Rock and roll rules now, but in the early 60s it was, as Leee Black Childers says, the dirty dog – until Lillian Roxon came along.
Childers, the influential rock photographer, is spinning stories alongside Mother Of Rock director Paul Clarke and producer Robert de Young about rock (and occasional political) writer Lillian Roxon, the subject of their documentary, screening at TIFF.
“Rock wasn’t treated with any respect until Lillian said, ‘It’s is our culture, it’s an art,’ ” says the gloriously flamboyant bad boy Childers. “It was like she was psychic, and now we look back and see how right she was. She knew what was going out and what was coming in. We wish she’d lived a few more years [she died in 1973] so that she could see that she was right.”
Roxon came to New York from Australia as a stringer for the Sydney Herald in 1959 and quickly got ensconced in the cool scene, partying with Warhol, holding court at Max’s Kansas City and keeping her finger on the cultural pulse.
“She kept sending material to Helen Reddy back home about what was going on in New York in the women’s movement. Reddy say she never would have written I Am Woman had she not done that,” says de Young.
Roxon was close friends with Linda Eastman before she met Paul McCartney and Germaine Greer before she became a worldwide bestselling author. Roxon supported them and promoted them, but the relationships soured soon after they became famous.
Greer did attend the launch of Mother Of Rock in Sydney where, says director Clarke, he could see signs that the feminist author still felt competitive with her deceased friend.
“She was hellbent on proving her rock credentials. I felt like she was still saying, ‘Lillian, please like me.’ I imagine that Lillian was sitting up there in heaven laughing at the fact that it was Germaine who introduced the film. I remember after the screening, Germaine said to me, ‘Biography is just the act of bacteria crawling under the skin and eating it.’ “
Some bitterness never dies.
Mother Of Rock: Lillian Roxon screens tonight (Wednesday, September 15), 8:30 pm, AMC 9 and Saturday (September 18) noon, at AMC 2. Read the review here.
