Bee Gees co-founder Robin Gibb dies at 62

Reuters/LondonBee Gees singer Robin Gibb, who with brothers Barry and Maurice helped define the disco era with their falsetto harmonies and funky beats on hits like Stayin’ Alive and Jive Talkin’, has died after a long fight with cancer. He was 62.The singer had colon and liver cancer and, despite brief improvements in his health in recent months, passed away on Sunday evening.Gibb died at the London Clinic surrounded by his second wife Dwina, sons Spencer and Robin-John and daughter Melissa. Officials at the clinic declined to comment yesterday.Barry, now the last surviving member of the Bee Gees, had been in Britain in recent weeks to see his ailing brother, but was in the US when he died.Funeral arrangements are expected to be announced later this week, a spokesman said.“The family have asked that their privacy is respected at this very difficult time,” read a statement on Gibb’s website. Fans, fellow musicians and politicians paid tribute to the musician, and at the Billboard Music Awards in Las Vegas late on Sunday the show stopped for a moment of silence to honour him.Canadian rocker Bryan Adams was among the stars who took to Twitter to say farewell. “Robin Gibb RIP. Very sad to hear about yet another great singer dying too young,” he wrote, referring to the death on Thursday of another giant of the disco era, Donna Summer. She was 63. Former prime minister Tony Blair, a friend, called Gibb “a highly intelligent, interested and committed human being.”“He was a great friend with a wonderful open and fertile mind and a student of history and politics. I will miss him very much,” he said in a statement. “My thoughts and prayers are with Dwina and all the family.”Gibb spent much of a career spanning six decades pursuing solo projects. But it was his part in one of pop’s most successful brother acts, the Bee Gees, that earned him fame and fortune.Born in 1949 on the Isle of Man, located between England and Ireland, Robin and his family moved to Manchester where the brothers performed in local cinemas.They went to live in Australia where the Bee Gees as a group was officially born, and in 1963 released the first single The Battle Of The Blue And The Grey.Believing their future lay in Europe, the Gibb brothers travelled to England to pursue a career in music and had their first British number one with Massachusetts in 1967.The same year, Robin and wife-to-be Molly survived the Hither Green rail crash in south London that claimed around 50 lives. He later recalled that they probably would have been killed had they not been sitting in a first class carriage.Rather than build on the early successes, the Bee Gees almost threw away the promising career they had worked so hard to achieve. After recording the double-LP set “Odessa,” the siblings fell out over which track should be the single and Robin walked out.Two years later the Gibbs were back together, and the 1970s was to belong to them. Early in the decade they released the ballads Lonely Days and How Can You Mend a Broken Heart, which topped the US charts in 1971. They struggled to maintain the momentum and critics felt the brothers had become stale until, in 1975, the Bee Gees changed course with an emphasis on dance-friendly tunes featuring high harmonies on their 13th album Main Course.It produced the catchy chart-topper Jive Talkin’, which then led to an invitation to contribute to the soundtrack for the upcoming movie Saturday Night Fever.The Bee Gees’ contributions would prove the pinnacle of their fame - Stayin’ Alive, How Deep Is Your Love, Night Fever and More Than a Woman are all among their most recognisable songs, featuring the band’s distinctive high vocals and harmonies, disco beats and slower romantic ballads.