Lily Brett has writ­ten six nov­els, three col­lec­tions of essays, and sev­en vol­umes of poet­ry. Her work fre­quent­ly explores the lives of Holo­caust sur­vivors and their chil­dren, the expe­ri­ences of mod­ern women, women’s rela­tion­ship with food, and life in New York City. Her most recent book, Lola Ben­sky (Coun­ter­point), is now avail­able. She will be blog­ging here all week for Jew­ish Book Coun­cil and MyJew­ish­Learn­ing.

I spent five or six years of my youth inter­view­ing rock stars. I inter­viewed them back­stage, after con­certs. I inter­viewed them in their homes, in record­ing stu­dios and in radio and tele­vi­sion sta­tions. I inter­viewed them in Lon­don, New York, Los Ange­les, San Fran­cis­co and Mon­terey, California.

I inter­viewed Jimi Hen­drix, Janis Joplin, Jim Mor­ri­son, Mick Jag­ger, the Who, the Mamas and the Papas, Son­ny and Cher and dozens of others. 

It was the mid to late 1960’s. It all began because my father want­ed me to be a lawyer. He thought that I would be bet­ter than Per­ry Mason, the lawyer played by Ray­mond Burr, who won his case, on tele­vi­sion, every week.

It is very hard to rebel if, like me, you are the child of two peo­ple who were impris­oned in Nazi death camps and had almost every­one they loved in the uni­verse mur­dered. My rebel­lion was unplanned. It seemed to come out of the blue. I was at a high school for gift­ed stu­dents, and I suc­cess­ful­ly botched any plans to become a bet­ter lawyer than Per­ry Mason by going to see Alfred Hitchcock’s movie Psy­cho, twice, instead of sit­ting for my final year school exams.

I’m not sure what I thought I was going to do with my life when it became obvi­ous that I had not sat for the exams and there­fore failed the year. I think I wasn’t think­ing. Psy­cho didn’t help me to think any more clear­ly. It just left me ter­ri­fied — it was a ter­ri­fy­ing movie. 

Even­tu­al­ly, after months and months of watch­ing me rid­ing my bicy­cle in cir­cles around my par­ents’ small back yard in order to lose weight, my moth­er, much to my hor­ror, said I would have to look for a job.

My father was bit­ter­ly dis­ap­point­ed when, through a stroke of mas­sive good for­tune and pos­si­bly a degree of decep­tion, I, who didn’t know how to load a sheet of paper into a type­writer, got a job as a jour­nal­ist. He thought jour­nal­ism wasn’t a real job. And cer­tain­ly not a pro­fes­sion. He was even more appalled when he real­ized I was work­ing for a rock music news­pa­per. Australia’s first rock music newspaper. 

I trav­eled the world at a very young age for this news­pa­per. I inter­viewed rock stars in an era when you could talk to them with­out today’s entourage of min­ders, assis­tants, man­agers and pub­lic rela­tions peo­ple present. I inter­viewed Mick Jag­ger in his apart­ment, Cher bor­rowed my false eye­lash­es and Janis Joplin and I dis­cussed dif­fi­cult moth­ers. It was, in so many ways, a much more inno­cent time.

A lot of peo­ple thought I had a glam­orous job. Although, let me tell you that trav­el­ling with Gene Pit­ney or the Trog­gs, whose hit at the time was Wild Thing,” and stay­ing at board­ing hous­es in the north of Eng­land is far removed from anyone’s notion of glam­our. My father couldn’t have been less impressed or less inter­est­ed in my job. For sev­er­al years he har­bored a small hope that I might yet end up a lawyer. 

In my new nov­el, Lola Ben­sky, Lola Ben­sky is a nine­teen-year-old rock jour­nal­ist who irons her hair straight and asks a lot of ques­tions. Mick Jag­ger makes her a cup of tea and Jimi Hen­drix, pos­si­bly, propo­si­tions her. Lola spends her days plan­ning diets and inter­view­ing rock stars.

I loved being Lola Ben­sky. And I liked shar­ing ini­tials with her. My long-term edi­tor calls me LB. I called Lola Ben­sky LB in all the notes I made for the nov­el. It wasn’t at all con­fus­ing. I knew exact­ly which LB I was refer­ring to.

Lola Ben­sky, which is set in 1967, is a book of fic­tion. But, I did, in real life, inter­view every one of the rock stars I wrote about in the nov­el. I want­ed to paint as hon­est a por­trait of the rock stars I inter­viewed as I could. I want­ed to draw an accu­rate and inti­mate pic­ture of this remark­able group of musicians.

When my father, who is now nine­ty-sev­en, saw the book, he was annoyed all over again. I have writ­ten six­teen books. No oth­er book of mine has irri­tat­ed him like this one. It has brought back all of his dreams of hav­ing a daugh­ter who could stride into a court­room bran­dish­ing her law degree, and, week after week, against all the odds, win every case. 

Read more about Lily Brett here.


Lily Brett | Jew­ish Book Coun­cil Vis­it­ing Scribe

Lily Brett has writ­ten six nov­els, three col­lec­tions of essays, and sev­en vol­umes of poet­ry. Her work fre­quent­ly explores the lives of Holo­caust sur­vivors and their chil­dren, the expe­ri­ences of mod­ern women, women’s rela­tion­ship with food, and life in New York City. Her most recent book, Lola Ben­sky (Coun­ter­point), is now available.

Lily Brett on Inter­view­ing Rock Stars and Not Becom­ing a Lawyer

Lust­ing for Pens and Pencils

Beach Mem­o­ries

Falling in Love in Cologne