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Gibb Songs version 2 by Joseph Brennan, copyright 2006—2013

2001

The last Bee Gees album, This Is Where I Came In, was finally released and the brothers made numerous television and radio appearances worldwide to promote it. In April they played a full-length concert in New York for the A&E cable channel program Live by Request, later issued on DVD. The same month A&E issued a DVD of the Bee Gees episode of their Biography. This was well timed to the album’ release date. In June they played for almost an hour as the closing act to KIIS-FM’s Wango Tango two-day multi-artist event at Dodger Stadium. These turned out to be the last Bee Gees concerts.

This Is Where I Came In felt like a farewell to the Bee Gees. There was the title, of course, but also the appearance of the Volkswagen microbus (called a Kombi van in Australia) in an old photo on the front cover and in the video for ‘This Is Where I Came In’, and the recording of so many songs separately. The only item left in their Polygram/Universal contract was a greatest hits album, and they were free. Barry seemed tired of it all, and after Wango Tango he did very little musically for the next few years. They all spoke vaguely of future plans for the Bee Gees but nothing further was started in 2001 or 2002.

The year ended with the release of The Record, a new greatest hits package that tried to cover their entire career from 1966 to 2001 on only two CDs. It was the first to include Bee Gees hits after 1989, but only a few could be fit in.

songs

I CANNOT GIVE YOU MY LOVE
Barry Gibb, Ashley Gibb
album cut by Cliff Richard, 2004. US copyright January 2002

I ONCE KNEW A MAN
Barry Gibb
poem (no music)

recording sessions

Barry Gibb

Barry Gibb — vocal, guitar
Maurice Gibb — keyboard
engineer: John Merchant
producer: Barry Gibb, Maurice Gibb
around January 2001, Middle Ear, Miami Beach

I CANNOT GIVE YOU MY LOVE
Barry Gibb, Ashley Gibb (2001)
undated 2001
stereo, lead vocal Barry Gibb
unreleased

Maurice’s keyboard track from this demo was used in the finished recording made in 2003 for the Cliff Richard version. The song was the first written by Barry and his son Ashley.

Bee Gees

Robin Gibb — vocal
Maurice Gibb — keyboard, programming
engineer: John Merchant
producer: Barry Gibb, Maurice Gibb, Robin Gibb
September 2001, Middle Ear, Miami Beach

ISLANDS IN THE STREAM
Barry Gibb, Robin Gibb, Maurice Gibb (1983)
undated 2001
stereo 4:22, lead vocal Robin Gibb
The Record, 2001

Barry does not seem to be present on this quickly-made recording for the greatest hits album The Record. Maurice and John Merchant created a techno backing for Robin to sing to, very different from the demo by Barry and Albhy and the hit by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton. Toward the end Robin sings a line of ‘Ghetto Supastar’. This curiosity piece was the very last Bee Gees recording session.

Also done around this time for the same project, an edit of ‘Emotion’ (the 1994 Love Songs recording) and unspecified touch-ups to the 1997 demo of ‘Immortality’. These and ‘Heartbreaker’ (also from Love Songs) were all being released for the first time.

selected record releases

A promo-only CD. Maurice produced, played keyboard, and co-wrote one song.

The lead single for This Is Where I Came In was the titular song, heard here without the sound effect intro it has on the album. The song ‘This Is Where I Came In’ took people by surprise. Rather than Barry singing to a techno rhythm track, it opened with Robin singing to acoustic guitar. It charted a reasonable 18 in Britain and 25 in Germany.

The first B side track was ‘Just in Case’, which fans had been asking for ever since they heard it in progress on the Keppel Road documentary in 1996. The second B side was the non-album track ‘I Will Be There’, a very good demo recording of a new song already released by Tina Turner. Lastly there was a CDROM track of the comedy video for ‘This Is Where I Came In’ starring the three brothers and David English. Altogether this single was an excellent value even for people who also bought the album.

‘This Is Where I Came In’ did not chart in the US for the simple reason that it was not released except as a promo CD with just the one song on it. The plan was to see whether it charted on radio play before manufacturing singles. The record business was in turmoil by this date. Some years earlier the concept of issuing a single after the song becomes a hit would have seemed totally daft, but songs really were getting extensive radio play on top forty stations purely as album cuts.

The standard edition of This Is Where I Came In was a 12-song album. The ‘Special Edition’ in Britain included two extra songs, ‘Just In Case’ (also on the single) and ‘Promise the Earth’ (nowhere else). Some other countries also issued this 14-song version. In the US Target stores had a two-CD version with the usual 12-song CD plus a second CD containing three songs from the VH1 Storytellers show.

This, the last Bee Gees album of original material, did quite well in the charts, especially for artists in their fifties. It reached number 6 in Britain, number 3 in Germany, and even number 16 in the US. The promotions of the last few years and One Night Only shows had kept them in the public eye, and in the US the long-lasting effects of overexposure seemed to be finally fading away.

Sales were high enough to justify a second single, but none was issued. For reasons of group politics, not music, the second single could not be one of the solo songs. They played ‘She Keeps On Coming’ at several promotional appearances, and its strong rock beat might have made it a second hit. Later the weaker ‘Wedding Day’ seemed to be the choice. Plans for a second single were to include more non-album cuts, of which ‘The Bridge’ was said to be a front-runner.

Andy Gibb Millennium is the same as the 1980 LP Andy Gibb’s Greatest Hits but for the addition of ‘I Can’t Help It’ and a reshuffle of playing order in the second half. It disappointed fans who hoped for something new, or at least all of the singles. Small favors are the first CD appearances of the P P Arnold duet ‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow’ and of ‘Time Is Time’ without the fadeout it had on the CD Andy Gibb.

Finally, the first released version of Angel of Mercy. The Bee Gees were not involved in this recording. The album reached number 6 in Sweden.

The Record, originally planned for the second half of 2002, was rushed out for the Christmas season of 2001 when Polygram decided that This Is Where I Came In was done. The package seems to show the rush, although the simple cover art does have potential as an icon in store displays, and lends itself to some advertising concepts that Polydor and Universal never quite carried through. The booklet text is very disappointing, all about awards and chart placements instead of about the music. The demo of Immortality in particular cries out for explanation. Chronological order is slightly violated to get ‘You Should Be Dancing’ at the end of disk 1 and ‘Stayin’ Alive’ at the start of disk 2.

This was the first Bee Gees hits collection to recognize some of the hits they wrote for other artists. To do so, four previously unreleased tracks and the original duet of ‘Guilty’ by Barbra Streisand and Barry are included. ‘Emotion’ and ‘Heartbreaker’ were recorded in 1994 for the never-released Love Songs album and are placed here to note the hit versions by Samantha Sang and Dionne Warwick respectively. ‘Islands in the Stream’ is a new recording made just for this album to note the hit by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton. Lastly ‘Immortality’ is the demo for Céline Dion’s non-hit recording of 1997, with Barry’s falsetto lead meant to take it into Celine’s range. In addition to these, the album track ‘Love Me’ and the B side ‘If I Can’t Have You’ represent Yvonne Elliman’s hit versions.

The first edition in Britain included two extra songs on disk 1, ‘Jumbo’ (the stereo mix from Tales from the Brothers Gibb) and ‘My World’. It also included by accident the wrong version of ‘How Can You Mend a Broken Heart’, an earlier state with Barry singing all the lead vocal, no Robin at all, and a less finished piano track by Maurice. Supposedly Barry himself heard the album master and did not notice the mistake. Copies with this otherwise unreleased take are collector’s items, although they are not exceptionally rare. Corrected copies look identical, so the CD must be played to identify the rare ones (the first line of vocal is sufficient!).

The CDs were compromised by being issued in HDCD format. Played on a normal CD player, the sound on the supposedly compatible disks is badly compressed. Nonetheless the improved sound quality over previous releases is quite clear. The Tales from the Brothers Gibb box was now ten years old, and as good as it sounded at the time, The Record exceeds it. Even the ‘newer’ songs like ‘Stayin’ Alive’ have new life and detail. The peculiar exception is ‘Lonely Days’: while the tape hiss that always dogged it has been mostly cleared away, the start of the first note is cut off!

It’s hard to cover thirty-six years of recording on two CDs, so many compromises had to be made. While the late 1970s is certainly when the Bee Gees had the most hits, the generous selection of songs from that period overshadows their equally interesting if less commercially successful work from other periods. It’s too bad the 1980s solo recordings are ignored entirely, even the hits. But it is only two disks.

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