Bee Gees Retire Name
In the wake of the January 12th death of keyboardist and bassist
Maurice Gibb, the Bee Gees will effectively be retired. Despite a
claim by guitarist and singer Barry Gibb that the group would
continue in honor of his late brother, Maurice’s twin (and Bee Gees
singer) Robin Gibb told a British television station this week that
they could not continue with the name, short for Brothers Gibb,
which the band took on in the mid-Sixties.
Robin said that he and Barry will continue to record and perform
together without Maurice. “Anything we do, we will do together,”
Gibb told GMTV television, “but it’ll be as brothers and not under
the name of the Bee Gees. We don’t want to be the Bee Gees
again.”
Maurice Gibb collapsed on January 9th at his Miami home and was
operated on for intestinal blockage. Prior to surgery, he suffered
cardiac arrest and died three days later. A medical examiner’s
report last week cited ischemic enteropathy, a twisted intestine,
as the cause of death. Gibb, 53, was laid to rest on January 15th
in Miami.
In other Bee Gees news, Gibb’s death prompted thousands of fans
to visit record stores and pick up the band’s 2002 anthology,
Their Greatest Hits: The Record, which bounced onto the
charts at Number Fifty-five this week.