Stevie Wright obituary

For Australian music fans in the 1960s, the Easybeats were the Beatles and the Stones rolled into one. The group’s vocalist, Stevie Wright, who has died aged 68 after suffering from pneumonia, was one of the most uninhibited and exciting performers of the era, and singers including Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, Bon Scott of AC/DC and Michael Hutchence of INXS have acknowledged their debt to him.

Between 1965 and 1969, the Easybeats notched up 14 Top 40 hit singles in Australia, including two No 1s, and a chart-topping EP. With the guitarist George Young, Wright co-wrote several of their early hits, including For My Woman, She’s So Fine and Women (Make You Feel Alright). However, it was a composition by Young and the lead guitarist Harry Vanda that broke them out to a global audience.

The group’s 1966 single Friday on My Mind was constructed from a throbbing guitar riff with a vaguely raga-like feel, and the song contrasted the drudgery of the working week with the hedonistic abandon of the weekend. As it erupted into its gloriously melodic verses, Wright sang as though cramming a lifetime of good times into 2 minutes 45 seconds – “gonna have fun in the city, be with my girl she’s so pretty...” The message rang out loud and clear, and the song reached No 1 in Australia, No 6 in the UK, 16 in the US, and the Top 10 in numerous charts around the world.

The track had been recorded in London, produced by Shel Talmy (famed for his work with the Who and the Kinks), and it shot the Easybeats into the top flight of London’s mid-60s musical maelstrom. The group found themselves sharing bills with pop’s top names (they toured Europe and the US with the Rolling Stones) and took tea with McCartney at his home in St John’s Wood. In 2001, the Australasian Performing Right Association voted Friday on My Mind the best Australian song of all time, and among countless cover versions are recordings by David Bowie, Richard Thompson, Blue Öyster Cult, Gary Moore and Peter Frampton. In 2014, Bruce Springsteen performed it in Sydney on his Australian tour.

Wright was born in Leeds, West Yorkshire, but in 1958 his father, Staff Sergeant George Wright, took the family to Melbourne under the Australian government’s assisted migrant scheme. In 1960 they moved to Villawood, near Sydney, and lived near the Villawood Migrant Hostel, a sprawling colony of corrugated iron huts. Wright began getting involved in pop bands in his mid-teens, and performed with the Outlaws and then Chris Langdon & the Langdells, who initially played surf music before falling under the influence of the Beatles.

While performing at Suzie Wong’s Chinese restaurant, Wright was approached by two future Easybeats, Vanda (born Johannes Hendricus Vandenberg) and Dick Diamonde (real name Dingeman Van der Sluys). Both were immigrants from the Netherlands staying at the migrant hostel, where they were part of a vibrant amateur music scene also frequented by Young, who had arrived from Glasgow in 1963. With Wright aboard, they recruited the Liverpool-born Gordon “Snowy” Fleet to play drums, and it was he who suggested the name Easybeats, a nod to both British beat music and the Beatles.

The group secured themselves a residency at the Beatle Village club, and it was there that they were spotted by the music publisher and producer Ted Albert. He signed the band to his own Albert Productions and secured a deal with EMI/Parlophone. Their first single, For My Woman (1965), made it to No 33 in the Australian chart, and the follow-up, She’s So Fine, rocketed to No 3.

The group’s intense streak of hits saw them topping the charts with the EP Easyfever as well as with the Wright/Young composition Sorry, but the huge success of Friday on My Mind marked their peak. Wright became less influential as Vanda and Young became the dominant songwriters (though Wright’s twisting, leaping, shaking stage performances remained uniquely his), but despite their efforts the group’s star waned inexorably. Fleet quit, having tired of being separated from his family, and after a string of decreasingly successful singles, the Easybeats disbanded in 1969.

Young and Vanda went on to great success as a writing and production team and became closely involved in the early career of Australia’s most successful band AC/DC, Young being the older brother of the band members Angus and Malcolm Young. Wright, meanwhile, tried to launch a solo career, fronting groups including the Stevie Wright Band and Stevie Wright & the Allstars.

In 1972 he gave an acclaimed performance in the role of Simon Zealotes in the Australian production of Jesus Christ Superstar, but began taking heroin while working on the show. In 1974 he enjoyed his biggest solo success with the three-part single Evie, an 11-minute work written by Vanda and Young which gave him a No 1 hit. Its parent album, Hard Road, reached No 2 on the Australian charts, and Evie (Part 1) was covered by Rod Stewart on his album Smiler.

Heroin addiction prompted Wright to try the controversial drug-induced deep sleep and electroconvulsive therapy treatment, which left him with serious mental health problems. His performing and writing were subsequently erratic, though he emerged from further rehab treatment in 1979 to perform Evie for a 100,000-strong crowd on the steps of the Sydney Opera House. In 1986, he joined a brief Easybeats reunion tour, and undertook some solo work with his own band over the next couple of years. In 2005 he was inducted into the Australian Recording Industry Association Hall of Fame with the Easybeats, and he made his final live performance in 2009.

Wright’s story has been told in two biographies, Jack Marx’s Sorry: The Wretched Tale of Little Stevie Wright (1999), and the authorised version, written by Glenn Goldsmith, Hard Road: The Life and Times of Stevie Wright (2004).

Wright is survived by his partner, Fay Walker, and a son, Nick, from his marriage to Gail Baxter, which ended in divorce.