Robert Stigwood - Diversification

Diversification

The next development in Stigwood's career as a manager came several weeks after his connection with NEMS began. Teenage vocal group The Bee Gees had just returned to the UK, after many years in Australia, with hopes of a career in the UK. Unknown to them, Ronald Rennie had already heard their only Australian hit, "Spicks and Specks", thanks to the band's publisher, so Rennie had made arrangements with their Australian label, Festival, to release it in the UK.

When Barry Gibb appeared at Polydor's offices in London, Rennie immediately contacted Stigwood, who he thought would be ideal to sign the group to Polydor and manage them. Stigwood had just begun his eleven-month perio with NEMS, and the boys' father Hugh Gibb had already sent an LP and acetates of their demo recordings to Stigwood in an effort to sign the group to NEMS. Stigwood signed the Bee Gees to a five-year deal in February and took their contract with him when he separated from NEMS in December.

Polydor released "Spicks and Specks", which had already been a major hit in Australia, but in spite of Stigwood paying for four week's exposure on pirate station Radio Caroline, the single flopped. Stigwood was undeterred, and with NEMS' resources behind him, he embarked on a concerted campaign (no doubt at NEMS' expense) to break The Bee Gees in the UK, assiduously wining and dining TV producers and DJs; according to the MusicWeb Encyclopedia, he spent £50,000 promoting the group in 1967.

It paid off—within months their second single, "New York Mining Disaster 1941", had become a major British hit and the follow-up, "Massachusetts", reached the top 5 in the UK and top 15 in the USA, the first in a string of Bee Gees hits through the late 1960s.

Stigwood's future with NEMS may have been uncertain, but it was decided in dramatic fashion by Brian Epstein's untimely death in August 1967. Brian's brother Clive took over as Managing Director and Stigwood left NEMS to form his own company, The Robert Stigwood Organisation (RSO), in December.

Also during 1967, Stigwood purchased a controlling interest in Associated London Scripts, a writers' agency co-founded by Spike Milligan and Eric Sykes around 1954, in which many of Britain's best comedy and television scriptwriters had been involved. Appointing Beryl Vertue from ALS as deputy chairman, Vertue was responsible for selling the formats to American producers of the TV series's All in the Family and Sanford and Son, which were adapted from the popular British TV shows Til Death Us Do Part and Steptoe and Son.