Barry Gibb’s son makes candid ‘survivor’s guilt’ admission after death of Bee Gees family member
The 51-year-old son of Bee Gees icon Barry Gibb has grown up with music in his veins with his dad and uncles performing across the globe, but admits he prefers stepping out of the limelight.
Stephen Gibb has followed in his father’s footsteps and has performed with some of the biggest names in music, including his father, Barry, on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury 2017.
Gibb and his band, Kill The Robot, have just released their debut self-titled album, and he reveals that although his father was a keen songwriter, his passion for lyricism came later.
Speaking to The Mirror, he said: “My dad wasn’t obsessed with guitar playing, I was, he was obsessed with writing songs and singing.
“That came for me later. But the thing that gets asked of me a lot is, how come I’m not the full time lead singer of Kill The Robot?
“The fact of the matter is, I have a great singer in Gil [Bitton], and he’s a great performer. I really just enjoy playing the guitar. Singing is fun as well, but being the son of a Bee Gee and being a ‘singer’ always seemed daunting to me.”
The Grammy award-winning band, the Bee Gee’s, comprised of Barry’s father and uncles, and was one of the most critically acclaimed bands around the world.
Their album Saturday Night Fever won album of the year at the Grammys in 1979, and had six overall music award wins and fourteen nominations.
“I don’t know what else to compare it to”, he said of his father’s success, “but if your dad was Michael Jordan, maybe you should get into baseball. If I get into pop music and being a singer, they’re going to destroy me.
“And that would also be kind of semi-not authentic to me. I’m a rock and metal guy who loves all kinds of music. I have a deep appreciation for the form when it’s done at the highest level, I’ve seen that with the Bee Gees.”
When Stephen was 16, he recalled a music hero of his, Stevie Ray Vaughn died in a helicopter crash: “He finally got sober, his life together, making the best music of his life”.
He added: “Sometimes, I think the hardest part is, especially in a family like mine, there’s a little bit of survivor’s guilt.”
Stephen openly struggled with excessive alcohol and drug use, and questions how he survived after his uncle Andy, aged just 30, died from myocarditis after repeated cocaine use weakened his heart.
“Eventually, you have to forgive yourself. You’ve got to live your life and accept it, God’s got a plan, I don’t know what it is, but I’m here for it,” he said.
He also added the struggle of growing up in the limelight and navigating who your real friends are.
“The Bee Gees were still a very big band, the hardest thing is knowing who your real friends are,” he said. “That’s a process, you might have to blow your life up for you to figure out who your real friends are, but you do.
“The big misconception a lot of people have is that because a family is famous, it’s somehow not affected by certain things that everyone else is affected by.
“The fact of the matter is, like most celebrities that I’ve met in my life, are real people that have problems, just like everybody else – it’s just that they have this unimaginable skill or gift that they’re able to bestow upon the world. It comes with a price.”
However, he recalled happy family memories of his father and uncles serenading him and his siblings.
“My dad and his brothers, we used to be a very close-knit, large family, we spent a lot of time together. We would have cookouts at Maurice’s [Gibbs] house.”
“The most powerful memories that all of us have, I can’t speak for everybody, many nights after dinner, they would sit around and sing other people’s songs, their favourite songs to entertain us.
“I don’t think it dawned on me until I was a little bit older, how special, unique and powerful their contributions were and are. You grow up as the oldest son of a guy that a lot of people know.
“The thing I’m most grateful for, I knew what it looked like, I knew what it took to be good at something that you really loved. It took obsession for my dad, all of them, 100 per cent commitment.”
He added: “You could be the greatest thing in the world, had the Bee Gees not gone back to the UK, what could have happened? Maybe nothing. It’s an incredible gift and honour to be in a family that created something that has, up to this point, outlived them.
“I think as I get older, that’s more and more rare with each passing year.”