Stars unite to farewell Stevie Wright

While the Villawood Migrant Hostel in the early 1960s wasn't the sinkhole of hope its detention centre is now, it wasn't exactly bountiful Australia either.

When migrant kids like Glaswegian George Young, Dutchman Johannes van den Berg (soon to be Harry Vanda) and the English kid who lived across the road from it, Stevie Wright, passed through, giddy futures were not a given.

Yet, as the hymn which opened this song-filled funeral service said, music saved them, lifted them, made them rock stars as the Easybeats and successful young men who would compete with the Beatles.

Wright, who was introduced to the music of the Beatles by another teenage English migrant with a musical bent, Robin Gibb, had set his sights on achieving that fame. But, his son Nicholas said in a eulogy about unconditional love flowing to and from his father and on to his own children, "be careful what you wish for".

As everyone who spoke in the packed St Andrews Cathedral, from the Reverend Canon Christopher Allan - who hadn't known Australia's first international rock star but was staggered in the past week to see how many people knew and loved the man - to a modern rock figure in Tim Rogers, told us, Stevie Wright had had many lives, greater highs and deeper lows in his 68 years than any of us will ever see.

One of those highs was represented in a tender performance of part two of his career-defining hit, Evie, by singer John Paul Young and Warren Morgan on piano. When the Adult Choir of St Andrews joined in on the second verse it was the toughest emotionally, but also sweetest, moment of the service for almost every one.

So, yes, he got what he wished for. But in the end, said his son, "fame and circumstance took him away from me", even if that had never stopped the love. A love which resonated in the family photos projected onto the screens just as much as the footage of a cheeky young Wright performing to screaming fans with the Easybeats.

So regrets were to be balanced with positivity. After all, said music documentary maker Paul Clarke in another eulogy, Wright had harboured no bitterness, nor crushing disappointment about the turns of his life. He'd had a burning energy "and that fire remained" throughout.

Maybe it was summed up by Wright's mid-'70s song Hard Road, sung this day by Rogers who said "this isn't a hymn but it is a spiritual".

"I'm diggin' what I'm doing and I'm doin' it as fast as I can, yes I am/Nobody's hangin' things around my neck or put me in a pigeonhole/I got my dog, I got my radio, living on rock 'n' roll".