RIP: Robin Gibbs

[Miguel]

By Claire Noland, Los Angeles Times

May 20, 2012, 4:37 p.m.
Robin Gibb, a singer and songwriter who joined two of his brothers in forming the Bee Gees pop group that helped define the sound of the disco era with the best-selling 1977 soundtrack to "Saturday Night Fever," has died. He was 62.

Gibb died Sunday after battling cancer and while recuperating from intestinal surgery, family spokesman Doug Wright announced.

This spring Gibb had been hospitalized in London with advanced colorectal cancer. He had intestinal surgery in March and, after contracting pneumonia, was unable to attend the April 10 premiere in London of "The Titanic Requiem," a classical composition he wrote with his son, Robin-John, to coincide with the 100th anniversary observance of the luxury ocean liner's sinking. He later fell into a coma but awoke April 21 after his family spent days singing to him at his bedside.

The Bee Gees energized the disco craze of the 1970s with such falsetto-laced hits as "Stayin' Alive," "Night Fever" and "How Deep Is Your Love?" from "Saturday Night Fever" and, from the successful follow-up album, "Too Much Heaven," "Tragedy" and "Love You Inside Out."

Their four-decade pop career was a roller-coaster ride of soaring success, plunging popularity, reinvention and difficult times.

The Bee Gees had nine No. 1 U.S. singles in the 1970s, won six Grammy Awards and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997.
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/l...0828.story

The Bee Gees — Robin, Maurice and their older brother, Barry — were an established pop act a decade before "Saturday Night Fever," with a string of hits, some of which featured Robin's plaintive, quavering vocal style, notably on "I Started a Joke."

Nonetheless: