Remembering Scott Sorry

I first met Scott Sorry sometime around 2006.

At the time, Scott had recently joined The Wildhearts as bassist. They were my favourite band then and, if I’m honest, probably still are. A cult band from the early nineties who never quite became as famous as they deserved to be, but who left fingerprints all over British rock music.

The night I met Scott was memorable for a number of reasons. For one thing, I’d never met anyone with that level of charisma before. Some people seem to occupy more space than everyone else in a room. Scott was one of those people. He didn’t just walk into a room. He arrived.

On this particular evening, he was glowing even more brightly than usual because he was, frankly, spectacularly off his face. Cocaine, heroin and rock and roll were competing for attention.

Through a combination of luck, persistence and friendship with The Wildhearts’ manager, the legendary Gav McCaughey, I found myself increasingly orbiting the band during that period. There were gigs, after-parties, backstage conversations and the occasional wonderfully surreal evening marked with hugs shared with people who’d previously been my heroes.

I may be conflating a few evenings together now (memory has a habit of sanding the edges off things after twenty years), but one night I took my team to see The Wildhearts for our Christmas party. The support that night was Tragedy, an ABBA tribute band who somehow managed to turn ABBA songs into heavy metal anthems. One of their vocalists was Victoria Lidke, who would later become Gav’s wife. They eventually got married in a medieval castle. A proper one. Which felt entirely on brand for everyone involved.

The Intrepid Fox

After the show we piled into taxis and headed across London to the Intrepid Fox. In my cab were a couple of people from my studio: Paul, our animator-programmer hybrid whom we affectionately referred to as “The Fungineer”, and Kit, an illustrator of alarming talent and equally alarming short-sightedness.

On the way, Kit asked who we were travelling with. I introduced Gav and then introduced Rich. Kit stared blankly.

“Who’s Rich?”

I remember laughing. “Rich? Rich Battersby, the drummer!”

Kit went completely silent. The look on his face remains one of my favourite memories from that period.

The Intrepid Fox itself felt like stepping through a portal. The room was packed with musicians, artists and assorted rock and roll characters. Ten years earlier I had been collecting posters of these people. Now I was somehow standing in the middle of the room with a drink in my hand.

I quickly concluded that if I was going to earn my place at the table, it probably wasn’t going to be through musical talent, so I contributed the one thing I could.

Jägermeister and Jack: I started buying rounds of shots with all the strategic subtlety of a man attempting to legitimise his presence amongst his heroes.

(I should probably point out that while Scott was busy exploring the harder end of the pharmaceutical spectrum, I confined myself firmly to the alcohol.)

Even then, Scott stood out, everybody remembers meeting Scott.

A Friendship At A Distance

Over the following decade I would occasionally see the band backstage through Gav, grab a drink after shows, or exchange messages online.

One night I somehow ended up talking to the lead guitarist from Snow Patrol (also a huge fan of the band). He bummed a cigarette from me, gave me his email address and promised me free tickets to their next gig in return. I never took him up on that and, looking back, that may have been a poor business decision 🙂

Anyway by extension from Gav, Scott, CJ and I also kinda became friends, or at least friendly. We didn’t spend a huge amount of time together. It was a friendship conducted intermittently across years, countries and time zones and the odd Jack and Coke.

At some point after the release of The Only One (one of the most beautiful songs The Wildhearts ever recorded IMO) Scott and I had a chat about it over Facebook. He told me the song had been written about his wife Hänni. I’ve never met her, but anyone capable of surviving everything life threw at Scott alongside him must be made of remarkable stuff.

The more I got to know him, the more obvious it became that the larger-than-life front wasn’t the whole story. Underneath all the bravado was someone carrying a great deal of pain, but also an extraordinary capacity for love.

Fuck Cancer

In 2015 I was diagnosed with Stage 3 oesophageal cancer. Needless to say, this was not part of the plan. After the initial shock wore off, I started speaking about it publicly and how I was dealing with a 15% chance of survival.

A few days later, I received a message from Scott. He wanted to know how I was doing but also wanted to let me know that he had recently been diagnosed with cancer too.

With a 5% chance…

Typical fucking rock star.

Over the months that followed we talked periodically while both going through treatment. Scott lived in North America at the time, so our conversations usually happened late at night for me and early in the morning for him.

One evening, after another conversation about treatment, exhaustion and uncertainty, I remember telling him:

“Dude, it’s going to be no time before you and I can have a beer together, here or in Valhalla.”

I genuinely meant it. Scott was a Viking warrior, not because of how he looked but because of how he fought.

During treatment I wore my Scott Sorry T-shirt to chemotherapy appointments. Meanwhile, Scott’s Facebook feed became a steady stream of defiance. Fuck cancer. Keep moving. Keep fighting.

Then he did something even more remarkable. He got clean, got fit, got vegan.

The direction had changed, the commitment hadn’t. The man who had once seemed determined to destroy himself became a marathon runner. A husband. A father. A man utterly focused on squeezing every possible second out of the life he had left. I found that deeply inspiring and I still do.

Black Dog Dancer

One evening Scott sent me an audio file, it was an early version of a song called Black Dog Dancer. The song dealt with his long battle with depression and mental health. What struck me wasn’t just the quality of the songwriting. It was the honesty.

Most people spend their lives trying to hide their scars. Scott turned his into art.

That seemed to be one of his genuine gifts. He could take pain, addiction, fear, depression and uncertainty and somehow transform them into something useful for other people. Not because he was preaching or teaching. Simply because he was willing to be honest about what he was carrying. The older I get, the more I think that’s one of the rarest forms of courage.

The Measure Of A Life

It brings me to tears to say that Scott died earlier this year.

I’ve largely abandoned Facebook in recent years so, sadly, I only learned he was seriously ill again a day or two before he passed away. There wasn’t enough time for a proper conversation. I sent him a message via Gav telling him what an inspiration he was to me and reminding him of our planned meeting in Valhalla. I hope he heard it, I hope he knew how much I meant it.

The next few days were tough, the news had hit me far harder than I would have expected. That’s a strange thing to explain to people because, objectively, Scott and I had only met in person a handful of times. There are people I’ve spent vastly more time with whose deaths would not have affected me as deeply. But impact and proximity aren’t always the same thing.

The truth is that Scott made an impression on me that never really faded. He didn’t have an easy life. Childhood trauma, addiction, mental health struggles, cancer: more adversity than most people could deal with in two lifetimes. Yet when I think about Scott, that’s not what comes to mind first.

I think about the father he became, the artist he became, and the man who looked at a five percent chance of survival and decided “fuck cancer” because there were still memories left to make with his children. He won himself another seven years. Seven more birthdays, seven more Christmases, seven more years of memories that otherwise would never have existed.

In business we often talk about success as though it can be measured in money, status, titles or influence. I don’t think that’s true.

Scott never became a billionaire. He never built an empire. He never appeared on the cover of Forbes. What he left behind was something far more important: people. People who loved him, people he inspired, and people whose lives were better because he was part of them.

That feels like a life well lived to me.

The last time I saw Scott was in London on the 24th September 2022. He, Gav, CJ, Rich and some of the other remarkable individuals in their orbit were playing a series of shows around the UK. Shortly before performing When We Were Kings, he stepped up to the microphone and delivered what now feels like the simplest possible summary of his life.

“If there’s one thing you learn from me, never fucking give up. I don’t care how bad the fucking world is. I don’t care how fucking tough it gets. Never fucking give up.”

Gerard Scott “Sorry”
1977-2026

Still Kings

One final thing feels worth mentioning.

On 30 October 2026, what would have been Scott’s 48th birthday, a memorial concert called Still Kings will take place at KK’s Steel Mill in Wolverhampton. Friends, bandmates and collaborators from across Scott’s career will be gathering to celebrate his life and music. From The Wildhearts to his solo work, from the Sinatras to the countless other projects and friendships he accumulated along the way, the people whose lives he touched will be in the same room for one night. It feels like the perfect tribute.

Not because Scott would have wanted people mourning him. Because he would have wanted people laughing, telling stories, playing music and raising a glass (of Red Bull) to absent friends.

It’s going to be emotional, it’s going to be one hell of a party, and at least part of it will take place in Valhalla.