Skip to main content
Menu

The National Portrait Gallery acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to Elders both past and present.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are warned that this website contains images of deceased persons.

Tribute

Stevie Wright

24 March 2016

Stevie Wright, 1975 (printed 2011) Gary Ede. © Gary Ede

Stevie Wright (1947-2015), singer-songwriter, came to Australia from England at the age of nine. He sang with a couple of small bands before joining The Easybeats as lead singer in 1964, when he was just sixteen, after meeting the other band members at Villawood Migrant Hostel. With guitarist George Young ‘Little Stevie’ wrote several of the band’s early hits, including 'She’s so fine’ and ‘Women (make you feel all right)’. However, it was the songwriting team of Young and fellow guitarist Harry Vanda that made The Easybeats into one of Australia’s top 1960s rock bands, sparking hysteria at home, supporting the Rolling Stones in Europe and achieving international chart success, with ‘Friday on my Mind’ voted Best Australian Song of All Time in 2001. When The Easybeats split in 1969, Wright drifted around before spending two years performing in Jesus Christ Superstar. His annus mirabilis was 1974, when he released his first solo album Hard Road, containing the Vanda and Young song for which he is best known, the eleven-minute three-part ‘Evie’. A tour and a second solo album followed; Wright ended the year with three concerts at the Opera House. By 1975, however, he had disappeared from public life, drastically diminished by drug addiction and ‘treatment’ for it at the dreadful Chelmsford Private Hospital in Sydney. Although various attempts were made to get him back on stage during the 1980s, and he issued a new album in 1991, he stayed out of the limelight until the Long Way to the Top series and live tours of the same name in 2001-03.

A cover of ‘Evie’ by The Wrights, a band formed for the purpose by members of Jet, Powderfinger, Spiderbait and other leading contemporary Australian bands, was released in February 2005. Wright lasted another decade before dying in hospital in Moruya on the south coast of New South Wales, where he had lived for some years.

Related people

Stevie Wright

© National Portrait Gallery 2024
King Edward Terrace, Parkes
Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia

Phone +61 2 6102 7000
ABN: 54 74 277 1196

The National Portrait Gallery acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to Elders past and present. We respectfully advise that this site includes works by, images of, names of, voices of and references to deceased people.

This website comprises and contains copyrighted materials and works. Copyright in all materials and/or works comprising or contained within this website remains with the National Portrait Gallery and other copyright owners as specified.

The National Portrait Gallery respects the artistic and intellectual property rights of others. The use of images of works of art reproduced on this website and all other content may be restricted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (Cth). Requests for a reproduction of a work of art or other content can be made through a Reproduction request. For further information please contact NPG Copyright.

The National Portrait Gallery is an Australian Government Agency