Make Love, Not War
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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 .