Plain and Fancy: 10/22/24

Tuesday, October 22, 2024

Stevie Wright - Hard Road (1974 australia / uk, fabulous classic rock vibes)

Steven Wright was born on 20 December 1948 in Leeds, England. His family came to Australia as assisted migrants when Stevie was nine and lived in Melbourne for a couple of years before moving to Sydney in 1960 . They settled in Villawood, in Sydney's south-west, close to the Villawood Migrant Hostel. Stevie had been bitten by the rock'n'roll bug at an early age, and in the early Sixties he fronted two local bands, The Outlaws, followed by Chris Langdon & The Langdells. The Langdells started out as a Shadows-style surf band but changed their image to Beatles clones overnight after being introduced to The Fab Four's music music by their friends, teenage vocal group The Bee Gees.

Stevie (aka "Chris") was singing with the The Langdells at Suzie Wong's Disco in Sydney one night in mid-1964 and when he met Hendrickus Vandenburg and Dingeman Vandersluys, two Dutch immigrant lads from the Hostel who were in the process of putting a new band together. Like Stevie, they too had been electrified by the new possibilities opened up by the emergence of The Beatles. Stevie was already friends with another young Villawood resident, a teenage guitarist from Glasgow called George Young. The new band tried out several local kids as potential singers, including John Bell (a great musician in his own right, who went on to form The Throb) but they knew they had their perfect frontman when the diminutive Stevie auditioned. He snapped up the offer of the lead singer spot, and through Stevie the band also met Stevie's friend, guitarist George Young. The new band was completed when they found their final member, drummer Snowy Fleet, thanks to a chance meeting on a train. With an obligatory nod to their heroes, Snowy dubbed the new band The Easybeats.

The huge post-Easybeats success of his bandmates Harry Vanda and George Young, as both writers and producers, has for a long time ovegsubadowed Stevie's contributions to the band, so it's worth repeating the fact that all of their classic Australian hits in 1965-66 -- She's So Fine, Sorry, Women (Make You Feel Alright), Come And See Her, and Wedding Ring -- were co-written by Stevie. He and George were a an accomplished and productive writing team whose knack for writing pithy, memorable, down-to-earth rock lyrics was perfectly matched by George instinctive gift for melody and arrangment. They rapidly wrote dozens of original numbers, most of them created around the piano at the George's family home in Burwood. They were productive enough to write a string of chart-topping hits of their own themselves and still have enough material to spare to provide songs for other artists, including "Step Back ", the 1966 debut hit for Perth singer Johnny Young as well as the B-side of a later single, "Good Evening Girl".

Stevie was one of the most dynamic performers on the local scene, famous for his trademarks stage technique -- the flying tambourine and his acrobatic leaps and backflips -- and he influenced many singers who followed him. He was a natural television performer, as evidenced by the Easys' surviving appearances on shows like their classic "Coca Cola Special", made for ATN-7 in Sydney in mid-'66, just before their first trip to the UK.

As lead singer Stevie was the focus of most of the publicicty and by 1967 he was one of the most popular and recognisable male performers in the country, with Normie Rowe arguably his only serious rival. The move to England and the international success of "Friday On My Mind" took the band to dizzy new heights and seemed to bode for a great future, but over the next two dispiriting years in the UK, Australia's greatest pop group gradually fizzled out and they dissolved after a desultory farewell tour of Australia in late 1969.

Stevie was one of the first new acts signed to the revived Albert label. The team commenced work on Stevie's debut solo album, with Vanda and Young producing, as well as writing and playing on several tracks. Hard Road (April 1974) is without question Stevie's finest hour, and it remains one of the best Australian albums of the period. The classic Vanda-Young tracks -- the autobiographical "Hard Road", "Didn't I Take You Higher?" and the epic "Evie" were ably complemented by Stevie's own strong compositions "Movin' On Up", "Commando Line", "Life Gets Better" and "Dancing in the Limelight".

Stevie's groundbreaking debut solo single "Evie (Parts I, II and III)" is a genuine rock epic. It is arguably the perfect rock'n'roll song, encapsulating the three basic themes of all love songs -- (A) "Baby it'll be great once w're together, (B) "Baby, it's so great now that we're together" and (C) "Baby, it's so bad since you left me". Clocking in at a whopping eleven minutes in total, it seemed an unlikely chart contender, but the three parts were wisely split across the two sides of the single, and the head-on power rock of "Evie Part I" proved irresistable. Lyrically, it revisited the perennial "gonna have a good time tonight" theme of "Friday On My Mind" and Good Times and musically it is perhaps the ultimate distillation of the full-frontal hard rock Vanda & Young had previously essayed on V&Y classics like "Good Times", and showcased the no-frills hard-rocking sound which they woudl soon hone to perfection with AC/DC.

Released in May 1974 Evie shot to the top of charts, peaking at #2 nationally during July. It did especially well in Melbourne, where it stayed at #1 for seven weeks. The Hard Road album also peaked at #5 nationally and #1 in Melbourne. It was released on Atlantic in the USA and Polydor in the UK and made a strong impression overseas -- Suzi Quatro later covered "Evie", and Rod Stewart included a version of "Hard Road" on his Smiler album. "Evie" is now widely considered to be one of best Australian singles of Seventies. Stevie (Stephen Carlton) Wright passed away 27th December 2015.

Milesago

References

Ian McFarlane -Encyclopedia of Australian Rock & Pop (Allen & Unwin, 1999)-

Chris Spencer, Zbig Nowara -Who's Who of Australian Rock (Five Mile Press, 2002)-

Noel McGrath -Australian Encyclopedia of Rock (Outback Press, 1978)-