I hope everyone's Memorial Day is off to a happy and safe start. Let's not forget that this isn't just "Monday BBQ Day," but a chance to remember those who died in service of keeping this country what it is, whatever you consider it to be.
I'd also like to take the chance to remember a fallen hero of mine, Robin Gibb, albeit a week late (I've not had a lot of time to just sit and write since then, busy week). No, he's not American, and he wasn't in the military, but he meant a lot to me. As a child born in the 70s, the Bee Gees made some of the first music with which I fell in love. As a youngster, it was easy to dance to the likes of "Jive Talkin'," "Night Fever," and "Stayin' Alive." Maybe I didn't understand the context of the songs, but I knew they had a great beat and I liked bopping around to them. Even after their career-peak of the 70s, I continued to appreciate their music, and began to discover the music they wrote well before the disco era began. It began to occur to me that they were much more than just a funky beat with a high falsetto. With songs like "New York Mining Disaster, 1941," "I Started A Joke," and "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart," I saw that they could write a song of just about any style. And in the 80s, they even had a huge hit that they never recorded in "Islands In The Stream" sung by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton.
By the time their album One came out in 1989, they were considered well past their prime. But that didn't stop me from saying yes when my dad asked if I wanted to see them live in concert at the now defunct Poplar Creek Music Theater in July of that year. When we got to Poplar that night, it was apparent that there weren't too many kids my age at the venue, and most looked like they were there under duress. I couldn't have been happier to be there. And, unlike them, I had a chance to go meet them after the show thanks to my father's having worked for the label for which they recorded at that time. I'd gone through this drill before and met several musical celebrities, so I knew the drill: go backstage, hand them something to autograph, tell them you liked the show, and move along so that others could talk to them. I was so wrong about what was about to happen.
There had to be about 20 of us in the backstage hospitality room waiting for the Brothers Gibb to arrive after what I remember to be about a 2-hour show. They had to be tired, right? They had to want to get in and get out, right? Wrong. They walked in the room, and the first thing I remember is Barry Gibb seeing my father and recognizing him right off the bat, having been stuck in an elevator together about 10 years earlier (that's right, my dad's job involved his sometimes just being stuck in an elevator with rock stars for 45 minutes shooting the breeze, although I'm sure he didn't plan the mechanical malfunction). And just after saying hello to a couple of people in the room, twins Maurice and Robin saw that there was a younger chap in the room, and made a bee-line right to me. Perhaps it was a schmoozing the next generation thing, but I'd like to think it was more than that. What followed was one of the coolest experiences of my life.
It was like nobody else in the room mattered. They sat me down at one of the tables and just started to talk to me like they'd known me all my life. Maurice was a huge baseball fan, and Robin was just starting to appreciate the sport. They were living in Miami, and there had been a rumor that they were about to get a team down there (now the Marlins). They talked to me about my love for the Cubs, and asked if I ever thought they'd end up finally winning the World Series. I said "of course they will!" Ah, the naivety of youth.
Robin asked me what kind of music I was into, "and you don't have to say us, it's okay." The truth was, though, I WAS into them, and didn't mind telling them that. I mentioned how I was a big fan of Prince, and Robin told me how he was also a huge fan, being a huge fan of the album Sign O' The Times that had just been released a couple of years earlier. "There's so much on that album, and not just because it's a double. It's a tour de force." I mentioned Tears For Fears being on my radar, and I remember Maurice saying that he liked their music, but when they had met TFF that they were kind of aloof. Conversation actually got down to what I'd been doing that summer, and what my plans were before school was to start up again. We were sitting there talking for close to 45 minutes about, really, everything. I remember Robin asking "you get good grades, kid?" and "you like to sing?" Thankfully, I was able to answer yes to both questions.
Other people from the record label would come up and say hello, and the twins would pretty much give them the standard "nice to see you" with this attitude of "look, don't you see we're busy in conversation, here?" It was awesome. I was sort of an outcast in school (king of the outcasts, if you will, sort of an ambassador to the cooler kids at times), and the fact that these 2 musical legends wanted to sit and talk to me was one of the bigger thrills of my life. It didn't matter that I was the son of a guy who was an executive at their label, it didn't matter that other label employees wanted to talk to them. They wanted to talk to me. Paul Simon didn't want to talk to me all that much. Peter Gabriel was a downright prick when I met him. Don't even get me started about Linda Ronstadt. Maybe the Twins Gibb didn't remember the experience even a week after it happened, but I've held onto that night for the rest of these almost 23 years.
I was at the airport ready to fly to San Francisco with my ex when I heard about the premature death of Maurice in 2003, and I honestly didn't have time to react to it as I was too excited about my pending trip. I happened to be at home last week when the news about Robin broke. It wasn't even a surprise, as he'd been ill on and off for the better part of two years. That didn't stop me from having a completely emotional reaction. I put on their 1997 song "Alone" (ironically thinking that could describe Barry in the whole scheme of things) and began to cry like I was a little boy again. Perhaps it was out of sadness for the loss of such a musical genius. Perhaps it was a feeling that part of my childhood had just died. What I do know is that it hit home that there's a period in my life, and the lives of so many others that had ended, as with Barry being the only Bee Gee left, there's really no shot at a reunion (let's face it, we're just an accidental meeting of Paul and Ringo at an Arthur Treacher's Fish n Chips in England away from a possible "Beatles Reunion," as hollow as that would ring). These folks from the musical past are all going to start dropping now, and that's a sad thought.
Over time, this broken heart will mend.
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