Pure Gold
- The mystery of the Bee Gees' missing tapes
- Sunday Telegraph (Australia). October 18, 1998
Buried treasure has been found in a
long-forgotten vault at Festival Records. The booty is a cache of early Bee Gees
recordings, sure to turns to gold : Kathy McCabe reports
The
nondescript box was caked with dust from 28 years of neglect and bore only the
initials BGs. Hidden on a shelf in a Festival Record's studio file vault, it
certainly wasn't where it was supposed to be.
Inside were two double-sided coated acetate lacquers vital in making vinyl
records, a medium rarely used in the 1990s but fondly regarded by music
aficionados. Festival Records archive specialist Warren Barnett was instantly
intrigued by the mystery package, which obviously hadn't been opened in more
than two decades.
He took it back to his office, gingerly removed one of the lacquers and played
it.
The unmistakable voices of Barry, Maurice and Robin Gibb - collectively know as
the Bee Gees - emanated from the speakers, and Barnett knew he had found
something akin to the Holy Grail in terms of Australia's rich contemporary music
history.
This year, Festival group deputy managing director Warren Fahey gave Barnett a
roving brief to find archive material from Festival artists of the 1950s and
1960s.
Fahey had an ambitious plan to release the label's early recordings of artists
such as Johnny O'Keefe Johnny Devlin, Col Joye and the Delltones, in the lead-up
to it's 50th anniversary year in 2002.
"Warren had a brief to keep his eyes open, and when he rushed into my
office I knew he'd found something rare", Fahey says.
"Apparently the box of Bee Gees songs wasn't in the usual master-tape vault
and had somehow ended up in the recording studio file vault.
"They had been sitting in the dusty box for nigh on 30 years, and had been
used only to provide material for a rare and short lived mid-'70s German double
album".
The Bee Gees were "discovered" by legendary Brisbane DJ Bill Gates,
who heard the Brothers Gibb, as they were known, perform via a public address
microphone at a Redcliffe speedway meeting in 1959.
Eighteen months later the boys' determined father, Hugh, convinced reigning pop
king Cool Joey to listen to his sons.
At a church hall the next day, Joey taped their unique vocal harmonies, layered
over Barry Gibe's original songs.
He passed the tapes on to his brother, entrepreneur Kevin Jacobsen, who was
instrumental in securing the boys their first recording deal with Festival
Records.
The
Bee Gees' success ranks them among one of the top five acts of all time, with
more than 100 million albums sold, 50 hit singles and countless awards,
including last year's induction to the ARIA Hall of Fame and more than 4000
cover versions of Gibb songs.
The two lacquer discs uncovered by Barnett in February this year contained 14
tracks recorded by the legendary trio between 1963 and 1966.
Some of them were never issued in Australia - or anywhere else
Barnet, who had worked for Festival for more than 25 years and has vast
experience in recording techniques, knew the restoration of these tracks would
be a painstaking process.
First, they were sent to the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra to be
treated to control the depth of sound and playing speed.
The tapes were then transferred to a digital medium and re-mastered to eliminate
the clicks, crackling and hiss inherent in the vinyl recording process.
Barnett, an avowed devotee of 1960s music, recognized that these Australian
recordings of the Bee Gees had great historical significance.
"The were pioneers. Coming out of the '60s era, locally the Bee Gees were
my biggest idols," he says.
When
you listen to some of this stuff - even the early Beatles covers - you could
hear the sound they were working on.
"From a pop-music perspective, these obscure recordings will remind people
of the vast influence the Gibb brothers had on the Australian music scene
then".
The rediscovered tracks, plus four others supplied by renowned rock enthusiast
and historian Glenn A. Baker, have been collated to form The Bee Gees -
Brilliant from Birth.
It spearheads the resurrection of the Spin Label, one of Festival's imprints for
premier Australian artists in the 1960s.
Partnering its release this month is Australian Cover Versions of the Brothers
Gibb, a compilation of long-forgotten recordings of Gibb songs by relatively
unknown artists.
Barnett says this CD equally demonstrates the Gibbs' influence on the fledging
Australian music scene.
"Almost every single artist wanted a Gibb song", he says.
"They wrote for so many different people, and while many of them have been
long forgotten, artists like Ronnie Burns got their break recording Bee Gees
tracks."
In his liner notes to the Brilliant from Birth collection, Glenn A. Baker
captures the enormous significance of Barnett's discovery of these of these
musical treasures.
"Among the 62 tracks can be found the unmistakable seeds of genius which
bloomed when the group left Australia," Baker writes.
"Many are vital pieces of '60s pop music that help us place in perspective
the growth and development not only of the Bee Gees, but of rock itself."
Transcribed by Shangri-La http://immortality.4mg.com/
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