Quote Of The Day By Barry Gibb: 'Once I'd Lost All My Brothers, I Just Sat Around For A Long Time. You Never ...'

Barry Gibb was destined to make music with his brothers in the Bee Gees. But when he was the last one on the dance floor, the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer found some somber wisdom to keep the music going.

Barry, born on September 1, 1946, on the U.K.'s Isle of Man, is the eldest son of his bandleader father. So, it was natural for him and his brothers, fraternal twins Robin and Maurice, to join the family business. Their first group was a skiffle band, which brought them a flash of childhood fame. The brothers continued making music after their family emigrated to Australia, forming a new group dubbed the "Bee Gees." After returning to the U.K. in the late '60s, they teamed up with film producer and music manager Robert Stigwood, eventually resulting in the Bee Gees being featured on the epic soundtrack to 1977's "Saturday Night Fever."

Thanks to songs such as "Jive Talkin'" and "Night Fever," Barry Gibb and the Bee Gees became synonymous with disco and dancing. When the sound fell out of fashion as the decades rolled on, the Bee Gees kept on dancing, evolving their sound over a total of 21 studio albums. But sadly, the party stopped after Maurice Gibb died in 2003 (15 years after the youngest Gibb brother, Andy, suffered a fatal heart virus). When Robin died in 2012, Barry pondered if he should let the music fade. His fortitude is why Barry's is today's quote of the day.

"Once I'd lost all my brothers, I just sat around for a long time. You never get past that, that's what you learn."

Barry Gibb said this in 2014 when fielding "10 Questions" from Time magazine. The first question was why Barry, who was 67 at the time, decided he would embark on his first-ever solo tour two years after Robin Gibb's death had made Barry the last surviving member of the Bee Gees. "My wife just said, 'Do something. Get out of the house. Get on the stage again,'" Barry recalled. "She drove me to it."

Dubbed the "Mythology" tour, the 16-concert run saw Barry perform many of the Bee Gees' biggest hits, while also singing many of the songs Barry and his brothers wrote for other stars, like Diana Ross' "Chain Reaction" and Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers' "Islands in the Stream." For many, it was a remarkable chance to hear these songs live, from one of their original creators. Following Maurice's death in 2003, the group retired the Bee Gees name. And with Robin's passing in 2012, Barry was left grieving and pondering his future.

By revealing that the death of his brothers is something that "you never get past," Barry Gibb acknowledged that loss is not a temporary condition. There is no cure for loss. Grief lessens over time, sure, but the loss of someone you love changes your life in profound ways. "Neither [he nor Robin] could really come to terms with Mo's sudden death, or losing Andy when he was only 30," Barry told Time.

The last remaining Brother Gibb had to learn how to stand in the spotlight by himself. "I can be onstage and still imagine that they're standing there, especially when we used to be around one microphone," he said. "I still feel that intensely, but I also feel it in real life."

Getting out of his grief and back on stage helped Barry continue his music legacy. In 2016, he released "In the Now," his second solo album and first since 1984's "Now Voyager." In 2021, he released "Greenfields: The Gibb Brothers Songbook, Vol. 1," a collection of country versions of Bee Gees songs. He'll always feel his brothers' absence, but he's made peace with their deaths and carried on with his own life. 

• "I'm in defiance of time."
• "I remember saying to one of my first girlfriends at 14 years old that if she dumped me she was making a mistake 'cause I was going to be famous. I actually said that!"
• "There's fame and there's ultra-fame and it can destroy. You lose your perspective, you're in the eye of a hurricane and you don't know you're there."
• "There was nothing more fun than singing in three-part harmony."
• "We were 45 years as a group so stepping away from that has never been easy and even today it wouldn't be any easier if we were all together."
• "I care that the music lives, and I do everything in my power to enhance that. That's my mission."
• "I just want to be remembered as one of the Bee Gees."