Germaine Greer on Jimi Hendrix, Oz #30, 1970
Greer appears in this 1973 doc about Hendrix - about 59 mins in and sporadically after.
Snippets
-
Sterling Morrison, quoted in Rob Sheffield's Beatles book I'm guessing the VU hated the Mothers ever since that period when the latt... -
"When I first saw Tarantino's 'Pulp Fiction' , I turned to my wife during the screening & said, “Everything I have d...
-
Someone recentl y asked Greil Marcus why "sixties and seventies rock crits hate prog so much?" "Why do people hate prog roc...
That is lovely. I have always liked Greer, but didn't know she was a Hendrix fan.
ReplyDeleteOne of those stylists / rhetoricians who I think is worth listening to even when I don't agree with her.
Yes I was trying to find the whole text somewhere - that scan is just the last page someone posted from its being reprinted in The Madwoman's Underclothes essay collection.
ReplyDeleteI probably have a pdf somewhere of that Oz issue...
She's great, isn't she. The Female Eunuch had a big impact on me. Not read any of the later books.
Talking of pdfs, what I would love to get is the entire run of Suck.
There's this film Town Bloody Hall, documenting a panel discussion in NYC, 1973 - second-wave feminists versus Norman Mailer. He had written an essay or monograph called The Prisoner of Sex critiquing the women's liberation women. Greer is on the panel - very pugnacious and cool.... glamorous too. Mailer's such a dick.
Along with the sparks flying, worth watching as an amazing document of this vibrant intellectual-literary culture in NYC. The event was the hottest ticket in town, anyone who was anyone was in the audience... Sontag was there, I think.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/jun/26/michael-jackson-death-in-la Germaine Greer heralding Michael Jackson at the occasion of his death. Curiously, the focus of her praise is his dancing, not his music. And no mention of the other stuff.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/jun/30/popandrock.poetry Germaine Greer in a rambling, unfocused diatribe ostensibly against Dylan, and which mainly serves to remind that Germaine Greer can be pretty bloody peculiar.
I enjoyed the swipe against Dylan (not a Dylan fan) and the surprise of her being an admirer / appreciator of Morrissey. The close metrical analysis of Blake lost me a bit but I wouldn't assume she doesn't know what she's talking about - she's a professor of English literature, isn't she?
DeleteThe Michael Jackson tribute is a little off, agreed (destroyed by his fans? Well, he destroyed some of his fans, that we know almost for certain). I think she is right to harp on about his dancing. The dancing and the singing are the genius element - I don't think he was a musical innovator, but with Quincy Jones and Rod Temperton he made records of surpassing beauty. Not forgetting the records he made with his brothers.
Loved her swipe at Madonna.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/rockandjazzmusic/3669830/Germaine-Greer-The-night-Led-Zeppelin-blew-my-mind.html Germaine Greer praising Led Zeppelin. Just discovered this, and frankly her insistence on pointing out how much she grasps the musicality saps all joy from the analysis. I fear Greer believes any artist should ideally submit their work to her before it's released, so she can rectify it with her teacher's red pen.
ReplyDeleteCan't access this but I have read something else somewhere else about her love of Led Zeppelin. "The teacher's red pen" comment doesn't sound like the Greer I know, which is The Female Eunuch. She was then a libertine, fearless, funny, the opposite of a didact or scold.
Deletehttps://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/germaine-greer-the-best-year-of-my-life-517050.html Germaine Greer claiming that she'd been chatted up by George Best. I think that might be the most disingenuous namedrop I've ever come across.
ReplyDeleteThe bit that blows my mind here is the reference to her then working on a TV series with Kenny Everett. Then again he was quite a cheeky, mischievous figure, and gay, so maybe they were comrades in libertinism.
DeleteWhy wouldn''t Georgie Best pursue her?
"So there I was, making a TV show with Kenny Everett, when George Best drops by and offers a shag."
DeleteGoing off on a tangent, but wasn't Cuddly Kenny Everett an ardent Thatcherite? I don't mean to say that as a criticism, or a lauding.
Deletehttps://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/apr/11/germaine-greer-margaret-thatcher-anniversary Greer's disparaging of Thatcher. Frankly, it's bizarre, not least when she mocksJeffrey Archer's obsequious flattery towards Thatcher at a garden party, a garden party where she was a fellow guest.
I believe Kenny was - a lot of showbiz people are Tory. He may not have started as a Tory but once you have income that gets heavily taxed then it's amazing how malleable political positions can become (e.g. Morrissey). Mind you, back then Denis Healey vowed to squeeze the rich until the pips came out or words to that effect - top rate tax was 90 percent. (Or was it 95 percent at its peak? George Harrison in 'Taxman' has that line (in the voice of the Internal Revenue) "here's one for you, nineteen for me".)
DeleteGood lord, I don't have time to read that enormous Greer piece on Thatcher. I'd be surprised if I disagreed with much of it, though.
Waving pieces written by Germaine in the 21st Century in front of me is not likely to dislodge my Female Eunuch-based admiration, anymore than I'd base my assessment of Paul MaCartney on "The Frog Chorus".
Apparently, when I was a baby, the Frog Chorus was guaranteed to soothe me.
DeleteBut I consider it a weird scenario for Thatcher, Jeffrey Archer, and Germaine Greer to attend the same garden party. And for Germaine Greer to consider that garden party a ripe occasion for diagnosis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulb8DlhTZoU Just discovered this. Probably the last good thing he's done.
DeleteWho's the blonde man with the glasses and mustache on the Oz cover?
ReplyDeleteI think that's Viv Stanshall.
Delete