Introduction:
The Bee Gee performed the famous 1967 song live on ITV just months after his brother Robin’s death.
Barry Gibb is widely regarded as one of the greatest singer-songwriters of a generation, and in 2013 a lucky TV crew were treated to a one-off, intimate performance from the British star.
Appearing on ITV’s This Morning, the last remaining Bee Gee gave an interview ahead of his first tour without Robin and Maurice Gibb, before going on to sing a stunning acoustic version of ‘To Love Somebody’.
Sitting on the famous sofa opposite the show’s two presenters, Sir Barry’s performance of the famous song came just months after his brother Robin’s death in 2012, after succumbed to kidney failure brought on by his battle with cancer.
The Bee Gees’ appearance on This Morning was part of a press drive to promote the UK leg of his Mythology Tour, the first time he would be on the road without his brothers who he had performed with since the inception of the Bee Gees in 1958.
The Mythology Tour, designed as a tribute to Robin and Maurice Gibb, kicked off in Sydney in October 2012 and saw Barry Gibb accompanied by his son Stephen, and Maurice’s daughter Samantha, who also regularly joined Barry for duets on stage.
Speaking about the loss of his brothers, Barry revealed that he often felt they were by his side as he performed.
“On stage is hard. One minute you feel they’re right with you, the next you know you’ve got to pull something off yourself,” he told The Sun in 2013.
“The audiences have been incredible, they’ve been so supportive. They’re finding closure as well.”
Barry also opened up about his relationship with Linda, his wife of 54 years, and she was the driving force behind the tour, after telling him he needed to stop grieving and ‘go make music!’.
“She told me to get off my backside and stop going along with the whole idea that everything was finished for me.” She said, ‘You’ve got music, so make music!’ That was her kicking me, so I decided to jump right in.”
Gibb went on to share that during the tour’s performances, the void left by his brothers was softened by the presence of his eldest son, Stephen, handling the guitar duties, and Maurice’s daughter, Samantha, joining him on vocals.
Barry Gibb started the tour just months after his brother Robin passed away in London from cancer complications he’d been battling since 2010.
In April 2012 he contracted pneumonia and fell into a coma. Despite coming out of his coma, his colorectal cancer had advanced, and he died on May 20, 2012, aged 62. His cause of death was liver and kidney failure.
Robin’s twin brother brother Maurice died in 2003 due to complications of a twisted intestine and their younger brother Andy Gibb died aged just 30 in 1988 after battling drug addiction and depression for many years.
“Personally, I think Robin knew he was dying. I knew he was ill for a long time, it wasn’t just the last couple of years,” Barry said of his last brother’s passing.
“It’s a hard reality, but we will all see it at some stage. That’s the lesson, it’s not unique to any person.”
Talking about the tour, Barry highlighted the show was a celebration of his brothers.
“We created this show that really celebrates everything we ever did, or as much as we could put into a show. I feel good. I felt a lot worse last year with all the stress over Robin,” he added.
Despite being on the group’s most famous songs, ‘To Love Somebody’, written by Robin and Barry Gibb and released in 1967, wasn’t a huge success in the UK.
At the request of the Bee Gees manager Robert Stigwood, the song was originally written for Otis Redding, who was looking for a soulful song in the style of The Rascals.
However, the Bee Gees went on to release the song themselves after Otis died in a plane crash, before he ever had a chance to record the song himself.
“Everyone told us what a great record they thought it was,” Robin Gibb said in the book Bee Gees: Tales of the Brothers Gibb. “Other groups all raved about it but for some reason people in Britain just did not seem to like it.”
Barry added: “I think the reason it didn’t do well here was because it’s a soul number, Americans loved it, but it just wasn’t right for this country.”
The song has been recorded by many other musicians, including Leonard Cohen, Michael Bolton, Tom Jones, Janis Joplin and Nina Simone and has featured in a multitude of film soundtracks.
Although it might come as a surprise that the song was initially written for Otis Redding, people are regularly surprised by the back catalogue of the Bee Gees, and the chart-topping hits they wrote for other artists.
Among the most famous are Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers’ ‘Islands in the Stream’, ‘Chain Reaction’ by Diana Ross, Frankie Valli’s ‘Grease’ and Yvonne Elliman’s ‘If I Can’t Have You’.
While some may be surprised that the song was originally written for Otis Redding, what many don’t know is just how many huge hits the Bee Gees, and Barry Gibb in particular, have written for other artists.