 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(August 2024) |
Lillian Roxon | |
|---|---|
 Lillian Roxon in 1965 | |
| Born | 8 February 1932 |
| Died | 10 August 1973 (aged 41) New York City, US |
| Occupation(s) | Journalist, writer |
| Notable work | Lillian Roxon's Rock Encyclopedia (1969) |
Lillian Roxon (8 February 1932 – 10 August 1973) was an Australian music journalist and author, best known for Lillian Roxon's Rock Encyclopedia (1969). [1] [2]
Roxon was born Lillian Ropschitz in Alassio, Province of Savona, Italy. Her family, originally from Lwów in Ukraine, then Poland, moved to the coastal town of Alassio in Italy.[ citation needed ]
As the Ropschitz family were Jewish, they migrated to Australia in 1937 to escape the rise of fascism, and settled in Brisbane. Shortly after their arrival, the family anglicised their names; the surname Roxon was Lillian's suggestion.[ citation needed ]
Roxon studied at the University of Queensland, where she met and had a brief affair with Zell Rabin, who gave Lillian her first job in the United States and who became a key associate of media magnate Rupert Murdoch in the early 1960s. She pursued further studies at the University of Sydney from 1949, where she developed an affinity for the cultural movement known as the Sydney Push, then congregating at the Lincoln Inn. [3]
In the process, Roxon attracted the attention of an Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) operative and was identified in June 1951 as a communist sympathiser. [4] She began her career in newspapers in Sydney and for several years worked for the tabloid magazine Weekend, owned by newspaper magnate Sir Frank Packer and edited by journalist and author Donald Horne.
In 1959, Roxon moved permanently to New York City, becoming the first Australian female overseas correspondent and the first Australian journalist to establish a high profile in the U.S. From 1962 onward, she was the New York correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and over the next ten years she carved out a career reporting on arts, entertainment and women's issues for the Australian, American and British press.[ citation needed ]
In the mid-1960s, Roxon became fascinated by pop music and the rise of groups like the Beatles, the Byrds and the Rolling Stones and she began to write regular articles on the subject. In early 1967, she visited San Francisco and was one of the first mainstream journalists to write about the nascent hippie movement, filing a landmark story for The Herald on the subject. She also contributed to Oz magazine [5] along with the short lived Eye magazine in the late 1960s. [6]
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Roxon became close friends with critic and rock manager Danny Fields, Village Voice journalist Blair Sabol, musician and writer Lenny Kaye (later the guitarist in Patti Smith's band and compiler of the original Nuggets LP), music journalist Lisa Robinson, photographers Linda McCartney and Leee Black Childers and Australian academic, author and feminist Germaine Greer.[ citation needed ]
In 1965, Roxon was joined by The Sydney Morning Herald's autocratic foreign correspondent Margaret Jones. It was a clash of two unbending personalities which her biographer Robert Milliken [7] described as "like two sopranos sharing the same stage". Perhaps to keep these two apart, Margaret was posted to Washington the following year.
Linda McCartney (then Linda Eastman) was one of Roxon's closest female friends and she did much to further Eastman's career[ citation needed ], but the friendship ended abruptly in 1969 when Eastman moved to London, married Paul McCartney and cut all ties with her former friends, a move which wounded Roxon deeply.[ citation needed ]
Roxon eventually retaliated, four years later, with a scathing review of the McCartneys' first American television special. Published in the New York Sunday News on 22 April 1973, Roxon's review panned the documentary and poured scorn on Linda, slamming her for being "catatonic with horror at having to mingle with ordinary people", "disdainful if not downright bored ... her teeth relentlessly clamped in a Scarsdale lockjaw", and "incredibly cold and arrogant".[ citation needed ]
During 1968-69, Roxon was commissioned to write what became the world's first rock encyclopedia, published by Grosset & Dunlap in late 1969, and the work for which she is best remembered. [8]
Roxon appears briefly, as an interviewed member of the audience, in the film Celebration at Big Sur , filmed at the 1969 Big Sur Folk Festival.[ citation needed ]
In the early 1970s, Roxon's profile expanded and she became more widely known for her feminist writing. She wrote a groundbreaking and highly personal report about the August 1970 women's rights march in New York, which was published in The Sydney Morning Herald under the title "There is a tide in the affairs of women". She wrote a regular column on sex and sexuality for Mademoiselle magazine (which continued after her death) and in 1971 she hosted a rock radio show that was syndicated to 250 stations.[ citation needed ] In late 1972, Roxon met and became friends with David Bowie and his first wife Angie on Bowie's Ziggy Stardust Tour, his first tour of the U.S., and was a major champion of Bowie's music in the American press as he was trying to break into the U.S. market.[ citation needed ]
Roxon's health declined during the early 1970s. She made what would be her last visit to Australia in early 1973. While she was in Sydney in early February she was interviewed by Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) journalists Jeune Pritchard and Gary Hyde for the ABC's pop magazine program GTK . The shorter Jeune Pritchard interview [9] was included in a special on the current Australasian tour by The Rolling Stones, and showed Roxon looking unwell. In the longer Gary Hyde interview, [10] Roxon was questioned about the current state of rock music in general; in response to Hyde's questions about up-and-coming acts, she cited the New York Dolls and the then-unknown Bette Midler as names to watch.
One of Roxon's last print articles reported on Iggy Pop and the Stooges's landmark concerts at Max's Kansas City in New York and her final piece, filed in early August, was on rising British glam rock star Marc Bolan.[ citation needed ]
Roxon wrote a novel, loosely based on her years in Sydney, which was never published. This manuscript now resides in Sydney's Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, along with her large collection of letters and other papers, donated by her family and her close friend, the film producer, Margaret Fink.[ citation needed ]
Roxon died at the age of 41 on 10 August 1973, after suffering a severe asthma attack in her New York apartment.[ citation needed ] She was survived by two brothers Jack and Milo. Both parents predeceased her and she never married or had children.[ citation needed ]
Her niece, Nicola Roxon was the Attorney-General of Australia from 2012 to 2013.[ citation needed ]
Roxon Place, in the Canberra suburb of Gilmore with a tradition of street names honouring journalists, is named in her honour. [11]
In August 2002, a biography of Roxon was published in Australia by Black Inc.: Lillian Roxon, Mother of Rock, [7] written by the Sydney-based journalist and author Robert Milliken.
A documentary film entitled Mother of Rock: Lillian Roxon, written and directed by Paul Clarke, premiered at the 2010 Melbourne International Film Festival [12] and was partly financed by the Festival's Premiere Fund.
In Lily Brett's 2012 novel Lola Bensky , based on Brett's own experience as a music journalist, Lola meets Lillian Roxon. [13]
In the 2017 miniseries Friday On My Mind , the Easybeats travel to New York in 1967 and meet Roxon, portrayed by Ella Scott Lynch. [14]
The 2019 film I Am Woman depicts Helen Reddy's friendship with Lillian Roxon, portrayed by Tilda Cobham-Hervey and Danielle Macdonald respectively. [15]
Crystal Catherine Eastman was an American lawyer, antimilitarist, feminist, socialist, and journalist. She was a leader in the fight for women's suffrage, a co-founder and co-editor with her brother Max Eastman of the radical arts and politics magazine The Liberator, co-founder of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and co-founder in 1920 of the American Civil Liberties Union. In 2000, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York.
"Paul is dead" is an urban legend and conspiracy theory alleging that English musician Paul McCartney of the Beatles died in 1966 and was secretly replaced by a look-alike. The rumour began circulating in 1966, gaining broad popularity in September 1969 following reports on American college campuses.
Donovan Phillips Leitch, known mononymously as Donovan, is a Scottish musician, songwriter and record producer. He emerged from the British folk scene in early 1965, and subsequently scored multiple international hit singles and albums during the late 1960s. His work became emblematic of the flower power era with its blend of folk, pop, psychedelic rock, and jazz stylings.
Linda Louise, Lady McCartney was an American photographer and musician. She was the keyboardist and harmony vocalist in the band Wings that also featured her husband, Paul McCartney of the Beatles.
Lillian Diana Gish was an American actress. Her film-acting career spanned 75 years, from 1912, in silent film shorts, to 1987. Gish was called the "First Lady of American Cinema", and is credited with pioneering fundamental film performance techniques. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Gish as the 17th-greatest female movie star of Classic Hollywood cinema.
Pamela Lyndon Travers was an Australian-born British writer who spent most of her career in England. She is best known for the Mary Poppins series of books, which feature the eponymous magical nanny.
McCartney is the debut solo album by English musician Paul McCartney, released on 17 April 1970 by Apple Records. McCartney recorded it in secrecy, mostly using basic home-recording equipment at his house in St John's Wood. Mixing and some recording took place at professional London studios. In its loosely arranged performances, McCartney eschewed the polish of the Beatles' past records in favour of a lo-fi style. Apart from occasional contributions by his wife, Linda, McCartney performed the entire album alone by overdubbing on four-track tape.
Wild Life is the debut studio album by the British-American rock band Wings and the third studio album by Paul McCartney after the breakup of the Beatles. The album was mainly recorded in seven sessions between 24 July and 4 September 1971, at EMI Studios by McCartney, his wife Linda, session drummer Denny Seiwell, whom they had worked with on the McCartneys' previous album Ram, and guitarist Denny Laine, formerly of the English rock band the Moody Blues. It was released by Apple Records on 7 December in the UK and US, to lukewarm critical and commercial reaction.
Loletha Elayne Falana or Loletha Elaine Falana, better known by her stage name Lola Falana, is an American singer, dancer, and actress. She was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical in 1975 for her performance as Edna Mae Sheridan in Doctor Jazz.
Angie Milliken is an Australian actress.
Mary Anna McCartney is an English photographer, documentary filmmaker, plant-based and vegetarian cookbook author, and activist. She is the Global Ambassador for Meat Free Monday.
Lily Brett is an Australian novelist, essayist and poet. She lived in North Carlton and then Elwood/Caulfield from 1948 to 1968, in London 1968–1971, Melbourne (1971–1989) and then moved permanently to New York City. In Australia she had an early career as a pop music journalist, including writing for music magazine Go-Set from May 1966 to September 1968. From 1979 she started writing poems, prose fiction and non-fiction. As a daughter of Holocaust survivors, her works include depictions of family life including living in Melbourne and New York. Four of her fictional novels are Things Could Be Worse (1990), Just Like That (1994), Too Many Men (2001) and You Gotta Have Balls (2005).
The Apple scruffs were a group of devoted Beatles fans who congregated outside the Apple Corps building and at the gates of Abbey Road Studios in London during the late 1960s, in the hope of seeing or interacting with one of the band members. According to Apple press officer Derek Taylor, when The Sunday Times wrote a feature article on the company in the late 1960s, their map included a location for the scruffs, on the steps of the offices at 3 Savile Row.
Richard Clive Neville was an Australian writer and social commentator who came to fame as an editor of the counterculture magazine OZ in Australia and the United Kingdom in the 1960s and early 1970s. He was educated as a boarder at Knox Grammar School and enrolled for an arts degree at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. Australian political magazine The Monthly described Neville as a "pioneer of the war on deference".
Isobel Buchanan is a Scottish operatic soprano.
The relationships of the English musician Paul McCartney include engagements to Dot Rhone and actress Jane Asher, and marriages to Linda Eastman, Heather Mills, and Nancy Shevell.
Margaret Mary Jones was an Australian journalist, noted for being one of the first accredited to China after the Cultural Revolution, and first female Foreign Editor on any Australian newspaper. Described as a "trailblazer for women journalists", she wrote for John Fairfax Limited for a total of thirty-three years.
Nicola Louise Roxon is an Australian former politician. After politics, she has worked as a company director and academic.
Unjoo Moon is an Australian film director, best known for the 2020 biopic I Am Woman, that tells the story of international feminist icon Helen Reddy.
I Am Woman is a 2019 Australian biographical film about singer Helen Reddy, directed and produced by Unjoo Moon, from a screenplay by Emma Jensen. Tilda Cobham-Hervey stars as Reddy alongside Evan Peters, as her manager husband Jeff Wald, and Danielle Macdonald as rock writer Lilian Roxon.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| People | |
| Other | |
