Out of some morbid curiosity, I suppose, soon after hearing about the death of the legendary BBC radio DJ Steve Wright, I went to the Radio 2 website to find out the name of the last song he ever played on the radio. It was on Sunday 11th February on Sunday Morning Love Songs and, I admit, not a show I ever listened to. And it was Delicate by Terence Trent D’Arby & Des’ree. It’s a lovely song and illustrates perfectly how narrow the thread is that keeps us alive.
Even if you were not a fan – and I admit I wasn’t – you would be foolish and downright wrong to deny the man’s status on the radio. Legend is the right word. Head to X, formerly known as twitter, where you will find a veritable A-Z of famous people paying tribute. Just about every DJ in Britain, alongside the great, the good and, probably later on, politicians, has said their piece. I suggest they are speaking for millions.
What Wright wasn’t was a bad person. There was never any controversy, the interviews were mostly fluff. If you wanted more aggressive cutting edge radio, he was not for you. If you wanted a safe place, with gentle humour and unthreatening familiar music, he was for you.
When he was axed from his afternoon show on Radio 2, listeners were livid. Indeed some left the station, never to return, seeking solace in unchallenging world of commercial radio with its myriad of safe stations. Because that is want many people like about the radio. Not for everyone the challenge of the unfamiliar and the new. There is a place for everything and for millions Steve Wright was there for them.
His Sunday Love Songs show was the least threatening show on the radio. How could a show called that be anything else? A show where people called in saying how much they loved someone. Maybe there’s not enough of that in today’s angry world? Maybe we need more of it?
The playlist for Sunday’s show was classic Wright and none the worse for that. And in it, one song stands right out. Love Is The Answer by England Dan and John Ford Coley. They were the first live act I ever saw in the very early 1970s at Bristol’s Colston Hall, supporting a certain Elton John. They didn’t perform this song, which was written by Todd Rundgren, on the simple grounds it hadn’t yet been written, but I’ve always loved it. And the words are so beautiful it could even be on Steve Wright’s epitaph:
Light of the world, shine on me
Love is the answer Shine on us all Set us free Love is the answerAnd love really is the answer.
RIP Steve