“My brothers’ personalities and thoughts are imprinted on my heart!” — Barry Gibb interview from “Best of 2013”

Q: I caught up with Barry when he returned to Australia for a seris of shows last year.  Aussie fans feared they may never see a Bee Gee onstage again.  With the passing of Robin, Barry emerges as a solo artist.

Barry： First I thought that maybe I should just leave it out there now, you know.  The idea of writing songs was still very real. The idea of being a lone Bee Gee was not so real to me.  But then I gradually over time came to realize that whatever it is I started doing, which is getting up and singing, before my brothers started doing it, was still there. So I just needed to become me.  

Ｑ：Do you still call Australia home?

Barry： I surely do. I surely do.  Whatever happened to us after we left Australia, our groundwork was done here.  

Ｑ： That groundwork produced an incredible repertoire of songs.  And the sixties gave us a string of hits after hits after hits.  And that was just the start of it.  The disco era delivered it again, "Saturday Night Fever" becoming the seventies’ soundtrack.

Barry: The truth is we didn’t know we were disco.  And we were trying to find a way of reinventing ourselves because it was the end of the sixties.  At the end of every decade, people get abjective.  And we thought, "Maybe it’s over."  And so you know we were a little bit lost for like two or three years.  We always used the term that we could not get arrested.  We’ve been around the American Billboard chart for 45 years. That was astounding to me, because we didn’t care. We never looked back, you know.

Ｑ：Now a new generation has discovered the Bee Gees through a series of hilarious Saturday Night Live skits.  Barry himself got in on the joke in a recent Christmas Special.  There is no denying the impact the Bee Gees have had on popular culture.  Much as this is the celebration of your music, it’s obviously a reflection that there are a couple of people missing onstage there.

Barry: Always! Always!

Q: How do you process that?

Barry: A lot of it is trying to put it aside, tyring not to think about it, but it never works.  And so when I am alone onstage, although I am not alone there onstage, that they are there, you know. That never goes away.  And their thoughts and their personalities are imprinted on my heart, you know.  They never go away.