Profile Make love, not war ... unless you’re MY daughter Richard Neville hit the headlines in the ’60s as the co-founder of Oz magazine and advocate of free love. Yet, as David Leser discovers, when it came to raising his daughters, he was nothing if not prudish.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY GARY HEERY STYLING BY AMANDA NEWMAN

n the prime of his was Neville and two others pretending young adulthood Richard to urinate on a Tom Bass sculptural Neville was the pin-up fountain, set into the wall of a drab boy for the 1960s counter- new building opened by Prime Minister culture and scourge of Robert Menzies. the establishment. Seven years later, in 1971, as editor He wore his hair long, of London Oz, Neville was sentenced to smoked pot, attended sex 15 months in prison and deportation by fairs in Denmark and the Netherlands Her Majesty’s government following the I(one was the inaugural Wet Dream longest obscenity trial in British history. Festival in Amsterdam!), and published (That conviction was also later quashed.) magazines that were satirical arrows After he and his two publishing aimed at the arid heart of Australian accomplices, Felix Dennis and Jim and British political and cultural life. Anderson, were led from the court in On one occasion, while still at handcuffs, John Lennon and Yoko Ono Growing pains: Richard university in Sydney, he was sentenced proposed marriage to Neville so that Neville and his eldest to six months hard labour (the charges his deportation could be stopped. They daughter, Lucy, 28, have were later dismissed) for producing also wrote a song for the magazine, had their differences, especially during her what the magistrate said was a “filthy called God Save Oz, and invited the teenage years, but today and disgusting” publication. It was Oz young Australian publisher over to their they share a similar ICHARD WEARS POLO RALPH LAUREN KNIT AND RALPH LAUREN SHIRT. THESE IMAGES HAVE BEEN RETOUCHED. magazine’s sixth edition and on the cover sprawling country house. In his purple ➤ HAIR AND MAKE-UP BY SASHA NILSSON. LUCY WEARS CARL KAPP DRESS, DINOSAUR DESIGNS NECLACE AND JAN LOGAN BRACELETS. r outlook on the world.

142 AWW.com.au MAY 2011 MAY 2011 AWW.com.au 143 Above: Richard and Lucy, aged three. Right: Today, father and daughter are much more in sync on a number of issues, but as a teen, Lucy was embarrassed by her dad and rebelled.

velvet bell-bottoms and rainbow waistcoat, his own guilty plea. “Yes, it is,” his even know each other! And I walk this son of a World War II infantry daughter quickly chimes in. “I was into the living room and everyone is commander and product of a Sydney always screaming at them [my parents] just leaning up against the walls, boys’ private school had become the and telling them they were hypocrites.” stoned. I said, ‘Look, it’s two in the leading voice of the London underground One of the more climatic – and morning and you said there’d be 15 scene, a self-confessed hippie dedicated faith-breaking – moments came during people. I’ve already counted 500’, to “whipping up a revolution … aiming a party Lucy had at their family home and so I started throwing them out, for world peace, putting acid in the drinking in the Blue Mountains, aptly named just threw them all into the back of water and providing “Happy Daze”. cars … and there were convoys going orgasms on demand”. “we used to call She was 16 and on till dawn.” Not a big ask really. had tried desperately “That was nice of you to drive them,” Fast forward nearly him Colonel neville. to cancel the party Lucy observes dryly. 30 years and you’d we were all when she learnt – “Well, I did,” her father says. “And, expect this one-time scared of him.” at the eleventh hour where possible, I provided transport … radical’s tolerance for – that her father was across the border to Tunisia.” youthful experimentation might extend staying home for the night. Lucy, stony-faced, reminds her father to his own children. Not on your life. “I rang up everyone,” she says, there were only 50 people at the party, Lucy Neville, his 28-year-old daughter, “and tried to cancel it, because you not 500, and besides which, her godmother, still chafes at the memory of her teenage can’t have a party if your dad’s going fashion designer Jenny Kee, and partner years. “Dad became a colonel when I was to be there. Like, that’s just the lamest, Danton Hughes (the late son of art critic a teenager,” she tells The Weekly in her most embarrassing thing in the universe. Robert Hughes) were there as minders.

. Bondi Beach kitchen, her father shifting So I tried to cancel it … but the word “Yes, Jenny and Danton were the rather nervously beside her. had spread.” minders,” says Richard. “Excuse me.” neville “We used to call him Colonel Neville. Indeed it had. Jenny Kee, of course, was the silky We were all scared of him. I wasn’t “I sort of woke up and it was two in Asian beauty who first gained notoriety

richard allowed to do stuff that everyone else the morning,” says Richard now, recalling in 1964 by claiming the bedroom scalp f o was allowed to do. So I just started the night with a fresh rush of incredulity, of John Lennon during the Beatles tour lying about everything and got myself “and there were hundreds of people of Australia. She then engaged in similar into all sorts of trouble.” around the treehouse and I realised delights between the sheets with Keith courtesy . Richard Neville famously defended the invitations were all around the Richards during the Rolling Stones

heery himself during the showcase London Oz pubs of Penrith.” trip Down Under.

trial of the early 1970s after being charged (Lucy’s mother, Julie Clarke, thinks In London a few years later, she gary with obscenity and conspiring to corrupt there was actually a sign on the road appeared naked on the cover of Oz by public morals. How did he answer the saying “Party This Way”.) magazine and managed to charm charge of double standards today? “It was incredible,” the Colonel the pants off Roger Daltry from “Is hypocritical the word you’re continues. “There were bottles everywhere The Who and Eric Clapton from

photorgaphy looking for?” he replies, chortling at and people smoking dope. People didn’t Cream. That was aside from joining ➤

144 AWW.com.au MAY 2011 MAY 2011 AWW.com.au 145 Left: Richard with wife Julie and baby Lucy, aged 10 months. Above, left: Mother and daughter in the garden at their Blue Mountains home, Happy Daze. Above, right: Fashion designer Jenny Kee was Lucy’s godmother and acted as a “minder” for the then teenager at a party which got a little out of hand, according to Richard.

Richard Neville in a ménage à trois with ho could doubt blew my mind. It was a sunny day, the Richard’s then girlfriend, Louise Ferrier. that parents are wind was in the trees and she had this So, yes, perhaps Lucy’s godmother often a great tight Mickey Mouse T-shirt on. She was not the ideal babysitter for a teenage disappointment looked so sweet and was asking me party. Nor, for that matter, was Lucy’s to their children, these really quite intelligent questions godfather, Martin Sharp, the creative Wespecially when judged by their own early and I just thought, ‘Wow’.” genius behind Oz magazine’s aesthetic. history? Richard Neville was not long The following year the couple met He often invited Lucy and her friends out of his bread-and-water British prison in Crete and then lived in a shepherd’s over to his museum-like mansion for and still clearly revelling in his notoriety hut on the Greek island of Ios before parties where he blithely appeared in as the wild, subversive voice when Julie travelling to Tangier, the ancient Berber his pyjamas. Clarke was sent to interview him for the city that had served as home to writers There were other indignities Lucy ABC’s music program GTK in 1974. like Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs had to suffer – like having her father T he interview was at filmmaker David and Paul Bowles. pick her up at school with Bob Dylan Elfick’s house in Palm Beach and Julie, a In 1977 the couple ventured to blaring from the car stereo (“She was fetching beauty and talented writer who’d India to research a book on the enraged,” says Richard) or, even worse, helped Ita Buttrose launch Cleo magazine murderous charms of Charles Sobhraj, having to introduce her boyfriends to in the early ’70s, was far less impressed by the infamous serial killer who’d been her parents. the people Neville knew – he seemed to preying on Western backpackers across Julie and Richard had strict rules know everyone – and much more Asia. Their book, The Life And Crimes about boyfriends. They had to come interested in his Of Charles Sobhraj, home first to meet them, say hello, athletic mind and became a global shake hands (a firm handshake was silver tongue. “he was like a court best-seller and spawned compulsory) and look them straight Richard Walsh, jester who could numerous television in the eye. Woe betide the limp hand who’d started Oz charm the birds out docu-dramas. or the furtive gaze. with Neville and of a bloody tree.” By the early 1980s “I had to tell this guy to get off Martin Sharp in Richard and Julie at Blackheath station [in the Blue 1963, before going had become one of Mountains],” Lucy says, “shake hands on to become chief executive of Sydney’s golden couples, their rambling . with my father and then we had to wait Australian Consolidated Press home – “Happy Daze” – on the edge of a at the station until the next train to go (publishers of this magazine), told The Blue Mountains escarpment, a salon for nevillie to Sydney. Imagine how embarrassing Weekly, “He was like an old-fashioned Australian expatriates like Geoffrey that was for me. court jester who could charm the birds Robertson, Kathy Lette and Robert richard

“And he [the prospective boyfriend] out of a bloody tree.” Hughes, and during the ’80s and ’90s, f o was really pissed off about it. He was Julie Clarke fell out of her proverbial Bob Geldof, Paula Yates, Timothy like, ‘Why do I have to meet your tree, as did Richard. “Julie blew my Leary and Salman Rushdie, author

f***ing Dad? This is bullshit’.” mind,” he says. “She just completely of The Satanic Verses. ➤ courtesy

146 AWW.com.au MAY 2011 MAY 2011 AWW.com.au 147 Left: Richard and Julie at Pulpit Rock in the Blue Mountains in 1984. Above: Lucy (left), 16, and her sister, Angelica, 10, on holiday in Fiji.

Rushdie came to enjoy a few days holding hands and saying, ‘The best is Richard and Julie contest this version respite at Happy Daze during his yet to come’. Richard and Julie hid in of things. There were no boarding schools decade-in-hiding from a fatwa issued their tent most of the time.” in the desert, although if there had been … by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah In 1995, when Lucy was 12 and Khomeini. Jack Nicholson also paid Angelica six, their parents nearly lost ames Baldwin, the a visit with his then their lives in a black American writer, once partner, actress Rebecca “Every morning shocking head-on wrote that “children have never Broussard, following an collision on the been very good at listening to Oscar-winning we had to sit in Spanish island of their elders, but they never fail performance in a naked circle Majorca. Richard Jto imitate them”. As Good As It Gets. holding hands.” had just arrived from Having finished her schooling “Perhaps you might London following in Sydney in 2001, Lucy Neville went like some exotic cheroots,” their the launch of Hippie Hippie Shake, his on to do an Arts degree in Politics and Australian host offered the couple memoir of the 1960s, when their car Latin American studies at the same shortly after their arrival. was crushed by an on-coming truck. university (University of NSW) her father “Yeah, I think we’d all like some Both of them suffered multiple injuries, studied politics and edited the student exotic cheroots,” Nicholson replied after with Richard’s ribs nearly piercing his newspaper, Tharunka, 40 years earlier. a moment’s awkward silence, before the heart and Julie’s vertebra crushed so Today she is completing her Masters joints came out. “It was a day never to badly that, to this day, she still suffers degree in Media Practice and Human be forgotten,” Richard says. from crippling pain. Rights, while her sister, Angelica, turns her This was the world into which Lucy “When we had the car accident I mind to an honours thesis on Somali piracy. Neville was delivered by a home midwife turned into an ultra conservative,” In February this year Lucy’s travel in 1983 and her sister, Angelica, six years she tells The Weekly. “I stopped thinking memoir, Oh Mexico! – an account of her later. Jack Nicholson coming over for like a hippie – that everything was going time spent teaching English in Mexico, joints. Salman Rushdie sleeping out in the to be fine; that the sun was always shining. not to mention becoming romantically E.

treehouse. Tiny Tim cradling Lucy in his “I realised that really bad things can entangled with two local musicians – nevill arms as a baby. (Yes, she screamed. Who happen and suddenly I thought, ‘One was published to rave reviews. It has wouldn’t?) Germaine Greer attempting to thing I can be really sure of is that our been sold to Britain and the United richard f

change Angelica’s nappy (Angelica peed children get the best education possible’.” States and translated into Russian. o on Germaine’s Persian carpet!). According to Lucy her parents went In the book Lucy picks her way And the two children being dragged into a “state of hysteria” when they lyrically and lightly through the courtesy off to New Age camps in the bush overheard her talking about drugs on the chaos and corruption that is Mexican . ris

where they’d run the gauntlet of telephone. “Mum used to pick up the life and politics, while at the same A naked dreaming circles and adults phone on the other end and listen,” she time poking good-natured fun at her rian making love in their hammocks. says. “They were full on. They threatened parents, particularly her father who “Everyone was hairy, naked and to send me to a boarding school in the is turning 70 this year. smelly and just telling me to take my desert. The fact that my father had written Forever the controversial commentator clothes off,” Lucy recalls. “And every glowingly in the 1970s about recreational and professional futurist (“You still

morning we had to sit in a naked circle drugs was irrelevant.” can’t shut him up,” his own website ➤ PHOTOGRAPHY BY B

148 AWW.com.au MAY 2011 MAY 2011 AWW.com.au 149 her mother, “Julie, I hope you’re going to be mature about this”. “It’s a battle as to how to bring teenagers up,” Julie concedes. “You spend your whole time trying to control them and stop them doing what they want to do, but finally they beat you and you’re exhausted.” Not surprisingly, though, Lucy and her father’s politics coalesce these days around many of the ideas that shaped (and still shape) Richard’s thinking – issues of social justice, environmental protection, international human rights, freedom of expression, freedom from torture, the rights of the poor, gender equality ... And mercifully he no longer feels he has to play the colonel, nor turn Bob Dylan up loud on the car stereo. (Lucy does that instead occasionally!) “He’s actually fun to hang out with,” she says. “He’s interested in lots of things and he has a great sense of humour, so we can laugh about everything.” Perhaps the turning point came in 2004, when Richard and Lucy travelled to the World Social Forum in India to listen to music and hear discussions from alternative voices on the perils of globalization, racism, fundamentalism and religious sectarianism. At the end of the “He’s actually fun conference they went to a disco hotel where to hang out with ... someone mysteriously He has a great drugged their coffee. sense of humour, “Lucy and I were so we can laugh.” dancing to the music,” says Richard finally, “and suddenly I said to Lucy proclaims), Richard Neville arrived in the idealism of her parents’ generation ‘I’m stoned’ and she said, ‘Yeah, so am I T SHIRT. Mexico City reading A History Of as necessary, but now a little quaint. … I think it’s ecstasy’. And I said, ‘It’s good, F Bombing, a testament to his continuing “Both our daughters have studied politics isn’t it?’ And she said, ‘Yes, it’s fantastic.’ obsession with the costs of the American- much more than Richard has, so they “It was a wonderful end to an amazing led invasion of Iraq in 2003. can critique his theories,” her mother holiday.” ■ T AND SPORTSCRA

Lucy believes her father should try and says, clearly delighted by this fact. “And i be more “constructive” and “analytical” they wipe the floor with him sometimes.” PS: Oh Mexico! by Lucy Neville is in his approach. Perhaps so, although it Richard doesn’t disagree. “The greatest published by Allen & Unwin. seems clear that she has imbibed the gift is to have children brighter than yourself.” PPS: New Oz Art, the best of the . LUCY WEARS TRELISE COOPER DRESS AND JAN LOGAN NECKLACE.

politics of her parents’ generation and Besides which, there is only so much Sydney and London Oz covers, designed heery adapted them to her own – proof, if a parent can do before raising the white mostly by Martin Sharp, is now available gary ever it were needed, that children often flag. During Angelica’s late teenagehood, in digitally remastered form online at by use their parents as building blocks to Julie discovered her younger daughter in ozcovers.com.au. sharpen their own teeth. bed with her next door neighbour’s son. PPPS: This writer has known Richard Lucy rejects the notion of free love The following morning, as she was Neville and Julie Clarke for more than RICHARD WEARS POLO RALPH LAUREN KN and people power and has come to see driving her to school, Angelica said to 20 years and been a guest at Happy Daze. photography

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