Jay Landesman; Writer and publisher who mixed with the Beat generation and the Soho set (Guardian(
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Writer and publisher who mixed with the Beat generation and the Soho set
Craig Sams
guardian.co.uk, Friday 25 February 2011 17.02 GMT
JAY LANDESMAN - 1994 Jay Landesman in 1994. He had a shrewd eye for
publishing opportunities. Photograph: Geoff Wilkinson/Rex
The death of the writer and publisher Jay Landesman, aged 91, marks the
demise of one of the last links to the Beat, hip and cool roots that
inform modern culture. For many budding Beat writers, Neurotica, the
magazine Jay founded in the US in the 1940s, was the first place they
saw their names in print.
In the 1980s and 90s, as a louche habitué of the Groucho Club, London,
Jay fell naturally into that Soho routine that moved from the Colony
Room club to the French pub to Gerry's bar to the Coach and Horses
(where he was banned for a while) and back to the Groucho. However, he
always had his wits about him and had a shrewd eye for publishing
opportunities that went all the way back to his early years in New York,
where he had published Neurotica.
Landesman was born in St Louis, Missouri, the son of an immigrant Jewish
artist from Berlin and a mother who ran an antique gallery. In the late
1940s, on antique-buying trips to New York, Jay discovered the
post-second world war bohemian scene. In 1949 he moved to the city,
where Neurotica became the platform for writers including Marshall
McLuhan, Allen Ginsberg, Leonard Bernstein, John Clellon Holmes and Jack
Kerouac.
In 1950 Jay married Fran Deitsch and moved back to St Louis, where he
and his brother Fred opened the Crystal Palace, a cabaret theatre bar
that hosted acts including Lenny Bruce, Barbra Streisand, Woody Allen
and Dick Gregory, at a time when few venues outside the east and west
coasts could support them. Bruce begged Fran to run away with him. The
Gaslight Square neighbourhood around the Crystal Palace became the heart
of St Louis nightlife and Jay was voted unofficial mayor of the
district. "That means nothing," said Jay. "I'd rather be king."
He wrote an unpublished novel The Nervous Set, which was a fondly
satirical take on the Beat generation. In 1959 he produced it as a
musical, with lyrics by Fran and music by Tommy Wolf. Its raging success
in St Louis prompted a move to Broadway, where the show closed after
just a few weeks. Fran's songs from The Nervous Set persisted – Ballad
of the Sad Young Men and Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most have
become jazz standards, recorded by Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald and
Shirley Bassey.
In 1964 the Landesmans moved to London and quickly settled into the
burgeoning 60s scene, hosting friends from the US and London at
legendary parties at their Georgian terraced house in Islington. In 1967
Jay became artistic director at the Electric Garden, the psychedelic
nightclub, but fell out with the management when they insisted that he
break up a screechy Yoko Ono happening which he had arranged. He was
fired, then reinstated, but the club failed soon afterwards.
In 1969 he became fanatical about macrobiotics. He worked as a waiter in
Seed, the macrobiotic restaurant owned by my brother Gregory and myself.
When we set up our wholesale business, Harmony Foods, in 1970 we were
frustrated by a long-running postal strike that affected our marketing
plan. Undaunted, Jay, acting as our sales manager and using the monicker
"Stan Stunning" (Fran called herself "Fran Fabulous") got on the phone
and somehow persuaded health-food retailers to commit, sight unseen, to
our introductory package, thus enabling them to offer a full macrobiotic
range to satisfy the increasing numbers of long-haired customers who
were demanding organic brown rice, aduki beans and hijiki seaweed.
Without Jay's determination, Harmony Foods might not have made it and
the organic brands it generated – Whole Earth, the original VegeBurger
and Green & Black's – would never have seen the light of day. When the
dour Boston macrobiotic contingent came to London in 1971 and took the
fun out of macrobiotics, Jay abandoned the organic food business for a
second shot at publishing.
His Polytantric Press published hidden literary gems. In 1977 he
launched the imprint with Elizabeth Smart's By Grand Central Station I
Sat Down and Wept and published Hancock's Last Half Hour by Heathcote
Williams. In the same year, he published The Punk, by my stepson Gideon
Sams, which had a real safety pin through the nose of the image of
Johnny Rotten on the cover. Jay sold the rights to Gideon's book to
Corgi and sales went into the tens of thousands. (Mike Sarne later made
it into the 1993 film The Punk and the Princess.)
Supported in his publishing activity by his devoted amanuensis Pam
Hardyment, Jay could safely leave his office in Wardour Street to
network at the Groucho, where he and Jeffrey Bernard could often be
found napping quietly on the sofas after liquid lunches. Later, Jay
moved the Polytantric office to a squat in Kentish Town, north London.
Jay was a lubricious, some would say lecherous, old roué. His easy
charm, magnetic appeal, inexhaustible line of intriguing suggestions and
manipulative understanding of the feminine psyche ensured that he had a
devoted following of intelligent and attractive women. Fran tolerated
and sometimes befriended them, always confident in the depth and
immutability of her relationship with Jay. Her own career as a poet and
songwriter gave a balance to their relationship that ensured they never
tired of each other.
Fran survives him, along with their sons, Cosmo and Miles, and a
grandson, Jack.
• Jay Irving Landesman, writer and publisher, born 15 July 1919; died 20
February 2011