Andy Gibb - Appreciation Thread

When I was 14, my brother walked in on me jerking off to a picture of Andy Gibb. Just thought I’d share that.

Cute, sweet, terribly troubled. Should have had a golden ride, being the Bee Gee's kid bro and having their guidance and help. He really crapped it all away.

I wonder if Barry walked in on Andy jerking off to a picture of Victoria Principal?

Loved his hairy chest

Here is where Andy Gibb met Victoria Principle. The beginning of the end.

Many years ago a friend of mine lived in an apartment owned by a photographer. He rented a room to my friend, a hot young Tennis player. He photographed a lot of female models who would hang around the apartment. It was a huge coke scene and I met Andy there a few times. He was short, great looking with a nice smile, but was most interested in getting his coke and splitting. He never did it front of anyone and usually came by alone and had no interest in socializing.

R6 continued. The apartment was on 70th off of Central Park West. It was a Penthouse but sort of run down, with big terraces. It was the era of Kelly LeBrock and Janice Dickinson and her sister Debbie. Big drug parties all the time. Half that crowd is dead now.

Was Victoria bad for Andy? How so?

Good dish r6/r/7. Who else did your friend see there?

Victoria wasn't bad for Andy, there was nothing she could do for him, he was already on a downward spiral when they met. She got out for her own sake.

What exactly did Victoria do?

Cuddled.

She didn't do anything r10. She was his gf for a time in the early 80's, got tired of his drug use, and broke up with him. He blamed the misery of her dumping him for his woes for years, until his death. But honestly he was already too far gone for her to do anything to 'fix' him.

Him blaming her for his woes really hurt her career. A lot of his fans turned on her and if you read comments to these videos people still seem to blame her and are angry with her for his outcome.

I bought his records in the late 1970's and early 1980's. Younger brother of the famous Bee Gees, and a Golden Boy who seemed to have a bright future ahead of him. Then drugs and booze wiped him out - he was only 30 when he died. Sad.

I always wanted to tongue his sac when I was a teenager.

I have his Greatest Hits album. Looks so cute on the cover.

R9, It was the whole Studio 54 set. Calvin, Steve Rubell, lots of Soap Stars who lived in the area. Ton of male and female models. One night Anthony Michael Hall fucked Kelly LeBrock in my friend's bed while everyone watched from the terrace. He still looked really young then. It was in the Weird Science era.

My niece really liked him and turned out to be a lesbian.

It didn’t hurt her career at all. She continued on Dallas for years afterwards and launched a successful lifestyle brand not too long after she broke up with gibb.

R12 is correct his wife left him after they moved to America to launch his career because of his growing drug habit. She was pregnant with their child at the time and Andy wasn’t there for the birth and only saw his daughter once when she was two though he spoke to her on the phone. She blamed the drugs and hangers on but seemed very bitter towards his parents who bad mouthed her family to the press and coddled Andy.

His last studio album after dark was a disaster it was delayed multiple times because of his drug problem. He either wouldn’t show up at the recording studio or would show up high or drunk and his voice would be shot. Barry had to cover for him vocally on parts of the album and ended up singing with Olivia Newton John on the Two duets with Andy laying down his vocals later.

R11 I have that 45 single by Andy and Victoria in the exact same record sleeve. It's pure vanilla all the way but Andy wanted to record a song with his girlfriend, and it's a keepsake for Andy Gibb fans.

r19 Robin's wife Molly had a tough time with her in-laws too, particularly the parents esp the mom Barbara who seemed to think her sons could do no wrong. She was quoted as saying there was a lot of interference in her marriage.

He started doing theatre and ended up in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat on broadway. Got great reviews but missed too many shows and he was ax'd. Too bad. Had he lived he would have ended up playing Billy Flynn by now.

If Andy Gibb was still alive he would be 60 years old.

They are all dead except for Barry

My first crush, I used to lay on my bedroom floor playing his records while looking at his pictures on the album covers. He was so beautiful, I like to think of him in the late 70's versus the 80's when he went downhill.

Their sister Leslie is still alive in Oz r24.

Shadow Dancing is such a killer. It’s a Bee Gees song which isn’t sung by The Bee Gees which somehow makes it just a bit more badass then had it been a Bee Gees song, I fucking love that song.

I used to see him getting blow jobs from both guys and girls in the balcony of Stuio 54. He seemed to always be up in the balcony. Always stoned on coke and a real mess. Saw his dick many times..nothing special. He was a little guy , thin and not that interesting. A friend of mine who was a drag queen used to suck his dick every weekend...He did it so often that it was kinda a running joke with us..

No wonder I always wanted to get into 54, but was too young

All those celebs were getting fucked and doing drugs at Studio 54

[quote] he was only 30 when he died. Sad.

Barely. He died 5 days after his 30th birthday

Holy shit, he's been dead longer than he was alive

He was excellent in JOSEPH on The Broadway

When did you see him at studio 54? Most of his time was spent in Miami or Los Angeles. All four gibb brothers wrote shadow dancing it was during the filming of sgt peppers lonely hearts club band.

He was supposed to be the lead in grease 2 but he was so fucked up on drugs he failed his screen test. Andy’s ex wife Kim said that robin and Maurice and their spouses were kind to her when she was in Miami, but nothing about barry and Linda or his parents though she did say Andy’s father Hugh was the one who contacted her about Andy’s death first which she was greatful for.

Barbara gibb somewhat continued the narrative that his ex wife’s family were the ones who wouldn’t allow him to see his daughter. It wasn’t it true and he had to be coaxed to see her when she was two. I think there was some arrangements for him to see her that fall but it never came to be. The gibb brothers signed over all of the rights and royalties to the songs they wrote for Andy over to his daughter.

He’d be old and ugly now, and the ugly would have happened a long time ago because Aussies, like Brits, hit the wall early.

If Andy had shaved his head he’d have been a dead ringer for ANTM’s Nigel Barker.

He always made me tingle down there.

I love that type of chest hair, I told my boyfriend he looks like Andy but he didn't appreciate it.

His pants always looked uncomfortably tight

Victoria was quite a bit older than Andy, and even older than Andy thought...

I met him when I was a little girl. He was very sweet. I remember him because he was the first Aussie I ever met, and later on, I fell in love with his music.

I had no idea he was AG when I met him. Not that it really would have made a difference about anything, since I was a child.

[quote] Saw his dick many times..nothing special

Cur or intact?

^ obviously, I meant 'cut'

Mediocre talent, lucky to have superstar brothers, who were also far better at songwriting than singing. They sang backup on and cowrote most of his hits, of course. "Shadow Dancing" and "I Just Want To Be Your Everything" still hold up well enough. Lost his mind when he realized he wasn't talented enough to extend his teen idol fame. His brothers should have let them join their group to protect him.

Victoria basically used him to try to be a pop singer. That is how the duet happened. She was also doing a lot of coke, but didnt get screwed up like he did. But she is not the angel she makes herself out to be in that relationship. Barry refused to let her attend his funeral.

I heard Victoria is what made him worse. She didn’t help him in any way.

No she didn’t r44, it was Andy that that the duets were a good idea. They also recorded will you still live me tomorrow but it was never released. She did do coke but she could always take it or leave it and it never interfered in her professional life.

Andy was a man child and his mother conceded that he never grew up. He courted Victoria like a 16 year old boy which she loved for awhile but it got old for her fast. She did love him but he was much more invested in the relationship then she was and he was naive as far as what he was getting into. He thought she was going to be like pam Ewing. She married the plastic surgeon that Andy took her to when she got her eyes done.

Olivia was the only one who got into and out of the coke scene relatively unscathed.

I always wanted her to save him.

Marie O. has claimed, "It was Andy . . . "

Andy's personal assistant during that time was a guy named Marc Hulett who has been Barry Manilow's personal assistant for many years and like Manilow is a gay man.

One of Hulett and Manilow's best friends is DL fave Lorna "I was molested" Luft.

Here's Manilow, Luft and Hulett.

Here's the article from R48's People magazine cover photo. It was a PR disaster and Andy was devastated when the article came out.

Marie Osmond said that Andy was an empty person.

He got a ton of fame far too young, also took a ton of drugs, and it staved off any personal growth that he might have done.

Why was the 1980 People article considered a pr disaster? It reads like many of the other celeb profiles of the day. Was it the drug talk?

as a kid I loved the part in Shadow Dancing when he goes uh uh ...

No it doesn't R53. He was a teen idol at the the time and was being written about as a shallow drug addict whose addiction made him unreliable as a performer at a time that he was wanting to branch out into more things (films). The article was supposed to be a puff piece, but the writer Fred Bernstein had his own agenda. After Dark, the last studio album Andy made was supposed to be released in summer 1979, Olivia and Andy performed one of the duet tracks for a UNICEF benefit the Bee Gees helped put together in early 1979. The album didn't come out until the spring of 1980 and yes the album was stale and the Bee Gees backlash was starting to take affect. Also by then, the brothers were about to split and sue Robert Stigwood so Stigwood had no incentive to try and steer Gibb's career back on track so later on in the year he was let go.

The biggest hit from the album "Desire" was a throwaway track from the Bee Gees Spirits Having Flown album. Here's the demo that was recorded in 1978 but was ultimately rejected for the Spirits Having Flown album.

Thanks r55 that clarifies. But what were Bernstein's reasons for shafting Andy though? what was his agenda.

Would the anti-Bee Gee backlash have been in effect then, early 1980? They would have just been coming off the hugely successful SHF tour a few months earlier, and I think were still touring. That album had been huge the previous year, sales- and hits-wise.

Nice to see a knowledgeable Bee Gees fan here. Used to be a huge follower myself back in the day, knew a lot about the whole family.

He looks just like Michael Beck from Xanadu and The Warriors.

By late 1979 radio stations were starting to advertise a "Bee Gees free radio weekend" and the group was lumped into the disco sucks movement. I don't know what Bernstein's issue was with Gibb but another journalist had him as a professor and Bernstein claimed that article to be one of the best of his career.

The older Gibb brothers and their sister grew up in poverty and in some pretty desperate and dire times. Barry spilled a hot tea kettle on himself when he was a baby and it took him a year to heal and the brothers were juvenile delinquents at times. Also they were rejected numerous times and were exposed pretty early to some of the seedier sides of the music business. It gave them a thick skin that served them well when they had periods of career decline. The Gibbs moved to Australia when Andy was six months old and their situation began to improve. Andy grew up in luxury for most of his childhood and never developed the toughness and resilience his older siblings did. When things went bad, he fell apart and wasn't really able to cope and his brothers have said he retreated into a bubble when he couldn't face the real world. Their mother, by all accounts was a great lady but had a huge blind spot in regards to her sons behavior and blamed girlfriends or the ex wife and her family and not Andy himself. He was kept a little boy for most of his life. His mother grudgingly admitted he was a Peter Pan

Does anyone know why Andy is buried in Forest Lawn in LA, and not in England where he last lived and died? It seems a lot of effort to fly his body all the way to LA and have a funeral there, when he only lived there at most a few years and they weren't necessarily his happiest.

I know both his parents are also buried there, very near to him - did they ever live in LA more than a couple of years?

He died while staying at Robin's place in Oxfordshire. Wouldn't it have been easier to bury him in the local churchyard there, where Robin was also later interred?

He was my teenage crush, but I had never read the People article before. By 1980 I, and most people, had moved onto New Wave, etc., I was stunned by the article for that time period. Guns, drugs, and porn is not what teen idols spoke about in magazines. Even the Jonas Brothers did their fake virginity shit. People really hated the Bee Bees at that point and it spread to Andy as well. It was the whole anti disco thing.

He was such a mess. Wasn't he fired from Solid Gold?

RIP. Gone too soon.

Andy's doll in the box sells for about $30. Dorothy Hammil's sells for about $200. That says it all.

Farrah Fawcett got her own Barbie a few years ago. Too bad she was dead at the time.

Its hard to maintain being a hot artist when your first 3 singles are huge #1 hits. A lot of artists couldnt segue into the 80s...

That happens every decade, r65. Most 80s artists couldn't segue into the 90s except for the really big stars like Madonna, Whitney etc.

So weird how much the brothers don't look alike. The youngest and the oldest look similar, but the twins look like they are from another family and they look absolutely nothing alike.

I thought Maurice was actually quite handsome. Robin - no.

R59 from what I understand he considered America his home. His parents were living in LA at the time and eventually Las Vegas. He spent most of his life in Australia and the U.S. His dad never recovered from Andy's death and died a few years later. His mother died two years ago.

Andy almost held his own with Nell Carter, which is saying something.

Beloved Andy, dead for 30 years now.

His first big hit. #1...…..

He was the harriest B-G ever.

Victoria Principal played tether ball with his heart. That is why he died.

r55 Olivia Newton-John's duet, killed his career like all her duets do

I would have liked a Barry/Andy sandwich as long as neither of them spoke

I forgot that he died of myocarditis, not a drug overdose. But years of taking drugs had obviously done great damage to his heart.

RIP

R59

The Gibb Brothers are buried all over the place. Maurice in Florida, Robin in Thame UK and Andy in LA (as are their parents).

Just seems the family never really established roots anywhere. The older siblings were born in The Isle of Man and Andy in Manchester UK. The family emigrated to Australia in 1958 (probably part of the "Ten Pound Pom" scheme), but the brothers returned to the UK less than 10 years later and their parents (plus Andy) moved to Ibiza in Spain.

They all ended up in the US for a time, some of them stayed and some left.

Andy dropped out of school at 13, I think his brothers were around the same age when they quit school as well. After the brothers had their first round of fame in the 60's, Andy's parents moved him from Australia, back to Manchester, to Ibiza, the Isle of Man, then back to Australia where he got his professional start and met his wife. His older sister Lesley still lives in Australia and has about 8 kids.

ONJ was reportedly disappointed that the duets she recorded with Gibb took so long to be released and she thought they were stale by the time "I Can't Help It" was released as a single in early 1980. Barry actually had to record the two duets with Olivia because Andy was so messed up on drugs he wouldn't show up to the recording studio. The first one was a song called "Rest Your Love On Me" which was an earlier Bee Gees record and would later become a country hit for Conway Twitty.

Daughter Peta speaks. Seems like drugs were a problem in his marriage as well.

Loved Andy, but not like I loved Shaun Cassidy before him.

If there was ever a boy who let his essence be penetrated by celebrity it was me and my first and longest was Andy Gibb. I was 11 and his shirtless pics in People do detailed perfectly with the budding sensations in my loins. I was soon to find out that Love Is truly Thicker Than Water.

Game. Set. Match.

RIP

My crush was Bobby Sherman.

I had a choker and everything Bobby.

Andy Gibb was hot as was his oldest brother Barry.

The other two were fug.

This is my favorite Andy song. Perfect pop.