot Sogeant Pepper the movie, right and and we had Peter Frampton had his own Winter Bagel, and we had one Winter Bagel between us, and about two weeks into shooting the same time, Fever came out and all of the dancers in the movie were suddenly dancing to this music at the lunch breaks, and we could hear it from our winter a bagel, Like, what what are they doing?

Why are they playing Southern feva?

You know, because at that point it hadn't taken off, you know, And within about a week we had our own separate Winner bagels.

So there's Hollywood right there.

You know, I don't do that.

We made that out, but we made that movie.

The soundtrack to that movie we're the only other group to record the Whold of Sergeant Pepper with George Martin.

Right, so there's something that's something I'm proud of.

How would you describe that experience?

You're performing somebody else's music.

Oh yeah, but we were learning sergendary music, yes, legendary music, and we wanted to perform that music, and George Martin was happy to show us the different tricks that that they would all get up to, you know, the song sun King or because they all sang the same melody once and then they would sing the harmony all together, the same thing again, all singing the same melody, and then they do the third harmony and they'd sing all that together, so that you've got three guys on three tracks singing each harmony, not three part harmony.

And then you play that back and it's mind blowing.

So we just learned stuff.

We learned stuff.

Whose idea was it to do the documentary?

Well, it was Frank Marshall Nigel Sinclair, and they had done the Sinarchi documentary, they'd done a couple of others that they were very proud of.

The Beatles eight days a week, I think they did that the day that we signed with Capital was the day I met Frank Marshall and Steve Barnett, the president at that point, introduced me to Frank Marshall.

Frank Marshall said, we're going to do this documentary and tell us something about how it began for you guys, and I did.

I told him a story and he went, Okay, we're going to do this documentary.

That's how it began.

But it was it was two years, two and a half years before we saw anything, and the Verse Cup didn't fly very well.

Why there were too many on truths, too many misconceptions that everyone was saying, well, that's true, but it really wasn't.

So I had to take issue with some of the things.

And I know that in the end some of those things may still be there.

But I could never watch it again because I can't watch my family pass one up to the other.

That's not fun.

Barry Gibb Subscribe to Here's the Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

While you're there, leave us a review.

When we return from the break, Barry talks about his regrets, and we'll also hear from his son Steve.

I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing that is, of course more than a woman from the soundtrack of Saturday Night Fever.

It's been a busy time for Barry Gibb.

There's the new HBO documentary about the Beg's, and earlier this year, Barry released an album of Beg's songs covered by some of Nashville's biggest names.

It's called Greenfields.

These are people I admired the most.

These are countrilogists that have always been in my blood so ever since I was a child.

Dolly Pardons has been a really important part of music for me.

Inxting words take them to me.

I wanted to get people I admired the most to sing our songs.

And maybe it's volume two that it will happen in the future.

I don't know.

But this was great fun and I was more than intimidated.

But it wasn't in my hands.

It was in Dave Cobbs sense.

When you say you were more than intimidating, absolutely, how so well, how many people do you truly admire?

You know, so when you're in their company you just feel When I meet Paul McCartney.

I don't know what to say.

My mouth won't say anything.

You know.

All I can say is I feel fine.

And you granted they must have been intimidated to sing your music as well.

Oh yeah, no, it was all the way aroun There's no question about that.

The only person I think was not intimidated by any of us was Dave Cobb, the producer, So he was the decider, was the decider, he was the director.

Well the cut you do with Dolly, Yeah, what a beautiful rendering that is of that song.

When you hear other people sing your songs, yeah, what goes through your mind?

It's a very flattering thing.

It's like anytime over the years anyone sang one of our songs.

If someone's covering your song, that's a huge compliment.

So I have the same feeling every time, and that goes back a long, long way.

So anyone singing our songs is wow, why did that person sing our song?

Now, when someone wants to sing your songs, yeah, is it open to anybody.

Anyone who records our song doesn't need to ask us.

They don't.

It's just the way it works.

No one needs to ask us to sing one of our songs.

If you're using one of our songs in a movie or in a sing license like a commercial, you have to ask, can you have to make it?

Sure?

But beyond that, anyone can record our songs.

Would they pay you the royalties for you as the songwriter?

Well, it we'd be paid indirectly by the system that works, like mechanical royalties and things like that.

Sure.

The only question I ever had was, I don't like commercials about alcohol.

I don't like commercials about cigarettes.

Is it true that you have a someone's making a feature film about the bechees?

Yeah, the biopics in its own process right now.

Graham King is in charge of that.

He did the Bohemian Rhapsody movie, right.

Are you going to have some participation in that?

Absolutely?

I'm sort of in agreement with Graham, and that is that sometimes the story can be a little different than the truth, but not too much.

You more than your two brothers.

I'll say this only because this is my recollection of it.

You know, you guys would get out there and sing.

When you watched you sing on film, you know, it's a different story when you're just listening to the music.

But when you'd watch you sing.

Your brothers are pretty straightforward musicians, and here you are, and the hair and the clothes.

He was like this preposterously handsome guy.

And then you'd open your mouth and you'd sing these like heart stoppingly beautiful songs.

And I want to ask you that, when the Beegs were at the zenith, when everything was just clicking for you, what was the best part of it and what was the downside of it for you?

You know, there's a lot of things I regret.

Saturday Night Fever wasn't something I regretted.

I didn't like people disregarding us after fever.

I thought that was unfair.

But that's the industry, you know, it's very fragile.

As you said earlier, it will it will turn on you in a heartbeat.

And so I think generally what I regret is that we became overexposed.

And I think that that was from fever, Yeah, yeah, and everything else.

Just having five songs in the top ten or three songs in the top five.

We were becoming pretty tainted.

You know, we were beginning not to really appreciate having a number one record, but we equaled the Beatles record.

We are six number ones in a row, and that was all right.

I can live with that.

I can little work that'll work, you know.

But I mean my other thing is that I find that the business is that people tend to look at something that's super successful and say, well, if it's successful, then it's like potato chips.

It can't be really that, right, great, it's like a snack food.

If it's something that appeals to the general public.

Two masses of the general publish.

If you're selling tens of millions of records, it can't really be that it's.

Too commercial, right right?

Did you get it?

You got a whiff of that.

Yes, But you know, I look back a long way and I see the final year of Elvis's life, the final year of the Beatles, Michael Jackson, and how they began to fragment, you know, and because nothing ever really less.

A group is not a natural state to be in unless you're relatives, unless you're brothers or sisters.

So I see all that.

I see that in the end, people like Elvis Michael Beatles began to make records that weren't quite up to the scratch of Sergeant Pebble.

Was well when the Disco inferno, if you will dies down.

What happens to your songwriting when you realize that's petered out that.

Well because of the backlash, We didn't base our lives on Fever.

We just sort of well back to the studio, you know, we were.

You know, I've been married for fifty years now, last September it was fifty years, and I've had a wonderful time.

You know, I love that woman and we've been together for that long, and so I always had her at my back.

I always.

I never I never had to be out there on my own.

You had a home family.

So at the end of FEVA we were starting to raise kids, you know, and so the distractions were plentiful.

They were plentiful.

And you know, even when that happened, you think to yourself.

I know, I thought to myself, well maybe that's it.

That was warm, that was great, that was wonderful.

Maybe go back to Australia, maybe go back to England, and you start to question your life and if it's time to change your life.

That was the moment that you could have done it.

Speaking of family, your son plays with you from.

Time, Yes, Steevie direct, Yeah, he's right here.

Son, Stevie plays with you, and he also plays some other types of music.

He's like into heavy metal or absolutely right, we need Stevie to come on just for one second.

Tell us, yeah, does he get the bends when he goes from the music of Barry gibb to the music of Metallica or whatever you're doing.

What's the scene in between that kind of music?

You know, I grew up watching the Begs.

I stood on the side of the stage as a kid, and I thought my dad was the coolest guy on planet Earth.

You know, I really did.

But what happened was is there was a band called Kiss that came.

Out around the similar time, and that was my introduction into hard rock and heavy metal.

And I was always fascinated with the guitar.

So you know, when I saw a guitar that was on fire, I said, Okay, I don't know how or when I'm going.

To get to do that, but I got to figure out how to do that.

And I knew enough to know that being a musician and being Barry Gibbs' son was probably a terrible idea.

And I knew that from a young age.

So I followed my joy with the guitar, and that took me a lot of places.

You know, I've played in a bunch of heavy metal bands over the years, like a Black Label Society, crow Bar, Kingdom of Sorrow.

And the thing is is that I figured it made me different enough that I could maybe carve out a career and not be compared to my dad.

You're singing good, now, Well, what happened is my dad and I have always kind of, you know, messed around a little bit, you know, writing songs and stuff like that.

So you know, I got to learn about songwriting from the best, you know, and I got to watch the Beg's write many times over my you know, the course of my life.

So I've been a student of theirs.

But you know, when when Robin.

Passed away, Dad was clearly struggling to figure out where.

To go in life.

And at that point I was like, Dad, you gotta channel this into music, like you can't sit here and mourn forever, you know.

And he said, okay, well let's do let's do a show.

And I said, yeah, you should do that, and he goes, well, I only want to do it if you do it with me.

I mean, I definitely didn't feel like I could step into those roles that Robin and or Morris had.

But over the course of a few years, you know, with his page and kindness, I found my place with him.

You know, I sometimes joke that I'm his emotional support animal.

But the fact of the matter is is we've come to understand it.

Even especially recently, now I know how to harmonize with him, which I didn't really know how to do.

I began to learn that really by being thrown in the fire with him, And to be honest, it's been probably the greatest gift of my life to come full circle and actually be with him making.

Music toward Australia.

Yeah, we toward England, we taught America and that was an incredible year of just finding yourself again.

Stevie said that he thought his father was the coolest guy.

Let me tell you something, stev your father is the coolest guy.

Your father reminds me of Nat King Cole.

Oh, your father reminds me of a guy that could sing and just bring you to tears.

He was so beautiful and the songs were so beautiful, and he's sang them thank you perfectly.

And then when you'd watch him on film, do it you go my god, he's also the coolest guy I've ever seen in my life.

Look at this guy.

You know, I don't know that anybody will ever be able to relate to this, because I do feel a little unique in that I've had this experience.

But I think that for me, we all have great memories throughout.

Our life, whether it's the you know, the birth of our children, or or you know, that first big accomplishment that you make, or whatever it is in life.

But I have to tell you that I was talking about that show that we did after Robin died, and there was a moment where he was singing and I was off to his right on stage, and he was really in a I have to say, he was kind of transcending into another level in front of my eyes.

I was like, I could not I was reduced to tears while I was on stage watching him sing, because you know, I remembered being a very small kid standing on the side of the stage going hey dad, you know, I'm over here type of thing, and then too, you know, thirty something years later, I'm standing on stage with him and there was a moment where he took a breath and just looked at me and it was he winked at me, and there was the most pure expression of love with no words between a father and son and that moment, and I remember thinking to myself, I'll never forget this moment for the rest of my life, because there are no words for that kind of love between a son and a father.

And I tell him this all the time.

I said, Dad, it's okay that you don't think you're the greatest of all time, but just don't ever forget that there is a second that I don't believe that you're the greatest of all time.

Just be true to yourself and do what you love.

Because his love is pure and his expression of it is incredible, and I'll never get tired of it.

Listen, I say this only because it's true, and I feel that we all are seekers of the truth here, truth and beauty, and that is Stevie.

Your father knows full well that he's the greatest of all time.

Who knows?

And this modesty thing, it's just a part of an act, it's a part of a public It's always like this, Oh oh thank you, Oh God, that's so nice of you to say that, Oh thank you.

No no, please, no, no, please, Your father's fully aware of who he is and what his towering achievements in the music industry are.

Himnist brothers and him on his ownA frozen for that matter, I want to say I have loved you, and I have loved your music.

I mean, good music is good music, and I have loved you and I have loved your music forever.

I mean, I have so many Beg's albums, so every now and then I got to hear I can't see Nobody.

I play that song and.

Yeah, oh my, you know, I con't see no Buddy was written in a dressing room with strippers.

I thought it was you were like in church.

It was one of my greatest memory bad bums.

And here's a song.

You know.

Let's stop right there and let me just say I'm so grateful to you.

You are one of the greatest musicians that ever lived and one of the greatest vocalists that ever lived.

And I never get tired of listening to your music never.

You're very kind.

Thank you both for making time to do this.

This has been a joy.

This has been a real joy.

This has been a real joy for us too.

I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing, If shown you.

SOB so you.

We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Carrie Donahue and Zach McNeice.

Our engineer is Frank Imperial.

Thanks for listening.

Oh my odes to open up your eyes to