Lillian Roxon

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.{{cn|date=August 2024}}

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.{{cn|date=August 2024}}

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.Weblin, Mark. [http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/anderson/contributors/weblin/tnl/tnl02.pdf The Lincoln Inn] in The Northern Line No. 2, April 2007, pp.8, 9

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.[http://www.takver.com/history/sydney/waters.htm#asio Darcy Waters and the Secret Police (2001)] 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.{{cn|date=August 2024}}

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{{Cite web|url=http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/oz-eras-feminist-offspring/news-story/b4d1d4b68ad7d4d567db4c3d5c394136|title = Subscribe to the Australian | Newspaper home delivery, website, iPad, iPhone & Android apps}} along with the short lived Eye magazine in the late 1960s.{{Cite web|url=http://the1968exhibit.org/covering-1968/2009-08/eye-magazine-september-1968|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160809224631/http://the1968exhibit.org/covering-1968/2009-08/eye-magazine-september-1968|url-status=usurped|archive-date=9 August 2016|title=THE 1968 EXHIBIT: "EYE" magazine, September 1968}}

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.{{cn|date=August 2024}}

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 MillikenMilliken, Robert, Mother of Rock, Black Inc, Melbourne 2002, {{ISBN|1-86395-139-3}}. 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{{cn|date=August 2024}}, 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.{{cn|date=August 2024}}

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".{{cn|date=August 2024}}

During 1968-69, Roxon was commissioned to write what became the world's first rock encyclopaedia, published by Grosset & Dunlap in late 1969, and the work for which she is best remembered.Naha E (ed, comp) Lillian Roxon's Rock Encyclopedia Workman Publishing / Grosset and Dunlap, New York. 1969; {{ISBN|978-0-448-14572-3}} {{ISBN|0-448-14572-3}}

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|date=July 2023}}

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. 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.{{Cite web |last=Taylor |first=Beth |date=2022 |title=I love Bowie |url=https://www.nfsa.gov.au/collection/curated/asset/82669-i-love-bowie |website=National Film and Sound Archive}}

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{{YouTube|NS_jwp7RxcE|Jeune Pritchard interview}} 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,{{YouTube|vgpEKGzwdn4|Gary Hyde interview}} 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.{{cn|date=August 2024}}

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.{{cn|date=August 2024}}

Roxon died at the age of 41 on 10 August 1973, after suffering a severe asthma attack in her New York apartment.{{cn|date=August 2024}} She was survived by two brothers Jack and Milo. Both parents predeceased her and she never married or had children.

Her niece, Nicola Roxon was the Attorney-General of Australia from 2012 to 2013.{{Citation |last=Milliken |first=Robert |title=Lillian Roxon (1932–1973) |work=Australian Dictionary of Biography |url=https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/roxon-lillian-11577 |access-date=2025-03-30 |place=Canberra |publisher=National Centre of Biography, Australian National University |language=en}}{{Cite web |title=Trove |url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/people/745076?c=people |access-date=2025-03-30 |website=trove.nla.gov.au}}

Roxon Place, in the Canberra suburb of Gilmore with a tradition of street names honouring journalists, is named in her honour.{{Cite web|url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article237537813|title=Australian Capital Territory National Memorials Ordinance 1928 Determination — Commonwealth of Australia Gazette. Periodic (National : 1977–2011), p.21|last=|first=|date=15 May 1987|website=Trove|language=en|access-date=7 February 2020}}

In August 2002, a biography of Roxon was published in Australia by Black Inc.: Lillian Roxon, Mother of Rock, 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[http://miff.com.au/films/view?film_id=102622 Mother of Rock, Melbourne International Film Festival] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110106075659/http://miff.com.au/films/view?film_id=102622 |date= 6 January 2011 }} 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.{{Cite web|url=https://www.readings.com.au/review/lola-bensky-by-lily-brett|title=Lola Bensky by Lily Brett|date=23 September 2012 }}

In the 2017 miniseries Friday On My Mind, the Easybeats travel to New York in 1967 and meet Roxon, portrayed by Ella Scott Lynch.{{cite web | url=https://www.collection.nfsa.gov.au/title/1530645 | title=NFSA - Search the Collection }}

The 2019 film I Am Woman depicts Helen Reddy's friendship with Lillian Roxon, portrayed by Tilda Cobham-Hervey and Danielle Macdonald respectively.{{Cite web|url=https://www.smh.com.au/culture/movies/she-was-a-true-force-danielle-macdonald-gives-lillian-roxon-her-due-20200812-p55kyk.html|title='She was a true force': Danielle Macdonald gives Lillian Roxon her due|date=15 August 2020}}

The National Film and Sound Archive has a curated tribute to Roxon's life and work.{{Cite web |last=Taylor |first=Beth |date=2019 |title=The Life of Lilian Roxon |url=https://www.nfsa.gov.au/latest/lillian-roxon-life |website=National Film and Sound Archive}}

{{Reflist}}

• {{cite archive |first= Lillian|last= Roxon|item = |type =Textual record |date = 1945–1972 |series = Fonds|file =MLMSS 3086 |box= |collection = [https://collection.sl.nsw.gov.au/record/94Rko4w1 Lillian Roxon - papers, 1945-1972] |repository = Mitchell Library |institution = State Library of New South Wales |location =Sydney, Australia}}
• {{cite archive |first= Lillian|last= Roxon|item = |type =Textual record |date = 1966–1969|series = Fonds|file =MLMSS 3086 ADD-ON 906/Folder 1X |box= |collection = [https://collection.sl.nsw.gov.au/record/1l4EBW21 Lillian Roxon papers, 1966-1969] |repository = Mitchell Library |institution = State Library of New South Wales |location =Sydney, Australia}}
• [http://theincblot.blogspot.com/2010/01/interview-with-robert-milliken-author.html Interview with biographer Robert Milliken]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20121004181733/http://www.madman.com.au/catalogue/view/14312/mother-of-rock More information about the documentary Mother of Rock] Retrieved 27 October 2016
• [https://www.nfsa.gov.au/latest/lillian-roxon National Film and Sound Archive - Biography and recorded interviews]

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Category:1932 births

Category:People from Alassio

Category:Australian feminist writers

Category:Australian music journalists

Category:Australian music critics

Category:Australian Jews

Category:1973 deaths

Category:Australian women journalists

Category:20th-century Australian women writers

Category:Australian women music critics

Category:Australian writers about music

Category:Women writers about music

Category:20th-century Australian journalists

Category:The Sydney Morning Herald people

Category:Australian people of Ukrainian descent