Barry Gibb, the last torchbearer of the Bee Gees, isn’t letting their flame flicker out. From his South Florida lair near Biscayne Bay, he’s spinning tales of disco glory, Grease lightning, and his latest record with writer Alex Pappademas. Picture this: the lone Bee Gee, once master of a roaring speedboat dubbed Spirits Having Flown—named after a 1979 album that moved 25 million copies—used to rip across the water, chasing riffs in the wind. “I’d tear around and bam, ideas hit,” he says, voice thick with a brogue that’s part Isle of Man, part Manchester, part Aussie Outback.
One day, Grease guru Robert Stigwood rang up with a wild ask: a title track for the movie musical, sight unseen. Gibb scratched his head—how do you craft a tune called Grease? Pacing the dock, it clicked. “Grease is the word,” he scribbled, “the word that you heard. It’s got groove, it’s got meaning.” Boom—Frankie Valli sang it, and by August ’78, it owned the Billboard Hot 100. That year, Gibb’s pen was a hit machine: seven No. 1s, from Stayin’ Alive’s fevered pulse to Andy Gibb’s Shadow Dancing. On March 3, 1978, the Gibb brothers hogged three of the Top 5 spots. They were untouchable—until they weren’t.
The Bee Gees landed in Miami in the early ’70s, hungry to crack America’s soundwaves. It paid off big, and Gibb’s stayed ever since, holed up in a sprawling pad he swears isn’t a mansion—neighbors like Matt Damon and Pablo Escobar be damned. At 74, his lion’s mane’s gone silver, tucked under a leather bush hat, and his teeth still gleam like a rockstar’s dream. His latest, Greenfields: The Gibb Brothers Songbook, Vol 1, drops in January, hot on the heels of Frank Marshall’s HBO doc, The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart. It flashes back to the trio—Barry, Maurice, and Robin—strutting in silver shirts, medallions bouncing off hairy chests. Then the lens tightens on Barry, a lone figure shadowed by loss: Andy in ’88, felled by drugs at 30; Maurice in 2003, gut-twisted to death; Robin in 2012, cancer’s cruel finale.
Gibb’s no fan of today’s pop—riddled with kids wielding nicknames and digits—but he’s hellbent on keeping the Bee Gees’ songbook alive. “The mission’s simple,” he growls. “Outlast me, outlast us all.” From Janis Joplin’s Woodstock wail of To Love Somebody to Miss Piggy’s campy croon, these tracks are immortal—karaoke staples for a reason. He’s seen empires crumble; he knows nothing’s forever.
Bluegrass hooked him young, back when the family swapped England for Australia in ’58. “It was all banjos and heartbreak,” he says, “and I was gone for it.” That twang snuck into the Bee Gees’ DNA, even if his brothers didn’t always buy in. After disco’s crash, he wrote country gold—Islands in the Stream for Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton chief among them. “Kenny still doesn’t get it,” Gibb chuckles. “I told him, ‘Man, it’s No. 1—doesn’t need to make sense.’”
Greenfields was a long-brewing dream, sparked when his son Stephen turned him onto Jason Isbell and Chris Stapleton. Enter Dave Cobb, a Grammy-winning producer and Bee Gees nut, who hauled Gibb to Nashville’s RCA Studio A. There, he cut new takes on old gems with heavyweights like Parton and Keith Urban. Recording Words with Dolly? “My legs shook,” Cobb admits. Isbell, duetting on a buried treasure called Words of a Fool, marveled at Gibb’s pipes. “How’s he still got it?” he asked. Gibb’s reply: “Cocaine’s a drag—every 15 minutes? Nah.”
His voice—a quivering, soul-rending thing—always carried a country ache. Back in ’64, he churned out titles like Claustrophobia and Since I Lost You, steeped in gloom. The ’60s London scene tried to hippie-fy them, but the Gibbs stayed oddballs—think flower-power priests dodging mescaline. Miami flipped the script: Jive Talkin’ kicked harder, Saturday Night Fever crowned them disco kings. Then ’79’s “Disco Sucks” backlash torched their shine—Gibb shrugs it off. “Everything ends.”
Now, he’s shed the white suits. “I’m country, always will be,” he says. Online, young fans flip for Too Much Heaven, proving the music’s still kicking. The mission holds: keep it alive, no matter what.
