Australian rock legend Stevie Wright dies aged 68

The Easybeats frontman Stevie Wright, who is regarded as Australia’s first international pop star, has died, aged 68.

Singer Stevie Wright, top, with Easybeats band members, left to right, George Young, Harry Vanda, Snowy Fleet and Dick Diamonde.

Stevie Wright was the wild man of Australian rock’n’roll.

Even Mick Jagger was said to be in awe of The Easybeats frontman as he leapt around the stage.

“Mick Jagger would stand in the wings and watch Stevie, just aghast at this guy who did cartwheels and hurled himself from one side of the stage to the other,” music historian Glenn A Baker said.

Dynamic, charismatic and full of energy, Wright found fame and success early as Australia’s first international pop star in the 1960s.

But the downs of his rock’n’roll life were so great that when Wright died in NSW on Sunday, many who knew him expressed surprise that he had made it to age 68.

A meeting at Sydney’s Villawood Migrant Hostel sparked the formation of The Easybeats in 1964, comprising Englishman Wright, Dutchmen Harry Vanda and Dick Diamonde, Scotsman George Young and Englishman Gordon “Snowy” Fleet.

They were the first Australian rock’n’roll act to score an international hit with the 1966 single Friday On My Mind, reaching No.1 in Australia, six in the UK and 16 in the US.

“The Easybeats were one of the most remarkable pop bands of their time, and I think probably recorded the definitive pop song of the era in Friday On My Mind,” singer Normie Rowe told the ABC. The band arrived at just the right time, Baker said.

The life and times of Stevie Wright

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“We’d had The Beatles tour and we loved that excitement and what we got in the form of The Easybeats courtesy of Little Stevie was a combination of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones wrapped up in one,” he told the Nine Network.

“You saw them on television and they were so enigmatic. They were so extraordinary.” As Fleet told the ABC in 2013 of Wright: “He had this dynamic personality about him and he was just amazing to be around.

“You’d walk into a room and Stephen, he’d light the whole place up.” Wright lived the real rock’n’roll life, 1960s singer-songwriter and former Young Talent Time host Johnny Young recalled.

“Little Stevie” Wright, affectionately known as Little Stevie, he was also a wonderful musician and great songwriter, Young said. “He was just a marvellous man of music and not just on a recording basis, but also as a personality,” Young told the ABC. “He was the wild man of rock’n’roll, a wonderful performer.

#RIP Stevie Wright, lead vocalist not only w/the Easybeats but also on this Flash & The Pan 80s classic 🙏🏻... https://t.co/o37Fehyw4V

— Colin Wright (@colinwright1959) December 27, 2015

“He could take any audience and just absolutely slay them with his energy.” Wright was an amazing performer, Rowe agreed.

“They were a wild group, there’s no doubt about it. They had all sorts of fun on stage and off stage.” The Easybeats broke up in 1969 and Wright became a top solo artist with the three-part, 11-minute-plus song Evie, written by Vanda and George Young.

“It was a song of its time and a song of its generation,” Baker said.

But it was perhaps a case of too much, too soon, Baker said. Wright’s famous battle with drugs and later booze were his undoing, his contemporaries say.

“When the drugs raised their ugly head, I think that was the beginning of the end for him,” Rowe said.

Wright himself has acknowledged the drugs turned him into a “self-destructive monster”.

“Are there many things I wouldn’t have done? Yes, there are plenty of things,” he told the ABC’s Australian Story in 2013. “I wouldn’t pick up any hard drugs. I wouldn’t do it. And it can destroy. It does destroy.

“Because it’s all inside anyway - all the things in the mind and the power that you think the drugs are gonna add to, and they don’t at all, they take everything away.” Wright tried to get off the drugs but his deep-sleep therapy and electric shock treatment at Chelmsford Private Hospital in the late 1970s created more problems than the heroin, long-time business manager and friend Jane English said.

“It killed his short-term memory so it killed his ability to write songs,” she told AAP.

“So it really took away his livelihood.” Bad falls also damaged his legs, leaving Wright unable to perform as he had.

Singer Stevie Wright, top, with Easybeats band members, left to right, George Young, Harry Vanda, Snowy Fleet and Dick Diamonde.

Wright also battled alcohol problems but was eventually able to rid himself of his addictions, saying in 2013 he had been off alcohol for two decades and heroin for a dozen years.

Ms English is not certain the man she knew since the late 1970s and former Sydney housemate was really the rock’n’roll type. “We never talked about The Easybeats. We just talked about what was funny at the time.” Wright did not dwell on his musical success.

“It was in the past but other people keep it alive,” Ms English said.

“But, yes, he was very proud of the effect that he had on the Australian music industry.” Ms English said Wright’s legacy lives on not just in his music. Wright’s life helped inspire the late John Bromell’s 17-year fight to get music industry charity Support Act up and running in 1997, Ms English said.

“That was definitely on the basis of Stevie’s life and what he’d given and the need to give back to the industry,” she said.

Johnny Young saw Wright at a gig two years ago, when he had to do most of his performance sitting down because of his injured leg. “The energy was still there even though he didn’t look as good as he did when he was a kid.

“He certainly had the fire in his belly to get out there and reach his audience.”