Chinook Winds fans will catch the fever with ‘Australian Bee Gees’

Initially, I was skeptical of tribute bands. They are just playing another group’s music, I figured. So what?

Then about a decade ago, I watched a Beatles tribute. Very impressive. Had the look and the sound of the Beatles down pat. It was a great show.

I fully expect that to be the case on November 22 when the Australian Bee Gees Show hits Chinook Winds Casino & Resort in Lincoln City for a night of nostalgia.

“Feel the Fever Again” is the slogan, and since it will be a Saturday night, the “Vegas Bee Gees,” as they are also known, will do their damndest to deliver.

I have not seen their act in person. On video, however, they emanate the harmony and falsetto music that made The Bee Gees — brothers Barry, Maurice and Robin Gibb, the latter two twins — one of the most popular groups in the world from the late 1960s through the late ‘70s.

From 1967 to ’78 they had 23 top-20 singles, including nine No. 1 hits — eight of them in the disco era between 1975 and ’78. Today, only Barry is living. Maurice died of a heart attack at age 53 in 2003; Robin succumbed of liver cancer at age 62 in 2012.

The Australian Bees Gees were co-founded in 1996 by Michael Clift, who has lived in Las Vegas since 2011, and Wayne Hosking. It started with a three-week gig at the Hong Kong Hotel. It has played continuously since then and has branched out to several iterations of the act, including one that is in residency at the Excalibur Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. Michael and Wayne are the two remaining original members of what they call “the cast.”

The group that will play Chinook Winds will be led by Clift, who plays the role of Barry (and guitar), and Wayne, who plays Maurice (and keyboards and piano). It will include Keaton Johns (Robin, guitar), David Inamine (bass) and Rick Powell (drums).

I spoke recently to Clift, a 62-year-old native Australian, via phone from Calgary, where the Vegas Bee Gees were in the midst of a 13-date tour through Canada.

KE: Are there two Australian Bee Gees acts going at the same time — one at the Excalibur and one on tour?

MC: More than two. We have enough (musicians) to do four, but it takes more planning and organization. At any one time, we can do four in a pinch, and we have done three for almost 15 years, including the residency at Excalibur, which runs six nights a week. It’s a fluid thing with different lineups. We have about 30 musicians (with whom) we can mix and match. As we have grown and had more guys join us as subs, it enables us to do three acts many times, with tours in Australia or Germany or Canada at the same time as the other acts. We pretty much tour every weekend in the States, at least three times a month.   

KE: Growing up in Australia during the Bees Gees era, were they your favorite band?

MC: From the time I started playing guitar at about seven or eight years old, I tended toward rock or punk bands. The first time I became aware of adult music on the radio was on a road trip I made with my family. The songs I remember hearing were by the Beatles, the Bee Gees and the Seekers (an Australian group whose biggest hit was “Georgy Girl,” which reached No. 2 on the Billboard charts). There was a Robin Gibb song, and his voice stood out to me. That’s when I first became aware of the Bee Gees. It flowed in the background of our car. That’s really when I became a fan of music, and the Bee Gees were definitely in the mix.

KE: Have you met any of The Bee Gees?

MC: I haven’t had the honor. It would be wonderful to meet Barry. I had an opportunity once. I was having a guitar built by a company in Melbourne and the owner said, ‘Guess what? Barry Gibb is coming in next week with his son to look for guitars. You should pop in.’ I thought, ‘I’m sure Barry Gibb doesn’t want me poking my nose into a little moment with his son.’ I passed. It was my best and only chance to meet Barry Gibb, I just thought, no, it wouldn’t be right.

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KE: On your website, it says you formed your first band at age 13.

MC: My music teacher formed it, really. A bunch of us boys were in music class. She said, ‘You, you, you and you are in the band.’ We knew each other and had played in class, but it never dawned on us to form a band. So she did it for us. We practiced for awhile, and she told us we had to pick a song and perform it for the class. That’s when it went from jamming to something real. Then we played for the whole school.

KE: How did that go?

MC: We played “Sultans of Swing” (by Dire Straits). It had just come out and was pretty popular. We didn’t do a very good version of it, I imagine, but at least it was something that the kids knew.

KE: How long was it after that you formed the band “Red Tape”? You released several singles and toured internationally for awhile.

MC: Red Tape was really an extension of that band. When we were teenagers, we started doing gigs and were doing our own stuff as well. We were an original band, but we had to put some covers in because no one liked our originals. And for me, that morphed into the Bee Gees show.

KE: In 1996, you formed the Australian Bee Gees show. How did that come about?

MC: We were doing an Eagles tribute at the time. We weren’t getting much work. I talked to my agent, and he said, ‘There’s this other show doing what you’re doing, so it’s hard to book an Eagles show.’ I came home from that meeting a bit dejected. Our drummer at the time and I had a few scotches, and talked about what could we do to have a bigger vibe. We came up with the Bee Gees, and that was it.

We jammed a few songs and put a set list together, and that’s how it all started. At first nobody was interested, and we sent a tape out to a few agents, and the Hong Kong Hotel picked it up and said, “We’d like you to do three weeks of it” at their restaurant. The Bee Gees’ “Still Waters” album was just coming out, so that was a good fit. That’s what kicked us off. Right time, right place.

KE: And you have been doing it ever since.

MC: Yes. August of ’26 will be our 30-year anniversary.

KE: And you are the owner of the operation.

MC: Myself, Wayne and Tony are the three owners of the show.

KE: How did you come to play the role of Barry in the band?

MC: I played guitar (laughs). That was pretty much it. Wayne was Maurice because he played keyboards. I did most of the singing, anyway.

KE: How much do you emphasize the music in comparison with the look of The Bee Gees?

MC: We didn’t particularly look like them. The thing we emphasized was beads and hair. You want to be as much like them as you can. You don’t want to turn up and just play their songs. We want to make it a realistic show. We take a little bit of time out to make sure it is a good experience for the fans, who can relax to the music and think they are watching the Bee Gees for an hour and a half, or two hours. You want to give them an experience.

To me, it is like watching a biopic. I remember watching an Elvis movie with Kurt Russell. The moment you start thinking Kurt Russell is doing a good job and follow with the story, that’s the moment the film makers and show creators want. If you keep thinking, “It’s Kurt Russell, it’s Kurt Russell,” the moment is lost on you. You are looking at the wrong thing. With our show, we want people to think, “That is Barry, Robin and Maurice.” That’s the aim. It’s like live performance theater.

KE: So you try to embody the spirit of The Bee Gees.

MC: Oh yeah. The whole thing. The characters — you try to get into that zone and deliver. The performance is important. The energy is important. The look and nuances are important. But there is still going to be a little bit of you in there, so it doesn’t look like you’re trying to impersonate Barry. You want to become that character. It’s a fine line. There’s no better way to do the songs than the way that they were done (by the Bee Gees), with that same energy and emotion. Barry once said, “We try to do the songs like the first time we ever played them. We try to recapture that.” That’s a great way of thinking about that. We adopted that as well.   

KE: You and Wayne have been together all this time.

MC: In 1994, I met Wayne teaching guitar in a music store. His dad bought the store. Wayne came in to work at the store. We put the Eagles show together. Now we have been performing together for almost 30 years. It becomes like a brotherhood. It’s a great thing. There is a rapport between us on stage. Even if one of us goes a little off script or ad libs, we know where the other is going. It is very easy doing the show with Wayne. I’m sure he feels the same way.

KE: There were two major but distinct eras of The Bee Gees. The late ‘60s and early ‘70s had some tremendous songs, like “I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You,” “I Started a Joke” and “To Love Somebody.” Then there was the disco era in the late ‘70s, with the emphasis on falsettos, all the Saturday Night Fever music and No. 1 hits such as “You Should be Dancing,” “How Deep is Your Love,” “Stayin’ Alive,” “Night Fever” and “Too Much Heaven.” Which do you prefer?

MC: That’s a tough one. A big part of me prefers the ’60s songs because of the lushness of it. Those were a lot of fun. I wouldn’t dismiss them as being a little bit fluffy compared to the ’70s ones. They’re still brilliant songs and so much fun to play. There’s a real sort of argument for the ‘60s songs. People sit and listen and absorb the beauty of the harmonies and lyrics. They’re both great (eras) for different reasons.

KE: In your concerts, do you provide a good mix of their stuff through the years?

MC: We do. We feature some of their more modern songs as well, songs from the later albums. Sometimes we play slightly obscure songs. And we have a moment where we do a few songs they wrote for other (artists). It’s a big catalogue, but we try to cover their whole body of work. We try to get a great representation of what the Bee Gees would put together today if they were going on tour. We want it to meet the audience’s expectations. We try to bring some surprises and some stuff for the true fans.

KE: So that’s what the fans can expect at Chinook Winds?

MC: We are using two parts, but it’s not necessarily a chronology. It starts off with a few of the modern songs, settles into the ‘60s and songs they wrote for others. The second set is more into the ‘70s. We’ll put on a good show for the folks out there in Oregon.

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