Barry Gibb was born to Barbara and Hugh Gibb in the Isle of Man. When he was 12 years old, his family moved to Brisbane, Australia, settling in one of the city's poorest suburbs, Cribb Island. The suburb was later bulldozed to make way for Brisbane Airport. It was in Australia that Gibb and his brothers Robin and Maurice started performing as the Bee Gees. The Gibb family returned to England in 1967. Shortly afterward, the Bee Gees became international stars.
The Bee Gees rank sixth on the all-time top-sellers list. When they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997. The trio's contribution to Saturday Night Fever pushed the film's soundtrack past the 40 million mark in sales. It reigned as the top-selling album until Michael Jackson's Thriller. They are the only group in pop history to write, produce, and record six straight No. 1 hits. They have 16 Grammy nominations and nine Grammy wins. In 1978, he had five songs simultaneously in the Top Ten of the Billboard Hot 100, and for one week in March, four of the top five songs were written by him. His songs were No. 1 for 27 out of 37 weeks from 24 December 1977 to 2 September 1978. As a songwriter Gibb has had No. 1 songs in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, when (Barry) Islands in the Stream became number 1 in the UK as the Comic Relief single for 2009. His songs have been recorded by numerous artists, including Destiny's Child, Celine Dion, Feist, José Feliciano, Al Green, Wyclef Jean, Janis Joplin, Barry Manilow, Olivia Newton-John, Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley, Kenny Rogers, Diana Ross, Nina Simone, Barbra Streisand, Tina Turner, Frankie Valli, Luther Vandross, Sarah Vaughn, Jennifer Warnes, Dionne Warwick, and Andy Williams.
On 14 March 2009, Gibb teamed with Olivia Newton-John to present the one-hour finale performance at a star-studded 12-hour live concert at Sydney's Sydney Cricket Ground, part of Sound Relief, a fundraiser to aid victims of the February 2009 Victorian Bushfires that devastated large tracts of heavily wooded and populated south-eastern Australia. The concert was televised live nationally across Australia on the Max TV cable network.