The Bee Gees were always heavily influenced by black music. As a songwriter, it's never been difficult to pick up on the changing styles of music out there, and soul has always been my favourite genre.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Soul was the music made by and for black people. For most of the Sixties it was thoroughly divorced from white popular music, but by the end of the decade several artists with their roots firmly in both soul and R&B traditions had crossed over.
I'd always listened to my parents' Bee Gees albums.
When I was in school, I really thought about soul a lot. I was listening a lot to Bjork and to the Commodores. I really wanted to know how they felt. And especially with Bjork, the music there told me wow, that's really her soul there.
I love the Bee Gees, but only the pre-disco stuff. From '64 to '69, I've got all their albums.
My style of singing has always been referred to 'soul' singing when it fact it's more influenced by English R&B Blues Shouting. I'm closer to Led Zeppelin as a vocalist than to Ella Fitzgerald. It was torture dealing with major labels.
Soul lyrics, soul music came at about the same time as the civil rights movement, and it's very possible that one influenced the other.
Historically, black music has influenced other cultures and other genres and created other genres.
Blues became rock, rock became soul, and all of it was colorblind.
My dad was a soul fan and a singer himself, and he loved vocal harmony, stuff like the Beach Boys and Motown like the Four Tops, which was a big influence on me.
I'd never try to be that distinctive from the Bee Gees' sound. I'm very proud of being a Bee Gee and am always aware that I'll be identified as a Bee Gee.