Masterclass: Robin Gibb

May 31 2008

For most of his life, 58-year-old Robin Gibb has been a principal member of one of the most celebrated songwriting teams and recording groups of all time, the Bee Gees. The group has made a unparalelled impact on pop music, notching up hits spanning five decades.

The Manx-born trio began performing when Barry was nine and twins Robin and Maurice were six, singing the hits of the day at a local cinema. After the family immigrated to Australia, the young Gibbs became regulars on TV and, by 1966, they scored their first Australian number one hit. International fame followed in 1967 when they returned to England and hit the charts with songs such as New York Mining Disaster 1941 and Massachusetts.

In the Seventies the band prompted a cultural revolution – and soundtracked a million discos - with their music for Saturday Night Fever and the songs Stayin’ Alive and Night Fever. At one point in 1978, the Gibb brothers had five songs in the US Top 10 at the same time.

In the early Eighties, the Bee Gees took a break as performers and worked with some of their favourite singers, which led to collaborations with performers such as Barbra Streisand, Dionne Warwick, Diana Ross, Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton.

As they entered their 30th year on the global music scene in 1997, the Bee Gees were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and, in 2006 they were only the third pop music writers to receive the prestigious Fellowship of the British Academy of Songwriters and Composers.

In March, Robin was made President of the Heritage Foundation, which is devoted to recognising the achievements of British people across the whole cultural spectrum.

Last Thursday Robin presented an Ivor Award for the best-selling British song and has a new album due for release later this year.

Below is Robin Gibb’s 10-step masterclass in songwriting, in the great man’s own words. Read it and learn…

The melody comes first

You know in production where the highs and lows are, what gets the hairs on the back of your neck standing on end, where the melodic flowering is. And we have always established the melody first before we write the lyrics. The principle is: let the melody dictate the flow of the lyrics. A good melody is not something you should labour at. It should come easily: if you can’t remember it, then it’s probably not worth it. If the melody doesn’t get you off, the chances are it won’t get other people off either. Sometimes, lyrics will come out almost without knowing it. You ad lib words to fit with the melody and sometimes it is gobbledegook, but actually from that we can define direction. When we write the melody it dictates the flow of the lyrics.

Use titles to inspire

A great title can inspire a song. You can hear a statement as a title. We have often gone for one-word songs like Tragedy, Heartbreaker; titles that say something without saying everything. You don’t have to say a lot in the title. We have written whole songs from just getting a title like You Win Again, Emotion, Islands In The Stream, Woman In Love, Chain Reaction, Too Much Heaven. We came up with the titles for Too Much Heaven and Tragedy in an afternoon and wrote the songs the same day.

Pick the right time in the day

For writing, late afternoon or night time always worked best for us. Melody is great for the afternoon. When we did the Barbra Streisand album Guilty, we laid aside afternoons between 4pm and 6pm to do Woman In Love, Guilty and all the other tracks on the album. We did melodies every afternoon for seven days and then the following week we wrote the corresponding lyrics. I think the longer you’ve been up, the longer you’ve been awake, the more adrenaline there is and the more your antennae is up for writing. For singing, night-time is the best. Your voice is better at night because the body warms up long before the voice does. The voice takes longer and gets higher and much looser as the day develops. The night-time is when the voice has the best flexibility and control.

Challenge yourself and others

We’ve been writing all our lives. We started out as eight years olds listening to the radio, imagining what it would be like to write for a particular singer. We challenged each other by saying things like, “What do you think their next record should be?” We tried to go one better than that artist would. The way it worked made us explore other areas of music that we perhaps wouldn’t have normally done, such as listening to soul, R&B, jazz and country music. Incidentally, Islands In the Stream was originally written as a Marvin Gaye, R&B-type song. When Dolly Parton came along we crossed over to a country song and it shows you can go into different areas as a songwriter - and you must be able to explore different areas if you are going to be a songwriter - going where you might not be entirely comfortable. We did this when we were young because that is the time to do it; when you are not afraid. As you get older there is a tendency to think. “That is a no-go area.” British songwriters had more guts in this department than their American counterparts. You just have to look at those Beatles records or The Rolling Stones; there were no boundaries for them. We changed a lot of the ways Americans viewed music because there were no no-go areas.

Spontaneity is key

We hardly ever write complete songs before going into the studio. We actually write in the studio and then we record because we see the studio as a creative environment. Obviously everyone has a different way of doing things and some people are shocked. The first time we worked with our producer Arif Mardin, he asked us where our songs were. We said, “We haven’t got any, we start writing now.” He couldn’t believe it. He said, “We start recording now! You are still writing?”

We would go upstairs and write a song and then come down and lay it down. Arif said, “How can you do that?” So we sat upstairs and wrote Jive Talkin’, then came down to record it. Arif got used to working like that and he got to enjoy it. He liked the idea of us writing and recording on the spot and it didn’t seem to slow the recording process down, it was just another way of doing it. It’s not so much working fast, but being unprepared. Sometimes, if you have everything planned out then you might leave something really great out because you have cut out all the spontaneity. If you have a blank space then anything can happen while you are there.

Work to deadlines

It is good to have deadlines and pressure. I know a lot of people don’t like pressure, but it works. When Robert Stigwood called up and asked us to write Saturday Night Fever, we only had X amount of time in the studio. It is almost self-serving; if you have only got a certain amount of time to write something you will come up with it. And it’s amazing how you focus and get inspired if you know there is a limited amount of time.

We certainly had a deadline with Fever to write all those songs. I think, in one week, we wrote How Deep Is Your Love, Night Fever, Stayin’ Alive, If I Can’t Have You and the rest. Having a deadline sharpens you up, it gets you out of bed and it stops you going to bed, too.

The thing about being in the studio is that you never know what time it is. Your brain, which you are using on a creative level, is completely oblivious to time and space and the only thing that is important is getting to the end of the writing cycle. Only when that finishes do eating, sleeping and everyday things become important to you.

Know where the song blossoms – don’t gild the lily

We come from the old school of writing, like Elton John and Paul McCartney. There is a basic part of the song that flowers and you can hear it; the art of composition I call it where you really have to get to grips with your stuff. I don’t think a lot of new songwriters are getting to grips with it; they don’t know where to go right. Knowing where the flowering is, where the song blossoms, where the emotional highs and lows of the song should be is so important. There is a skill in getting to the heart of the song and not letting it get too long before getting to that feeling. If you have a verse, which goes on too long without getting to the emotional high of the song then you might be defeating the object. You don’t want to hear a song on the radio that takes a long time before getting to the point.

Also, working too late into the night over and over again can make you studio-deaf. If you have too much time to finish a record you will keep on mixing it and following it into the record shops and it’s not always going to be to the improvement of the record. You will be gilding the lily or simply adding too much. The best way of getting back on track is to go back to the demo because when you do something for the first time, that is the magic.

Keep the tape running

Through the writing process always keep a tape running. You never know in a three-hour writing session when you are going to come up with something and then if you’ll remember it completely. All the ideas, everything, will be on tape and then you can always refer back at any time. Melodies will be born for the first time during writing and unless you have it on tape you haven’t got any way of remembering them. That is a cardinal rule.

Leave your ego at the door

Ego is something that doesn’t play a part in writing. The most important code is to hang your ego up at the studio door as you go in. When you are coming up with ideas you can’t be self conscious and you must be accepting of other people’s ideas. Barry could come up with an idea and - because it is for the improvement of the song - I would say, “Yeah, that’s better than my idea, let’s go that way.” It is team-playing. And always have a good sense of humour with writing, don’t take it too seriously and have a damn good laugh. If you listen to the writing tapes of all our songs they are full of gags and humour. If you are self-conscious you can’t write. If you come together with another songwriter you tend to be a little more self-conscious. It’s almost like taking your clothes off in public and your relaxation level with another writer will always be handicapped by the feeling that you will be judged. But you have got to be totally relaxed to be creative. Everyone I know in the business, they become themselves in the recording studio. That is where it happens for everyone. It is where all professional recording artists are grounded. You can’t really pose in the studio. It is very real and the more comfortable people are in the studio, the more likely you are going to get a good record.

Use emotions as the bedrock

Melody has always been important and emotions are as perennial as the grass. Put those two together and you have something magical. There is something very appealing to all ages when you are singing about human emotions. A lot of young guys are self-conscious about singing about human emotions - they think it is girly or sissy - but there is something very human about it. I would encourage all young songwriters to do it.

James Blunt is a very good songwriter and You’re Beautiful is a good example of using emotion. That song could have come out in 1970 and, because he is talking about raw human emotion, it was as big as it was. Young people want that. Emotions will reach out over the decades. Always look for new and alternative ways to sing about emotions and show human emotions in a different light that people haven’t heard before. That is the trick; making it sound new, but still talking about emotions.