April 5, 2013

Friendships and devotion to the Bee Gees go hand-in-hand and so does the scenario of loving Barry Gibb whether he was singing or not.  How many fans around the world started with lusting after Barry and ended up loving the music as much as the man?

From Lust to Trust? Oh, yes!

Kristen

Chicago

I have been following the Bee Gees since I was a teenager in the late 70’s. My three best  girlfriends and I were in love with Barry Gibb. We were like the girls from Sex and the City only the late 70’s edition. We talked relationships, sex, and love; and each one of us imagined being with Barry. The music was secondary, although “Saturday Night Fever” was a phenomenon. It was perfect. Still, all we wanted to do was make love to Barry. All we cared about was adoring him, wanting him, and swooning over him. He was the sexiest of all the pop stars and definitely the most gorgeous. Barry Gibb in those white pants and open shirt with his chest hair showing had millions of girls around the world panting. I’ll be the first to admit that he was in my dreams for years, not months. The girls in my high school would trade Barry pictures. My walls of my bedroom were papered with his photos. He was an obsession; it was lust pure and simple. This was not anything new, since we were part of the craze for Barry. There would be long conversations at weekend sleepovers about every aspect of Barry, the long legs, his wild hair and great eyes, the terrific accent. My friend Melissa would cry when she talked about him. Cathy and Debbie had it in their heads that when they graduated from high school, their road trip would be to Miami to meet Barry. What’s most important, though, is what happened after we got tickets for the first time to one of their concerts. The four of us made a pact that we would go together to every concert from 1979 on. When we saw “our” Barry and Robin and Maurice in concert during the Spirits Having Flown tour, everything changed. We screamed our way through that concert; but somewhere in the middle, we started listening to the music and enjoying their voices. I remember thinking that Robin Gibb’s voice was so beautiful; I had never heard a voice like that in person. Maurice was so adorable, like the puppy you wanted to take home and keep forever and he was so talented. Barry was just Barry, perfect and better than I could ever imagine. The music from that Spirits album was different and special. They were so creative and unique and the harmony sound made me think of a choir at my church. I couldn’t believe it was the three of them and not a dozen people singing. As much as we went to the concert to lust after Barry, we left with a different mindset. I was still the teenage girl with the raging hormones, but I started collecting the other albums and played them until I wore them out. The four of us had faith that the Bee Gees would always write great music for us and never abandon the fans like some groups that would break up after they got rich. I somehow trusted them to take care of their fans. We’d all talk the music as much as we talked about Barry; and as each new album was released, we’d pick the music apart, arguing for our favorite songs. Although the girls and I went to different colleges and got married and had kids, we stuck to our guns and saw five concerts after the first one in ’79. It was an unwritten law that a Bee Gees concert would trump whatever else was going on in our lives. This could have been a nearly impossible task after we were married and had so many responsibilities, but it held our friendship together, the four of us having a bond that we couldn’t explain to anyone else. We have remained friends through many ups and downs with our families, and we still love Barry; he is just as sexy now as he was in 1979 when I first laid eyes on him in the flesh. The lusting never goes away, but there is so much more to him. I know we all respect him and the music in a way we couldn’t when we were 16 and 17. It’s not really possible to explain the hundreds of happy moments he has given all of us, but any Bee Gee fan knows how lucky we all are. The music always got better and better, and they were so good to the fans. Four grown women with grown children still squeal for Barry Gibb, and he is a part of our lives forever.