Barry Gibb joins country partners to bring his songs alive again. ‘I just want my brothers’

Barry Gibb’s music, written with his brothers, once seemed to change the world.

Now, in a time of so much loss — personal, as Gibb continues to process the deaths of his brothers, and universally, as the world struggles through the COVID-19 pandemic — Gibb is changing his sound a bit to fit the new world.

The sole surviving member of the family harmony group, the Bee Gees, has re-recorded some of the Gibb brothers’ most beloved songs — country style.

“My only mission is to keep those songs alive,” Gibb said from his North Bay Road home in Miami Beach about his new Nashville album. “That is what it is about.”

Jive talkin’? Maybe not.

Gibb’s creative, commercial rebirth

Gibb, 74, is enjoying the kind of creative and commercial renaissance that might have seemed usual more than 40 years ago when the music he made in Miami with his brothers, twins Robin and Maurice and youngest brother Andy, hit No. 1 around the world and dominated popular culture.

In December, “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,” Frank Marshall’s documentary about the Bee Gees, was released to near universal acclaim from critics. Fans, and even those who dismissed Bee Gees classics like “Stayin’ Alive,” “Night Fever” and “Tragedy” the first time around, are gushing on social media about how deep their love is for the film.

The renewed love affair seems to have extended to the new album, too, Gibb’s first solo release since “In the Now” in 2016.

On Jan. 8, Gibb released “Greenfields: The Gibb Brothers’ Songbook, Vol. 1,” a new album of 11 Bee Gees songs (13 on the deluxe Target edition) and one never-released Barry Gibb solo tune. He recorded the collection last year before COVID at RCA Studios in Nashville as duets with country and Americana luminaries including Dolly Parton, Alison Krauss, Keith Urban, Jason Isbell and Little Big Town.

Barry Gibb’s gone country and he, and the world apparently, couldn’t be happier.

This week, “Greenfields” debuted at No. 1 on the UK album chart, his first time atop the album charts as a soloist and not since the Bee Gees’ “Spirits Having Flown” album in the spring of 1979 and Barbra Streisand’s “Guilty” in the fall of 1980. (Gibb cowrote and produced the Streisand album from Miami.)

In the U.S., “Greenfields” has spent its first week in the Top 5 of Apple Music’s digital albums sales chart.

“It’s been incredible,” Gibb said. “I’ve had my mind completely destroyed. If you told me six months ago this would happen I’d have said, ‘You’re crazy.’ All the stars lined up and everything fell into place and I don’t know why. I can’t explain it.”

Bee Gees cover versions

There have been thousands of cover versions of Bee Gees songs since the first American hit, “New York Mining Disaster 1941,” in 1967. So why not a covers set by the songs’ originator?

“To Love Somebody,” alone, has had hundreds of covers in every musical genre from artists including Nina Simone, Janis Joplin, Rod Stewart, Roberta Flack, Hank Williams Jr. and Leonard Cohen. That song, written by Barry and Robin Gibb for soul singer Otis Redding, who died in December 1967 before he could record it, is sung on “Greenfields” with Jay Buchanan.

How “Greenfields” went country

The idea for the album came as a jolt when Gibb’s eldest son, musician Stephen Gibb, played his father a Chris Stapleton album produced by Dave Cobb.

“I said, ‘I have to work with that person.’ Stephen put the iPhone in front of me and I just started breathing heavily. This is real music. Real people playing. And nothing is more important to me than playing with other musicians. Even Dave sits in and plays,” Gibb said.

Stephen Gibb, who gets an associate producer credit, flew to Nashville and helped line up the talent. Stapleton was not able to take part. Barry Gibb said he would ask the country rocker to take part for a second, or third, volume if he fulfills his dream to turn “Greenfields” into a trilogy.

Jay Landers, a veteran producer and artist and repertoire (A&R) executive who has worked with Streisand, Neil Diamond and Frank Sinatra, served as executive producer on “Greenfields” with Gibb to oversee the project. In his A&R role, Landers helped choose the songs and secure the duet partners.

Initially, Landers said, Gibb and Cobb were not certain the album should feature duets on every song. Gibb wasn’t even sure he wanted to sing lead on every track. Landers helped steer the project toward all-duets and mostly familiar material.

Parton and Krauss were the first two artists to sign on, Landers said.

“I’m proud of it and proud of all the people who said ‘Yes.’ Because, you know, that’s a tough question: ‘Would you come to the studio and sing a Bee Gees song?’ That’s not an easy one,” Gibb said. “So to have Dolly Parton and Alison Krauss and Keith Urban and Brandi Carlile and Little Big Town, what a gift. I feel incredibly grateful to all of them. And to Dave Cobb, especially, because I didn’t want to produce this. I wanted everyone to work with someone they all knew and trusted and Dave was the guy.”

For Gibb, making the album was a dawning. He says his next dream is to perform his music at The Ryman Auditorium in Nashville with these musicians and without an audience. Not just because of the pandemic, but because he saw Alan Jackson showcase his music in a live setting at the hallowed theater without an audience and the setting and acoustics served the music so well.

“I’m not going away because country is in my blood from being a child, and since the ‘60s and the ‘70s,” Gibb said. “At this time of my life that is the only real music to me.”

Still, though marketed as country, the arrangements on “Greenfields” stick close to the pop originals, with the exception of a slower tempo on “Jive Talkin’” that Gibb sings with Buchanan and Miranda Lambert.

Otherwise, Cobb’s rich string arrangements on selections like “I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You,” “With the Sun in My Eyes” and “Morning of My Life” hearken to the lush orchestral pop arrangements on Elton John’s “Madman Across the Water” (by Paul Buckmaster in 1971) or Neil Diamond’s “Serenade” (by Jimmie Haskell in 1974.)

“I had a lot of trouble talking everyone to getting steel guitar on this album and I did get that on ‘Rest Your Love on Me,’ but it doesn’t bother me it’s not on other tracks because each track has to be individually special and that’s what Dave does,” Gibb said.

“Some of the most heartening aspects of this project? Seeing first-hand how much love and respect the guest artists had for Barry,” Landers said. “It’s a misconception to think that country artists only listen to country music. The Bee Gees’ songs have permeated every corner of the earth from Nagasaki to Nashville. It wasn’t really a stretch to reshape these songs from their origins into country-informed arrangements. There’s a direct link between R&B, country and rock ‘n’ roll — so if the song is well-crafted, it’s quite natural to interpret it in a variety of genres, styles, and tempos.”

The Gibbs’ country roots

Gibb isn’t just rewriting history to sell a new project. Despite the popular, and not accurate perception, that the Bee Gees were a disco group because of ‘70s hits like “You Should Be Dancing” and their run of “Saturday Night Fever” smashes, country filtered into the Gibb brothers’ music since they were teens making music in Australia and England.

“Butterfly,” the oldest and most bluegrass-oriented composition on “Greenfields” and sung here with Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, was written in 1966 by Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb.

“Rest Your Love on Me,” revisited for “Greenfields” with pal Olivia Newton-John — who first sang the ballad with Andy Gibb on his 1980 album, “After Dark” — made the Top 40 on Billboard’s country chart when DJs turned the Bee Gees’ “Too Much Heaven” 45 over to play its twangy B-side in 1978. Country legend Conway Twitty also took his cover to No. 1 in 1980.

Most famously, Gibb co-produced and co-wrote Kenny Rogers’ “Eyes That See in the Dark” album in 1983 and its hit, “Islands in the Stream,” with Dolly Parton, became RCA’s top-selling single for a time.

“Some of the tracks Maurice recorded on his own were like Johnny Cash. He loved that stuff,” Gibb said. “Robin was not so much a country fan. He was more into what could be a hit. But Mo and I at night would become the Everly Brothers — but not Robin. He didn’t like singing socially or in an intimate setting, where Mo and I would do it anywhere. And that’s how it grew and it’s been such a long journey.”

Rethinking old tunes

Gibb calls “Greenfields” his dream project. “I got what I wanted. I made another dream come true in a way. I know now if I’m a pest I can make things happen,” he said, laughing.

He also hopes that the new versions awaken another audience to his family’s music.

“The original concept for me was to bring the songs back alive again and bring them back in a different way — make people realize they are good songs,” he said. “If you only listen to the Bee Gees’ version you might not understand that. But if you listen to someone else do it sometimes it works more often than not.”

Gibb cites a few songs that stand up to rediscovery.

“’Butterfly’ and ‘Words of a Fool’ [with Jason Isbell] are gems and never came to light until those people sang those songs. Singing with Gillian was like singing with my brothers.

“‘Rest Your Love on Me,’ he adds. “Olivia, she hadn’t been well for awhile and she was so happy to be in a studio and singing. That was something else again and I’d grown up with that girl. Brandi’s ‘Run to Me,’ was fantastic. She is amazing and will be one of the all-time greats.”

But don’t necessarily call these new versions “improved.” That’s not how Gibb thinks.

“I don’t think in terms of improving something. The original records are the original records. You’re never going to walk away from that. There are songs I think we could have done better then. I think ‘Words’ could have been a better recording. I don’t know if we improved it [on ‘Greenfields’] but I think it’s special that we had Dolly sing it. ... It doesn’t have to be an improved version or a better version. It’s just a different version.”

New use for old songs

This world has lost its glory/Let’s start a brand new story now, my love/

Right now, there’ll be no other time/And I can show you how, my love.

— Words (Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb/1967).

Gibb also came to a new realization during the COVID crisis. Words matter.

“The lyrics are so important now with the pandemic,” he said. “That only struck me a couple weeks back how important some of these words are. Like ‘How Can You Mend a Broken Heart.’ You can send that to somebody you might not be able to visit. ‘Words of a Fool,’ you could send to somebody and say what you want to say without talking. That means a lot me now because we are all stuck at home. You can say in songs what you can’t speak. You can get away with everything when singing, that’s the difference.”

For Gibb, that mindset meant reaching out to his former co-producers Albhy Galuten and Karl Richardson with whom he, most often with his brothers, produced 13 No. 1 singles in America. These included “You Should Be Dancing,” “How Deep Is Your Love,” “Stayin’ Alive,” “Night Fever,” “Too Much Heaven,” “Tragedy,” “Love You Inside Out,” “I Just Want to Be Your Everything,” “Shadow Dancing,” “Grease,” for Frankie Valli, “Woman in Love” for Streisand and the Rogers/Parton duet, “Islands in the Stream.”

“It’s a silly world but we are stuck in it and we have to be safe and take care of yourself and our families and, you know, we find ourselves calling people you haven’t called in years because of the pandemic,” Gibb said.

“Albhy and Karl. I hadn’t spoken to them in 30 years and I told them how much I loved them and that I hope we get to make another record together. I felt it was necessary. I got to tell them how much fun we had and how much I cared about them. Because of this pandemic, if you love somebody tell them. That is what I’m missing now and you can use the songs to do that, too,” Gibb said.

Bee Gees documentary

But there is one major part of his past Gibb still can’t bring himself to confront: the “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” documentary that everyone seems to be loving.

His brother Andy died at 30 in 1988. Maurice died at 53 in 2003. Robin followed in 2012 at age 62. His musically gifted parents, Hugh and Barbara Gibb, are gone, too.

“I haven’t seen the documentary,” Gibb said. “I saw about 20 minutes of the first cut. I made some comments and then distanced myself from it because I can’t watch my family disappear. That’s a tough one. But the response is unbelievable to the point it doesn’t sound right. It doesn’t sound true. But nobody has said anything negative about that documentary. That’s a joy. What I’m saying now is the past is unpredictable.

“I used to imagine the three of us as 80-year-olds sitting around, laughing about all of it. I did not know that that was never going to happen. So you can’t have it all.

“I just want my brothers,” Gibb said. “That is what is real.”