| Maurice Gibb |
|
| Background information |
| Birth name |
Maurice Ernest Gibb |
| Born |
December 22, 1949
Douglas, Isle of
Man |
| Died |
January 12, 2003 (aged 53)
Miami
Beach, Florida,
USA |
| Genre(s) |
Disco, pop, rock, soft rock, |
| Occupation(s) |
Singer, songwriter |
| Instrument(s) |
Acoustic guitar, bass
guitar, voice,
keyboards |
| Years active |
fl. ca. 1960s-2003 |
Associated
acts |
The
Bee Gees |
Maurice Ernest Gibb CBE (December
22, 1949 – January
12, 2003),
was a musician
and singer-songwriter. He was born in Douglas,
Isle
of Man to English parents.
|
Contents
- 1 Biography
- 2 Career
- 3 Personal
life
- 4 Death
- 5 Awards
- 6 External
links
- 7 References
|
Biography
Maurice (pronounced Morris), was a twin brother to Robin
Gibb, and was the younger of the twins by thirty-five
minutes. He is best known as a member of the singing-songwriting trio
the Bee
Gees, formed with his brothers Robin and Barry.
The trio had their start in Australia; their major success came when
they returned to England
where they had lived for several years as children.
Gibb grew up with his family in Chorlton-cum-Hardy,
Manchester,
England.
In 1958 he
and his family moved to Brisbane, Australia, settling in one of the city's
poorest suburbs, Cribb Island, which was subsequently demolished to
make way for Brisbane Airport.
Career
-
While in Brisbane, he and brothers Robin and Barry formed the
Bee Gees. At first the younger brothers simply sang harmony to Barry,
but by 1966 Maurice was important as an instrumentalist and had begun
writing songs. The family moved back to England in January 1967 and the
Bee Gees signed with Robert Stigwood, which led to their
becoming one of the most successful musical groups of the 1960s, 70s
and 80s. In a career spanning five decades, the group sold over 180
million records.
Maurice Gibb's role in the group focused on melody and
arrangements. He sang harmony and backing vocals, and played a variety
of instruments. Very early on in 1965 and 1966 he played lead guitar,
but as early as 1966 he was playing other keyboard and string
instruments in the studio. Bee Gees records from 1967 to 1972 are
dominated by Maurice playing piano and bass guitar, along with mellotron
("Every Christian Lion Hearted Man" and "Kilburn Towers"), rhythm
guitar (along with Barry), and other parts. The piano on songs like
"Words" and "Lonely Days" is the Maurice Gibb sound. On stage he
usually played bass guitar, with an additional musician taking bass
when Maurice switched to piano. Maurice was less influential in the disco Bee Gees sound
of 1975 to 1979, when he played mostly bass guitar.
After that time for the last twenty years of his life he played
primarily electronic keyboard instruments on stage and in the studio,
but occasional lead guitar (like the acoustic on "This Is Where I Came
In", 2001).
In the reunited Bee Gees from 1987 onward Maurice was the group's
resident expert on all technical phases of recording, and he
coordinated musicians and engineers to create much of the group's sound.
As a songwriter Maurice contributed mainly to melody, with his
brothers, for the most part, writing the lyrics that they would sing on
the finished song. It is difficult to identify his contributions
because the songs were so shaped to the singer, but his brothers'
continued writing collaboration with him on solo projects shows how
much they relied on him. Maurice sang lead on average one song per
album. He was sometimes known as "the quiet one" for his less obvious
contributions to the group, but privately he was a good teller of
stories who immensely enjoyed talking with fans. His reputation as a
mild-mannered stabilising influence with two very ambitious brothers
continued through his life.
Away from the Bee Gees, Maurice recorded but did not release a
solo album in 1970, and in the same year he appeared in a short-lived West
End musical, Sing a Rude Song. During the Bee Gees
hiatus in the 1980s he worked with both Barry and Robin on their solo
projects, and did some instrumental writing and recording including the
soundtrack for the film "A Breed Apart". In 1986 he produced and
co-wrote an entire album for Swedish singer Carola.
Of these and other projects the only disks released under his own name
were two singles: "Railroad" in 1970 and "Hold Her in Your Hand" in
1984.
Maurice's last great project was to produce an album's worth
of songs written and sung by his daughter Samantha, which finally
appeared in 2005 under the name M E G -- Maurice's initials.[1]
Personal life
Gibb was married to the Scottish pop star Lulu
from 1969 to
1973; they
had no children, and the pressure of their respective commitments led
to their divorce.
Together with his second wife Yvonne, Gibb had two children:
Adam and Samantha.
Gibb loved the sport of paintball, and had a team which he called
the Royal Rat Rangers, a reference to his being named a Commander of
the British Empire, and to his time at the Little River AA group, where
the members referred to each other as "river rats." He promoted the
sport at every opportunity, and opened a paintball equipment shop,
"Commander Mo's Paintball Shop," in North Miami Beach,
Florida.
Death
Maurice Gibb died unexpectedly at a Miami
Beach, Florida, hospital on 12 January 2003, of complications from a heart
attack during surgery to correct a blockage. Following his death, his
surviving brothers Barry and Robin announced that they would no longer
perform as the Bee Gees.
Awards
In 1994, Maurice Gibb was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame,
and in 1997 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of
Fame. His catalogue is published by BMG
Music Publishing.
In 2002,
Maurice was made a Commander of the
British Empire (CBE), along with his brothers, but the awards were not
presented until 2004, after Maurice's death; his son Adam accompanied
Barry and Robin to Buckingham Palace for the ceremony.
External links
References
-
Juan Cristobal (7 Apr 2007). Record Sales. Beegees World.
Retrieved on 2007-04-24.
-
David Leaf, "Bee Gees / The Authorized Biography", 1979.
-
Album credits.
-
Melinda Bilyeu, Hector Cook, Andrew Môn Hughes, The Bee Gees
/ Tales of the Brothers Gibb. London: Omnibus, 2001.
-
Album credits.
| The Bee Gees |
Barry
Gibb | Robin Gibb | Maurice Gibb
Colin Petersen | Vince
Melouney |
| Studio
albums |
| Bee
Gees 1st (1967) | Horizontal (1968) |
Idea (1968) |
Odessa (1969) |
Cucumber Castle (1970) |
2 Years On (1970) |
Trafalgar (1971)
| To Whom It
May Concern (1972) | Life
in a Tin Can (1973) | Mr.
Natural (1974) | Main
Course (1975) | Children
of the World (1976) | Spirits
Having Flown (1979) | Living
Eyes (1981) | E.S.P. (1987) |
One (1989) |
High Civilization (1991) |
Size Isn't Everything (1993) |
Still Waters (1997) |
This Is Where I Came In (2001) |
| Compilation
albums |
| Best
of Bee Gees (1969) | Best
of Bee Gees, Volume 2 (1972) | Greatest (1979) |
Their Greatest Hits:
The Record (2001) | Number Ones (2004) |
