When Barry Gibb invited his son and Maurice's daughter on stage for emotional revival of 'Stayin' Alive'
15 March 2024, 15:45
The Bee Gee offspring have inherited their parents' musical talent.
A video of Barry Gibb singing one of the Bee Gees' greatest hits with his son Stephen and niece Samantha is a moment which will go down in music history.
The footage, taken during Barry Gibb's first tour without any of his three brothers, shows the Bee Gee taking to the stage to sing 'Stayin' Alive' in honour of his siblings.
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The 1977 song, performed originally as a trio with Robin and Maurice Gibb, is given a unique makeover by Barry, Samantha and Stephen Gibb in a beautiful moment captured by an onlooker.
The 2014 Mythology Tour was Barry Gibb's first solo outing after the death of his brothers, whom he had been performing with since the inception of the Bee Gees in 1958.
Running from February 2013 to June 2014 across Australia, the UK and the United States, the tour featured guest appearances from Stephen and Samantha, both members of the Gibb Collective – a band consisting of the sons and daughters of the Gibb brothers.
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Created to celebrate the lives of Maurice and Robin Gibb, Mythology kicked off in Sydney, with Gibb giving an emotional statement at the time, saying: "I am absolutely thrilled that Australian music lovers have embraced the Mythology Tour so wholeheartedly, given that it's the country where it all began.
"I am truly humbled by this response and can’t wait to perform these songs again on home soil."
Barry Gibb and his son Stephen have only given a handful of joint performances in their careers and alongside the performance of 'Stayin' Alive', the 2014 Mythology Tour also saw the pair sing a spine-tinglingly good duet of 'Grease'.
In the years following the tour, Barry and his son reunited most during lockdown where they recorded a live jamming session back in March 2020 and streamed the medley for lucky Bee Gees fans.
The musical pair gave a stripped-back acoustic performance of three of the band's most famous songs: 'Stayin' Alive', 'Words' and 'How Can You Mend A Broken Heart'.
In 2020, Stephen Gibb opened up about his battle with drug-addiction and how he managed to turn his life around.
The 46-year-old revealed how his drug addiction led him into a spiral of homelessness and scavenging for food.
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Stephen recalled that he came to a crossroads and turned his life around, knowing that if he carried as he was he faced 'death, prison or a mental institution.'
Speaking on his recovery podcast, Addiction Talks, the performer said: "The first time I drank I was probably 14 and I downed an entire bottle of Jack Daniels [and] blacked out."
He went on to describe his spiral from having regular work to losing everything.
- Watch the amazing moment Barry Gibb sing 'Stayin' Alive' with Stephen and Samantha Gibb:
"After I lost my gig with my band I was homeless, they throw away so much good food in studios and I remember eating out of the dumpster at the record plant praying nobody would see me," he says.
"I remember thinking ‘This sucks’.'I was living in my van or wherever I could land. If somebody let me crash on a couch I was fortunate.
"The thing for me that was mind-blowing was the old saying, from Park Avenue to park bench."
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Once he turned his life around and got sober, Stephen went back to performing, writing music and playing the guitar with his dad, however, the threat of addiction has sadly been rife in the Gibb family.
Robin Gibb passed away in May 2012 after battling cancer for a number of years, while his twin brother Maurice – who had been sober for 20 years – died in 2003 due to complications of a twisted intestine.
The Bee Gee's youngest brother, Andy Gibb, died in 1988 aged just 30 due to heart problems caused by cocaine addiction.
'Stayin' Alive' was a huge hit for the Bee Gees in 1977 after it was written and released as part of the Grammy Award-winning soundtrack for Saturday Night Fever.
Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb wrote the song over a few days while working on a staircase at the Château d'Hérouville studio near Paris.
The Bee Gees preferred to record the majority of the soundtrack in France for tax reasons, like many artists at the time, and wrote four tracks for the film’s incredible disco sound, including ‘Stayin’ Alive’, ‘How Deep Is Your Love’, ‘Night Fever’ and ‘More Than A Woman’.
Alongside its recognition as an iconic disco track, 'Stayin' Alive' has since been used to train medical professionals to provide the right number of chest compressions per minute while performing CPR.
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A study on medical professionals found that the quality of CPR is better when thinking about 'Stayin' Alive' as it has close to 104 beats per minute, with 100–120 chest compressions per minute being the recommended amount by the British Heart Foundation.
'Stayin' Alive' is just one of the many iconic songs the Bee Gees gave the music industry, with their legacies living on through their millions of record sales, awards and legions of worldwide fans.
December 2023, saw Sir Barry Gibb among the Kennedy Centre honorees in Washington, an annual ceremony paying tribute to those who have made exceptional lifetime contributions to the arts.
Five legendary artists were celebrated, including Billy Crystal and Dionne Warwick, and the night saw Barry Gibb pay honour to his absent siblings.
At the end of his speech, Barry said: "Thank you all, this is the most incredible honour of my life.
"Without my brothers, I wouldn't be standing here. I salute Maurice, Robin, and Andy. We were a family of music and a family of love."