My review of Hard Road: The Life and Times of Stevie Wright, by Glenn Goldsmith

Hard Road: The Life and Times of Stevie Wright

by Glenn Goldsmith

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

It was the '60s. I was a boy growing up in the UK. Pop groups were our idols, their sounds our mantras. The Easybeats sound was no less impactful than that of the Beatles, The Stones, The Who, The Kinks, The Animals or any other such band of the hour. 

Their front man, Stevie Wright, was among those immortals whose every crackly radio lyric we hung onto, whose spot lit forms we gazed at in wonder on our snowy black and white TV screens. Their voices we emulated at play, spun round our heads as we fell asleep at night and, as with everything else we internalised, remains in our heads 50-plus years on. 

Wright was a remarkable performance talent who sprang from nowhere at the right moment, then paid his industry dues in reaching the top. Like the mythical Icarus who burnt his wings flying too close to the sun, or the cat with its nine lives, Wright would survive the seemingly impossible for way, way longer than fathomable. Others have gone the same way, of course, while an ever-shrinking handful of his contemporaries, incredibly, live on. 

So many of this generation walked similar paths to this hard living music industry legend, if minus his fame or notoriety. Few had as far to fall as Stevie Wright. But the sex, drugs and rock were the cultural, generational binder. We were all components of the counterculture revolution, some infamous, most unheard of.   

I searched high and low for this book, albeit thirteen years after its release (to say I have a long reading list is a mild understatement!). After awaiting its arrival, on tenterhooks, I took it to bed at 7 and 8 p.m., like a jealous, obsessive teenager, for the best part of a week until closing the last page.

Far from the tacky kiss-and-tell performance of some like it, this impeccably documented account of an icon's darker side is penned with compassion, respect and integrity. One of those rare, classy efforts readers so often hope for but are only sometimes delivered. 

A heartwarming trip down Nostalgia Street for the first half, hysterically tragicomic for the second, by turns almost unreadably heart wrenching, devastating as it nears conclusion.   

I laughed, I cried, I nearly bought a round.

Full marks to author Glenn Goldsmith who, besides having a musical career of his own, was Stevie Wright's Musical Director and Tour Manager in the late '80s. 

Pure class, Mr. Goldsmith. You've done Stevie proud.