As a result they were asked to sing on radio and, for the first time, became known as the BGs (in honour of Bill Gates, Barry Gibb and Bill Goode). This engagement led to their first serious break when an appreciative racing drive by the name of Bill Goode contacted Bill Gates, a local disc jockey. Each weekend after that the brothers would return home from the race track with pockets weighted down by loose change. They were engaged on the understanding that the only payment they would get would be whatever the crowd threw to them. When the twins were nine and big brother Barry 12, they approached the local Redcliffe Speedway for a singing spot between races. Hugh Gibb became a travelling photographer and the youthful Barry made his first fumbling attempts as a songwriter.
In 1958 the Gibb family emigrated to Australia, settling in Brisbane, Queensland. The introduction to rock’n’roll came through sister Leslie, a fan of Bill Haley, Tommy Steele and Elvis. The family left for Manchester in 1955, where youngest brother Andy was born that September Barry was given a trumpet by his father, followed by a £4 second-hand guitar that Christmas. It was here that the Bee Gee brothers were born – Barry on 1 September 1946, the twins Robin and Maurice on 22 December 1949. They had married in 1944 and moved to the Isle of Man after the war where there was work to be found playing for holiday-makers. Father Hugh Gibb was a bandleader and drummer who had worked the Northern Mecca circuit and had met their mother in 1940 at a Manchester ballroom. The trio were no strangers to music, however. Thus they were forced into their vocal debut. The boys were all set to mouth their lyrics when the presenter broke the record they had been rehearsing to. The career of the three Gibb brothers began inauspiciously enough in December 1956 at the Gaumont cinema in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester, where they volunteered for the regular mime spot preceding the Saturday morning films. Finally in the mid-Seventies they found themselves setting the pace for the disco boom and emerging as songwriters of note on the adult-oriented rock scene. In 1967, they came to Britain as suitable opposition to the Beatles.
The first was in Australia as child prodigies. SINCE ENTERING POP MUSIC in the Fifties, the Bees Gees have had three careers on three continents, each more successful than its predecessor.
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