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Sorry: The Wretched Tale of Little Stevie Wright
Stevie Wright, the pop star, is sitting on the edge of his bed, facing a blank television screen. The lights are out and the curtains, as always, are drawn. There is a gentle illumination in the room from the dim, red glow of the radiator at Stevie's feet. The only sound is the whir of the fan on the bedside table. Next to the fan is a needle, used. His bottle is next to the radiator. His bucket is next to the bottle. Everything left in the life of Stephen Carlton Wright is within his reach: heat, cold, darkness, dim light, anaesthetic, sickness and a show that won't come back on.
In the mid 1960s, Little Stevie Wright was the brightest star Australia had ever seen. Thirty years later, author Jack Marx found him destitute among the ruins of his life. Sorry: The Wretched Tale of Little Stevie Wright is two stories. One is a parable of the man who had it all and lost. The other is a warning about getting close to our idols.
In the mid 1960s, Little Stevie Wright was the brightest star Australia had ever seen. Thirty years later, author Jack Marx found him destitute among the ruins of his life. Sorry: The Wretched Tale of Little Stevie Wright is two stories. One is a parable of the man who had it all and lost. The other is a warning about getting close to our idols.
233 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 14, 2018
Review from Ma href="https://darrengoossens.wordpress.com/...
This is an odd book. My gut reaction to it is distaste. Marx paints both himself and Wright as untrustworthy junkies -- which is most likely true -- but in doing so he expends a lot of words on himself -- for a biography, it's remarkably autobiographical. Whether this reflects an inability to get much useful material out of Wright, or rampant ego on the part of the author, it's hard to tell. Perhaps it needs to be viewed as the book plus the 'making of' documentary all rolled into one. In fact, that's what it is.
Cover of Sorry by Jack Marx.
The structure consists of alternating sections, one lot following Stevie Wright through his -- yes, wretched -- life, the other following Marx as he deals with Stevie and Fay(e) and tries to get material for the book.
I'll discuss them separately.
The main problem with the actual biography part is that it lacks detail and dates. It's just not a very good biography. Are we in 1969 or 1967? Is it 1975 or 1972 or 1979? It's impossible to tell. Only by reference to some external source -- like the internet -- can the reader actually get a sense of when any of this happened. There's no context half the time, just a narrow focus on Stevie and his drug problems and the emptiness of his life. OK, that's important -- but it's not everything. Marx captures that seamy side well. But his view is rather monochromatic.
To his credit, Marx evokes the junkie life pretty vividly. Correctly, I can't say. There's a core of analysis in the work that seems valid -- that Wright spent his life looking for easy answers, waiting for things to go his way, and the quick fixes he indulged in along the way turned from being the means to being the end in getting through life. After the Easybeats, did he make a new path for himself in music (like Vanda and Young)? No. Did he consciously give it up and get a 'real' job and work at it like a grown-up, like Snowy and Dick Diamonde? No. Things sometimes fell his way -- Jesus Christ Superstar, Hard Road, 'Evie' -- and often didn't, and he wasn't equipped for the mundane slog.
So that half of the book is an intermittently insightful, intermittently evocative narrative that hangs in the air, without context, without grounding in time or space. Interesting, but weak.
The other half ... is not that good.
We follow Marx as he stays with Wright and his woman, Fay(e). Marx feeds them money in return for promised cooperation on the book, cooperation we never actually see although near the end he refers to his tape recorder so presumably he has got something out of Wright. Marx drinks, shoots up, mistreats people and generally paints himself as someone most of us would not want to associate with. He indulges in long vignettes that have little or nothing to do with the subject. He seems keen to tell us, basically, how immersed he was in the gutter and presumably this makes his comments on Wright more credible. I don't know. I should say I have never been a fan of the 'presenter as star' kind of thing. It's like one of those nature documentaries where all we ever see is the presenter telling us how hard it is to find the animal of interest. What it amounts to is padding, making the tiny little bit of real footage go as far as possible.
This is like that. It's like Marx realised he did not have a whole book, so he's padded it out with his own adventures and his list of attempts to get the story -- all of which are essentially the same (he gives them money, they blow it on drugs, they ask for more money).
Pretty unsatisfactory unless you'd like to know more about Jack Marx.
Lastly, it's not clear what if any of the content was actually provided by Wright. Some is very personal, so presumably some of the book comes from actual interviews. Much of it reads like a potted version skimmed from elsewhere and then padded out by Marx's attempts to guess what was going on inside the band or inside Wright's head. There are no sources given, so we can only assume it's either all from interviews or partly from interviews and partly made up, or it's been gathered from other sources but Marx is too lazy to document them.
If this is 'gonzo' journalism, you can have it.
If you want to know what it's like being a junkie trying to cadge information out of a junkie, it's a very handy book.
Of course, the Easybeats were a great band, we must never forget that.
ok?
This is an odd book. My gut reaction to it is distaste. Marx paints both himself and Wright as untrustworthy junkies -- which is most likely true -- but in doing so he expends a lot of words on himself -- for a biography, it's remarkably autobiographical. Whether this reflects an inability to get much useful material out of Wright, or rampant ego on the part of the author, it's hard to tell. Perhaps it needs to be viewed as the book plus the 'making of' documentary all rolled into one. In fact, that's what it is.
Cover of Sorry by Jack Marx.The structure consists of alternating sections, one lot following Stevie Wright through his -- yes, wretched -- life, the other following Marx as he deals with Stevie and Fay(e) and tries to get material for the book.
I'll discuss them separately.
The main problem with the actual biography part is that it lacks detail and dates. It's just not a very good biography. Are we in 1969 or 1967? Is it 1975 or 1972 or 1979? It's impossible to tell. Only by reference to some external source -- like the internet -- can the reader actually get a sense of when any of this happened. There's no context half the time, just a narrow focus on Stevie and his drug problems and the emptiness of his life. OK, that's important -- but it's not everything. Marx captures that seamy side well. But his view is rather monochromatic.
To his credit, Marx evokes the junkie life pretty vividly. Correctly, I can't say. There's a core of analysis in the work that seems valid -- that Wright spent his life looking for easy answers, waiting for things to go his way, and the quick fixes he indulged in along the way turned from being the means to being the end in getting through life. After the Easybeats, did he make a new path for himself in music (like Vanda and Young)? No. Did he consciously give it up and get a 'real' job and work at it like a grown-up, like Snowy and Dick Diamonde? No. Things sometimes fell his way -- Jesus Christ Superstar, Hard Road, 'Evie' -- and often didn't, and he wasn't equipped for the mundane slog.
So that half of the book is an intermittently insightful, intermittently evocative narrative that hangs in the air, without context, without grounding in time or space. Interesting, but weak.
The other half ... is not that good.
We follow Marx as he stays with Wright and his woman, Fay(e). Marx feeds them money in return for promised cooperation on the book, cooperation we never actually see although near the end he refers to his tape recorder so presumably he has got something out of Wright. Marx drinks, shoots up, mistreats people and generally paints himself as someone most of us would not want to associate with. He indulges in long vignettes that have little or nothing to do with the subject. He seems keen to tell us, basically, how immersed he was in the gutter and presumably this makes his comments on Wright more credible. I don't know. I should say I have never been a fan of the 'presenter as star' kind of thing. It's like one of those nature documentaries where all we ever see is the presenter telling us how hard it is to find the animal of interest. What it amounts to is padding, making the tiny little bit of real footage go as far as possible.
This is like that. It's like Marx realised he did not have a whole book, so he's padded it out with his own adventures and his list of attempts to get the story -- all of which are essentially the same (he gives them money, they blow it on drugs, they ask for more money).
Pretty unsatisfactory unless you'd like to know more about Jack Marx.
Lastly, it's not clear what if any of the content was actually provided by Wright. Some is very personal, so presumably some of the book comes from actual interviews. Much of it reads like a potted version skimmed from elsewhere and then padded out by Marx's attempts to guess what was going on inside the band or inside Wright's head. There are no sources given, so we can only assume it's either all from interviews or partly from interviews and partly made up, or it's been gathered from other sources but Marx is too lazy to document them.
If this is 'gonzo' journalism, you can have it.
If you want to know what it's like being a junkie trying to cadge information out of a junkie, it's a very handy book.
Of course, the Easybeats were a great band, we must never forget that.
ok?
June 8, 2013
This is well written and the structure is clever. It's clear Marx was a fan and was pretty disappointed in how his 'hero' had turned out (as we all are). But it's not really surprising. I think I would have liked more insight. Wright became a heroin addict and addicts as such are not nice people to deal with. But then, researchers and journalists are not nice either (and I am one, by the way). I'm torn here, on one hand, I think Marx was being honest but on the other I wonder if it's a book you would want to be remembered by.
December 19, 2017
Mindblowingly good.
February 15, 2019
Anyone that is after a detailed expose on the life of Little Stevie Wright may want to consider looking elsewhere. What the reader gets in its place reads more like an autobiography of the author and the tale of the time spent in the company of the hapless pop icon and Fay, his partner, minder and drug-buddy. Having said that, it is a real page turner and Marx is often funny despite the sordid content and throws himself under the same squalid, junkie bus that flattened the Easybeat in order to tell his story. What sets this book apart is that it clearly doesn't worship at the feet of one who may have once deserved it (Friday On My Mind - euphoric). Not only does he display little empathy for the tragic figure of Stevie Wright but suggest that there is little reason that he deserves any. Often grimy and thought-provoking, this is a cautionary tale of squandered opportunity and making all the wrong choices.
August 9, 2010
Hard to find these days, but well worth the effort. A great true tragicomedy of excess, success, and bedsits.
November 16, 2017
What a read, two tales past and present, musical legacy is unforgettable, personal abuse is sad and sorry..
July 9, 2019
Achingly well done.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews