Barry Gibb, the sole surviving member of the Bee Gees, was knighted yesterday (June 26th) at Buckingham Palace by Prince Charles. Variety reported that “Sir Barry” said it felt “a bit surreal,” and called the coveted honor “A high award that your culture can give you and that is something I am enormously proud of.”

Gibb — who in 2004 had previously awarded the CBE (Commander of the British Empire) with late-brother Robin Gibb along with nephew Adam Gibb accepting on behalf of his late-father, Maurice Gibb — attended the investiture with his wife of 48 years, Linda, and three of their five children, Michael, Alexandra, and Ashley.

At Buckingham Palace, Barry Gibb was asked by The Daily Mail how he felt receiving the honor: “Very proud. Very proud. And my family, everybody’s been bouncing off the wall, because nobody really understands that this could happen. But (I) just don’t think that this could happen for me today without my brothers. The idea of what we did together was something that we shared our entire lives, y’know? And we were relentless. It didn’t matter if something didn’t work out — we just kept going.”

When asked if he spoke with Prince Charles, Gibb said: “We have played for Prince Charles a number of times and he’s very, very affable, very kind and very sweet to us and has been to me on various occasions. So it’s not like. . . It’s not like we really know each other, but he has sort of, a little bit of a look, like ‘I know you,’ y’know? And mainly about knees, because when I bent down. . . He said, ‘You can stand up now,’ and I said, ‘I don’t think I can.’ So, he said, ‘No, it doesn’t get any easier does it?'”

In October 2016 Barry Gibb released his second solo album, titled, In The Now. Gibb, whose last official solo release was 1984’s Now Voyager, wrote, co-produced, and performed on Barbra Streisand‘s 2005 collection, Guilty Pleasures.  As was the case on that album, Gibb has once again enlisted the help of his sons Ashley and Stephen Gibb, along with co-producer John Merchant. The 12-track album features Gibb’s backing band for his recent Mythology tours.