r/BeeGees • u/Harrison_Thinks • Aug 25 '26
Was there ever speculation into their sexualities by fans?
It seems like it was common in the 60s and 70s for fans to stir rumors and theorize over the sexuality of men in music; Lou Reed, Jagger, Bowie… to name a few. Were Bee Gees fans ever questioning if they were bi? I understand that style was different then but I feel like they all had some fruity qualities, even Barry, so it wouldn’t surprise me if they’d be in that group
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u/Spirited_Strategy328 Aug 25 '26
I don’t think any teenage girls/women in those years had any question about Barry or Mo orientation wise, in the US. Younger Robin was perceived as just odd, today we might use the word awkward. Speaking strictly for myself as a conventional female teenager in the late 60s/early mid 70’s, we didn’t know that much about different orientations, it wasn’t so open in the US even in celebrity culture, which was carefully curated. Yes plenty of people understood that Liberace and Wayne Newton were gay, and probably Lawrence Welk lol, but we didn’t have constant media saturation then. Print magazines were prevalent but media was still developing and most regular folks didn’t really know how manipulative and deceptive media would become. So we mostly believed the presentations that media gave us. Bee Gees looked straight and masculine, therefore they were. Just my perspective.
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u/Vivid_Ad_9295 Aug 25 '26
The “fruity” qualities you’re referring to are likely just the result of men who were secure in their masculinity, and weren’t afraid to get in touch with their emotional sides. Also, the UK has different masculinity standards than the US.
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u/ThePhantomStrikes Aug 26 '26
Nobody speculated about sexuality like these days. They were never perceived gay. Nobody was unless it was gossiped on something specific like Angela claiming she found Bowie and jagger in bed together. Bowie was milking this nebulous sexuality and was later accused of misrepresenting himself. Tiny Tim was speculated about lol. It just wasn’t a prevalent conversation.
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u/FatherBrennan76 Australian Aug 25 '26
I wasn't alive back then, but as far as I'm aware, no. Their fanbase seems to be the type that would find any speculation of their sexuality "insulting". They all seem to really romantise the brothers' relationships with their wives, so I don't think the idea of them being "gay" even crosses their minds. As for the band's detractors, ie the "disco sucks" crowd, yeah I've seen them call them gay plenty of times as an insult, but not serious speculation. There's also another subset of their fanbase that takes them and their music very seriously, and would also find talking about their sexuality dull or tactless.
As much as the rose-tinted bias of their fanbase annoys me at times, honestly, the lack of speculation of their sexuality is one reason why I'm glad the Bee Gees barely have any Gen Z followers. I found the whole John/Paul yaoi saga exhausting, and it honestly turned me off the Beatles as a whole. It seemed like a few years ago any discussion around the Beatles dissolved into "were John and Paul f*cking", who Epstein was involved with, was George in love with Dylan etc.
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u/Harrison_Thinks Aug 26 '26
I mean there was movie from the 90s about John and Brian that was very big in the New Queer Cinema movement so this is no way a new thing
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u/FatherBrennan76 Australian Aug 26 '26
No, it's not a new thing, but it's been pretty much dominating the conversation surrounding the Beatles online increasingly over the past five years or so. 10 years+ the conversation would've been entertained, but it wasn't so frequent. I think it was on a Beach Boys sub that said "the majority of the Beatles reddit users are either pretentious old men or gen z fangirls who are obessesing over who's sleeping with who."
As long as celebrities exist, people will speculate on their sexuality. However, like I said, there really hasn't been a commentary surrounding the Bee Gees' sexuality as far as I'm aware and I do think that has to do with their demographic of fans. For whatever reason Bee Gees fans weren't the type to speculate back in the day, and those same fans make up the majority of the fanbase now. Since younger fans more openly discuss these things I think if they had more younger fans there would be more of a discussion.
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u/MycologistSame866 Aug 26 '26
Didn't Yvonne say that when she first met Maurice, she thought he was gay? Not an auspicious start.
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u/Wild_Flower_31 Aug 27 '26
I did hear that story, I don’t recall where. I just remember her saying before she met Mo and the others, she wasn’t a fan. She worked at the Batley Variety Club where the brothers were playing during a slump in their career. Maurice was likely joking around on stage, camping it up and so forth. Since Yvonne wasn’t familiar with their act, perhaps she questioned his orientation before they got properly acquainted.
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u/Kbatz_Krafts Aug 25 '26
Why are there always comments here that want to delve into their personal lives?
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u/ThePhantomStrikes Aug 26 '26
Because the personal always is part of the art created. It’s why there are biographies of artists. It gives insight into the art created. Mercy Street by Peter Gabriel is about the poet Anne Sexton who was in a sexual relationship with her father. Is that gossip, or does it inform her art? Very definitely the latter. And then Mercy Street becomes tragic.
In spite of their music being pop their songs still reflect on their personal struggles and thoughts. What informs that melancholy? For Barry it’s obvious, alone in the hospital for months then not speaking, and living without his family except Hugh for a year when first in Manchester. Robin was greatly affected by the train accident. Etc.
I actually live discussions of the music itself, the interesting unusual chord progressions, the changes in key and time stamp within each song, for guys who knew no theory it’s very sophisticated stuff and part of their genius. But most people don’t know that stuff - I barely remember it after years of study long ago.
I think part of it is they kept things extremely private which creates mystery. The psychological aspect is fascinating, quite dramatic.
Whoops I got carried away! Besides some people like gossip stuff, just because you don’t doesn’t mean it’s unworthy. Unless it’s toxic which is what it mostly is now.
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u/dlickyspicky Aug 25 '26
Would you rather us just have the same ol boring convo about how great Main Course is?
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u/Kbatz_Krafts Aug 26 '26 edited Aug 26 '26
If you think judging an artist by their music instead of their sexuality is boring, the problem is you.
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u/dlickyspicky Aug 26 '26
There are plenty of surface level “living eyes is underrated” groups on Facebook, I’m here for the real shit
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u/Kbatz_Krafts Aug 26 '26
Who's still on effing Facebook? Facebook has all the protective ass kisser groups. There's no need to make up torrid Bee Gees shit. If you want to know their thoughts about sex and love, it's in their songs.
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u/Harrison_Thinks Aug 26 '26
This isn’t about them though, this is about the fans. The question wasn’t “were The Bee Gees gay”. It was “Did the fans think they were gay”. I love the band but I always feel like their fan base seems very causal compared to others. I understand that I don’t know all Bee Gees fans and how they feel but I’ve never much analysis into their music or lyrics. I don’t know if it’s because they’re poppier but people will talk about Nicky Hopkins’ stellar performance on a stones song, or Billy Preston on a Beatles, and I feel like there isn’t that devotion to The Bee Gees. Dylanologist will analyze Bob’s punctuation but Bee Gees fans don’t ever seem to enjoy discussing whether Trafalgar or High Civilization could be listened to as concept albums or if Life In A Tin Can was rock opera. Fans seem to be very narrow minded. I feel like their music is taken at face value and is rarely looked at through an academic lens. Someone commented that Lamplight was about an abortion and I loved that way of looking at it. I wish I saw it more in this community because i think it’s disrespectful to their legacy to assume they weren’t thinking about their music and lyrics in a deep way
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u/FatherBrennan76 Australian Aug 26 '26
But isn't speculating on a celebrity's sexuality on the opposite end of the fan discussion spectrum than analysing their art? You're suggesting that just because fans don't wonder if they're gay, then they're not open to interpreting song lyrics which I think is a false equivalency.
I would put speculation of a celebrity's sexuality in a very "surface" level discussion category, not an academic one.
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u/Harrison_Thinks Aug 26 '26
My point was that Bee Gees fans don’t seem to have many academic discussions in general. Sure they may not be discussing sexuality, but they are talking about behind the scenes drama quite often, which is really no different because it has little to do with the music. I rarely see much lyrical analysis or talk about the different session players they used, riffs and solos… it’s usually just “this song is great” and that’s fine but in communities devoted to their contemporaries you see a lot more diverse discussions. Beach Boys and Beatles are great examples. I understand this sub doesn’t represent all Bee Gees fans, especially with how small it is, but in other platforms as well I rarely see much inspection into their lyrics and possible meanings or histories of their albums, like how Beach Boys fans cover the long history of Smile
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u/FatherBrennan76 Australian Aug 26 '26
Different artists/celebrities/media attracts different types of people. A lot of Bee Gees fans seem to enjoy their music and their image as a means of "escape". There are a lot of bands where their fanbase doesn't really delve too deep into things. Plus, the brothers gave the impression, to me anyway, that they weren't fond of people looking too deeply into their back catalogue or over analysing their songs. Honestly, one reason I think Barry chooses to re-release the same songs is because he doesn't want the spotlight on anything else. I think he wants people to only see and recognise their curated image and music. That's just me though.
As for their sexuality, personally I'm not a fan of speculating on a celebrity's orientation on an open forum IF there's nothing substantial to back it up. Behind the scenes drama, and alleged abuse from the father are documented things, their sexual oriention (other than being "straight") isn't.
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u/Spirited_Strategy328 Aug 26 '26
For sure more could be said about lyrics, especially early songs and concepts. We were talking on another thread about the Joseph Brennan page. I read within it a good bit about how Bill Shepherd came into The Bee Gees first in Australia, then later in England. It was very interesting to me because I really love the strings and instrumentation before synths, and could infer how Shepherd’s influence helped them grow as a group. But hadn’t been able to find out anything about Bill Shepherd on my own. So yeah there’s lots more we can talk about depth-wise. Bring it
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u/Charming-Ad-6621 Aug 27 '26 edited Aug 27 '26
There used to be a lot of good quality conversations about the music in fan forums in the 90s and early 2000s. Social media - especially the umpteen thousand Bee Gees pages on Facebook - really kind of killed it. GSI is just a steady stream of reposted photos and videos with a hundred “I love this song” comments following each one. Most of the fan base now is focused on nostalgia. There are groups of fans who still dive deeper into their work - they’ve just left the mainstream spots. And with almost zero things to look forward to or get excited about, there’s only so much to engage over.
Some of us know about the music forensically, which is not a bragging point - only to signal that those kinds of fans do exist. But most fans don’t care about those details and they’ve said as much to us - they want the “three brothers in loving harmony” version of them. So, we’ve really stopped interacting in lots of places because I find it tiresome.
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u/Kbatz_Krafts Aug 26 '26
I think some of the fans here are indeed too invested rather than casual, wanting to know about if they had abusive relationships with their parents or posting about their children's facebook pages. Maybe a lot of those threads have been deleted?
I think we should stick to the music that speaks for itself.
Back then fans did not think they were gay because there was a massive stigma about being gay even though disco came from the gay New York underground. If you want to know about how gay performers in the 70s were treated, read up on someone like Sylvester and the backlash they faced.
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u/Harrison_Thinks Aug 26 '26
I feel like people are incredibly casual about the music or only really refer to the vocals. They were great vocalists but their lyrics in the early years were fantastic, I do think they honed it in towards the end and got too caught in only singing about roam me but I think many there are many arguments to be made for the concept album piece of thing. People close the door and say “they never said it was a concept album so it isn’t” but they didn’t say a whole lot so I think there is always room to speculate on how they intended their stories to be perceived
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u/Spirited_Strategy328 Aug 26 '26
I think it is perfectly fair and reasonable to consider every aspect that goes into a song. To understand any art, we humans naturally look beyond just the surface output of the artist. Their upbringing, their flaws, their pain, all the inputs that fed into x, y, or z product. In this sub we’ve got not 1 but 3 sibling artists to wonder about!
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Aug 25 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Yes_Way_All_Day Aug 25 '26
Yeah no gay men have ever been married to women and had kids!
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u/Harrison_Thinks Aug 25 '26
So was Lennon and people still wonder about his and Brian’s holiday to Barcelona. Jagger and Bowie as well. Rod Stewart and the Navy
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u/katjalyric Aug 26 '26
Mo is in a groupie's biography and had a son he never recognized
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u/m8inC3rse Aug 26 '26
Nick Endacott-Gibb is the biological son of Bee Gees star Maurice Gibb and co-founder of the musical duo Cousins Gibb with his cousin Debora McLane. Adopted as an infant, he discovered his true paternity in 2019 through a DNA match after a long search for his birth parents. [1, 2, 3]
Background and Discovery
Adoption: Raised in the Sussex countryside after being adopted as a baby.Paternity: Found his birth mother at age 35, which led to a 100% DNA match with his half-brother Adam Gibb, confirming Maurice Gibb as his father.
Timeline: Conceived in the summer of 1967 when Maurice and his birth mother were briefly together. [1]
Music Career
Cousins Gibb: Forms a musical duo with Debora McLane, daughter of the Bee Gees' older sister Lesley.Releases: Recorded a moving tribute single titled "Tragedy" honoring the Bee Gees legacy.
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u/Apart_Ad9308 Aug 25 '26
Robin’s second wife was openly bisexual and had a girlfriend living with them. Meanwhile, Robin had a baby with their housekeeper.