Bee Gees Retire Name

In the wake of the January 12th death of keyboardist and bassist Maurice Gibb, the Bee Gees will effectively be retired. Despite a claim by guitarist and singer Barry Gibb that the group would continue in honor of his late brother, Maurice's twin (and Bee Gees singer) Robin Gibb told a British television station this week that they could not continue with the name, short for Brothers Gibb, which the band took on in the mid-Sixties.

Robin said that he and Barry will continue to record and perform together without Maurice. "Anything we do, we will do together," Gibb told GMTV television, "but it'll be as brothers and not under the name of the Bee Gees. We don't want to be the Bee Gees again."

Maurice Gibb collapsed on January 9th at his Miami home and was operated on for intestinal blockage. Prior to surgery, he suffered cardiac arrest and died three days later. A medical examiner's report last week cited ischemic enteropathy, a twisted intestine, as the cause of death. Gibb, 53, was laid to rest on January 15th in Miami.

In other Bee Gees news, Gibb's death prompted thousands of fans to visit record stores and pick up the band's 2002 anthology, Their Greatest Hits: The Record, which bounced onto the charts at Number Fifty-five this week.

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Song Stories

“All Along the Watchtower”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience | 1968

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."

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