Barry Gibb & Spirituality: One Of His Most Emotional, Revealing Interviews

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One of the most beautiful albums in the Gibb cannon, 1981's Living Eyes.

Two days on and the feedback from Barry Gibb’s interview on Sunday evening’sepisode of The Two has beenoverwhelming. That said, it’s fair to say that after all previous interviewsI’ve done with Barry stretching back to 2005 (this is interview #5), theresponse from both diehard and casual fans has been immense and totally positive.But this was something else. People have called this not only the mostrevealing interview of Barry’s career, but the most emotional interview they’veever heard on the radio by anyone.
Hyperbole or not, this blows me away. As to how it happened, it could be for a number of reasons. One is that as theonly surviving Gibb brother, Barry is now more free to speak about the complexrelationships he had with Robin, Maurice and Andy – the three younger brothers he so dearly loved.
Another reason is that Barry knows he is insafe hands when I interview him; I am probably as big a fan as is humanlypossible, but I am also an experienced broadcaster who he trusts. A thirdreason is that my co-host Pam Corkery approached this interview with thesensitivity and empathy that it required and used this to broach some emotional topics. This is a man who has experienced the greatest of success as well as the most devastating personal loss and Pam gotthis beautifully.
But the final and most important reasons I’d put forward asto why this interview resonated both so much for Pam and I, with our audiencein New Zealand and with fans around the world is that quite remarkably, Barry is both at peace and is almost staggeringly humble. Not long before he died, Robin said he wondered if the all toofrequent tragedy his family had suffered was some kind of karmic balance fortheir record breaking achievements. This jarred with some (including myself)because having grown up with a Christian faith, there is the belief (or betterput, the understanding) that the rain falls on us all. (UPDATE OCTOBER 31ST: See comments section below for an excellent extension to this particular topic from a reader of this blog regarding karma, Buddhism, Christianity and the thoughts that might go through our head when we are seriously ill.)
Contrasting with Robin, Barry clearly doesn’t think in termsof this kind of cruel karmic balance. It was so greatly moving to hear a man who has beenthrough such grief say that “someone must have been smiling on me,” whentalking about the steadfast support of his wife Linda and the gift of his fivechildren and six grandchildren.
Figuring out how Barry has reached this position of peace withthe world I find fascinating. During the interview he spoke to usin endlessly quotable sentences; phrases of real beauty. I am in the process ofconverting the full interview into a feature-length article for publication,but in the mean time, here is a sample of what I am talking about. 
I’dmentioned to Barry about his recent performance at the country music’s mosthallowed turf the Grand Ole Opry and how the version of How Can You Mend A Broken Heart he did with bluegrass great Ricky Skaggs was the most powerful version of that song I could remember hearing. Thetwo have collaborated on a new song of Barry’s called Soldier’s Son and it wasclear to me that just weeks after Robin’s death, Ricky had taken it uponhimself to look after his new friend.
BARRY: Ricky Skaggs was helping me through thatdarkest period. He is by nature a devout Christian and he took me there andmade me understand. Letting me do those shows and knowing how much I love thatmusic….you know they’re very pure [at the Grand Ole Opry], they don’t letpeople play with them if they don’t think it’s right. But there I am at theGrand Ole Opry and he just put me under his wing and we had a ball.
When I finished doingthat, my love for that kind of music now will never go away, it’s in deep. Andif you hear an album out of me in the future it will be a great mixture of thatkind of music and Mr Skaggs will be on that album with me.
I then asked Barry about the detectable spirituality which implicitlyrather than explicitly runs through some of his music. I mentioned about thelate Billboard magazine editor Timothy White who believed this was a large (ifsubconscious) part of the Bee Gees appeal. Referencing songs like the stunning Spirits Having Flown, Too Much Heaven and most directly, alittle known piece of magic from 1981’s LivingEyes called Nothing Could Be Goodwhich features the lyric, “sing to the Almighty, if that’s what you need to do,love what is true,” I wanted to know if religion or spirituality was an ephemeralthing for Barry or something more.
BARRY: Religion in and of itself and spiritualityare the absolute pure tools of a songwriter. For instance, if you listen tomountain music or immigrant music or bluegrass music, religion was the onlysubject. So when you listen to that kind of music you realise they didn’t haveanything else but religion. So religion over the years and through rock ‘n’roll and through people like Elvis Presley….listen to him singing gospel music,c’mon….it never went away, it never will and the idea of true faith is behindevery artist that ever really gets to the place they want to be.
“The idea of true faith is behind every artist that ever really gets tothe place they want to be.” That is a sentence of equals parts wisdom, intrigueand beauty. Thank you Barry, thank you for the music that means the world tome and thank you for the unforgettable lessons in humility.
Look out for my upcoming full feature article, go to newstalkzb.co.nz to hear the entire, unedited interview (the on-air broadcast was divided into three segments with added music andextra commentary from Pam and I) and don’t forget to get your tickets to seeBarry Gibb live in Australia and New Zealand in February, 2013. Here is pop songwriting at it's most inspirational, Nothing Could Be Good: