Book Review: Andy Gibb

A Fair Trade Book (maybe)



(Amazon has a page for this book, but no picture. Clicking on the picture above should take you to the Amazon page for the book. The picture is public domain, supplied to Wikipedia By Photograph C1299-9A, White House Photographic Office: 1981-89 Collection (see large PDF with description and link to photo contact sheet here). From the The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48695026 .)

Title: Andy Gibb

Author: Connie Berman

Date: 1979

Publisher: Xerox

ISBN: none

Length: 122 pages

Illustrations: black-and-white photographs

Quote: “He’s had three number-one hits on the record charts, and one of them, ‘I Just Want to Be Your everything,’ lasted longer than any single since Bobby Darin put ‘Mack the Knife’ up there in 1959...He is, after all, only 20 years old.”

And his career was destined to end around the time the target audience for this book were 20 years old.

In the late 1970s an otherwise bad popular movie made superstars of the Brothers Gibb, three young men known for harmonizing in such high tenor voices that audiences thought they might be a girl group. In fact Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb had sisters who sang in the band at times; brothers and sisters were said to sound very much alike. Then there was baby brother Andy, who rose to fame as a singer while his brothers were slipping down the charts.

In 1979, in Virginia, the music news was that the Original Carter Family, both Sara and Maybelle, died. I remember 1979 as the year local radio stations wore out their records of “Wildwood Flower” and “Sunny Side of Life.” Who knew, who cared, what might have been popular in the rest of the world. I remember a phrase that was becoming popular in 1979; it described the sub-genre of rock the Bee Gees sang, and it suggested infantile qualities to innocent teenaged girls, who used it liberally for that reason, although the phrase was apparently coined to suggest male homosexuality. I don’t remember hearing “I Just Want to Be Your Everything,” although pop music stations broadcast a lot of teen-romance caterwauling, so maybe I heard it and didn’t notice.

It was sung by the cute boy on the cover of this book,the one whose wavy ash-fair hair looked prematurely gray, worn in a fashionable “bob” curl a little longer than Dorothy Hamill’s or Diana Spencer’s, with the pendant around his neck, and the chest hair sticking out the front of his shirt, because what else was there to prove he was supposed to be male. Meh. Less attractive faces were in the news in 1979; the vice-president of the United States was Walter Mondale; but this face does nothing for me. The schoolmate it most resembles was a girl. Ordinarily I wouldn't pick on a fellow for having been a fashion victim in 1979, but the thing was, girls my age were frequently insulted by an assumption that we were all lusting after characters like Andy Gibb, and that never was the case. I don't think he had a single fan at my school.

The story of Andy Gibb’s life before 1979 is, like that life, short. He was born. His brothers formed a band. He grew up. He wanted to sing all by himself. He did. So far so good: that’s a plausible biography of a 20-year-old singer. Then the writer drivels off, “He’s the type who would buy you flowers and surprise you with something special...” Would he really? He’s asking?

Andy Gibb seems to have been a nice kid but it’s hard for me to imagine how anyone can live down the shame of having been marketed as a Teen Heartthrob, of hearing people say, “That’s what you like, isn’t it?” and, “That? Per-lease! Ick ick ick!” Possibly that mortification had something to do with Gibb's flameout on drugs. And if you think this web site is going to take sides in the debate whether the immediate cause of his death was drugs, AIDS, both, or merely being extra-vulnerable to infections because he'd used drugs, you are mistaken. All I'll say is that in 1979 a lot of people, especially in the music industry, believed cocaine was a "safe," non-addictive drug. 

Anyway Connie Berman, who's made a career of writing biographies of popular actors and musicians, had time to write a short, sweet book about the short, sweet part of Gibb's short, bitter life. This is it. Berman doesn't seem to be active in cyberspace but she's written Real Books about more current celebrities, fairly recently, and bookseller sites still speak of her in the present tense, so this web site is guessing she's still alive. If you buy her book here, $10 per copy, $5 per package for shipping, and $1 per online payment, we'll find out for sure and, if she is still living, we'll send $1.50 per copy to her or a charity of her choice.