Bee Gees (And Me)

I’m beyond excited to be talking today with the three authors of Bee Gees Decades, a new book series about our favorite Brothers Gibb. This first book, focusing on their lives and work in 1960s, will be available on November 12th across the world, December 17th here in the States, right in time for Christmas!

The book “The Bee Gees In the 1960s” has left no stone unturned. In addition to getting to the bottom of all of the information they could about these tracks, sessions and albums, spanning multiple decades, the three authors have also created a narrative that will make you feel closer to The Bee Gees, and undoubtedly have a new perspective on the music, the story, and the legacy. 

Based in Wales, the United States, and Australia, respectively, Andrew Môn Hughes, Grant Walters & Mark Crohan have over fourteen decades of combined expertise and history tied to the Bee Gees’ legacy between them, amassing a lengthy list of credits for their contributions to CDs, DVDs, books, tour programmes, articles, television documentaries, and official websites.

In 2000, Andrew and Mark co-authored the expansive biography, Tales of the Brothers Gibb. Andrew’s expert contributions can be seen and heard in a myriad of Bee Gees-related productions for the BBC, ITV, A&E, and VH1 networks.

Mark, the foremost expert on the Bee Gees’ Australian era gifted his collection to the Queensland Library in 2016. He contributed liner notes to the 1998 compilation Assault the Vaults.

Grant is an award-winning freelance arts writer for Columbus Underground and Albumism, for which he has penned nearly 300 features since 2015. He is a prolific music interviewer, conversing with a diverse roster of artists including Dionne Warwick, Midge Ure, Melissa Etheridge, Edie Brickell and Bryan Adams.

BUY THIS BOOK HERE: https://www.beegeesdecades.com/

AS ALWAYS Be sure to follow me on Instagram and Twitter, @BeeGeesAndMe, like us on Facebook and Subscribe to our YouTube channel for great videos. Everything and more is at BeeGeesAndMe.com. Original T-shirts designed by me are available at BeeGeesTees.com. And please be sure to subscribe here where you listen to this podcast, and rate it 5 stars. It helps SO much. 

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This episode is all about Andy Gibb. Even though this is a Bee Gees podcast, I would often get questions or messages about Barry, Maurice and Robin’s little brother Andy, who as you all know, was a musician himself. I would often joke back to those people with something along the lines of, “This is the Bee Gees And Me YouTube channel, you must have confused me with the Andy Gibb And Me channel.” Because, here’s the shocker, I was never a really big Andy Gibb fan. Now, that might be considered blasphemous to some, how could a Bee Gees fan not like Andy too? But the simple truth is, Andy just wasn’t my thing. His 70s teen idol gimmick didn’t interest me as a male teen in the 90s. So while I was insanely obsessed with his older brothers, Andy and his music was always on the periphery. In my world, Andy was celebrated along with the other Gibb side projects like Barbara Streisand, Kenny Rogers, Diana Ross and Dionne Warwick. I didn’t DISLIKE any of that stuff back then, let me be clear. I enjoyed it, but it didn’t capture my ear like the Bee Gees proper did. 

So I decided that had to change. I tapped into my collector instincts first, telling myself that I had to own his albums to complete my collection. So I picked up some vinyl at a record shop. And then I started listening to more of his songs mixed into my playlists on my streaming devices. Then, a few months ago, I saw a new Andy Gibb tribute album. “Higher Than A Mountain.” And I knew this would be the thing that kicked my interest in high gear. I love me a good tribute album of cover songs. I love hearing people’s interpretations of music and how it compares to the originals. I knew that this “Higher Than A Mountain” would be the thing that made me actually *listen* to the music and get a deeper appreciation for Andy Gibb.

And that’s exactly what happened. This compilation gave me a new appreciation for Andy’s hits, AND it introduced me to a couple tracks that I wouldn’t have given too much attention to. This tribute album “Higher Than A Mountain” made me an Andy Gibb fan.

So, on this episode of Bee Gees And Me, I am talking with Andrew Curry, the man who assembled this tribute through his record label Curry Cuts. We’ll talk about, not only these amazing cover songs, but also the complicated legacy of Andy Gibb.

Matt Bower joins me to tell his bizarre story about being lured into the woods by a scary camouflaged-clad man to see a secret inside a wooden trunk. Was Matt murdered, or did he live to tell the tale? (He lived, he's the one telling the story. ) In all seriousness, I thoroughly enjoyed being joined by one of my oldest friends, "Big Matt," for this episode of Bee Gees And Me. Matt and I performed comedy together "back in the day," and he's experienced my Bee Gees fandom firsthand. We talk about some of that in this conversation (and also a good bit about my delicious chili), and the main course, though, is his "Andy Gibb's Guitar" story. 

AS ALWAYS Be sure to follow me on Instagram and Twitter, @BeeGeesAndMe, like us on Facebook and Subscribe to our YouTube channel for great videos. Everything and more is at BeeGeesAndMe.com. Original T-shirts designed by me are available at BeeGeesTees.com. And please be sure to subscribe here where you listen to this podcast, and rate it 5 stars. It helps SO much. Thank you for listening to this episode. My name is David Fedor, and this has been Bee Gees And Me.

This is a “Superfan Sessions” episode where I have a conversation with a fan about their love of the Bee Gees. It was my pleasure to speak with Daniel Vega, a Bee Gees fan in Honduras. Daniel has been a Bee Gees fan for as long as he can remember, first hearing the Bee Gees as a child because his Dad is a fan. His stories are great, especially his adventure of travelling to the Hollywood Bowl show of Barry’s Mythology Tour.

AS ALWAYS Be sure to follow me on Instagram and Twitter, @BeeGeesAndMe, like us on Facebook and Subscribe to our YouTube channel for great videos. And check out my t-shirts dedicated to the music of the Brothers Gibb at BEEGEESTEES.com. That’s bee-gees-tees dot com. And please be sure to subscribe here where you listen to this podcast, and rate it 5 stars. It helps SO much. Thank you for listening to this episode. My name is David Fedor, and this has been Bee Gees And Me.

My guest on my Bee Gees And Me podcast this week is Scott Campbell, an artist who has channeled his love for the Bee Gees into his artwork and then uses that artwork to raise money for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. He’s literally using his time and talents to help sick and dying children. It doesn’t get any more inspirational than this!! Not too long ago he posted his portrait of Barry Gibb on Facebook and it created quite the stir in one of the Bee Gees Facebook groups. The mixed reviews were quite comical, and when Gibb family members started to become involved in the comments section, things got even more interesting! Scott shares some insight into his feelings about all of this during our chat.

I like to consider myself an artist, or at least over the years I have dabbled in various forms of art. I used to draw a ton as a kid, super into comic books and all that stuff. My grandfather was an amazing painter and sculptor, but he didn’t really do much of that until he retired. He labored in the steel mills for years and years, then retired to become this amazing artist. He was definitely an inspiration when I was a kid. I like to think I inherited some of his talent. I did some drawings and paintings through school, but never pursued it to a point where I became an expert or something like that. My parents wouldn’t let me do anything like that for a living, I had to “grow up” or ‘get a real job.’ So art was always a hobby I did on the side. Graphic arts, performing arts, t-shirt design, even stuff like this, videos and podcasting, can be art. But I’ve always wondered what it would have been like if I was able to put more effort into that sort of thing when I was younger. And, of course, during this pandemic one does a lot of thinking and a lot of soul searching. Many of us were quarantined at home, so there was alot of time on our hands. I was home with my two small children, and I saw my oldest son, Griffin - he’s 5, he’s always drawing and scribbling and writing and stuff. There’s paper everywhere. So I decided I would start drawing with him. Superheroes, doodles, stuff like that. And then I got a couple better pencils, and then some better paper. And before I knew it, I was drawing pictures of the Bee Gees. BECAUSE OF COURSE I WOULD. Haha.

I did a couple, you can see them on my social media accounts. @BEE GEESANDME on Instagram and Twitter, and "Bee Gees And Me" on Facebook. In a crazy twist, the Bee Gees social media pages actually shared my drawings! Which was an absurd honor. So I’ve been encouraged to follow this art thing a little bit more, you know, why not? This pandemic hasn’t really been great for my creativity at times, but it’s also made things alot clearer in some ways too. What’s important? What am I passionate about? What inspires me?

Which is why I’m so excited about this episode. Like I said at the top of the show, this is about ART this is about LOVE. Scott Campbell has channeled his love for the Bee Gees into his artwork and then uses that artwork to raise money for charity. Like, he’s literally helping sick and dying children. It doesn’t get ANY MORE INSPIRATIONAL THAN THIS.

AS ALWAYS Be sure to follow me on Instagram and Twitter, @BeeGeesAndMe, like us on Facebook and Subscribe to our YouTube channel for great videos. Everything and more is at BeeGeesAndMe.com. And please be sure to subscribe here where you listen to this podcast, and rate it 5 stars. It helps SO much. 

https://www.BeeGeesAndMe.com. 

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BUSY TWO WEEKS! The Foo Fighters release their Dee Gees tribute on Record Store Day, the Isle of Man unveil a Bee Gees statue to extremely mixed reviews, and I, personally, have a wild roller coaster of emotions. Hear all this and more, on Bee Gees And Me podcast episode 11.

I appreciate you listening to these stories, and we’ll get back to regular episodes with guests on our next episode in two weeks. AS ALWAYS Be sure to follow me on Instagram and Twitter, @BeeGeesAndMe, like us on Facebook and Subscribe to our YouTube channel for great videos. Everything and more is at BeeGeesAndMe.com and BeeGeesTees.com. And please be sure to subscribe here where you listen to this podcast, and rate it 5 stars. It helps SO much. Thank you for listening to this episode. My name is David Fedor, and this is Bee Gees And Me.

Today is a VERSUS episode where we talk about another music group, or musical act, and sort of compare them to the Bee Gees. I got a chance to talk with a fellow Bee Gees fan who I met through social media thanks to this show. His name is Frode Apeland and is from Norway. It was incredible to talk with someone halfway around the world on the other side of an ocean about our love of the Bee Gees who, without the advent of the internet, I would have never been able to meet. But here we are, almost 4000 miles apart, connected not only thanks to the internet, but more importantly, connected by the songs of the brothers Gibb.

He’s been obsessed with the Bee Gees for the past 5 years, and before that he was a huge U2 fan. So we took this opportunity to talk about the two bands and how they compare. It’s lots of fun, I think you’ll really enjoy it too.

First though, I want to talk about a personal milestone for myself. This past week I got a Bee Gees tattoo!! That’s right, I permanently marked my skin with a tribute to the Bee Gees. It’s the Spirits Having Flown tour logo, I got it on my leg, you may have seen it online. Check out my instagram @bee gees and me; that’s my twitter handle too, @bee gees and me; you’ll see some pics. I’m ridiculously excited about how it turned out. The tattoo artist, my friend Micaela Cottman-Smith did a tremendous job. Right now it’s healing up, i’ve been using lotion and stuff. There’s just a couple touch ups needed before it’s officially done. But i’m so happy. And I’m already thinking about other tattoos that I need to get. I might be addicted. I heard thats a thing.

So here’s my question, listeners, do YOU have a Bee Gees tattoo? If so, I want to see them! Send me pictures to my email address: [email protected] with the Subject Header MY BEE GEES TATTOO. And let me know if it’s ok to share them on my social media. I think that would be fun for the other fans to see. And if you DON”T have a Bee Gees tattoo, what would you get if decided to get one?

Thank you for listening to this Bee Gees -vs- U2 episode of Bee Gees And Me. And of course, thank you again to Frode Apeland for being my guest on this episode. Look for our Listening Party episode available exclusively on Spotify one week after this episode is published.

Be sure to follow me on Instagram and Twitter, @BeeGeesAndMe, like us on Facebook and Subscribe to our YouTube channel for great videos. Everything and more is at BeeGeesAndMe.com. And please be sure to subscribe here where you listen to this podcast, and rate it 5 stars. It helps SO much. Thank you for listening to this episode. My name is David Fedor, and this has been Bee Gees And Me. 

This is Part 2 of the “Best Bee Gees Song” episode. If you haven’t done so yet, you could check out Part 1 first. In part 1, featuring the first half of this “List Rate Rank” episode, Felicia and I build our Top 10 list and I reveal the Top 10 list that was voted on by you the fans. On this episode, Felicia and I welcome our guest expert Andrew Mon Hughes, who will help us rank our lists 10-1. In addition to being an avid fan and collector, Andrew has worked on and contributed to several books, tv shows, and albums about the Bee Gees. The first installment of his latest book series, Bee Gees Decades, is scheduled to be released in October of 2021. This first book will feature information and stories about every single song from the Bee Gees in the decade of the 1960s. Find them on Facebook by searching for “Bee Gees Decades” and follow them on Twitter and Instagram on @BeeGeesDecades. I’m ridiculously excited to hear some of the never-before-heard stories he has discovered.

It’s an almost impossible task, narrowing down a career that spanned multiple decades, with albums of songs from different musical styles and genres. And in these episodes, we’re talking about JUST the 22 studio albums of the Bee Gees proper. So not taking into consideration solo albums, work with other artists, and unreleased material, we’re still looking at over THREE HUNDRED songs.

And, let’s not forget, enjoying music is a personal and subjective thing. One person’s ‘best’ is going to be different than another’s. AND THAT’S OK. It’s an opinion, and we all know what they say about opinions. ‘Best’ could mean ‘favorite,’ it could mean ‘most weeks at #1,’ it could mean ‘best selling,’ it could be ‘most culturally significant.” It could mean a number of things, and they’re all right. The point of this podcast is not to cause fights or disagreements, it’s merely to start discussions about the songs we love and why we love them. So please, if you disagree with what someone on this podcast says, don’t take it personally.

Thanks for listening to this two-part mega-episode of Bee Gees And Me. What did you think of our lists? After everything, I stand firm with my claim that my picks 5-4-3 could have gone either way. It really changes day by day. And I can’t believe I lost this episode! Maybe I should have picked different songs. Oh well. It was fun to go through the exercise, to get Felicia to listen to the Bee Gees and convert new fans, and to get a chance to talk with Andrew Morn Hughes. This episode is about an hour long, and it’s been edited down. He and I talked for over three hours that day. Felicia signed off and Andrew and I just kept going, trading stories and talking about the music for hours. And all this was last year before “Bee Gees And Me” launched, so it was a great experience that helped me decide to start doing this podcast and to do more stuff on my YouTube channel.

Be sure to follow me on Instagram and Twitter, @BeeGeesAndMe, like us on Facebook and Subscribe to our YouTube channel for great videos. Everything and more is at BeeGeesAndMe.com. And please be sure to subscribe here where you listen to this podcast, and rate it 5 stars. It helps SO much. Thank you for listening to this episode. My name is David Fedor, and this has been Bee Gees And Me.

This is PART ONE of a special two-part episode of Bee Gees And Me. This is my attempt to get a conversation going around what is THE BEST Bee Gees song.

It’s an almost impossible task, narrowing down a career that spanned multiple decades, with albums of songs from different musical styles and genres. And in these episodes, we’re talking about JUST the 22 studio albums of the Bee Gees proper. So not taking into consideration solo albums, work with other artists, and unreleased material, we’re still looking at over THREE HUNDRED songs.

And, let’s not forget, enjoying music is a personal and subjective thing. One person’s ‘best’ is going to be different than another’s. AND THAT’S OK. It’s an opinion, and we all know what they say about opinions. ‘Best’ could mean ‘favorite,’ it could mean ‘most weeks at #1,’ it could mean ‘best selling,’ it could be ‘most culturally significant.” It could mean a number of things, and they’re all right. The point of this podcast is not to cause fights or disagreements, it’s merely to start discussions about the songs we love and why we love them. So please, if you disagree with what someone on this podcast says, don’t take it personally.

Alright, so then WHY am I doing this? Why am I stirring up a hornets nest, risking to get stung by angry Bee Gees fans by trying to rate the unrankable? It’s all because I used to host a podcast called List Rate Rank where each week we assembled a Top 5 list about a topic with the help of an expert in that field. This was before I launched Bee Gees And Me, and of course if I had a vehicle to talk to an audience, I wanted to do a podcast about one of my biggest passions. So, as I’ve been known to do, I forced my friend and co-host Felicia Gillespie into listening to a bunch of Bee Gees music with the goal of picking the ultimate and definitive Top 5 songs. And the expert we consulted with on this Bee Gees episode is the legendary Andrew Mon Hughes. He wrote the book on the Bee Gees, no seriously, he quite literally had a hand in writing several books about the Gibbs. You’ll hear more about his story once we get into Part 2 of the show. It was so awesome talking with him.

In fact, one of the best things about List Rate Rank was getting to talk with people from all over the world about such interesting topics. We discussed things like Top 5 Things to Do On Mars with a scientist who helped build the Mars rover, we talked with a film school professor about the Top 5 Fake Bands from TV & Film, we even talked about the Top 5 Ways to Overcome Adversity with a quadriplegic motivational speaker. It was a really rewarding show to host, every week I learned something new.

The season two finale was to be this one centered around the Bee Gees, but the show ended before I was able to finish the episode. Though now, thanks to THIS podcast, Bee Gees And Me, I was able to dig into the archives and publish this never before heard episode, split into TWO parts, because quite frankly it was too long to do in just ONE show.

A short time ago on social media, I asked YOU what YOU thought the Best Bee Gees Song is. In Facebook groups, on Bee Gees And Me Facebook page, and on Instagram and Twitter @BeeGeesAndMe, we had hundreds of votes from Bee Gees fans like yourselves. So at the end of this show, Part 1, the first half of the List Rate Rank episode-within-a-show, I jump in with the voting results, the Top 10 Bee Gees songs as voted on by YOU. It will be fun to see how your list compares to the list that Felicia and I came up with last year.

On today’s episode I talk with my good friend Doug Sell. I’ve known Doug since the late 90s when we met in college and have remained friends ever since, he was a groomsman in my wedding, he’s a great dude. AND, important to this podcast, back in 2014 he went with me to see Barry Gibb at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia.

This was Barry’s Mythology Tour, his first solo tour! He had never toured without his brothers before. So it was a big deal, not only for his performance, but also for him personally. He had family on stage with him though, his son Stephen, and his niece, Maurice’s daughter Samantha. So that had to be a huge comfort. The evening paid tribute to the career of him and his brothers. It was quite emotional.

Of course, it was a big deal for me, because I had never seen the Bee Gees perform. It’s one of my biggest regrets, not making an effort to see them when I had the chance. I forgive myself because I was young, and there was also no way to know that I would have such a limited time to see them. I’m working on the invention of time travel to correct this, but that's a topic for a different podcast episode.

I would NOT make the same mistake of missing out this time around. I was going to be there, and I was going to get good seats, no matter the cost. Living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the closest show to me was across the state in Philadelphia. And my good friend Doug lived there. So it all worked out the way it was supposed to. We had some fun.

Now, a few things about the show.

I made a continuous effort to NOT be distracted on my phone the whole time. I didn’t want to be a distraction to the other people around me either. Like, would my grainy cell phone photos be that important? But now, 7 years later, I’m frustrated with myself because my memory is fading and I wish I took one thousand photos! Haha. AND Why the hell didn’t I turn around and take a selfie of myself with Barry in the background?!? Why didn’t I do that?!?!

I was just now for this podcast, looking through the photos that I did take (it was about 200 actually. Wrap your mind around that. Me being conservative with picture taking means I ONLY took 200 photos.), anyway I found a couple of those pics had my finger in the corner. SO, I don’t have a selfie with Barry, or a picture with Barry, but I do have a blurry finger in a grainy photograph from a concert.

I will be posting some photos and videos from the day onto my social media pages over the course of this week, and of course, on the anniversary of the show on the 19th. There’s one story specifically that I can’t wait to share the video. More on that later.

One of the things that I realized since recording this talk with Doug, was that the anniversary of Robin’s death was May 20th. We saw the show on May 19th, the day before the two-year anniversary of his passing. Which I’m sure Barry mentioned that night. And I remember the emotions being very strong in the arena, and I distinctly remember crying during the Robin tribute of the show. (I mean, let’s be honest, I cried a few times, but we don’t need to talk about that.) But it took me a little bit to remember the timing of the show, which I didn’t reference during my conversation with Doug. I wanted to point out the significance of that date here.

So, listener, get ready for two old friends chatting it up about the Bee Gees