Lillian Roxon probably isn't very well known nowadays. She once was, and also very well respected too. As one of the first really important journalists to take Rock music seriously and choose to write largely, but not exclusively about it, she made quite a mark.
She's probably best known for her Rock Encyclopedia, the first significant example of these, which was published in 1969. It's a fascinating document about the Rock and Roll phenomenon before the canon was officially set in stone in the decades that followed.
Roxon's writing style is assured and generally but not always generous. Her judgements are obviously subjective but always interesting. The Byrds were deep while the Beatles were funny but not always deep. The Troggs seemed to specialise in songs that got banned. The Stones thing was 'the full slummy English lout barrow-boy gutter-rat routine. Mean, moody and magnificent.'
It's also curious to see what gets mentioned and what doesn't. Creedence, who only really broke big in '69 get a brief, cursory paragraph. The Stooges, who barely made a dent when they first emerged, get less than that and are listed as The Psychedelic Stooges, a name they'd long since shed.
Sometimes she's merely descriptive as was probably expected to be by her publishers, but she's also opinionated, and that's when the book gets interesting from a modern perspective. Obviously intended, as all encyclopedias are, as one for the shelf, to take down and browse occasionally, rather than a book to sit down and read through. Still, this and Nik Cohn's Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom, which came out in the same year are key texts for anyone who wants to know what it felt like at the time. Roxon, died tragically, after an asthma attack in her New York apartment in August 1973. She was 41.
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