In 1976, an 18-year-old Gibb moved to the United States to work on a solo career. A talented songwriter, Gibb scored his first hit in Australia with his own composition "Words and Music." Top Solo Artist: 'Shadow Dancing' He eventually attracted the attention of Robert Stigwood, who had helped propel his brothers to fame. Before long, Gibb had a new band called Zenta. He and his bandmates split up, however, while they were in Australia trying to promote the group. While he had hoped to join the Bee Gees, Andy Gibb started up his own group called Melody Fayre in the mid-1970s. In an interview with People magazine, Gibb later said "Everybody said I'd regret leaving school so young, but there was nothing else I would rather have done." He dropped out of school in his early teens to follow his passion for music. As the youngest brother of the Bee Gees, Gibb also enjoyed the perks of the rock and roll lifestyle. His brother Barry encouraged Gibb to pursue his own interest in music and gave Gibb his first guitar. Gibb was still a child when his brothers had their first big hit as the sibling singing group the Bee Gees. The family later returned to England where the Bee Gees really began to thrive. There his brothers had a successful television show and started their recording career. The son of a band leader and a singer, Gibb moved with his family, which also included sister Lesley, to Australia when he was very young. He grew up in the shadow of his older brothers, Barry, and twins Robin and Maurice. Early CareerĪndy Gibb was born Andrew Roy Gibb on March 5, 1958, in Manchester, England. However, he struggled with drug addiction and later declared bankruptcy. Andy gained popularity and commercial success with his album Shadow Dancing. While Gibb pursued a solo singing career, his brothers formed the popular 1970s band the Bee Gees. "When he died, it had nothing to do with drugs at all," his mother, Barbara Gibb, has said, "but the damage had been done through drugs in the first place.Andy Gibb began his career in Australia before relocating to Miami to work with his brother, Barry Gibb. On March 10, he died of inflammation of the heart, officially as a result of a viral infection. On March 7, 1988, Andy Gibb entered the hospital in Oxford, England, complaining of severe chest and abdominal pains. Gibb declared bankruptcy in 1987, reporting an annual income of less than $8,000. By 1981, he was finished as a viable recording artist, and in the years that followed, his drug use led to his firing from jobs on television's Solid Gold and Broadway's Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and to the end of a high-profile romance with actress Victoria Principal, of Dallas fame. Four months earlier, his second release, "(Love Is) Thicker Than Water" had reached the same pinnacle, and six months before that, Gibb had topped the charts with his debut record, "I Just Want To Be Your Everything." His string of three #1 hits with his first three releases is a record that still stands today, and at the time he achieved it, it seemed to herald the arrival of a major new star.īut the rest of the Andy Gibb story is not so sunny: What his drug and alcohol abuse in the late 1970s didn't do to Andy's musical career, changing fashions in the early 1980s did. In the summer of 1978, Andy Gibb was barely 20 years old, and his third single, "Shadow Dancing," was the #1 song on the Billboard pop charts. When the New York Times announced his death, the headline read: "Andy Gibb, 30, Singer in 70's, Dies in Britain." To suggest that the name "Andy Gibb" would require a modifier like "Singer in the 70's" would have been patently absurd just 10 years earlier. With his heart greatly weakened from years of cocaine abuse, Andy Gibb succumbed to an inflammatory heart virus on March 10, 1988. And his star may have risen even higher were it not for the prodigious cocaine habit that derailed his career and contributed to his premature death. With his knee-buckling good looks and his brothers' songwriting talents backing him up, 19-year-old Andy Gibb staged an unprecedented display of youthful pop mastery in the 12 months following his American debut in the spring of 1977.
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