The Roxborogh Report

1 Of NZ's Finest Boutique Hotels - My Top 50 Waipoua Lodge & Kauri Coast Photos

2016-12-12T01:37:00.000-08:00

Gazing at Tane Mahuta.

Every now and then as a travel writer you stay somewhere that isn't just a bit fancy, isn't just in a pretty setting and doesn't just have a point of difference. Which isn't to say that all of the above aren't enormously good fun and even a prerequisite for a high end property. But sometimes you get something a little extra special and that's normally in the form of a personal connection with either the staff or management.

The Waipoua Lodge on the Kauri Coast in the New Zealand province of Northland is one of those "every now and then" places. And as a result, I've been lucky enough to stay there three times in just four years and am already plotting visit number four.

Owned and managed by Ian and Fran Farrant, these two felt like old friends after my first visit. Presiding over one of the most acclaimed small hotels in the country, over the past several years Ian and Fran have welcomed guests from all over the world to their gorgeous subtropical property. Right on the edge of the Waipoua Forest - home to the largest number of remaining kauri trees in New Zealand - Ian and Fran's hotel is an elegant historic villa with an adjacent block of four large suites.

To find out more about the history and luxury of the Waipoua Lodge, please subscribe to Let's Travel magazine or order/download the most recent issue. Written by co-editor of the magazine, Gayle Dickson, Gayle's account is based on a night she and her husband Gary (also co-editor of Let's Travel) had at the lodge a couple of months ago. Me and my girlfriend Aimee also happened to be there and together with Ian and Fran it was a wonderful night of food (Fran's cooking is so good she even runs a cooking school for guests), wine and ripping yarns.

Unfortunately Gayle and Gary had to leave the next day, leaving me and Aimee to explore the surrounding forests. This is most famously the Waipoua Forest where the biggest kauri tree in the world - the 2000 year old Tane Mahuta - exists. But beyond Tane Mahuta is the far lesser known but equally as beguiling Te Matua Ngahere - an even older tree which while not as tall as Tane Mahuta, is noticeably wider.

A #casuallean inside the Waipoua Lodge.

For most tourists Tane Mahuta is all they see which is a shame given the magnificence of Te Matua Ngahere and the other surrounding old-world trees of the Waipoua Forest. That said, one of the absolute highlights of our time at the Waipoua Lodge wasn't even in the forest that is its namesake and rather the unassumingly named Trounson Kauri Park.

20-minutes drive south of the lodge, the Trounson Kauri Park is an entirely flat, almost all wooden board-walked chunk of pristine kauri forest. While these trees don't have quite the jaw-dropping size of Tane Mahuta and Te Matua Ngahere, the 45-minute loop walk is so striking it has felt fairytale-like every time I've done it. Most of the trees are many centuries old and the easy terrain of the track coupled with the never-boring sight of these vertical monoliths of nature makes this one of the great, virtually unknown walks in the country.

For enquiries and bookings of Ian and Fran's Waipoua Lodge please click here. The hotel is perfect for weddings, romantic escapes and for those who love forest as much as beach. 90 Mile Beach and the spectacular Hokianga Harbour are both within easy driving distance.

Once again, to read more about the lodge and this part of the country, please click here and subscribe to Let's Travel magazine. And in the meantime, here are my top 50 Waipoua Lodge and Kauri Coast photos - hope you like them.

Walking In Memphis - My NZ Herald Article + My Top 60 Memphis Photos, Including A Brand New Elvis-Themed Hotel

2016-12-06T18:46:00.001-08:00

Outside Graceland with Aimee Palmer.

This week the New Zealand Herald published my article on Memphis, focusing on my stay at a brand new Elvis-themed hotel called The Guest House At Graceland.

Click here to link to the article which explains all the cool things about the hotel (TVs on the ceiling! Soap with Elvis's face!) as well as why a visit to Graceland itself is so rewarding even if you aren't an Elvis fan. For me, I've been a huge fan since I was a kid and the first time I ever heard Hound Dog is also talked about in the article.

Click here to link to Graceland.com and the page for The Guest House At Graceland.

In these photos you'll also see why Memphis is such a bucket list destination if you're like me and music is an essential part of your life. In addition to Graceland there's the Stax Museum Of American Soul Music (check out Isaac Hayes' 24k gold-plated Cadillac from 1972), Sun Studio (where Elvis first recorded as well as countless other acts like Johnny Cash and U2) and Beale St (where every band I saw I came away thinking, "they'd probably be the best band in New Zealand!").

But beyond the music, the most profound moment of my time in Memphis was at the Lorraine Motel where Dr Martin Luther King Jnr was assassinated in 1968. Preserved as it looked from the outside that April day, the motel is now the National Civil Rights Museum. From recreations of Rosa Parks and the bus boycott, the cell where King wrote his famous Letter From Birmingham Jail, the March On Washington ('I Have A Dream') and the Mountaintop Speech that King delivered the night before he died, the museum is both distressing and inspirational. It culminates in a silent visit to the two rooms King and his advisors occupied at the motel which, like the motel frontage, have been left (or recreated) as they were.

As I write in the article, hairs stood on the back of the neck throughout and I departed hoping that somehow the National Civil Rights Museum becomes a compulsory pilgrimage for all Americans. Watch and listen to the YouTube clip below to hear me discuss on my Newstalk ZB radio show the emotional impact of the museum as well as my thoughts on some of the grittier aspects of Memphis.

Memphis was unforgettable and there are few places I've been with as many sights that I just knew I couldn't miss. Thanks so much for reading (and listening) and do enjoy the pictures below - my top 60 Memphis photos:

Special thanks again to The Guest House At Graceland for such a wonderful stay. I hope to be back before too long.

Link to my Memphis article in the New Zealand Herald: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/travel/news/article.cfm?c_id=7&objectid=11760628

Sydney In Springtime - My Top 50 Photos + My Concrete Playground Feature Article

2016-11-30T17:16:00.002-08:00

One Central Park in Chippendale,
as seen from the top of The Old Clare Hotel.

My article in Concrete Playground about me feeling a teeny bit jealous of Sydney - 100 Hours In Sydney: A Trifecta Of Restaurants, Hassle-free Golf & Plant-Tastic Skyscrapers - has just been published. If you're new to Concrete Playground, it's an online magazine that has found enormous popularity in both Australia and New Zealand with as many as 750,000 monthly hits. So yes, it's a great pleasure to write for them.

Click here to link to my article, which also includes a really cool new hotel that's located in a grand old building, The Old Clare, and info on three very different musicals that are showing in central Sydney theatres.

As the headline suggests, a chunk of the article is about my obsession with One Central Park - one of the most innovative new skyscrapers in the world. By coincidence I happened to be staying across the road from this "plant-tastic" structure and managed to get plenty of images of which you'll see below.

You'll also see photos from 'The Coast' which is amongst the most scenic and exclusive golf courses in Sydney. I myself am not an especially "scenic" golfer, but I did have a brilliant time with Travis from LuxGolf.com. The article explains how LuxGolf is the easiest way to have a golfing holiday, while also giving you access to the sorts of courses money normally can't buy. It was a stunning day out and my unintentional trick shot of ricocheting the ball off a rake in a sand bunker and onto the green will live long in my memory.

Thanks again also to these outstanding restaurants who looked after me so well:

Bistrot Gavroche (1/2-10 Kensington St, Chippendale)
LP's Quality Meats (Suite 1, 16 Chippen St, Chippendale)
Cirrus (23 Barangaroo Ave, Barangaroo)

The images below are my top 50 from my four days/100 hours in Sydney this Spring - hope you like them. And do check out the full feature in ConcretePlayground.com:

http://concreteplayground.com/auckland/travel-leisure/travel/100-hours-in-sydney-a-trifecta-of-restaurants-hassle-free-golf-and-plant-tastic-skyscrapers/

Bistrot Gavroche.

The rooftop of The Old Clare Hotel with One Central Park behind.

Same as above.

My Fair Lady at the Sydney Opera House.

Spice Alley, Chippendale.

LP's Quality Meats.

With friends at LP's Quality Meats.

Government House.

Travis from LuxGolf.com on the 'The Coast'.

Super swing that.

A #casuallean on 'The Coast'.

Sydney skyline from Pyrmont.

White Rabbit Gallery, Chippendale.

Reception at The Old Clare Hotel.

My bedroom at The Old Clare Hotel.

Breakfast at Kensington St Social at The Old Clare Hotel.

One Central Park.

Downtown Sydney.

Luna Park.

Sydney Opera House.

Fort Denison.

Coastal walk at the Botanic Gardens.

Skyscrapers of Downtown Sydney.

Bistrot Gavroche, Chippendale.

Alleyways of Chippendale.

The Old Clare Hotel.

Foyer at The Old Clare Hotel.

Travis of LuxGolf.com showing how it's done.

Another image from 'The Coast' golf course that I played thanks to LuxGolf.com.

Same as above.

Super shot that.

Not a bad way to ride - thank you LuxGolf.com.

Same as above.

Chippendale.

One Central Park.

The foyer of The Old Clare Hotel.

Cirrus, Barangaroo.

The outside of Cirrus.

Sunset In Santa Monica - 20 Favourite Photos

2016-11-17T19:10:00.000-08:00

I love Santa Monica, it's hard not to. With three nights in LA a couple of weeks ago, we made sure one of those was dedicated to Santa Monica. The pier, the architecture, the shops of the 3rd Street Promenade, the sand and the sun and an overall disposition that seems tangibly happy, Santa Monica is world famous for good reason.

There are also few other places I've been where the sunset is quite as beguiling. As you'll see in these photos, it was all about timing the pressing of the camera shutter at the same moment the seagulls were flying by.

Keep a look out for further Roxborogh Report photo essays from my USA trip (which also included Miami, Memphis, New Orleans and Austin) as well as full articles for Let's Travel Magazine and the New Zealand Herald. But in the meantime, here are my top 20 photos from that autumn evening in Santa Monica as the sun set into the Pacific Ocean.

Could This Be Barry Gibb's Final Ever New Zealand Concert? Why To Make This The Trip Of A Lifetime - My Top 40 NZ Photos

2016-11-16T02:50:00.003-08:00

The second most successful songwriter in popular music history after Paul McCartney is doing one show only in New Zealand next year. And while there are plenty of diehard Kiwi fans anxious to see the sole surviving Bee Gee, Barry Gibb, isn't this also the perfect opportunity for international fans to combine a concert with the trip of a lifetime?

"Yes!" is the correct answer to that question so with that in mind, here are a few compelling reasons why you should buy tickets to see Barry Gibb at Vector Arena in Auckland on April 11th, 2017. Firstly, at age 70 the guy has just released one of the best albums of the year, the highly confessional, deeply melodic In The Now.

Secondly, beyond some new tracks and a smattering of hidden gems, Barry Gibb will likely be performing at least a couple of dozen of the Bee Gees most famous songs. Everything from 60s favourites like Spicks And Specks and To Love Somebody, through early-70s smashes like Lonely Days and How Can You Mend A Broken Heart, late 70s dance-floor staples like Stayin' Alive and Night Fever to 80s and 90s hits like Guilty and Immortality.

Thirdly, as Barry says on one of his new tracks, Home Truth Song, "I'm the man who does it all or nothing." What that means is that his preference is for touring with a 12-piece band of the absolute elite of Florida's musicians. These guys are so A-list that many of them have their pick of which star they want to work with and the fact they've chosen Barry is a testament to the esteem they hold their boss in.

And fourthly, this could well be the last chance you'll ever have to see Barry Gibb live in New Zealand. With 21 US or UK #1 hits as a songwriter, a back catalogue that extends as far as 2000 songs and album sales estimated at more than 220 million, this is a gig you don't want to miss. But there are some specifics to New Zealand that will make this Autumn night extra important too, including the fact that this country was the first nation in the world to give the Bee Gees an official number one hit in the form of Spicks And Specks, 50 years ago. Then there's the not insignificant fun fact that the Bee Gees' One Night Only gig at Western Springs in 1999 in front of 70,000 fans is still the highest grossing concert in the country's history.

However, if all of that hasn't quite tipped you over the line, here are 40 further reasons to see Barry Gibb in New Zealand in April, 2017: New Zealand itself. All taken from my own camera, here are 40 of my favourite photos from my domestic travels these past 18 months. If you'd like to know the exact location for any of these photos feel free to copy the image and to email me tim@roxborogh.com. And to buy your tickets to Barry's Auckland concert please click here:

http://www.ticketmaster.co.nz/barry-gibb-auckland-new-zealand-11-04-2017/event/2400514788CF0CB9

Be quick, tickets should sell out.

Why Bee Gee Barry Gibb's 'In The Now' Is Such A Remarkable Return - My Review + The Audio Of Our Latest Interview

2016-10-26T01:49:00.000-07:00

Here's the audio of my latest interview with Barry Gibb. Thanks so much if you read the transcribed sections on the Roxborogh Report and I hope you enjoy listening to the interview as it sounded on a special "Sunday Lunch" show I did for the New Zealand radio station Coast.

This is what I've written in the YouTube blurb for the interview:

Hear Barry discuss the inspiration for In The Now (written alongside his sons Stephen and Ashley), how his upcoming tour will be different from the Mythology tour of 2013/2014, what it was like performing with Coldplay at Glastonbury, the incredible backstory of You Should Be Dancing, why his childhood in Queensland, Australia had such a profound impact on him, why he kept getting his heart broken as a teenager, the role his wife Linda has on his professional life, whether his mother used to give him any musical advice, the unusual structures of so many Bee Gees songs, whether or not he's satisfied with all he's achieved and the very vivid dreams he has of his brothers Robin, Maurice and Andy.

When I did the interview I'd only heard some tiny snippets of Barry's new album. In the three weeks since the release date I've come to know these songs and on the basis of their strength I hope In The Now is just the beginning of a late career flourish for Barry. Some Bee Gee-ologists have given major praise for the contributions of Barry's sons Stephen and Ashley. I hope to ask Stephen and Ashley one day about the songwriting process, but the assumption is that Stephen has given Barry a slightly rockier sound on several songs, while Ashley has steered his father in a more lyrically direct and confessional direction. This is of course just the speculation of fans and it will be interesting to see how the three of them view the gestation and evolution of their songs.

For me it's the back half of this new album that is really remarkable. Track 6 is Cross To Bear and it's a 6-minute mini-epic with mentions of Gandhi, Krishnamurti and Jesus. Barry's rumination on religion and the state of the world comes with a sizeable hook ("let's hit rewind...") that repeats enough times that I knew on first listen it was a song I'd be coming back to time and again.

Track 8, Shadows, is intentionally written to have the melodic and emotional drama of the most devastating Roy Orbison songs. It's a reminder of the great gift Barry and his brothers had for writing material in the style of their favourite performers. Even if the end game was always to use these songs themselves, just the idea that Abba might record If I Can't Have You, or that Otis Redding might record To Love Somebody, or Andy Williams How Can You Mend A Broken Heart etc was enough for the Gibbs to step out of themselves.

With Barry & Stephen Gibb, LA 2014.

But what really makes Shadows for me is the incredible beauty of the Spanish-influenced instrumental that is the song's final 90-seconds. This is a contender for the most gorgeous Gibb outro after Spirits Having Flown.

My next standout is Diamonds (track 10) with the intrigue of lines like, "Not even one brave soul is gonna' walk that mile from the curse to the legacy, but I must try." Later in the song this is subtly switched to, "Not even one brave man is gonna' walk that mile from the hearse to the funeral, but I don't cry."

Is the "curse to the legacy" the path Barry was on from mourning the loss of all three of his brothers to the point where he felt safe enough to resume cementing the Bee Gees standing in music history as a solo act? Or is it more-so the journey the Bee Gees took from the quite staggering ridicule they faced in the 80s to the time of their critical comeback in the late 90s? Barry walked that mile from the "curse to the legacy" and saw his records go from being burned at the infamous "Disco Sucks" bonfire in Chicago in 1979 to now where there isn't a single major lifetime achievement award in popular music he hasn't won (Brits, Grammys, AMAs, Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, Songwriters Hall Of Fame etc).

Diamonds is full of time changes and swings from sounding like a folk ballad to an early 70s singer/songwriter tale to a mid-tempo rock song. As I write it's probably my favourite song on the album.

That said, the song I most want a major artist to do a cover of is track 12, End Of The Rainbow. This is a sublime piece of emotional pop songwriting and almost sounds like a Christmas song with the line, "we think of each other this time of the year." Though as many Bee Gees fans will already know, this song was really written about Robin, with Barry previously having the chance to sing some of it to his brother who lay dying in a coma. The song tells the story of Barry, Robin and Maurice achieving everything they set out to do; they reached "the end of the rainbow." It's desperately sad, but the basic message is one of contentment. It sounds like a standard and Michael Buble, you're welcome to make this your signature song, sung the world over, if you so choose. Thank me later.

The special edition of In The Now also features three excellent bonus tracks that date back as long ago as 2006/2007 for Barry and his sons. Grey Ghost (track 13) was later dedicated to the victims of the 2011 Japanese tsunami and like much of the album is sonically (use of what appears to be a sitar) and melodically (counter melody background vocals) interesting. Which is a boring way of saying I love the song.

While the second half of In The Now is what I'm playing the most, the smooth R&B of the title track (track 1), the nifty guitar riff of Grand Illusion (track 2) and the pair of Bruce Springsteen-inspired songs Home Truth Song (track 5) and Meaning Of The Word (track 6) are strong enough that this could be my preferred half down the line. Regarding Springsteen, it's been well documented that Home Truth Song - a song Barry says is about "bluster and ambition" - was Barry getting some mojo from the indefatigable Bruce.

What I'm going out on a limb on is that Meaning Of The Word is just as likely to have come about from Barry's circa-2014 Bruce Springsteen listening sessions. Having covered I'm On Fire on the US leg of the Mythology Tour in repsonse to Bruce doing Stayin' Alive onstage in Australia, Barry listened to Bruce in greater detail than he'd ever done previously. With that in mind, the prettiness of the music and the falsetto adlibs at the end of Meaning Of The Word recall Bruce songs like Secret Garden and I'm On Fire and in a good way too.

If you haven't yet bought your copy of In The Now, go out and buy it. Let's not have this return of a 70-year old songwriting genius be a fleeting one. The interview is below, thanks for listening! Tim.

For more please visit brothersgibb.org, barrygibb.com and follow 'The Barry Gibb Band' on Facebook.

'10 Questions With Tim Roxborogh' - My Get Frank Interview, Including 1st Ever Concert, Best Decade For Music & Favourite Travel Destination

2016-10-23T17:15:00.001-07:00

The famous #casuallean.

Recently I was interviewed by the publication Get Frank about all the different things I do in media, including hosting talkback, being a travel writer and establishing my own iHeartRadio station, Coast Soul. If you missed it, here is the link:

http://www.getfrank.co.nz/lifestyle/music/10-questions-with-tim-roxborogh

It was a nice opportunity to promote Coast Soul (if you're a fan of the best soul and R&B of the past 50 years you should enjoy the station) as well as answer questions like what the very first concert I went to was. The most fun question was probably regarding which decade is my favourite for music - find out why I chose the 70s, even though I was born in 1981.

Thanks for reading and if you haven't yet heard Coast Soul, click here to find out more. In short, this is the station for you if you love listening to people like Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Alicia Keys, Bruno Mars, Diana Ross, the Commodores etc. I'm the sole announcer on Coast Soul and I go behind the scenes on 12 specially selected tracks each week, giving stories about the artists and the songs.

If you're already an iHeartRadio listener, here is the link:

http://www.iheart.com/live/coast-soul-7105/

And you haven't yet checked out iHeartRadio and it all sounds a bit intimdating, don't worry! All you have to do is either download the app for your phone or click on iheartradio.com on your computer. It takes just a few seconds to create an entirely free account. Once you've done that, just search for the word "soul" or the words "Coast Soul" and you'll find the station. Many thanks!

Tim

Create a free iHeartRadio account and click here to listen: http://www.iheart.com/live/coast-soul-7105/.

Man-Made Islands On A Stunning Lagoon - My Top 60 Malaita, Solomon Islands Photos

2016-10-19T04:12:00.001-07:00

Langa Langa Lagoon, Malaita.

There were so many things I saw in the province of Malaita in the Solomon Islands that I don't think I'll ever forget. A grass-runwayed airport with jungle either side and the sea at both ends for starters. But the sight of naturally blonde-haired locals playing bamboo panpipes with old flip-flops/thongs/jandals was pretty remarkable too. Then there's the sincerity of the village welcomes we had, from elders on a boat who sang as they paddled to greet us, to young musicians singing Waltzing Matilda in a village with no power or running water.

Malaita also imprinted on me the beauty of the jungle, the clarity of the water and at the other end of the scale, the bleak reality of the town of Auki with its boarded-up windows and barbed wire.

All of this is explained in an upcoming article in NZ's number one travel mag, Let's Travel. In the meantime, here are my top 60 Malaita Photos. These images include the airport outside of Auki (the largest town in Malaita), Auki itself, the artificial islands of Langa Langa Lagoon (including Busu where we attended the Shell Money Festival) and Bio village on the mainland of Malaita where we met a missionary couple and their five (yes, five!) children.

Click here to link to the Let's Travel website and to find out about print and digital subscription details.

Click here to link to the Solomon Islands Visitors Bureau Website.

Click here to see my previous Solomon Islands photo essay, this on my top 50 Guadalcanal photos.

Enjoy the photos.

Barry Gibb: 'You're making me think these songs may belong somewhere in the show' - In The Now With Tim Roxborogh Part 6

2016-10-06T15:44:00.003-07:00

Barry Gibb in concert.

Last night I sat where Barry, Robin and Maurice would've readied themselves for their record-breaking concert at Western Springs stadium in Auckland, New Zealand on March 20th, 1999.* For the album launch of Barry's new solo album In The Now, the team at Sony/Columbia recreated the backstage area as it would've been for the Bee Gees, just as it is for any of the major stars who still occasionally perform at the famous venue. Complete with the setlist from that night and various other props like medallions draped on dressing-room tables, there was a handy little rider too as we sat back and listened to the album.

On first listen the six-minute track Cross To Bear jumped out at me with a big hook and beautiful light and shade as Barry ponders the state of the world and the impact - positive, negative and mysterious - of religion. When my CD arrives today that will be the first song I'll go for.

In the meantime, here is the sixth and final part of my interview series with Barry. For the most comprehensive article on the recent creative process Barry experienced with his sons Stephen and Ashley, click here to read Billboard magazine. It's an outstanding extended feature that shines some serious light on how In The Now is very much a collaboration between father and sons. I'd also encourage you to read Howard Cohen's latest Gibb-related piece in the Miami Herald. The longtime admirer of the Bee Gees is one of the best American music journos when it comes to recognising the brothers' output as being so much more than just the Saturday Night Fever era.

As far as what this final transcribed section of my interview with Barry discusses, it covers Robin's anxiety about whether late-period Bee Gees would get more hit songs, the fight the Bee Gees fought to get the respect back, some early 70s lesser-known Gibb gems and the professional as well as personal impact Linda Gibb has on her husband. The song from In The Now that Barry has written for Linda - Star Crossed Lovers - is at the bottom of the article. Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed the series and let's make sure the album has all the success it deserves.

Barry Gibb In The Now With Tim Roxborogh Part 6: 'You're making me think these songs may belong somewhere in the show'

TR: Do you really feel now that at this point in time, the dream did come true?

BG: Yeah, I do ultimately. I think that the full cycle, the dream came true. We had to go through a lot of nonsense, as you know, but in the end, while Robin was still anguishing about having another hit, I just kept saying to him, “Rob, enjoy what happened, it came true. It’s not like you still have to make it come true again. It’s OK. What we need to do is keep making the music that we love making and don’t worry about the charts.”

Charts were changing very fast, you know? I don’t even know in America what chart you’re supposed to be in anymore.

TR: There are so many…

BG: Well I miss Billboard and I miss Record World and Cashbox.

TR: I’ve heard you say that Robin always wanted that one more hit, and yet late period Bee Gees, you did actually get those hits. You know, For Whom The Bell Tolls (1993) was a top 5 in the UK and was a number one in South America…

BG: That’s right, I mean I think it was justifiable for Rob to want that because we all wanted that. We all wanted one more hit – that never goes away, you know, you want that. But if you weren’t going to get that, if that wasn’t going to happen… There was a period when we couldn’t get on the radio at all Tim. And that was probably my mid 40s for God’s sake! So looking back now, at that long time span, it doesn’t really matter. It’s OK.

People come up to me now and say the nicest things. And when there was a time when there was literally no respect at all, that’s changed completely. So, I don’t understand it, but I love it.

TR: I love it too. I remember when Maurice died that the thing that gave a diehard fan like me a little bit of comfort was it seemed like the respect had come back. I mean not long before he died the Still Waters album had been huge, the One Night Only album had been huge, This Is Where I Came In did well and then you put out The Record which went 8x platinum in New Zealand and it was then that Maurice passed away. So at least he would’ve died knowing that the Bee Gees, a lot of people like them! A lot of people respect them.

BG: Yeah. I mean I think we were always saying that to ourselves, you know? You know, “we shouldn’t worry about this negativity, it’ll be OK.” And I always felt it would be OK because we’d been down many times over the years, many times. We were down in 1972, we were pretty much done by 74 and then we made Main Course with Arif Mardin and it all exploded again. So you can never predict what’s going to happen next. You’ve just gotta’ keep your head down. And that was before Fever for God’s sake and that’s shocking to me! But we were done.

TR: I remember telling you when we did an interview in London in 2009 that early 70s songs like Saw A New Morning and Wouldn’t I Be Someone, [not to mention My World and Morning Of My Life], those were number one hits in Asia!

BG: Were they really? Geez!

TR: Did you know that Elisa – I only found this out the other day – a beautiful song where all three of you sang lead [also from the early 70s], was a top 10 hit in Rio in Brazil!

BG: What you’re doing to me now is you’re making me think these songs may belong somewhere in the show…

TR: Good! (laughs)

BG:…somehow. Whereas I wouldn’t have thought about that before (laughs).

TR: We have to have a little word on Linda. Last time we spoke you said, “Linda gave me a kick up the ass!” (laughs)

BG: No (laughs), she said “get off your ass!” (laughs)

TR: Oh OK (laughs). Well one of the two.

BG: Yeah well I’ve probably had both! (laughs)

TR: So what’s Linda’s influence on your professional life at the moment?

BG: Well everything. She’s not just my wife and my life partner, she’s also my biggest critic. So if I wander off the path creatively, she’ll walk past and she’ll say, “Well you’re gonna’ have to do better than that.” (laughs)

TR: And do you ever say, “Linda! Come on! That was pretty good, what are you talking about?”

BG: No! (laughs) Because then it turns into something (laughs). You don’t want to raise the bar, mate. You don’t want to ratchet it up (laughs).

TR: Right, OK, that’s probably good advice.

BG: No, I mean, it’s best to say, “OK love.”

TR: And is she right most of the time?

BG: Oh yeah. Well maybe I’ve had a couple of drinks and I’m just buggering about with the guitar, you know? And she’ll walk past (laughs) and say, “You’re gonna’ have to do better!” And I enjoy that. She’s sort of like a coach. If something really works well, she’s the first one to tell me, like these live shows or like the streaming that we did at the Hit Factory. When things turn out really well she’ll tell me right away, no-one else needs to tell me. If something didn’t work out, she’s got a way of telling me without putting it into words. So she’s right there.

Barry, Andy, Linda & a hair dryer - 1979.

TR: Why do you think you have one of the longest lasting marriages of anyone in showbusiness?

BG: Well first off the obvious answer is being in love and always being in love. What you might add to that is the fact that you really have things in common, that you’re great friends, that you have a sense of humour that you share about everything. So I think it’s a number of things Tim, I don’t think it’s one thing. I think when you find a partner you want to spend your life with it becomes a number of elements that make that happen. Also, I’ve turned out to be pretty stable, consistent – whatever the right word is (laughs).

TR: I like that there are images of you two recently walking down the beach hand in hand. That’s cute!

BG: Yeah, that’s us! And beyond all of that, we don’t think too much about what’s going on around us. Whatever we have to do we get done and between Linda and Dick Ashby who’s worked with me for 40 years now, we’re a very professional team. We get things done and we get ‘em done right.

Click here for Part 1: How Bee Gees Songs Were So Catchy You Didn't Notice How Strangely They Were Structured

Click here for Part 2: 'I always felt High Civilisation the song would've been a big hit'

Click here for Part 3: Barry Explains The Backstory Of 'You Should Be Dancing'

Click here for Part 4: 'These songs are my personal insight into my own life'

Click here for Part 5: 'Bury me on Moreton Island'

*70,000 people attended that concert and it is still reportedly the highest grossing concert in New Zealand history. More people attended David Bowie's all-standing 1983 concert at the same venue (80,000+), but no single concert has ever grossed as much as the Bee Gees did on March 20th, 1999.

Barry Gibb: 'Bury me on Moreton Island' - In The Now With Tim Roxborogh Part 5

2016-10-05T17:36:00.000-07:00

Barry Gibb as he appears on his new album.

Hearing Barry Gibb talk about where he wants to be buried - even if he chuckled as soon as he said it - seems significant to me. So with that in mind, here is part 5 of my transcribed interview series with him ahead of tomorrow's release of his new album In The Now.

Once again, this is a series that I've done in addition to the articles I've written for the New Zealand Herald (out this Sunday) and the New Zealand Woman's Weekly (this Wednesday). This RoxboroghReport.com series has been put together with an emphasis on content that might appeal to the biggest Bee Gees fans and you can see links to the previous sections below. You can also hear clips of this interview on the New Zealand radio station Newstalk ZB on Sunday October 9th between 8pm-11pm and on my iHeartRadio station 'Coast Soul' all next week.

This part of the interview begins with me asking about Barry's return to his childhood home of Redcliffe in Queensland, Australia. And being he mentioned being buried, I couldn't help but put a link to one of countless lesser-known Gibb songs that I love, the country and gospel influenced Bury Me Down By The River from Cucumber Castle (1969).

From my visit to Bee Gees Way in Redcliffe earlier this year.

Barry Gibb In The Now With Tim Roxborogh Part 5: 'Bury me on Moreton Island'

TR: What was it like to go back to Australia recently to Redcliffe for Bee Gees Way stage 2 - I got to see that recently and I love it – and for you to go to Moreton Island where you’d looked at from the pier as a child and it’s sort of this paradisical place that you can’t quite get to... You finally got there as an adult! What was that like?

BG: An incredible experience. Alan Sutherland, the mayor of Redcliffe, and his wife took me to the island and as a 13 year old, a 12 year old maybe, we used to look at the island from Redcliffe and wonder what it was like. You couldn’t go there in those days, it was an old whaling station and of course now I learn that it was a military base during the war. But I didn’t know that and you could see this beautiful place and you could even see the white beaches, but you couldn’t go there. So, all of my life I’ve been trying to get to Moreton Island which eventually I called Bali Hai, sort of my nickname for it. “The island you can’t come to.”

TR: Is it almost disappointing to have finally gone there? Or did it live up to expectations?

BG: Oh no, quite the opposite. Enthralling, beautiful. I mean, beaches wider than I’d ever seen before and snow white sand. No, it was everything I hoped it was gonna’ be and it was as private as I hoped it was gonna’ be. There’s a few homes there now, but you know, when I kick it off mate, that’s where I wanna’ be. Bury me on Moreton Island (laughs).

TR: OK! Well, there’s something in a lot of people – there’s something in a lot of animals – and salmon want to go back to childhood!

BG: Yes! (laughs) That’s me!

TR: So why not? I love that you have that connection. It’s not that you spent the longest amount of time in Redcliffe, but there was something about that chapter in your lives that obviously meant a great deal to you.

BG: Yes, it set off a sort of romanticism, a wanderlust – how’s that? Always what’s over the next hill and always what’s round the corner.

Moreton Island, Queensland, Australia.

Click here for Part 1

Click here for Part 2

Click here for Part 3

Click here for Part 4

Barry Gibb: 'These songs are my personal insight into my own life' - In The Now With Tim Roxborogh Part 4

2016-10-04T16:10:00.001-07:00

Barry Gibb

With just two days to go until Barry Gibb's first solo album since the 80s is released - In The Now - here is part 4 in my series of transcribed extracts from the interview we did together at the start of September. I've pulled these sections of the interview with the biggest Bee Gees fans in mind and I hope you're enjoying them - see the links below to read parts 1-3.

For part 4 I've chosen where Barry is talking specifically about the new album (co-written with his sons Stephen and Ashley) and what inspired it. Turns out Barry wasn't just a heartbreaker as a young man, but that it was his heart that was frequently getting broken:

"By the time I hit 15 or 16 I was all over the map. It was perfectly normal for girls to dump me, they’d just dump me, simply because I was just too possessive and always getting myself into trouble. I couldn’t keep a long relationship going..."

Those early romantic experiences probably informed a great deal of Barry's songwriting over the years and have come up again on In The Now. Barry also talks about being influenced by Bruce Springsteen on In The Now as well as the songwriters he grew up listening to like Carole King and Roy Orbison. Part 5 coming up tomorrow!

Barry Gibb In The Now With Tim Roxborogh Part 4: 'These songs are my personal insight into my own life'

TR: How excited are you that you’ve got officially your second solo album? There was an unreleased one in 1970 and also the Hawks soundtrack (1988), so it’s sort of the fourth…

BG: Yeah that’s right. Yeah it’s sort of strange isn’t it but you know there was never really any great opportunity or time to put out solo albums. Robin did and between the two of us we really didn’t make too much of a noise with solo material. I think maybe the business, the industry itself, especially our record company, they didn’t want solo material. They wanted “the Bee Gees” and that really made everything a little more uphill. You couldn’t step out like Phil Collins was able to step out of Genesis, you couldn’t quite do that and without everyone supporting you. So it was many, many years before that opportunity came around and at this point Tim, I have the opportunity to record the music I really want to record.

So all the falsetto is restrained. I’ve come up with something that I think is based on great songs, not necessarily whether there are gimmicks there or not. What I love about this album is it’s a pure band playing. It’s a real band. There’s no programming, it’s everybody you hear is actually playing and that’s wonderful for me.

TR: How much of a conscious decision was it to have less falsetto?

BG: I didn’t think about it, I just didn’t do any leads in falsetto. I do play with the falsetto in various moments in the songs, but you know? The songs are my personal insight into my own life, that’s what they are. It’s my adventure and it’s our entire lives through my eyes. We can all have our own opinion… if you had Maurice’s story it would be different, if you had Robin’s it would be different, but you can only say this is our life story I’ve written, this is the music I love and this is the music I love now. Even the one End Of The Rainbow is basically about the loss of my brothers. There’s a reason – that’s it – there’s a reason for every song. There’s isn’t a song on this album that I wouldn’t put on this album.

TR: The Home Truth Song sounded to me like you were listening to a little bit of Bruce Springsteen. It also sounded very autobiographical – is any of that true?

BG: Oh no question, no question. These are influences for me today. I think Star Crossed Lovers is Carole King influenced and that was my greatest period as a teenager with Bobby Vee and Carole King and Neil Sedaka. So I loved all those songs and that definitely comes from that.

The Home Truth Song definitely comes from Bruce’s affect on me. And ambition. The song is really about bluster and ambition and “I’m gonna’ keep going no matter what.” There’s different styles, I think End Of The Rainbow is really a country song and that’s the way it is – I love country music…

TR: There’s a song called Amy In Colour which is quite an intriguing title…

BG: Amy In Colour, yeah! Well that’s the one night stand isn’t it, you know? That’s in every young guy’s life – that specific one night that will never happen again, but by God! (laughs)

TR: You never forget it! (laughs) There was something I heard you say that for most people, your heart gets broken, and even though you fall in love with somebody else and very much in love, that first heartbreak is something that stays with your whole life.

BG: That’s The Meaning Of The Word. And you know, you never forget that first thing at school, that first crush, you just never forget that. I’ve talked to Linda about it too and it happened to her as well, so it seems we all go through that event between the age of maybe 11 to 14. By the time I hit 15 or 16 I was all over the map. It was perfectly normal for girls to dump me, they’d just dump me, simply because I was just too possessive and always getting myself into trouble. I couldn’t keep a long relationship going and at that point – the first time ever I had those kinds of feelings – is really The Meaning Of The Word. But you know, that’s what these songs are – they’re a part and parcel of my life.

TR: One of your ex-girlfriends from childhood, I saw she did a women’s magazine article a couple of years ago saying, “Barry Gibb was my boyfriend back in the 1960s!” And she said nice things and didn’t mention [you] being possessive or anything (laughs)…

BG: It depends it who is was. I mean if it was Carol, there was a girl I was dating when I was 15 and I think it’s her because we’ve seen each other in real life since then. And you know? We’re two people who now we’re 69, or she was 69 and I was 69 when we saw each other again. So that’s fascinating because it doesn’t matter what you look like as a person, it’s still in the eyes. And yeah, she dumped me! She dumped me and the next person she met at school is the guy she married and there it is. But you have these things happen to you when you’re a kid and in my own way it came back in the way of the song.

TR: I wonder how much what happened to you at a very young age informed your songwriting? The emotion that’s in your songwriting is incredible.

BG: Oh thank you. I mean I really think that that comes from somewhere that’s not explainable. I started writing songs when I was 8 years old and never thought about doing anything else. It seemed like, well, this is what I’m gonna’ do and I don’t know how to do anything else. It really became about listening to songs that appealed to me and trying to recreate songs with that kind of form, that was it. That comes to me about 8 years old.

Click here for Barry Gibb In The Now With Tim Roxborogh Part 1

Click here for Barry Gibb In The Now With Tim Roxborogh Part 2

Click here for Barry Gibb In The Now With Tim Roxborogh Part 3

Barry Gibb & The Surprising Backstory Of You Should Be Dancing - In The Now With Tim Roxborogh Part 3

2016-10-03T18:23:00.003-07:00

Barry Gibb

For part 3 of this web-series celebrating the Friday-release of Barry Gibb's new album In The Now, here's another transcribed section of my recent interview with him. This one is all about the backstory of You Should Be Dancing and how it's the 40th anniversary of that song going to US number 1. Scroll to the bottom of the interview to hear You Should Be Dancing with just the vocals only and be reminded of how detailed the Gibb vocals and harmony lines could be.

And if you're like me, you might be surprised to learn that buried within the final mix of You Should Be Dancing is Barry singing along in falsetto with the iconic trumpet solo. You also clearly hear each breath taken before singing and the clarity on the echoed line, "Whatcha' doin' on ya' back," is much greater than when you listen to it with the music. I still find it to be a spectacular song, right down to Maurice's cascading bass that even somebody like Bernard Edwards would've been impressed by.

Once you've listened to that and being conscious of the fact we are In The Now and not just looking back, you can hear one of the tracks from Barry's new album, a song dedicated to his wife Linda called Star Crossed Lovers. Come back tomorrow for part 4 with Barry going behind the scenes of In The Now, but in the meantime, here is part 3:

Barry Gibb In The Now With Tim Roxborogh Part 3: Barry Explains The Backstory Of 'You Should Be Dancing'

TR: There was a photo from London when you were recently there that had you, your son Ashley and Ashley’s boy…

BG: Oh Lucas? Yeah…

TR: Yeah, Lucas. And everyone was saying, “Gosh, look at these three generations, they’re lookalikes!”

BG: True. And that was at the Sony Summer Party and can Lucas dance! We’d never seen this before (laughs), but he was all over the floor, you know? But the rest of us could only look on in amazement. This kid’s got some fantastic moves.

TR: Wow!

BG: I know!

Ashley, Lucas and Barry Gibb.

TR: (Roxborogh with a tenuous link...) That brings me then to the 40th anniversary of You Should Be Dancing going to US number one [in early September 1976], it was just the other day. If we briefly go back, because that song’s got some cool stories like Stephen Stills on percussion and something like 16 layers of percussion, are there any sort of fun things you can remember about recording that song?

BG: Oh I remember a lot of that song. I remember that we cut the track at least four times. That we fixed things over and over again throughout that two weeks that it took to put that altogether. And Stephen Stills playing percussion at 5 in the morning, you know? With um, playing sticks. And just the incredible environment that we were discovering something. We were discovering more accurate rhythms, we were discovering Latin rhythms and because we lived in Miami that was all around us so it just happened that way, you know? But it’s still very vivid.

TR: It’s an incredible song. It’s one of those ones I love to listen to loud and just try and hear all the different detail in it. I only discovered recently that you’re doing falsetto singing along with the trumpet solo. And I only found that out because on YouTube you can listen to just the vocal with none of the instrumentation.

BG: Yeah. I think we did things like that. I did the explosion on Tragedy and things like that, just by mouth and Karl Richardson would add various things to that to create that explosion. With You Should Be Dancing it was the sudden emergence of having as many tracks as you wanted. So you would always add something else that made it unusual.

I’m singing the instrumental in Jive Talkin’, you know? Because if everything sticks together it becomes a little bit more unusual. But you kept trying things, you just kept trying things. Some things stuck and some things didn’t, but I remember that You Should Be Dancing in particular, it took 10 of us to mix that song. [As in], 10 at the board. You couldn’t update anything, there was no such thing. So you had to do the whole mix at once with everybody moving faders. My fader was the repeat of the echo of (breaking into falsetto) “Whatcha’ doin’ on ya’ back?” There’s a little repeat on that…

TR: Yeah, it’s, “ya’ back, ya’ back, ya’ back…” (laughs)

BG: That’s my job! (laughs)

TR: That was your job, OK. Well you did that well!

BG: (laughs) But if somebody got something wrong, you had to do the whole thing again.

TR: Is that right?

BG: In those days you couldn’t keep anything. There was no computerized scenario, you know?

TR: Generally artists will say that they can’t tell which of their songs are going to be hits, but was that one of those ones, when you’re mixing it and you’re all there at the same time having to have all the channels, where you’re going, “You know what? This song, this song is going to be a smash hit.”

BG: Well I don’t think you can ever say that about any song. I think you can look at each other and go, “this is great. This is special.” Whether it’s chart special or radio special, this was special for us. I have said before that I think Islands In The Stream struck us as a number one record, before anyone recorded it. So sometimes you really feel it. I really felt it with How Deep Is Your Love and we were just having a great time with You Should Be Dancing because suddenly everyone was wanting to dance and we wanted to make a record like that. So I think it was us doing that.

I liken some of these things to McCartney’s comments about writing a song like the Beach Boys with Here, There And Everywhere and I guess it’s like that. There’s someone out there you really admire and you want to do a song like that so You Should Be Dancing fits that mold. But How Deep was one of a kind, it wasn’t really based on any other artist, it was just a feeling.

Click here for Barry Gibb In The Now With Tim Roxborogh Part 1

Click here for Barry Gibb In The Now With Tim Roxborogh Part 2

Barry Gibb: 'I always felt that High Civilization the song would've been a big hit' - In The Now With Tim Roxborogh Part 2

2016-10-02T21:33:00.000-07:00

Barry Gibb as he looked in the early 90s.

As Bee Gees fans around the world count down these final few days until the release of Barry Gibb's new album In The Now on Friday, here's part 2 of my interview series with him. As mentioned in part 1, this collection of transcribed articles for the Roxborogh Report is a little bit different than the clips that will play on my radio shows and the newspaper and magazine articles I've written based on the interview. These blog transcriptions are reprinted purely with the diehard fans in mind.

For Barry Gibb In The Now With Tim Roxborogh Part 2 I've chosen a section of the interview (Barry and I spoke on the phone at the start of September) where he talked about how Robin tended to want Bee Gees albums to have more songs on them whereas Barry would lean towards wanting fewer. Barry mentioned a couple of songs that he felt would've been hits if they'd been singles, though concedes that one of those - High Civilization - may've have been a little too "abstract" to have worked on the radio.

As far as my own opinion on what songs should've been singles, it's a bit of pastime! Where do you start? Unlike a lot of fans, I love the High Civilization (1991) album. While it may suffer from protracted intros on some of the songs, the songwriting, the rhythms and the melodies weren't just strong, they were really very interesting. With the famous stomps from You Win Again (1987) having been such a success just four years earlier, perhaps Barry thought the heavy, electronic percussive sound of High Civilization could've had similar cut through. The off-beat chorus is unique and it's a song I find myself liking more and more as an adult than I did as a kid for whatever reason.

Personally, I think Robin was right that the Chain Reaction-recalling Secret Love was the best choice as single given it hit the UK top 5 and went all the way to number 2 in Germany. But it didn't have to be one or the other. Probably the main issue as far as Stateside success went was that When He's Gone was promoted instead of Secret Love. This was perhaps due to the fact the similar-sounding Chain Reaction (Diana Ross, 1985 - written by the Bee Gees) failed in the States despite being a UK #1.

Speculation from me of course, but if you haven't listened to High Civilization in a while, go back to it. When He's Gone, Happy Ever After and The Only Love are all beautiful, big-hooked, harmony-filled Gibb songs. Ghost Train and Party With No Name are also dark horse Bee Gees R&B tracks that seldom get mentioned but are filled with ideas (the drum loop at the end of Ghost Train followed by the lighting of a match, for example) and modern - for the times - production.

Fast-forwarding a decade, my position has always been that Deja Vu from This Is Where I Came In (2001) should've been re-recorded by all three brothers and then put out as a single. It had the hooky hallmarks of a potential smash, but maybe wasn't considered due to it being one of the solo tracks Robin did for the album. For fans unfamiliar with that project, it was a almost like a collection of three solo EPs plus a handful of group songs to create a full Bee Gees album. Deja Vu sounds good, but imagine how good it could've been with the presence of Barry and Maurice too.

Then there are the songs left off those 90s albums Size Isn't Everything (1993) and Still Waters (1997) that rank as some of the finest late-period Gibb songs: tracks like My Destiny (1993) and Rings Around The Moon (1997), though there are many more. But as Barry said with a laugh during this interview, "You can't change a thing now!" He's right, but it's often fun to speculate about some of the what ifs.

The transcription begins with Barry talking about how he feels there are no dud tracks on In The Now:

Barry Gibb In The Now With Tim Roxborogh Part 2:

BG: There’s no fillers Tim! (laughs)

TR: All killer no filler, that’s great! Well I don’t think there’s filler on any of your albums but it must be very liberating.

BG: Oh, well yeah (said disparagingly), there always were. They’re affectionate…

TR: (laughs)

BG: …but there are songs that we… Robin was always looking to put more and more on an album rather than less is more, so you know, that was Rob.

TR: Is that something from back at the start or are you even thinking of late period Bee Gees albums that there were kind of extra songs there that maybe you wouldn’t have had?

BG: Yeah. I would say there are extra songs on a couple of those later albums that I personally wouldn’t have put on the albums, but we all have to agree on something or we didn’t do it. Robin wanted those extra songs, like for instance, Robin wanted to record Heartbreaker as us and I never really saw a cause to do that. He wanted to do Islands In The Stream which he eventually did, but I never saw a real reason to do that, but that was up to Rob.

TR: And yet, and I know I’m biased, but there are songs like My Destiny and 855-7019 which I think, “Oh my gosh, these are great songs which missed out on those albums!”

BG: Well, you know, I can’t explain that. There’s a song on one of the albums called Wedding Day which I think should’ve been a hit single, but if the record company doesn’t spot and put it out as a single, you can’t do that yourself. So we were often at the mercy of what they thought was something they could get on the radio.

I always felt that High Civilization the song would’ve been a big hit if everyone had got behind it. Robin wanted… Secret Love. Robin really wanted that out ‘cos he though that was going to be a hit. It sort of was, but it was like a top 5 and now I can reflect on the fact that High Civilization maybe was a little bit too abstract to be a single, but who knows? You can’t change a thing now! (laughs)

How Bee Gees Songs Were So Catchy You Didn't Notice How Strangely They Were Structured - Barry Gibb In The Now With Tim Roxborogh Part 1

2016-10-01T19:58:00.000-07:00

45-minutes with Barry Gibb. How many other music greats would spend that amount of time on the phone to an interviewer on the other side of the world? It was like chatting away with an old buddy, all be it one who happens to be popular music royalty of the highest order. This was also my sixth official interview with Barry going back 11 years now and it's fair to say none of the others have been short either. And still I think of the countless questions I should've asked and hope to have the opportunity to put to him in the future. Maybe one day there will be a seventh interview!

Speaking with Barry (we chatted just after his 70th birthday at the start of September) is always such an honour and through the honesty, emotion and humility for which he's known, there are always plenty of laughs too. I particularly treasure when he reveals something that I've never heard him say before and that's what I'll try to focus on during this series. With less than a week until the release of his new solo album In The Now (October 7), what follows is Part 1 of Barry Gibb In The Now With Tim Roxborogh. Each entry in this little series will highlight a different transcribed section of my most recent chat with Barry, chosen specifically for diehard fans.

Find out the late period Bee Gees songs Barry desperately wanted to be singles, where he'd like to one day be buried, the full backstory on how You Should Be Dancing was created, why he would pretend to be sick as a child, how his upcoming tour will differ from the Mythology Tour, what he thinks the greatest song of all time is and just how much influence his wife Linda has on his professional life. And of course, there will be an exploration into the sonic and lyrical inspirations on In The Now - just his second official solo album after 1984's Now Voyager, though fourth if you count the unreleased The Kid's No Good from 1970 and the Hawks soundtrack in 1988.

As far as part 1 goes, I wanted to ask Barry about song structures with particular mention of You Win Again and Night Fever. Enjoy.

Barry Gibb In The Now With Tim Roxborogh Part 1:

TR: I’ve always wanted to ask you a question about the song structure of a couple of songs. One is Night Fever and the other is You Win Again because sometimes I hear fans and critics say, “I love those songs, they’re so simple, they’re so catchy,” and I think, “No no no, have a look at the song structure!” Night Fever has got one of the craziest song structures of a number one hit in history. You Win Again has a truncated verse that comes in and they’re so catchy that you don’t notice that the song structure is not traditional at all. Was that by accident? By design?

BG: Organic. I mean, for me it just came that way. You know, “what do we need here?” “We need a verse” “What do we need here?” “We need the chorus.” And you’ve gotta’ get back to the chorus but you don’t have to do another verse. You can take a left turn and go back to the chorus that way. And really, the centre of the song, the idea of the song, must always come back, but it doesn’t always have to come back the same way. And that was a concept.

You Win Again – listen to the structure of You Win Again – it’s quite unusual and we did that on purpose. How Deep Is Your Love is quite unusual. There are structures I hear that I’m delighted we came up with them. We didn’t know Night Fever was going to be a number one record and there it is right there. We just thought, how can we just make this a better song than it actually is and that is to go off the path. Go off the path and then come back. Build up to coming back. And I would have those conversations with Michael Jackson on a lot of quiet times and a lot of quiet evenings where we’d talk about that. And how important it was to be not so repetitive, but keep the listener interested.

And secondly, coming up with songs that everyone feels they lived through somehow. A great love song where everyone feels, “Oh we fell in love then.” Or, “That’s how we fell in love.” Or, “That’s how I got hurt.” Or, “That happened to me in my life.” That I think is what the songwriter tries to do and you know, that’s it. Structures, I can’t honestly tell you why they come about, but when they come about, you know it’s right, you just know it’s right.

TR: I’m so pleased to hear that explanation because it’s always interested me. I wrote [once in an article on my blog] that You Win Again goes verse, chorus, then there’s an ad-lib, then there’s a coda, then there’s a second verse – but it’s only a truncated version of the first verse’s pattern! Then there’s an adlib, then there’s the chorus but with a key change – it’s actually spectacularly mathematical!

BG: Right! Yeah, but somehow it flows. And you can’t really explain that, but you know it’s right. Do it, just do it.

Note: Return back to the Roxborogh Report soon for the further parts in this interview series. I will also post links to my soon-to-be-published feature articles for the New Zealand Herald and the New Zealand Woman's Weekly that are also based on this interview. To hear some of this interview, listen all week to the Coast FM breakfast show October 3-7. Also tune into my Newstalk ZB radio show The Two on October 9th between 8pm-11pm and to my iHeartRadio station Coast Soul.

Which Part Of The Great Wall Of China To Walk - My Latest Let's Travel Mag Article + Top 50 Great Wall Photos

2016-09-29T12:27:00.001-07:00

A #casuallean on the Gubeikou section of the Great Wall.

The latest issue of NZ's number one travel mag Let's Travel is out and it features my second of three China articles, this one all about the Great Wall and the Gubei Water Town of Gubeikou. People are often a bit stumped as to which part of the Great Wall to visit and given it's more than 8000 kilometres long, that's hardly surprising. But with the Wall so accessible from Beijing, it's worth noting there are several sections you can visit from the Chinese capital.

Badaling is the closest to Beijing and is a fully-restored section that can be overrun with people. If you've ever spoken to a tourist who was somewhat blase about their Great Wall visit, chances are they went to Badaling, saw the Starbucks, rode the cable-car, battled the throng and left pretty promptly. A shame because up the road in Gubeikou is a very different, very beguiling experience.

All of this detailed in my Let's Travel article, including the specifics of why the Gubeikou to Jinshanling section that we walked over the course of about four hours is everything you could hope the Great Wall Of China to be. As in, beautiful, wild and ragged and with a very palpable sense of history. The crumbling, steep state of this section of the Wall makes this a real adventure - only made better by the fact it is relatively low on tourists.

The latest Let's Travel issue.

Which is odd given our nearby hotel (an enormous modern structure built to look vaguely like a European castle) was busy with guests. The hotel is next to the quite remarkable Gubei Water Town - find out in the article why this newly-built replica of a traditional Chinese village could be kitsch and tacky but is somehow enthralling.

Thanks once again to Cathay Pacific who flew us to and from China in style in their very swish business class. Cathay Pacific and their sister airline DragonAir fly to over 20 destinations in mainland China - more than any other airline from New Zealand.

As far as the "we" described in this piece, that was the group of Kiwi travel writers from various different publications. We had a rip-roaring time together and a lot of this was thanks to Wendy Wu Tours - one of the most established travel companies to operate in China. Beyond China, Wendy Wu Tours also offer extensive itineraries throughout the rest of Asia.

Here are my top 50 photos from the Great Wall and the Gubei Water Town - enjoy!

Links:

LetsTravelMag.com

CathayPacific.com

WendyWuTours.co.nz

The 40th Anniversary Of Stevie Wonder's 'Songs In The Key Of Life' - Was It His Greatest Ever Album?

2016-09-26T01:12:00.001-07:00

Stevie Wonder in the 70s.

This week marks 40 years since the release of the most famous of all of Stevie Wonder's albums, Songs In The Key Of Life. For something so significant I've decided to dedicate four of the week's 12 featured songs on my iHeartRadio station Coast Soul to the album - create a free iHeartRadio account and click here to listen.

The four I've chosen are the twin US #1 hits I Wish and Sir Duke, the radio staple (though inexplicably never-released) Isn't She Lovely and the top 40 hit As. Listen throughout the week as I go behind the scenes with each of these four songs.

There are fun facts like how I Wish was musically inspired by Earth, Wind & Fire's Shining Star, how As later became a UK top 10 hit for George Michael and Mary J Blige and that the album version of Isn't She Lovely included audio of Stevie's baby Aisha crying.

Just mentioning "album version" of a song that was never officially released seems an oxymoron, but Isn't She Lovely has long been a radio staple even though Stevie himself didn't want it to be a physical single - something he battled Motown over. Apparently Stevie was dead against the song being edited from its more than six-minute length into something more radio friendly. As such, he refused the release of the song as a single, but a much shorter radio edit was made anyway and the song became one of his best loved works. Often record companies are wrong, but this was not one of those occasions.

Throughout the week you'll hear other stories about Songs In The Key Of Life. Like the fact the original release wasn't just a double album across four sides of vinyl, but that it also included a bonus EP with a further four tracks. Far from being cast-offs, three of those four I'd put amongst my favourite Stevie songs of the 70s: the funky All Day Sucker, the melodic Saturn and the cross between the two of Ebony Eyes.

Commercially, Songs In The Key Of Life was a staggering success. In debuting at US#1, Stevie became the first US artist to do so after Brit Elton John had made history doing it twice, first with Captain Fantastic & The Brown Dirt Cowboy and then mere months later with Rock Of The Westies - both in 1975.

Songs In The Key Of Life spent 14 weeks at US#1, 13 of those in a row. In 1977 only one album sold more copies in the States and that was Fleetwood Mac's Rumours. With more than 10 million in domestic sales, internationally the album will have sold somewhere in the vicinity of 20 million copies.

As to whether it's Stevie's greatest ever album, it's hard to overlook a sprawling work that so perfectly incapsulates everything that he could be as an artist: funky, melodic, spiritual, political, angry, romantic, nostalgic, optimistic and joyous. There might not be a social or political statement as striking as Innervision's (1973) Living For The City, nor a funk/rock classic in the calibre of Talking Book's (1972) Superstition. And when it comes to a Stevie spiritual, nothing will ever rival Fulfillingness First Finale's (1974) Heaven Is 10 Zillion Light Years for me.

But taken as a whole, the scope and realised ambition of Songs In The Key Of Life is as remarkable now as when it first hit shelves exactly 40 years ago. Once again, create a free iHeartRadio account and click here to listen to my soul and R&B station Coast Soul. And in the meantime, here's another classic from Songs In The Key Of Life that was never a single, though is known the world over, Pastime Paradise. This is a work that would one day provide the foundation for a hip-hop song arguably as important as any in history, the genre-defining/bashing/expanding Gangsta's Paradise* by Coolio.

*Hip-hop was more than 15 years old by the time of Gangsta's Paradise, but few songs in the genre had received anything like this track's mainstream success when it dominated the charts in 1995. The song also quite literally changed radio, forcing top 40 stations that otherwise excluded hip-hop into embracing the genre for the first time.

1 Million Hits For The Roxborogh Report - The Most Popular Posts & Where In The World The Blog Is Most Read

2016-09-13T15:59:00.000-07:00

Tim Roxborogh

Last week my music and travel blog The Roxborogh Report reached one million total hits. Five years ago I remember thinking the passing of 10,000 hits was worth celebrating, so to pass one million is something I'm pretty thrilled about, not to mention thankful for. So a big thank you if you've ever visited and I hope you've enjoyed the photos, the destinations and the music musings.

Through the course of nearly six years and exactly 400 posts, the top 10 countries for The Roxborogh Report are a combination of who you'd expect as well as a few surprises. More than 55% of my total web traffic has come from the USA with my home country, New Zealand, in second place on 15%. In third spot it's the UK with 5.1%, then Germany on 2.7% in fourth with Australia rounding out the top five with 2% of the total traffic.

France and Canada (sixth and seventh) are both sitting at 1.2% with the Netherlands in eighth on .7%. And for whatever reason, my thoughts on popular music and travel have proved popular enough in both Russia (ninth) and the Ukraine (10th) to give both those countries .6% of my total hits.

In more recent years The Roxborogh Report has generated good support from Brazil and the UAE and I hope to grow these markets further in the years to come. But wherever you're from and whether you've visited once or a hundred times, thanks again. I hope you'll come back soon.

Here are my five most-read music posts with my most-read travel posts below:

RoxboroghReport.com Top 5 Music Posts:

1: Barry Gibb And Spirituality: One Of His Most Emotional, Revealing Interviews - http://www.roxboroghreport.com/2012/10/barry-gibb-spirituality-one-of-his-most.html

2: Whatever Happened To 5-Time Grammy Winner Christopher Cross? - http://www.roxboroghreport.com/2010/10/whatever-happened-to-5-time-grammy.html

3: Chris Martin Calls Stayin' Alive 'The Greatest Song Of All Time' - Barry Gibb's Surprise Glastonbury Performance With Coldplay - http://www.roxboroghreport.com/2016/06/chris-martin-calls-stayin-alive.html

4: The Redemption Of Cliff Richard - Why His Singing At Cilla Black's Funeral Resonated So Much - http://www.roxboroghreport.com/2015/08/the-redemption-of-cliff-richard-why-his.html

5: 25 Years Since Andy Gibb's Death - A Remarkable, Lost Song - http://www.roxboroghreport.com/2013/03/25-years-since-andy-gibbs-death.html

Barry Gibb and Tim Roxborogh, Napier, NZ, 2013.

RoxboroghReport.com Top 5 Travel Posts:

1: Tim's Guide To Luang Prabang - http://www.roxboroghreport.com/2011/05/tims-guide-to-luang-prabang-quite.html

2: Skyscrapers And Jungle - Kuala Lumpur In 2015 - My Top 50 Photos - http://www.roxboroghreport.com/2015/08/skyscrapers-jungle-kuala-lumpur-2015.html

3: Kuala Lumpur In The 1960s - Rare Video Footage - http://www.roxboroghreport.com/2011/05/kuala-lumpur-in-1960s-rare-video.html

4: A Monk, A Motorbike Crash And A Mad Mission To Deliver Schoolbooks - Adventures In Laos, 2010 - http://www.roxboroghreport.com/2015/05/a-monk-motorbike-crash-mad-mission-to.html

5: LA 2014 Top 50 Photos, Including Disneyland, Universal Studios, Hollywood, Downtown, Beverly Hills, The Getty Center And Santa Monica - http://www.roxboroghreport.com/2014/06/la-2014-top-50-photos-including.html

LA, 2014.

Contact: For story ideas or proposals please reach me at tim@roxborogh.com. The Roxborogh Report has consistently averaged 20,000 monthly hits for the past three years and has totaled more than one million overall views. I take all my own photos when on travel assignments with my images regularly published in the New Zealand Herald and Let's Travel magazine.

The Best Jungle In The South Pacific? Top 50 Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands Photos

2016-09-06T19:20:00.002-07:00

Near Tenaru Falls, Guadalcanal.

The Solomon Islands may be poor, in some cases, desperately so. And they may also be surprisingly expensive too. Then there's the not insignificant matter of the civil unrest from the turn of the century. But none of this means you shouldn't go, nor does it mean there aren't some very real attractions for this very beautiful country to shout from the rooftops. I'd love to go back and if you are searching for adventure in a largely untouched tropical destination - particularly of the WW2, underwater or jungle-swashbuckling variety - the Solomon's could be just for you.

In an upcoming pair of articles for New Zealand's number one travel mag, Let's Travel, I'll explain my time in the Solomon Islands from August this year. With eight nights in the provinces / islands of Guadalcanal and Malaita, I had experiences like snorkeling in serene lagoons as well as in the waves of a WW2 shipwreck. I trekked through arguably the finest jungle in the South Pacific (the Solomon's still have more than 75% of their original forest cover and it is wild, oversized and truly stunning) and saw trees growing out of abandoned war tanks. I climbed a volcanic island, went dolphin spotting, met missionaries in a remote village and felt humbled witnessing cultural performances on a man-made island built centuries ago.

Indeed, everywhere we went we found ourselves welcomed into villages - often times with food, song and dance. And I should note that the accommodation at the Heritage Park Hotel in Honiara was excellent with the dishes at the restaurant (or brought to you by the pool) even better.

Split over two Roxborogh Report photo essays will be my favourite pictures from the expedition with the first lot of photos below. These images include the two Guadalcanal cultural villages we visited with one being traditionally Melanesian (Lumatapopoho) and the other traditionally Polynesian (Sikainana). Hope you like them - my top 50 Guadalcanal photos (with the Malaita photos to come):

Links:

Let's Travel Magazine

Solomon Islands Visitors Bureau

Heritage Park Hotel Honiara

Why The Bee Gees Gave Away So Many Great Songs - My Interview With British Radio Station 'TalkRadio' For Barry Gibb's 70th Birthday

2016-09-03T00:22:00.001-07:00

Bee Gees in concert, 1989.

There's a scandalous rumour doing the rounds that I was in nothing but my underwear while this interview took place yesterday morning NZ time. Scandalous and accurate, though it was 7.20am here and I'd just woken up. Checking my Facebook inbox, there was a message from an old colleague who now works as a producer for a major radio station in the UK called TalkRadio. He was wondering if I wouldn't mind speaking to hosts The Two Mikes (funnily enough I co-host a nationwide NZ radio show called "The Two" and my co-host is also called Tim) about the legacy of Bee Gee Barry Gibb on the date of his 70th birthday.

So here is that 10-minute interview which covers everything from how I first became a fan, the songwriting process of Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb and just why the Gibbs gave away so many great songs to other artists. Hope you enjoy listening and happy birthday to Barry once again. Here is the link:

http://talkradio.co.uk/entertainment/radio-host-and-bee-gees-fan-tim-roxborogh-reflects-bands-legacy-barry-gibb-turns-70

Is This The Bee Gees Finest Ever Album Cut? Barry Gibb's 70th Birthday

2016-08-31T20:22:00.006-07:00

Listen: scroll to the bottom of this article to hear Barry Gibb's new single In The Now.

In 1978 the Bee Gees were at the top of their game to such an extent that it's arguable no songwriting team has ever dominated the American music charts so completely. There were the five songs in the US top 10 at the same time, week after week. There were the mammoth hits they wrote for other artists that year like Grease (Frankie Vallie), Shadow Dancing (Andy Gibb), Emotion (Samantha Sang), If I Can't Have You (Yvonne Elliman) and Warm Ride (Graham Bonnett).

There were the four consecutive US #1 hits - a stat often mistaken as being four in a row for the group (by 1979 they would do six), when in fact it was Gibb song at number one, replaced by a Gibb song at number one, replaced by a Gibb song at number one, replaced by a Gibb song at number one. During one eight month period beginning in December 1977, a Bee Gees song was number one 25 out of 32 weeks. Staggering.

It was within that climate of unparalleled success, where they were shifting so much vinyl that their record company had to pay rivals to manufacture more for them just to keep up with demand, that the Bee Gees set about writing the followup LP for Saturday Night Fever. 37 years on, the work they came up with Spirits Having Flown has been estimated to have sold anywhere from 15 million copies to 30 million, making it not only one of the Bee Gees biggest ever albums, but one of the biggest albums of all time.

Barry once said that in hindsight there was too much falsetto on the album, though more recently has said that the falsetto-sound was so hot at the time they couldn't not do a falsetto album. With Fever selling a million a week and in a creative bubble where everything the Gibbs wrote sounded like a hit because invariably it was, the use of falsetto hadn't reached its tipping point from credibility to misunderstood parody.

And when that tipping point hit, it was as if black artists who used falsetto like Earth Wind & Fire (Philip Bailey), the Temptations (Eddie Kendricks), the Delfonics, the Stylistics etc were excused, but for a white band to be so blatantly influenced by black music and R&B seemed to be confronting. At least for the predominantly white, male rock fans in America behind the racially charged "Disco Sucks" movement.

The Spirits Having Flown album produced three number one hits in Too Much Heaven, Tragedy and Love You Inside Out, but for me, it has always been the title track which has meant the most. If Spirits Having Flown the album is guilty of lacking vocal variety, Spirits Having Flown the song most certainly isn't. Featuring breathy natural voice on the verses, assertive falsetto for the choruses and some of the most complex harmonies the group ever laid down, Spirits Having Flown stands for me as the greatest example of the genius of the Bee Gees' production team.

While the album is officially produced by the Bee Gees, Albhy Galuten and Karl Richardson (who'd worked with the group since the mid-70s), it must also not be underestimated the ground-work of Mr Natural and Main Course producer Arif Mardin in 1974-75, nor the influence of Dennis Byron on drums, Alan Kendall on guitar and in particular, Blue Weaver on keyboards. All played a vital role in fleshing out the true potential of the songs the Bee Gees were writing. Spirits Having Flown (song) remains the zenith of the Bee Gees sound with a crack band, beautiful lyrics, harmonies and production.

As to why the production is so good, listen for the drum fills, the tension that hits in the chorus with Weaver's synthesizer keyboards, the carry-over of the vocals at the end of the chorus: "I'd like to take you where my spirit flies, through empty skies we go alone, never before having flown," and best of all, the fade-out.

This song stands out for me ultimately for two main reasons: the marriage of the spiritual nature of the lyrics with the melancholy of the fade-out. I once heard a documentary on BBC Radio 2 where they dissected the song's layers and pointed out that with every bar in the fade-out a new element is added to the song. The beauty of flutes, the shuffling of the drums, the keyboard bass, the counter-melody lines of the horn-section, the background falsettos.....This isn't just a pretty song, but a song of immense detail, carefully crafted with the precision of songsmiths at the peak of their powers.

Sometimes that perfectionism can suck the life out of songs, as it did on parts of the Eagles The Long Run album, but it rarely worked as well as it did on Spirits Having Flown.

Happy 70th birthday Barry Gibb and as every die-hard Bee Gees fan also knows, happy wedding anniversary too Barry and Linda (46 years). Enjoy my pick for the Bee Gees finest ever album cut, though there are literally dozens of contenders for that title.* And once you're done listening to Spirits Having Flown do have a listen as well to how Barry sounds in 2016 with the title-track from his long-awaited solo album In The Now (due for release October 7).

*I'm calling Spirits Having Flown an album track because despite it being a UK top 20 hit in 1980, it went unreleased in most of the world.

A version of this article first appeared on The Roxborogh Report in 2011 for Barry's 65th birthday.

New Zealand's Forgotten World Railway - My Latest Let's Travel Mag Article + Top 50 Photos

2016-08-31T13:29:00.005-07:00

The current issue of New Zealand's number one travel magazine, Let's Travel, features my piece on New Zealand's Forgotten World Railway. Visit LetsTravelMag.com for subscription details (including very well priced digital rates) to read the article. In short, imagine a combination of lush rainforest, remote and enormous farms, abandoned settlements and dozens of tunnels and bridges. In less than five years the Forgotten World Railway has become one of the most popular new tourist attractions in the central North Island.

In the article you'll also find out how the golf-buggies that ride this once disused railway were converted and just how much ingenuity and entrepreneurship was involved in creating the business.

Tours begin in Taumaranui and in the eccentric little settlement of Whangamomona - a Wild West-looking historic town that thinks it's a republic. Find out why in the article! In the meantime, enjoy my top 50 photos from the trip.

Please visit ForgottenWorldAdventures.co.nz for multiple journey itineraries.

Links:

ForgottenWorldAdventures.co.nz

LetsTravelMag.com

Paul Simon's Graceland Turns 30 - The Album's Key Moments & Where It Still Always Takes Me

2016-08-27T21:24:00.000-07:00

Ladysmith Black Mambazo & Paul Simon

South African rhythms, Americana lyrics and an album that always takes me back to Malaysia, last week marks 30 years since the release of Paul Simon's Graceland. 30-years-old and 30 years of being a mainstay of virtually every "top 100 albums of all time" list published since.

And the memories for me are alive: the excitement of being woken up at midnight by my parents to watch the Graceland concert on TV that Paul Simon recorded in Zimbabwe. There's the fact I still can't hear any one of those songs without thinking of the big yellow Nissan van Mum and Dad used to drive and the road trips we'd take listening to that album.

I knew as a 5-year-old living in Malaysia (my family was there from 1983-1990) that this was special music. The bounce of the African rhythms, the combined playfulness and poetry of the lyrics and the track-after-track strength of the melodies. Some lyrics always stood out: "Losing love is like a window in your heart / everybody sees you're torn apart," from the title track is devastating and concise, like so many of Paul's greatest lyrics.

The harmonies with Linda Ronstadt on Under African Skies always get me, so too when the instruments first kick-in on Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes and this doo-wop / African / secular-gospel hybrid announces itself as a very, very catchy pop song too.

But my favourite moment from this most perfect album is on The Boy In The Bubble. With approximately 45-seconds left on the track, Paul sings for the final time the line, "These are the days of miracle and wonder and don't cry baby, don't cry, don't cry." From there he cross-between hums and oohs over a home-stretch piece of music that grooves with more South African soul than any other song on the LP. Listen for the dominance of the fretless bass (played by Bakithi Kumalo), the constant of the accordion and the subtlety of the acoustic guitar. It's hopeful but melancholy and it's the Malaysian jungle and the rubber plantations and the skyscrapers of KL. It's a loping soundscape of incredible beauty and it's the sound of childhood and innocence and a place you can never quite get back to. But every time I hear this album, I get pretty close.

Bee Gees Mother Barbara Gibb Dies - 4 Deep Album Cuts From Each Of Her 4 Sons

2016-08-23T02:50:00.000-07:00

The Bee Gees with their Mum Barbara in 1997.

What a lady. 95 years on this planet, five children, four sons, one who'd become the only solo artist to have his first three singles go to US#1, three others who'd sell 220 million records and write no less than 21 different US and UK#1 hits. Barbara Gibb, the beloved Mum of one-time teen-idol Andy Gibb and pop superstars the Bee Gees (not to mention their sister Lesley), has died in her adopted home of Miami.

The best and most detailed article I've read about the original BG - Barbara Gibb - was by Howard Cohen in the Miami Herald - click here for the link. I always thought with Barbara about the great paradox of her life: On the one hand, raising children who'd have such stratospheric success they would be famous in every corner of the globe. And on the other, outliving not just her husband Hugh (who died in 1992) but three of her boys: Andy (1988), Maurice (2003) and Robin (2012). Only Barry remains of the brothers Gibb, plus the eldest of Barbara's offspring, her daughter Lesley.

Barbara and Andy, circa 1978.

For more on Barbara, do have a read of the piece in the Miami Herald. In the meantime, I'm going to take a leaf from the Bee Gees and Andy 2009 box set Mythology. Across four CDs and 81 tracks, Mythology attempted to gather the favourite songs by each of the brothers and divvy them up according to whoever the dominant performer or writer was. Barry and Robin chose their playlists, Maurice's widow Yvonne selected his songs and Andy's daughter Peta was in charge of her late father's CD. So as a tribute to Barbara for raising four men whose music has made so many millions of people happy, here are four beautiful and poignant songs with one each from Barry, Robin, Maurice and Andy Gibb. And as I have a tendency to do, I've gone for lesser known works that I think deserve a wider audience.

Barry Gibb - Tears

From the Bee Gees 1989 album One, Barry told me in 2014 this is a particularly cherished track of his and something he'd one day love to perform live. Not mentioned as frequently as One's other tribute to the then recently departed Andy, Wish You Were Here, Tears is similarly devastating. Both songs have direct, repeated lyrics that hammer home their naked emotion. In Wish You Were Here it's the repetition of "they were good times and I wish you were here" that gets me every time. As for Tears, it's the same songwriting tool used for "I will not sleep tonight, there will be tears tonight." Both songs could've been hits and indeed Wish You Were Here was, though only in South America (going unreleased in most of the world).

Robin Gibb - Love Me

A US top 20 for Yvonne Elliman, the Bee Gees wrote and recorded this for their 1976 album Children Of The World. A soul song with a huge, melodic chorus and a Robin lead, it's a shame this wasn't the LP's third single after You Should Be Dancing and Love So Right. The group weren't to know at the time, but a Robin-sung lead on a late-70s Gibb song was soon to be a rarity and given this would've been an almost surefire hit, it's a shame it's not the modern day radio staple it should be.

Maurice Gibb - Railroad

"I'm glad somebody liked it!" This is what Maurice laughingly said to me in 1999 when I let him know this 1970 solo single was one of my most-played Gibb songs. His response typifies both the good-natured self-deprecation of the Gibbs as well as their occasional tendency to be retrospectively too dismissive of their less-commercially successful projects. This gentle, country-tinged ballad has a warm Maurice vocal and a killer violin hook in the chorus. Had it been a Bee Gees single and not a solo Maurice release I believe it would've been a hit (though it did reach the top 10 in both Malaysia and Singapore).

Andy Gibb - Good Feeling

Alongside Why and I Go For You, Good Feeling is the third in a trio of great singles that never were from his bestselling Shadow Dancing album (1978). With the album's title track a US#1 (and the biggest US hit of 1978) and both An Everlasting Love and (Our Love) Don't Throw It All Away sailing into the top 10, it's a surprise more singles weren't mined from Shadow Dancing. Good Feeling may not be especially deep, but as a melodic, upbeat piece of expertly produced pop, it would've been perfect fodder for Andy's young fan base. The "ooh hoo!" that announces the falsetto chorus is the key hook in a song not lacking in them.

Instead of flowers, donations in Barbara Gibb's name can be made to Diabetes Research Institute.

Don't forget that Barry Gibb's second solo album In The Now will be released October 7th - for details including how to download the title track and to pre-order the deluxe edition of the album, please visit barrygibb.com.

Beijing Top 50 Photos - My Latest Let's Travel Magazine Article

2016-08-04T04:51:00.000-07:00

My favourite Beijing skyscraper, the CCTV headquarters.

I never expected Beijing to be so clean. Sure, the air isn't quite like Aotearoa's, but even the infamous Beijing sky managed some genuine shades of blue while we explored. On a 9-day adventure with the outstanding Wendy Wu Tours (see more at wendywutours.co.nz), I was on assignment for Let's Travel Magazine. In the current issue (visit letstravelmag.com to order either a physical or digital copy) you can read my first of three China features, this one focusing on my time in Beijing.

As said, the streets were near-on spotless and the pace surprisingly un-frenetic for a city of more than 20-million. There were spectacular sky scrapers, unusual and decidedly liberated public artworks, people dancing and playing board games in the park and the historical wonder of places like Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City.

As for the food, even if the restaurants sometimes offered enticing treats like boiled beef tripe and duck blood in chili oil, there were always delicious, less outlandish options available. For whatever reason, I found the restaurants in Beijing to be far more accessible, tastier and less intimidating than some Chinese establishments in Auckland. And it's not as if we were eating at places tailored to Westerners. In short, the food - from the vegetables, to the dumplings, to the kung-pao chicken, to the beef noodles - was great.

Once again, subscribe to Let's Travel Magazine for my trio of China articles, but in the meantime, here are my top 50 Beijing photos. Huge thanks again to Wendy Wu Tours (who do organised tours right across Asia) and Cathay Pacific. While business class is enough of a rarity in my life that I could never for a second take it for granted, I found both the onboard and lounge experience with Cathay Pacific to be superior to any I've previously experienced. From high-end restaurant quality meals to isolated, diagonal pods that get you fully horizontal, Cathay Pacific were hugely impressive. See more at CathayPacific.com. Enjoy the photos!

Barry Gibb's 1st Solo Album Since The 80s - 6 Of His Best Ever Solo Songs

2016-07-28T19:08:00.000-07:00

Barry Gibb.

I have a theory that the tail-end of every decade is extra special when it comes to the music and successes of the Bee Gees. It all began in 1958 when the Gibb family left the grey of England for the warmth of Australia. Then after years of toil as teenage TV stars Downunder they finally hit the big time internationally in 1967. Fast-forward a decade and their late 70s records are still amongst the most iconic and recognisable anywhere on the planet. In the first half of the 80s they wrote smashes for other A-list artists until storming back to the top of the charts themselves in 1987. And exactly 10 years later they were at it again as they toasted their biggest selling album in nearly 20 years.

In the latter part of the initial decade of the 21st century the song catalogue of Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb was announced as reportedly being the most played on the radio in the world - more than Lennon / McCartney, more than Bacharach / David, more than John / Taupin, more than Diane Warren, more than anyone. No doubt a hard fact to quantify, but with approximately 1000 published songs and lasting fame in every corner of the globe, entirely conceivable.

Which brings us to 2016. Before the year is out, before we enter the year of the 20th anniversary of Still Waters, the 30th anniversary of You Win Again, the 40th anniversary of Saturday Night Fever and the 50th anniversary of Massachusetts, Barry Gibb will release a new album. The fact the year of release for the hotly anticipated In The Now - Barry's first full official solo album since 1984's Now Voyager - ends in a '6' and not a '7' doesn't bother me. It's still the back half of the decade and let's not kid ourselves that this article has until this point been anything other than an exercise in coincidence.

That said, maybe there's something about the end of a decade that forces artistic types to be extra creative. In a culture that endlessly wants to put people in boxes and that limit multi-decade phenomenons to the 10-year chapter of their greatest prominence (how else can the Bee Gees get so frequently called a "70s group" if they also had number ones in the 60s, 80s and 90s?), maybe it's smart business to be firmly associated with a decade. As in, do music acts who had even triumphs across the ends as well as the beginnings of decades get discussed as much as more easily pigeon-holed artists?

Barry Gibb as pictured in publicity shots for In The Now.

Unsure even as I type whether this is a thesis worthy of any more debate than I've already given it / fairly certain I've squeezed the yarn of every last drip, let's move onto something more fun.

As the most prominent member of one of history's most important groups, the Bee Gees, Barry Gibb's solo career is the scattered discography of a man so devoted to his brothers. There's a bootlegged unreleased LP, a series of demo albums for superstars as varied as Barbra Streisand, Dionne Warwick, Kenny Rogers and Diana Ross, an ambitious amalgamated album / music video project and a soundtrack for an acclaimed though not especially well-known movie.

Close and repeated listening reveals many a gem that deserved a larger audience. Barry's first solo album The Kid's No Good (1970) didn't go unreleased because it wasn't good enough, it stayed largely hidden because he reunited instead with his brothers after a 15-month split. The demo albums of the 80s only saw the light of day as digital releases years after the Streisand, Warwick, Rogers and Ross versions had given each of them career-defining (and record-breaking) rewards, while it's possible the big-budget 1984 release Now Voyager simply came out at the wrong time. Amidst the early to mid-80s backlash against the Bee Gees, the album went under-promoted by the record company and failed to catch on despite the US top 40 hit Shine Shine. But with a music video for each song, also presented in the form of a full movie, you could't fault the innovation.

A solo followup called Moonlight Madness was ditched in 1986 in favour of a new Bee Gees album (1987's chart-topping ESP), though several of those songs emerged on the Hawks movie soundtrack in 1988. Starring Timothy Dalton and Anthony Edwards, Hawks is a more melancholy forerunner to the Morgan Freeman / Jack Nicholson film Bucket List and features a handful of extremely high quality Barry Gibb songs.

The last full-length Barry Gibb solo LP, Now Voyager (1984).

Which brings us to In The Now. To be released in late 2016 and hopefully still riding high in the charts in 2017 in order to prove my lucky late-decade theory once again, this is Barry's first album project since the second Streisand collaboration Guilty Pleasures in 2005. With all the songs written by Barry alongside his sons Stephen and Ashley, I feel the time is right. Barry is a veteran artist, his reputation as being amongst the very greatest songwriters and producers of all time is assured, as is his legacy. He will also have an audience who are arguably more interested in hearing a solo album from him than they were when a Bee Gees album was still a possibility.

So as a precursor to In The Now, let's have a look back on half a dozen of the best ever solo Barry Gibb songs. Hear the huge falsetto chorus of My Eternal Love (1988) as well as that song's waiting-to-be-sampled opening riff*. There's the soulful Americana of One Bad Thing and Born (both 1970), the almost mournful beauty of Childhood Days (1988) and the Kenny Rogers demo You And I (1983) that is so gorgeous you can see why some Gibb diehards regard the Eyes That See In The Dark demos as the greatest unofficial Barry Gibb album. And then to round out the six is the more eclectic, staccato funk of I Am Your Driver (1984).

Enjoy the songs and for more details on Barry's new album In The Now please visit either barrygibb.com and brothersgibb.org.

My Eternal Love (1988)

One Bad Thing (1970)

Childhood Days (1988)

Born (1970)

You And I (1983)

I Am Your Driver (1984)

*I once told Barry in an interview that I couldn't believe My Eternal Love wasn't promoted as a single as it sounded so much like a hit. He responded with a laugh, saying, "I thought so too! I just couldn't get anyone to agree with me at the time!"