Fran Landesman

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety six, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My Castaway this week is a songwriter and a poet. Now sixty eight, she was born in New York to wealthy Jewish parents, but abandoned her bourgeois background to pursue a life of bohemian excess. She mixed with the famous writers of the Beat generation, such as Alan Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, and Timothy Leary introduced her to LSD. The unknown Woody Allen and Barbara Streisand appeared at the nightclub she ran with her husband. And in the swinging sixties she came to London and never went home again.

Presenter0:57

Drugs, sex, and human miseries make up the raw material of her work, which has been recorded by, among others, Ella Fitzgerald, Shirley Bassey, and Bette

Presenter1:07

Popular on both sides of the Atlantic, her style is highly sardonic. She's written I may write a verse that is funny, But mostly laments are my thing, For somehow the song of the honey Seems less than the song of the sting. She is Fran

Presenter1:25

One thing, however, is true, Fran: you like rhymes.

Fran Landesman1:28

I do like rhymes. It always rhymes, doesn't it? It's funny because when I first came to England I began uh uh Michael Horvitz invited me to read with the poets. I was the only poet who rhymed at all. I mean

Fran Landesman1:39

The modern poets just turn their back on rhyme. They can be quite snobbish about people who rhyme. Indeed. Mere versify. I as a matter of fact, I never call myself a poet and I I am very honored when somebody else

Presenter1:42

I

Fran Landesman1:52

uses that word, but I think of myself as a songwriter.

Presenter1:55

I mean, give me a a couplet that you're really proud of. I mean, a rhyme. That's difficult to put you on the spot.

Fran Landesman2:01

Oh, here's one.

Fran Landesman2:03

His assets have been overtaxed He's trying hard to look relaxed His latest dream has just been axed He's over sexed and under faxed.

Fran Landesman2:13

It's good, isn't it?

Presenter2:14

You should of course write Life's a Bitch. I mean, that that's your line.

Fran Landesman2:18

No, it was Cosmos. My son Cosmo, he walked into my room one time and I remember him saying Life is a Bitch and I'd sat down and wrote that lyric. But Life's a Bitch was a great favorite of Bette Davies, wasn't it? I was so honored because of all the movie stars she was my favorite. And when she came here, she made a record and she recorded All the Sad Young Men, which ala it didn't turn out well and they didn't include it in the final thing. But she called me up and she invited me to tea and all of that.

Presenter2:43

But one of the the best known lines, I think, i is one that one would never have thought best known lines that you've written would never have thought would have caught on, which is Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most, which is sort of great synt syntactically quite dubious, I think. Where did that come from?

Fran Landesman2:57

Well, I had

Fran Landesman3:00

Just started hanging out with jazz musicians and listening to the way they spoke.

Fran Landesman3:05

And I realized one day, I was thinking about April is the cruelest month, mixing memory with desire, those lines of Elliott's. And I thought the way the jazz musicians would say that would be, spring can really hang you up the most. And I told this piano player about it. I said, wouldn't it make a funny song title? And he said, yes, why don't you write it? And it's a kind of standard.

Presenter3:25

And now it's a kind of standard jazz classic, isn't it?

Fran Landesman3:28

Yes, but because of the music that he put to it.

Presenter3:30

But your poetry in the main, as I uh was trying to say in the introduction, is is born of your experiences, isn't it? It's it's it's what you've been through, but with a dollop of humour, or that wryness, that sort of sardonic wit thrown in.

Presenter3:44

One of your latest songs I wondered if you'd read it to us, actually, before we hear your first record, um one which I think has a theme which may be quite close to your heart now, because it's about aging.

Fran Landesman3:54

Oh yes.

Presenter3:55

Uh

Fran Landesman3:56

Goodbye, days of jazz and joking, Goodbye, booze, and food that's fried Goodbye, glamour, so long smoking Hullo, thoughts of suicide

Fran Landesman4:06

Farewell, days of fun and flirting So long, sex so glad we came Now there's always something hurting Hullo, specks and walking frame

Fran Landesman4:16

So long, lovely finger lickers Goodbye, life that late we led Hullo, cramps and dodgy tickers Soon we'll be the grateful dead Goodbye, Ronnie goodbye, Lennie Goodbye, pretty girls and boys Got to go and spend a penny Hullo, geriatric joys

Fran Landesman4:35

So to music, tell me about your first record. My first record is a song that I used to sing to my children when they were little. It's called Brother, Can You Spare a Dime from the Depression? And the boys used to say, Mommy, sing Dime song. And then they'd try to press a coin into my hands while I did this affecting number.

Speaker 44:46

I mean

Speaker 44:53

Once I built a tower to the sun

Speaker 45:01

Built of brick and mortar and lime

Speaker 45:07

Once I built a tower

Speaker 45:12

Now it's done.

Speaker 45:15

Buddy, can you spare

Presenter5:21

Judy Collins, singing Brother Can You Spare a Dime from the musical Americana. Now, you, friend Landersman, as I said, in the nineteen fifties, ran a nightclub in St. Louis or St. Louis, called the Crystal Palace, with your husband Jay.

Presenter5:35

Barbara Streisand sang there. She was unknown. Did you know even then that she was something special?

Fran Landesman5:41

Yes, we did.

Fran Landesman5:43

She was simply marvelous. She was a wonderful singer, but she wanted to be a comedian, and she used to do all kinds of funny little routines and she would change the show every night.

Fran Landesman5:53

And somebody said to her, Why don't you do that show you did on opening night? That was so good. And she'd say, I get bored doing the same songs every night. And Jay said to her, You punk, you've been in show business for two weeks and you're bored already. And Woody Allen was around too. What was he like? Woody Allen, terrified. Every single night, I couldn't believe it. He would pace up and down his dressing room and I'd hang out with him. He'd say, I hope they're going to be nice tonight. I do hope they're going to be nice tonight. And constantly on the phone to his annual. List of And the phone was sort of outside of the toilet, so there'd be sort of like a queue of people waiting for the Lulu to hear on his conversation.

Presenter6:25

Or listening to

Presenter6:28

And who el I mean, what other this is a good name-dropping session, really. Lenny Bruce was around, wasn't he?

Fran Landesman6:31

Yeah.

Presenter6:32

Hi history has it that he wanted you to run away with him, is that right?

Fran Landesman6:36

He did say something like that. Come on the road with me. We'll send your old man a little money every month, he said.

Presenter6:42

But he did something worse than that. I mean, you didn't go with him, but he did something he injected you in the behind with heroin, isn't it?

Fran Landesman6:47

Not heroin de lauded, which is a synthetic form of heroin that he was using. And I upchucked for about nine hours. It cured me of anything ever again. He said, Do you want to try this? I said, No, it's going to make me throw up He said, Nah, it won't, it won't, it won't And he and I was wearing a knitted skirt and he just did it right through the skirt and then it did make me throw up.

Presenter6:55

Why did he do it?

Presenter7:05

But you were pretty into drugs in that period, in your twenties.

Fran Landesman7:08

Well, I could have smelled grass, but that's really different from I mean, I've I was never into heavy downers.

Presenter7:13

Hmm, for sure.

Fran Landesman7:14

Sure.

Presenter7:14

But what about Timothy Laurie and the MSD?

Fran Landesman7:15

Timothy Larry and the NSDAC.

Presenter7:17

Do you remember that first?

Fran Landesman7:18

Yes, yes. I remember it as being

Fran Landesman7:22

To quote Shakespeare, it it left of love. It lends a precious seeing to the eye. I don't want to sound like I'm proselytizing for Elsie, but it does make you see the world, the sea, the beach, the sky, all of that incredibly enhanced. And afterwards, you only have to do it once or twice. You can remember how you see that forever, really. You don't want to go and see it again. Well, no, it's too strenuous.

Presenter7:45

But did it make a difference? I mean, to to how much difference did it make, I think, is the question to all of those people that that scene you were in.

Presenter7:54

How much difference did the drugs make? Do you think that you wrote things or poetry was written, things were created that wouldn't otherwise have been created?

Fran Landesman8:01

I sik for me it was a college education.

Presenter8:05

Tell me about your second record.

Fran Landesman8:07

It's from the Three Penny Opera, and it's Mac the Knife.

Fran Landesman8:11

And the reason in German, the reason I've chosen it is that when I met J. Irving Landesman and he took me to his flat with one Eames chair and a Jackson Pollock spattered floor, he had one record, and it was the three-penny opera. It was in German, and I'd never heard this song before, and it sounded wonderfully kind of sexy and decadent and all that. I had no idea what it was about till years later when I heard a translation of it.

Speaker 48:36

Und das crus fire in so ho Sieven Kinder und ein Greis in dermen.

Speaker 48:52

Kimes are dan Manik Frog Tung Dernit Smile.

Presenter9:00

Lottalenia singing De Moritat von Machimesse, the ballad of Mac the Knife, written by Courtville.

Presenter9:07

Your husband, Fran Landesman, J. Landesman, has written that when you two met in nineteen fifty you were, and I quote, a classy uptown broad in full rebellion. So what what were you rebelling against? Who and what?

Fran Landesman9:20

On f. Where are you? How are you?

Fran Landesman9:22

What is Marlon Bradison when they asked him that question, What d'ya got?

Fran Landesman9:26

My mother tells me that the first word she ever remembers me uttering when I was a tiny little child was, Mommy, when am I going to get my freedom? I didn't want any kind of restraints.

Presenter9:37

But you were very well off when you the family was very well healed.

Fran Landesman9:39

Well Helltikians, who lived on Central Park West.

Presenter9:42

Rather loveless in your home?

Fran Landesman9:45

We didn't see a great deal of our parents, really.

Presenter9:47

And your mother didn't like it very much.

Fran Landesman9:50

Oh, she gave me a lot. You know, I th I had this constant fight with her, but she took me to the theater. She read aloud beautifully. She read plays and poetry, and she could sing. She was very musical. She discouraged me from singing, though. She said I had a voice like a cow. She was critical, let's put it that way. She said you were fat. You were fat. Yes, I was. How fat?

Presenter10:08

Yes, I would.

Fran Landesman10:10

Well, she used to describe me as a monstrosity. She used to say it brings tears to my eyes when I see that poor swollen body of yours.

Fran Landesman10:18

You monster. Did you just say you want to commit suicide? I'll open the window for you. You can jump.

Speaker 410:19

When did you just

Fran Landesman10:23

They were tough. My parents were tough.

Speaker 110:23

And I've

Fran Landesman10:25

When did you stop being fat?

Fran Landesman10:29

I was beginning to stop before I met Jay, but I was s my ambition was to weigh less than Jay because he was extremely skinny. And somehow after I met him I I just started getting thinner and thinner. I guess it was just hanging out with thin people makes you thin.

Presenter10:42

And you were in love.

Fran Landesman10:43

Yeah.

Presenter10:43

Perhaps.

Presenter10:44

But it was Jay who changed your life, really. Meeting him, the whole thing kind of began to gel, didn't it? You were you were where it was at and that was where you'd been trying to get to.

Fran Landesman10:54

Yep.

Presenter10:54

Bohemian Life

Fran Landesman10:55

He was the editor of Neurotica magazine. Which was Swati. Well, he published.

Fran Landesman11:00

Alan Ginsberg's Pull My Daisy. It was a it was the first underground magazine and it criticized American culture. It sort of almost satirized it all.

Presenter11:08

So you entered his life, you entered his circle of friends, and you were home.

Fran Landesman11:11

Yeah.

Presenter11:12

Is that how it felt?

Fran Landesman11:13

Yeah.

Presenter11:15

Tell me about uh number three.

Fran Landesman11:16

Yeah.

Presenter11:17

Yeah.

Fran Landesman11:17

The Ballad of the Sad Young Men, sung by Roberta Flack. It's the title of a collection of short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Fran Landesman11:25

Most people don't know that or or or they will accuse me of stealing it and I say I assume that anyone who's literate knows that.

Speaker 411:43

Choking on the you

Speaker 411:51

Trying to be brave

Speaker 411:57

Running from the truth

Presenter12:07

The ballad of the sad young men, sung by Roberta Flack, and those lyrics by Fran Landersman, my castaway, about the young men who hung out in New York bars in the fifties and refused to grow up. It's also, though, uh the title uh was the title of your first book of poems. Do you write them differently when they're supposed to be poems on a page, or are they introducing?

Fran Landesman12:27

I would say the only way you can tell the poems from the songs is that the poems don't rhyme.

Fran Landesman12:32

But they do.

Fran Landesman12:33

No, no, I have a lot of poems that don't. I'm really proud of it. I want to be a series for here's a shorty.

Fran Landesman12:39

I call this a Jewish haiku. That summer I met a handsome biker on crutches. Everybody's got a brick wall waiting for them somewhere, he said, smiling.

Fran Landesman12:49

Transit

Presenter12:49

Set that to music. But can any poem be set to music? Can you just play some jazz in the background and read it out? I mean, is that how it happened?

Fran Landesman12:56

Yes. I mean there was a whole movement of people reading poetry to jazz.

Presenter13:00

And indeed it it's it's quite fashionable again now, isn't it?

Fran Landesman13:03

With the lead singer of

Presenter13:03

Blur now quoting his poetry on the stage.

Fran Landesman13:06

He he did it at the Poetry Olympics at Albert Hall.

Presenter13:09

Now you you also published a poem um way back which seems to me to sum up the way that that that you and Jay have led your married life. It's called Semi Detached. I wonder if you'd read it to me.

Fran Landesman13:20

Yes, I remember I wrote this on the way back from Liverpool on a train and I could we were passing all these semi-detached houses and I could hear the train going, semi-detach, semi-detach, semi-detached, semi-detached, and I wrote this. My sweetie and I are semi detached, We're comfy and cool and perfectly matched His lover is A and my lover is Art We're semi detached, but never apart.

Fran Landesman13:39

When some of our loves are semi destroyed, We make it all right by quoting them Freud. We play little games and never get scratched It's easy because we're semi detached. We each have a sigh that's free as the air, And people don't see the sigh that we share Our set up is sweet, there isn't a catch The secret is living semi detached. That's a close Um

Presenter13:58

What you and Jay became very famous for in the sixties, you were said to be the pioneers of an open marriage, weren't you? Of having other sexual partners than each other. I'm sure we were the pioneers.

Presenter14:10

And further back, probably. But I mean, tell me about it. Is it as easy as it sounds? Surely not. Surely there's a lot of pain in it.

Fran Landesman14:18

Yes, but I think there's a lot of pain in almost any enterprise. There's no such thing as unalloyed joy. That's all I can say.

Presenter14:26

But don't you put yourself in the path of even greater pain if you openly take a lover in front of your husband he openly takes one in front of you, surely, you know.

Presenter14:37

I don't I'm being very conventional here, but I mean tell tell me what the argument is, because it seems to me that that love and marriage is about f

Fran Landesman14:41

To me that that last

Fran Landesman14:43

I think the idea of limiting yourself for all of your life to one person, they can't do everything. Suppose Jay likes to play tennis or listen to different music and all the those people. It isn't all about sex, which is what people think it is. It's about all the things that other people can bring into your life. I think part of it is you have to have the security to believe that the person that you're with really loves you first and puts you first, and you're not going to lose them. And if you know that, then it doesn't worry you if they spend an afternoon in somebody else's company, and it shouldn't worry them.

Presenter15:15

And did you go on feeling like that even when you had children? Because you then had two little boys, didn't you? And that open marriage.

Fran Landesman15:20

It's certainly harder for a woman to carry on like this just because I was always there for my children. I mean, I didn't want them to wake up in the morning and say, where's mommy? I had to be there. And I was always there to put a meal on the table.

Fran Landesman15:34

It's hard to remember accurately, and I want to be as truthful as I can. There must have been moments when it was really painful, but I think

Fran Landesman15:41

For me, it was worth conquering those feelings because what I gained from a more open lifestyle and a wider list of acquaintances, shall we say, or friends, I feel compensated for the pain of the momentary jealousy. And it always went away again because we're still together. A lot of people.

Presenter16:02

The proof is in the pudding really.

Presenter16:09

You've been married forty six years. Are you still in love, then?

Fran Landesman16:11

Yes, I think we are. More than ever, as a matter of fact.

Presenter16:13

More than

Presenter16:14

Do you still have affairs?

Fran Landesman16:17

No, definitely not. Neither of you. I felt that, well, maybe he does a bit, but men can get away with that. I remember when.

Fran Landesman16:24

Joan Collins and all those women were in their fifties talking about toy boys, etcetera. And they were still beautiful, desirable women, and it made perfect sense. But there is a cut off, and I think the big six O is where I would personally cut it off. But everybody can make their own decisions about those things. After that I became Granny Frannie.

Presenter16:43

Record number four.

Fran Landesman16:45

Oh, Miles Davis and Sketches of Spain. Well, we did know Miles. He lived across the river in East Saint Louis.

Fran Landesman16:50

And we used to listen to this record by the swimming pool. We had the speakers outside, and I just remember that wonderful horn of his drifting.

Fran Landesman16:58

over the pool as I lay there in the sun.

Speaker 417:54

Yeah.

Presenter18:01

Miles Davis playing part of his Sketches of Spain, arranged and conducted by Gil Evans.

Presenter18:07

So, Fran, the the two of you well, four of you actually, because you had two small boys by by this time came to London in nineteen sixty four, height of the swinging sixties. You apparently came for what someone called a talent tune-up, but you never went back. Wh why? What happened? What came to you?

Fran Landesman18:21

We only expect it to stay for a year. I always say I I became addicted to the B B C Radio four.

Fran Landesman18:28

No, it wasn't. No, it was just wonderful.

Presenter18:29

Can't have been just

Speaker 118:29

That's

Fran Landesman18:32

Although at at first I couldn't understand any of the jokes. I kept trying to read Private Eye. I couldn't understand what's funny. But by the end of a year I began to be clued into all the references and

Presenter18:42

But who did you meet? Who took you in? What became your circle here?

Fran Landesman18:42

But who did you meet? Who took

Fran Landesman18:45

It was

Fran Landesman18:46

Just before we came to America we ran into Peter Cook in a bar and he said, Call me when you get to London and we called him and he invited us to dinner and I wrote some songs with Dudley Moore.

Fran Landesman18:56

And I met Ned Sharon, who was producing a a television program called Not So Much a Program or a Way of Life.

Presenter19:02

So you found your niche, yeah.

Fran Landesman19:03

You wrote lyrics for that.

Presenter19:04

Instantly, yeah. And you wrote a poem, of course, Yankee Doodle London. Just give me a bit of it, because it's.

Fran Landesman19:10

Uh

Fran Landesman19:11

Ought to be a single.

Fran Landesman19:12

It's about the because it is a different language. My washcloth is my flannel, my apartment is my flat, I saunter down to Soho and have dinner at the Trat.

Fran Landesman19:21

I know the drill. I've sussed the scene. It's biscuit now, not cookie. I've got a turf accountant where I used to have a bookie. But I just can't say con.

Fran Landesman19:30

I just can't say can't. I'll do most anything you want, but I just can't say can't. But you can

Presenter19:35

Can say can't ma'am Just with difficulty, I think.

Fran Landesman19:38

Difficulty.

Presenter19:40

Record.

Fran Landesman19:41

On the thigh.

Presenter19:41

Uh

Presenter19:42

Tell me

Fran Landesman19:43

Yeah.

Presenter19:43

Yeah.

Fran Landesman19:43

This is a song by that cute Jarvis Cocker.

Fran Landesman19:46

I saw him on the television when he just had a go at Michael Jackson. But then I heard this song of his. I have a friend named Howard Samuels, and he was performing in Cabaret, and afterwards I went up and I said, Where did you find that wonderful song, The Common People? He said, Oh, that's by Jarvis Cocker.

Fran Landesman20:02

So I wanted to have something in temporary. I like to hear new songs, songs that I've never heard before, and I'm not that familiar with Pulpit on this desert island. Maybe if I took this record I would get to know his work better.

Speaker 420:13

She came from Greece, she had a thirst for knowledge She studied sculpture at St. Martin's College, as well as

Speaker 420:27

She told me that the damp was slow down

Speaker 420:31

I said in that case I would ruin Coca-Cola, she said fine.

Speaker 420:37

And then in thirty seconds time she said

Speaker 420:41

Our

Presenter20:42

Uh

Speaker 420:42

Come on. Uh

Presenter20:43

Pulp and common people, and that's from their album Different Class. You have two boys, Fran, um, as we've mentioned, Cosmo and Miles. Miles Davis, of course. What sort of parents do you think you and Jay made?

Presenter20:56

Yeah.

Fran Landesman20:56

Well?

Fran Landesman20:58

Both of my boys are healthy, not they haven't been to jail, they're not drug addicts. And Cosmo did that relative values uh thing with me in the times, and he he

Fran Landesman21:10

S said in print that I wasn't all that bad of a mum, although I I embarrassed them. Everybody's parents embarrassed.

Presenter21:17

I think he said he was very embarrassed to see you at the school gates. I mean, what what would you and Jay have looked like at the school gates in what would have been w the sixties late sixties, I suspect?

Fran Landesman21:27

Richard Neville, who edited Oz, had one of those Afghan coats and he dyed his blue. So I decided to dye mine purple in the bathtub. And I I'm afraid I I didn't I guess I didn't realize that it looks so weird. I did wear that to Cosmo School once, and he's never let me forget it.

Presenter21:27

Richard

Presenter21:42

And you used to tell him I think to hang loose and lighten up. You sound like the sort of parents every teenager thinks they want, Ray.

Fran Landesman21:47

I know all that's what Cosmo says. All his friends said that I'd love to have parents like that, but of course Cosmo wanted something a little bit more traditional. As a matter of fact, he moved in with some English friends of ours, the Brookses, for a year just to sort of get away from the craziness, yes. And what about Miles?

Fran Landesman22:05

No, th it's always the oldest child that has these problems with his parents. Miles is my younger child and he doesn't have any problems with us at all. As a matter of fact, Miles and I perform. He's a songwriter and guitar player, and we do a lot of gigs together.

Presenter22:17

But you make Cosmo sound l rather like that girl in Absolutely Fabulous who sort of disapproves of her mother, Jennifer Saunders, you know.

Fran Landesman22:22

Exactly like that. But he's what I'm so proud of him and he's he I I think he's very clever and funny and charming with it. I don't want him to sound like a total pain in the ass.

Presenter22:33

But would you would you recommend it as a way of parenting? Or looking back on it, do you think perhaps it was just

Fran Landesman22:39

Well I think it's ideal because if you

Presenter22:39

I think it's ideal because

Fran Landesman22:41

Well actually

Fran Landesman22:43

If you are terribly strict and unpermissive, your children can turn into dope fiends. And if you're l loose and permissive like us, they can turn into dope fiends. It doesn't seem to matter how you do it. I think it's really important for children to know that they're loved and that you care about them and that they're important.

Presenter22:58

But you say you're now granny, Frannie. I mean, I suppose that's the great test, isn't it? Do you worry when you see your grandchildren now being brought up? Do you

Presenter23:08

You know, would it worry you to think of those children being brought up as you brought up your children?

Fran Landesman23:15

It's alas, it's impossible to my children would you didn't have to lock the door. They were in and out of the house. They'd go off with their friends to football matches with their rosettes and all that.

Fran Landesman23:26

And now it's everything is so much more dangerous. I I

Fran Landesman23:29

We Jay and I went around telling people to loosen up. I think it's time that people stopped loosening up. Tell me about the next piece of music, number six. This is a song I used to sing to my children. Somebody said I used to sing very depressing songs to them, but they used to say, sing that song about the bulging eyes and the twisted mouth. It's Billie Holiday saying you strange fruit.

Speaker 423:51

Southern tree

Speaker 423:54

Very strange rule.

Speaker 423:59

Blood on the leaves

Speaker 424:02

And blood at the room.

Speaker 424:06

Black body swinging

Speaker 424:09

In the solo breeze

Speaker 424:14

Dream

Speaker 424:16

Hang in.

Speaker 424:18

From the past.

Presenter24:18

Have lunch.

Speaker 424:19

Yeah.

Presenter24:22

Billy Holiday and Strange Fruit You're perfect singer, you say, Fran.

Fran Landesman24:26

Yes, yes, I have a lot of songs that I wish you were around to sing.

Presenter24:30

Now, we we cast you away, as you know, on a desert island on this programme. Do you think you'd survive for long? Do you think much about death?

Fran Landesman24:37

Yeah. Yeah.

Fran Landesman24:37

Yes, I do think about death and write about it a lot.

Fran Landesman24:41

Uh

Fran Landesman24:42

But I the thought of dying on it alone on a desert island, I must admit, gives me the shivers.

Fran Landesman24:48

Chip.

Presenter24:48

You've lived quite dangerously, haven't you? Jay says you're fascin again, let me quote your husband to you. He says you're fascinated by death.

Presenter24:55

You've threatened to jump out of windows, you've crossed streets carelessly. Do you think you'd resort to suicide if you were condemned to a?

Speaker 124:57

Yeah.

Fran Landesman24:58

Carelessly.

Presenter25:03

Solitary existence.

Fran Landesman25:05

Possibly. I can't imagine being alone on a desert island really, even though this that's the object of this exercise. Could you look after yourself? I couldn't make a shelter. I couldn't escape. I have a thing about it. I'm not a nature poet. I sing a city song.

Presenter25:13

Yeah.

Speaker 125:15

Uh

Presenter25:15

No, I couldn't.

Speaker 125:16

Yeah.

Fran Landesman25:23

I wouldn't be really good on a a desert island.

Fran Landesman25:27

More music.

Fran Landesman25:28

We've come to me. Shall I explain about this? My I began really to be a poet because I met Michael Horowitz and he invited me to perform with a a troupe of performing poets. And we we did

Fran Landesman25:42

Something called the Poetry Olympics. And this is a cut from that LP with my son Miles, who I do a lot of gigging with, playing guitar for me. And it's his setting of a poem of mine called White Nightmare. Also, it attacks the question of n racism. So I'm quite proud of it in that sense, because it's not so easy to write about racism without sounding like some bit of adjut prop sort of.

Fran Landesman26:04

So there you go.

Fran Landesman26:05

White playground for a white race.

Fran Landesman26:10

No shadows in this white place.

Fran Landesman26:15

No hiding from the white glare White Nightmare White Nightmare

Presenter26:33

My castaway Fran Landersman performing her poem White Nightmare, which was recorded in nineteen eighty two at the Poetry Olympics.

Presenter26:40

So bed now plays a very central role in your life, Fran not for sex,'cause you've given that up but for everything else, I understand. What percentage of your life do you spend in and on on your bed?

Fran Landesman26:50

On bed, not in bed, but on bed. I practically do everything on that bed.

Fran Landesman26:54

It's my raft in a sea of dreams.

Presenter26:56

Yeah.

Fran Landesman26:57

And your husband? At his own bed, Dan

Presenter26:58

Yeah.

Fran Landesman26:59

Stenair's in the basement.

Presenter26:59

Uh

Fran Landesman27:00

So what part

Fran Landesman27:02

Oh, every first thing I wake up in the morning terribly depressed. I don't know the news or whatever it is, and I feel really sour. And then I come downstairs and I meet Jay. Something about him cheers me up instantly. And we take a walk to Al's Cafe in Exmouth Market, the best cappuccino west of Rome. It's excellent. And the walk is through this little park, which we call Angel Park. There's a statue to the airmen who died in the last war of a giant angel. And she always has all these pigeons on her wings. So, this is the recipe for a happy marriage, is it? I think if you've got somebody living on top of you in your room and you worry about their mess and your mess, especially if you're in your word, etc., ultimately, I think that separate rooms is the secret of a happy marriage, but I recognize it's a great luxury. I mean, most people don't have that much space and can't afford to do it. But if you can.

Fran Landesman27:53

Because then you're always glad to see the person. They're not just th somebody that's there.

Fran Landesman27:57

They're a a welcomed and honored and treasured guest.

Presenter28:02

Tell me about your last record.

Fran Landesman28:03

My last record is the fruit of my collaboration with Simon Wallace. And it's sung by a wonderful girl, Nikki Leighton Thomas. And the three of us, she says she's waited all her life to find these songs of mine. She really knows the way to get to a girl. Anyway, we have a whole bunch of shows and things. And this is, they also did this at the Royal Shakespeare Company did a little show recently. And one of the boys from Train Spotting was in it. I was so proud. And they called the show down.

Speaker 428:32

Down.

Speaker 428:34

Has some terrible attractions.

Speaker 428:37

Featuring some desperate distractions.

Speaker 428:42

And that hookah misery Sings I'll never set you free

Speaker 428:47

Cause there's something irresistible in down.

Speaker 428:53

Down

Speaker 428:55

Make some dangerous suggestions Taunt you with those sweet depressing questions

Presenter29:02

Down, written by Fran Landersman and Simon Wallace, and sung by Nicky Leighton Thomas. If you could only take one of those records, Fran. Which one?

Fran Landesman29:09

I think that would be it. Certainly today it's the one I would take. But tomorrow it might be tomorrow it might be another one, yes. What about your book? You've got the Bible and you've got Shakespeare, as you know.

Presenter29:16

What

Fran Landesman29:19

I think I would Jay's written two volumes of memoirs. One's called Rebel Without a Clause and the other's called Jay Walking. I'd like to have them both bound together in one book.

Presenter29:31

Walk back through your life.

Presenter29:33

And what about your luxury?

Fran Landesman29:36

Cannabis seeds?

Presenter29:37

Not a bed.

Fran Landesman29:39

Well, I was wondering what

Presenter29:39

I was wondering how I managed without that bed?

Fran Landesman29:42

It would be very hard. But actually if I if I if I could grow myself some grass, I would probably not m miss the bed as much as I'd miss the smoke.

Presenter29:51

Uh

Fran Landesman29:51

Uh

Presenter29:51

Fran Landersman, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Fran Landesman29:56

Thank you.

Speaker 130:04

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.