Discobit: Robin Gibb

It's been expected for a while, but it doesn't make it any less sad: Robin Gibb has died from his cancer.

Although they allowed themselves to slide towards easy parody, you can't ignore that the Bee Gees were as pivotal to music in the late 70s as The Sex Pistols were. Neither created their genre; neither moved it along creatively, but just as the Pistols created a High Street version of punk that made a saleable product, the Bee Gees Saturday Night Fever soundtrack took the potentially incendiary sound of disco and made it fit into a Woolworths rack. For that, if nothing else, they were a pivotal band.

And this, inarguably, is a great record:


Robin Gibb was 62.

Gordon in the morning: Karma cancer

It always used to be a little uncomfortable when someone whose health has been dragged through The Sun turn up doing an exclusive interview; these days, they might as well print the things on paper which smells a bit funny to really ram the point home.

Who knows, though, maybe Robin Gibb willingly spoke to Wendy Leigh; a man who views cancer as karmic payback for the Bee Gee's success could well believe that dancing for Murdoch is part of the price of remission from that cancer.

Gordon in the morning: Health matters

Here's something that Leveson might like to ponder. Earlier this week Sun editor Dominic Mohan and showbiz editor Gordon Smart appeared before the judge, insisting that theirs was an ethical, sound newspaper.

Today, there's rather a lot about Robin Gibb's health, matters which would appear to be private and without any real public interest justification.

Richard White, chief showbiz writer, has apparently spoken to a "close family pal" - one of those "close" "pals" who yaks to the newspapers about a sick friend; we all have those, right?

Obviously, if this was information Gibb and his family wanted being raked over by the newspaper, that close pal would be happy to speak on the record, yes?

And just in case there was any doubt:

His spokesman would not comment.

Why is The Sun printing details about a seriously ill person who clearly doesn't want to have that information in the public domain? Maybe Justice Leveson could bring back a couple of Sun people and ask them to show their thinking.

Gordon in the morning: The embrace of death

Filed as an "exclusive" by Caroline McGuire, a tale of Lady visting Amy Winehouse's house to 'pay respects':

A source said: "She went in disguise and kept things low key."

That's probably wise; otherwise it would have appeared in the papers.

To be fair to GaGa, the scant information the Sun has (the story is padded out with adverts for the rushed-out posthumous album) suggests that GaGa did want to keep the visit private, and did nearly succeed.

From the recently dead to the still alive, and Richard White's piece on Robin Gibb. If the tabloids are horrible when someone's dead, how much worse are they when they think somebody is about to die. One thing I'm sure family and friends of Robin Gibb could do without is having the Sun crying fake tears about his condition outside the hospital doors.

The only saving grace is that with Leveson sitting, even Murdoch's papers are unlikely to repeat the ghoulish crashing of the death of Russell Harty. You'd hope.

EC opens up royalty market

The European Commission has ordered royalty collection agencies across the continent to open themselves up and abandon the insistence on artists dealing only with their local agency.

When the EC was considering the question, some grumpy (and, it would be noted, rich) artists argued that if the status quo was changed, they might throw a strop and have a sort of strike, withdrawing permission for their music to be performed in Europe at all.

Which artists?

More than 220 singers, musicians and composers — including the Bee Gees' Robin Gibb, Charles Aznavour, Sade, David Gilmour, Julio Iglesias, Maurice Jarre, Mark Knopfler and Michel Legrand — have signed an appeal to the EU saying pan-European music licensing will stifle creativity.

Yes: Mark Knopfler thinks that saying he'll withdraw Walk Of Life from the European airwaves is some sort of threat.

Robin Gibb is expecting a call from David Cameron

There's some unexpected advice for Gordon Brown - albeit wrapped in some supra-name-dropping - in this morning's Telegraph from, erm, Robin Gibb:

'Tony and Gordon are good friends, I like both of them,' he says. Blair, he insists, is a very proficient guitar player. 'We've jammed.' Brown, he says, is much more personable in private than he appears in public. 'Gordon has too many people telling him to be serious. In fact he is very contagious and infectious. He should show that side more often. People would respond.'

Frankly, the idea of Gordon Brown chuckling his way through Prime Minister's Questions like Vernon Kay is certain to get a response. Still, Gordon could do worse than listen to Robin - after all, it's not like the Bee Gees come across like po-faced humour vacuums, is it?

Gibb also shows the paper round his house:

'The Bishops decided Joan of Arc's fate in the chapel here. Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn stayed here in 1533 on one of their progresses. Oh, and Baroness Sophie Wenham conducted her affair with William IV here,' he rhymes off. 'There's a very old set of stone steps outside that the Baroness used to climb into her carriage. She was short. Dwina uses them now to climb into the Range Rover. I like that kind of continuity, too: the melding of the old and the new.'

Not, of course, that Gibb has lost sight of his roots. Oh no. Because the kids today...

'I can remember my dad sitting under a 40-watt bulb counting pennies, trying to make them last until Friday. The evening meal was a six-penny bag of chips divided among us all for chip butties. We had bread soaked in milk and sprinkled with sugar for cereal. But kids don't question that.

... they don't know they're born, do they?

Mind you, the way his good chum Gordon is handling the economic mess, it's probable that kids are going to start gathering on the Range Rover steps outside his house yelling "a bag of chips between you all? We're lucky to get half a portion of potato peelings for the entire street..."

Whitehall Tax Disaster 2008

It stretched credibility when Gordon Brown claimed he woke up to the Arctic Monkeys. But not so much as the claim that Gordon Brown listens to the Bee Gees every day.

Mind you, we've only got a Bee Gee's word for that anyway:

“He listens to our music every day,” Robin Gibb tells The Times today. “He said, ‘Your music is absolutely timeless’. Gordon likes our music and I like Gordon.” Gibb, 58, in whose Miami home Tony Blair stayed last summer, said that Mr Brown liked the songs — which include Stayin’ Alive, Tragedy and How Deep Is Your Love? — “because they talk about human relationships and human experience, and reach out across the decades”.

Expect lame gags about the Prime Minister "Staying Alive" and facing a "Tragedy" and trying to find out how deep the electorate's love is and so on to be getting knocked out in Tory Central command's senior common room within the hour.

Of course, the idea that Brown likes songs about human relationships makes it all sound unlikely - perhaps Robin has re-recorded the songs to feature fewer lines about love and a bit more about the accelerator theory and non-endogenous growth.

Throw A Penny: Robin Gibb takes chair at CISAC

The International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers, an umbrella body which represents royalty collecting agencies worldwide, has appointed Robin Gibb as its President. He says he's going to use his position to push for changes in copyright law, of course:

Bee Gee Robin Gibb says he plans to campaign for a change to copyright laws on behalf of musicians in the UK.

Currently, performers in the UK receive royalty payments for 50 years, at which point their work goes out of copyright.

"Artists should be getting royalties for the records that they make for life," Gibb told the BBC News website.

Gibb seems to be supporting the push to extend the copyright term in recordings in line with the mainstream push at the moment, but then manages to shoot his own argument down, almost by accident:

"I've been a songwriter since I was 8 years old," said Gibb. "I want to champion the rights of all those people who aren't getting a fair share from their creative work."

The 57-year-old said the Bee Gees had experienced several periods in their career where they did not control their music - including hits like Massachusetts and Jive Talkin'.

The singer said he wanted to make sure other artists did not suffer a similar fate.

"We were lucky because we had some good people working on our behalf, but the reality is that many do not," he said.

"There are still many major writers who still don't own their catalogue.

"It's a moral issue that people should get a bigger piece of the pie."

The BeeGees were lucky to regain their copyrights - and since most artists aren't lucky enough, all copyright extension will do is increase the size of the pie, not the proportion of the slice.

Gibb also fails to explain why musicians should be paid in perpetuity for the work they do on one afternoon - the bloke who built the studio the song is recorded in got paid when he did the building, he doesn't continue to extract an income from his bricklaying for the next fifty years; we're still waiting for the compelling explanation of why the works created inside a studio should, by their nature be treated differently. We're not saying we begrudge the money, it's just if we're being told there is a compelling moral case, we'd be fascinated to hear the philosophical justification that underpins it.

Gibb does have a strong plan, though, to create a label to help artists sell their music through iTunes rather than having to go through the existing label structure. We're not sure if he intends to do this under the auspices of CISAC - presumably there would be conflicts of interest in the collecting agencies also releasing music?

Tragedy

It's almost incredible to us, but somehow the BeeGees managed to really piss away any wave of sympathy we felt for them during their BBC interview [Real] this morning.

Of course, it's terrible to lose a brother under any circumstances, and to believe that it might be as a result of medical malpractice is even worse. But Robin and - especially - Barry just came across like the worst northern stereotypes, arranging a scrap before the wake's even taken place. Self-aggrandising and aggressive, they actually managed to make their walk-out on Clive Anderson's show look even-tempered and considered.

Perhaps the highlight came with Barry stating Maurice was "one of the greatest recording artists of all time", leaving no doubt that he meant the other two were sitting on that sofa.