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Writer's pictureRichard Challen

Andy Gibb – “Desire”

TOP 40 DEBUT: February 2, 1980

PEAK POSITION: #4 (March 8, 1980)


It might be the most infamous decade-to-decade decline in pop music history. Over the course of the Seventies, the Bee Gees scored nine #1 singles, including a truly impressive six in a row from 1977 through '79. Then the Eighties happened. The Australian trio only reached the Top 40 three times over the next ten years. Forget returning to #1; just getting back to the Top 10 took them almost the entirety of the decade. (September 1989, to be precise.) In simplistic terms, it appeared as though everyone in America woke up on January 1, 1980 and collectively decided they’d had enough of the Bee Gees.


Reality, of course, tends to complicate the number-crunching purity of cold, hard chart statistics. And the reality is that the Brothers Gibb were victims of their own bad timing as much as any anti-disco backlash. (Although, if you read the recent Donna Summer entry, you know there was also plenty of anti-disco sentiment going around.) From 1965 through 1979, the Bee Gees released either a studio or soundtrack album every single year, without exception. But following their April ’79 single “Love You Inside Out,” the Australian trio unveiled no new music for 29 straight months, an unprecedented break that made their dip between decades look even worse in hindsight. Now, I am in no way suggesting the group could’ve avoided a ten-year commercial slump simply by plowing ahead with product in 1980. But the Top 5 success of Andy Gibb’s “Desire”—basically a Bee Gees track in all but name—certainly argues that their aesthetic still carried some weight with the record-buying public as the new decade began.


Andy was the baby of the Gibb family, the last of five children born to bandleader Hugh and his wife Barbara. He arrived on March 5, 1958, six months before the family relocated from Manchester, England to Brisbane, Australia. More than eight years separated Andy from his closest siblings, twins Robin and Maurice, and an additional three from big brother Barry. All three older Gibbs began performing together under the “Bee Gees” name while Andy was still in diapers; they were international stars before he left elementary school. In January of 1967, the whole family moved back to the United Kingdom to better further the Bee Gees’ burgeoning career. Andy would often come home from classes to find five hundred kids camped outside his house, hoping for a glimpse of his famous siblings.


It wouldn’t be long before the youngest Gibb had his own legion of fans and a level of fame to rival his brothers’—with no one contributing to that success more than Barry. Andy’s first guitar came from his oldest brother. At age sixteen, Andy took Barry’s suggestion and moved back to Australia to advance his musical ambitions. When his first single, “Words And Music,” became a regional hit, Barry urged his manager, Robert Stigwood, to sign Andy to the company’s RSO Records label. Barry co-produced Andy’s debut album, Flowing Rivers, with Albhy Galuten and Karl Richardson, the Bee Gees’ own hitmaking team. And he wrote Andy’s first #1 single in twenty minutes.


I Just Want To Be Your Everything” topped the Hot 100 in July 1977, on its way to becoming the second biggest song of that calendar year. (It’s a 6.) Andy’s second single, “(Love Is) Thicker Than Water” (a 7), hit #1 the following March. That summer, so did his third, “Shadow Dancing.” (Billboard would eventually rank it the #1 song of 1978 and one of the fifty biggest songs of all time. It’s another 7.) Andy Gibb became the first solo artist in history to reach #1 with his first three singles, and he did it with three tracks co-written, co-produced, and co-starring Barry. And while plenty of artists in the late Seventies benefited from the elder Gibb’s pop-Midas touch, this particular relationship was different. The decade difference in age meant Barry filled an idealized Older Brother role, halfway between parent and sibling: part mentor, part collaborator, and part protector.


By mid-1979, Barry found himself forced into another role: de facto savior. RSO demanded another record, but Andy’s drug use had spiraled out of control to the point that he could barely sing or write. After Dark is, for all intents and purposes, a Barry Gibb project released as an Andy Gibb solo album. The older sibling shepherded every element of the sessions: writing new songs, digging up old ones, and coaxing usable performances out of his younger brother by any means necessary. Of the album’s ten songs, Barry has sole writing credit on five and co-writes on the other half. (Andy composed just two tracks on his own. Neither made the cut.) Years later, Andy admitted that large chunks of his lead vocals were actually Barry doubling—or outright replacing—his parts once the deficiencies became too obvious.


For all his early, out-of-the-box success, Andy never escaped the shadow of his older brothers. RSO turned him into the teen idol arm of the Gibb empire, a baby-faced Bee Gee for the Tiger Beat crowd, marketed to prepubescent girls too young to get into an R-rated matinee of Saturday Night Fever. Even his best singles were simply extensions of the Barry Gibb brand: those same characteristic melodies, that same unearthly falsetto hovering in the background. Perhaps a clean-and-sober Andy would’ve eventually carved out his own separate sonic identity, but the coked-out teen idol forced to make After Dark under contractual obligation? He never stood a chance. And any lingering distinctions still separating the youngest Gibb from his elder siblings came crashing down with the album’s first single. “Desire” didn’t just sound like a Bee Gees song. According to a U.S. copyright registered on July 11, 1979, “Desire” actually was a Bee Gees song.


Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb wrote and recorded “Desire” in 1978, during sessions for the trio’s multi-platinum Spirits Having Flown album. Ultimately, the track didn’t make the final running order due to its similarity to “Too Much Heaven,” the leadoff Spirits single that became the group’s fourth straight #1 in January ’79. Months later, when Barry found himself short on material for After Dark, he decided to resurrect the song. The released version of “Desire” is simply that original ‘78 recording with Andy’s lead vocal in place of Barry’s. Stigwood Music, the Gibbs’ publisher, didn’t even bother to change the artist when submitting the copyright; officially, “Desire: 5/30/79” is credited to “Bee Gees.”


Unlike previous songs given to other artists (“If I Can’t Have You,” “More Than A Woman,” even Andy’s earlier single “(Our Love) Don’t Throw It All Away”), the Bee Gees never allowed their own version of “Desire” to see the light of day. Nor has any bootleg copy managed to leak out. This decision was undoubtedly made to protect Andy’s reputation, but I’d love to hear that earlier recording, if only to compare the final Andy release to the Barry-sung original. I suspect they’re nearly indistinguishable.


Within the first seconds, a wordless chant of vocals—all quavering in unmistakably high-pitched fashion—plants “Desire” firmly inside the Barry Gibb wheelhouse. It’s the most Bee Geeian opening of any track ever, and yes, that includes every single song actually attributed to the Bee Gees. I won’t speculate on rumors that parts of that vocal might actually be Barry, but let’s just say Andy’s impression of his older brother borders on the uncanny, especially in the verses, where he emulates Barry’s delivery right down to the last tremulous tic.


As for the chorus: There’s zero chance it wasn’t lifted, unchanged, from the original Spirits recording. No other voices on Earth sound that way when harmonizing, and no one—not even a younger Gibb—could pull off that particular style of alien grandeur besides the actual Bee Gees. RSO promoted “Desire” as the first track featuring all four brothers together, and that’s technically accurate (even if those performances occurred a year apart). But it’s honestly just a great lost Bee Gees song, which means it works for three simple reasons: Barry, Robin, and Maurice.


Andy might’ve played second fiddle throughout “Desire,” but in one respect he got the better end of the deal. The Bee Gees decided to keep Too Much Heavenfor themselves, and RSO got it to #1 on sheer momentum (along with some possible chart manipulation), but “Desire” was, clearly, the better song. "Heaven" (a 4) moves like molasses over the course of five interminable minutes; "Desire," by contrast, intrigues from the get-go. It's a sleek soulful samba where skeletal verses explode into a glorious, Gibb-drenched chorus, an early run-through for the kind of midtempo adult pop that would resurface on future hits for Barbra Streisand and Dionne Warwick. More than any other moment in Andy’s fun-but-inessential catalog, "Desire" delivers the quintessential Bee Gees rush without a drop of disco. Too bad it also made him a minor character inside his own song.


Andy Gibb never returned to the Top 10 after “Desire,” although he did manage to score three more Top 40 singles over the ensuing eighteen months. But by the middle of 1981, declining sales and a continuing cocaine habit forced Stigwood to drop Andy from the RSO roster. After Dark would be the final full studio album of his tragically short life. In early 1988, mere months before his passing, there was talk of Andy joining the Bee Gees; no proper sessions ever commenced. "Andy always wanted to be part of us," Barry would later admit. For better or worse, “Desire” was as close as the youngest Gibb brother ever came.


GRADE: 7/10


BONUS BITS: This tantalizing bit of the original “Desire” demo has been floating around YouTube for several years. Be warned: There’s a lot of tape hiss, and Barry’s “lyrics” for the chorus were just “nah nah nah” at this point. But even in its rough state, the similarities between this version and Andy’s eventual single are numerous, and unmissable.


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Richard D'Orazi
Richard D'Orazi
Jun 05, 2020

The thing that interests me about Andy Gibb's popularity is how unlike other siblings of big acts like Janet Jackson, Andy never asserted any independence from his older brothers. His success was driven as much by his brothers then himself. He needed his brothers for hits. This is largely my problem with Andy Gibb's songs. He's not bad and it's sad that he died young but his music is basically the Bee Gees but less interesting. I'd rather listen to the real thing than the teenybopper knock off. Desire is no different for me. It's perfectly okay but not as memorable or good as the Bee Gees. Not surprised they didn't release it themselves. And if this got released today,…


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scanner3
Jun 05, 2020

I’d had enough of The Bee Gees long before this song, so I managed to completely ignore its chart success, and had forgotten it even existed before this excellent writeup. Andy was a somewhat tragic figure, and I still have female friends who excitedly gush about their lifelong crush on him, but this song is the work of The Bee Gees, period.

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RL Myers
RL Myers
Jun 05, 2020

On Andy's other big hits, I can at least hear a voice that is distinguishable from the Bee Gees. Not here. I like the verses of Desire better than the chorus. The verses have a soulful slinkiness to them that works, but the vocal harmonies on the chorus are a bit shrill and whiny. There was always a fine line between brilliant and grating when it came to the Bee Gees vocals. They kind of cross the line into grating on this one. I don't know how much further Andy could have taken his career, even if drugs hadn't gotten in the way. He likely would have had a hard time moving past the teen idol, little brother…

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Ian King
Jun 05, 2020

Always thought Andy's story was such a sad one. Guess it must have been hard trying to live up to the reputation of his older brothers - and then too much money, on top of that, tends to produce self-destructive habits. Still, he (or Barry) made some good sides on the way to creating a career for Andy. This is not my favourite of Andy's, but I can see some of the charm that you signal.

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