Gibb Gap-fill
The following text is taken from the Oxford dictionary of national Biography. To look at this wonderful website, click on the logo at the start of the article.
Listen to the podcast, write down the missing words and answer the two questions at the end of the passage. Bring your answers to class on a piece of paper.

Maurice Ernest Gibb was born on 22 December 1949 in Douglas, Isle of Man, the younger twin and third of the four sons of Hughie Gibb, a Manchester-based ballroom bandleader, and his wife, the singer Barbara Pass  At the age of six, his twin brother, Robin, and their elder brother Barry  formed the Rattlesnakes, and began to sing on the stages of Manchester cinemas, performing short sets between feature films, particularly on Saturday mornings. In 1958 (shortly after the birth of the fourth son, Andy) the family (1)__________ to Queensland, Australia, where the three older boys continued to perform as a harmony group at first called the Bee Gees an abbreviation of Brothers Gibb, at beach resort venues in and around Brisbane. Their act owed much to the inspiration of America's Everly Brothers. Regular appearances on a local television show (2)__________ to their first recording contract with Festival Records, a leading Australian label for whom they made a dozen singles and two albums. By 1965 the Bee Gees were voted Australia's top songwriters. The following year their song ‘Spicks and Specks’ went to the top of the Australian charts, although by this time the Gibbs had (3)__________ to return to England.

In London the Australian impresario Robert Stigwood  became the Bee Gees' new manager, and they consequently joined a roster that ranged from the Beatles and Cream to Cilla Black. The Beatles and the Bee Gees (4)__________ friendly, Maurice bonding particularly with John Lennon, who gave him his first alcoholic drink and later presented him with a guitar for his twenty-first birthday. Boosted by an introductory appearance on BBC television's Top of the Pops in May 1967, the Bee Gees took their first UK single, ‘New York Mining Disaster 1941’, to number one. They (5)__________ this with a string of further hits, including ‘To Love Somebody’ (also recorded by Nina Simone), ‘Massachusetts’, ‘World’, ‘Words’ (later recorded by artists as diverse as Elvis Presley and Boyzone, and honoured by the Isle of Man Post Office with a commemorative stamp in 1999), and ‘I've Got to Get a Message to You’, as well as several best-selling albums. Their fame (6)__________ to the USA, where the group's three initial albums, 1st, Horizontal, and Idea, soared into the best-sellers. Maurice Gibb, the most versatile of the trio, played bass guitar, piano, organ, and Mellotron, as well as contributing to the group's distinctive vocal harmonies, though he was often (7)__________ by his brothers.

On 18 February 1969 Gibb married the Scottish pop singer Marie McDonald McLachlan Lawrie, known as Lulu , and she moved initially into his mews cottage in Belgravia and later to a house in Highgate. The marriage (8)__________ four years later.

Disputes within the trio in 1969 (9)__________ the way for Robin's departure followed closely by Barry. Each of the Gibb brothers now (10)__________ solo projects but failed to find any to give them long-term job satisfaction. Maurice went into Sing a Rude Song, a musical produced in Greenwich, and issued a single, ‘Railroad’. By 1971 the brothers had (11)__________ to make the album Trafalgar, which went to number one in the American charts. After a period of relative inactivity the Bee Gees came crashing back into the headlines in 1975 with the disco-orientated ‘Jive Talking’, a chart-topper on both sides of the Atlantic, followed by the equally popular ‘You Should Be Dancing’ (1976). Stigwood (12)__________ the group's new association with disco culture by getting them to write seven songs for the soundtrack of his film Saturday Night Fever, including ‘Night Fever’, ‘Stayin' Alive’, and ‘How Deep is Your Love’.

On 17 October 1975 Gibb married Yorkshire-born Yvonne Jeanette Spenceley. The couple had been introduced by the boss of Batley's famous Variety Club, where the Bee Gees were appearing in cabaret and Yvonne was manageress of the venue's steak bar. The couple had two children, and Yvonne was credited with helping Gibb to reduce his enormous intake of alcohol, which had (13)__________ out of control over the years to become a serious problem.

Seeking a change of musical environment in which to make their R&B-orientated album Main Course, the Bee Gees moved to Florida, where they (14)__________ a place on Ocean Boulevard in Miami, the former home of Eric Clapton. The brothers decided to make their permanent homes in Miami, where they (15)__________ their own  music production company, Middle Ear Studios. Aretha Franklin's acclaimed producer, Arif Mardin, (16)__________ to Americanize their studio style, showcasing Maurice Gibb's bass-playing more powerfully and accentuating Barry Gibb's high-flying falsetto, a vocal gimmick that became a memorable hallmark of the group's sound. Recordings produced during the later 1970s and early 1980s included six consecutive chart-topping singles in the United States. Titles such as ‘Too Much Heaven’, ‘Tragedy’, and ‘Spirits Having Flown’ (from the album of the same name, which sold 20 million copies worldwide) were (17)__________ via Robert Stigwood's RSO label. In this era the only blemish on the Bee Gees' record of musical achievements was their participation in Stigwood's less than mediocre film Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, based loosely  on the ground-breaking 1967 album made by the Beatles. Meanwhile they (18)__________ their recording activities to write material for and produce recording sessions with a range of North American female stars including Diana Ross, Barbra Streisand, Dolly Parton, and Dionne Warwick. In 1987 the international number one hit single ‘You Win Again’ marked the group's move to Warner Brothers. Personal tragedy (19)__________ the lives of the Gibbs the following year with the sudden death of the youngest brother, Andy, himself a successful singer.

Maurice Gibb joined the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1994. The Bee Gees sold well over 110 million records during his lifetime, won seven Grammy awards, and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997. In 2002 the three brothers were each appointed CBE. Although the group's work in the 1990s was less spectacularly popular, they continued to record until two years before Maurice died, their final album being This is Where I Came In (2001), a curious mixture of musical styles recalling both their disco successes of the 1970s and the earliest hits they had written in the late 1960s.

Maurice Gibb was widely (20)__________ as the most gregarious of the brothers, a benign, down-to-earth peacemaker, and a mild-mannered stabilizing influence who maintained an equal balance of power within the trio. He died at the Mount Sinai Medical Center, Miami, on 12 January 2003. During emergency abdominal surgery a few days earlier he had suffered a heart attack. He was survived by his wife, Yvonne, and their two children.

21) What nationality was Maurice Gibb?