Jerry Brandt, Whose Music Clubs Captured a Moment, Dies at 82
#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThose We’ve LostJerry Brandt, Whose Music Clubs Captured a Moment, Dies at 82Energizing Manhattan night life, he opened the Electric Circus in 1967 and the Ritz 13 years later. He died of Covid-19.The promoter Jerry Brandt, right, with Tina Turner and Keith Richards in 1984 at the Ritz, the East Village club Mr. Brandt opened in 1980.Credit…Bob GruenJan. 28, 2021Updated 5:52 p.m. ETJerry Brandt, a promoter and entrepreneur who owned two nightclubs, the Electric Circus and the Ritz, that were attention-getting parts of New York’s music scene in their day, died on Jan. 16 in Miami Beach. He was 82.His family said in a statement that the cause was Covid-19.Mr. Brandt made a career of trying to catch whatever wave was cresting on the pop-culture scene. With the Electric Circus, which he opened in 1967 on St. Marks Place in the East Village, it was psychedelia. With the Ritz, opened in 1980 a few blocks away, it was the exploding music scene of the MTV decade, with the shows he staged there — Parliament-Funkadelic, U2, Tina Turner, Ozzy Osbourne, Frank Zappa and countless others — reflecting the exploratory energy of the time.Not all his big bets paid off. Perhaps his best-known debacle was Jobriath, a gay performer whom Mr. Brandt backed with a lavish promotional campaign in 1973 and ’74, hoping to create an American version of David Bowie’s androgynous Ziggy Stardust persona. The concertgoing and record-buying public soundly rejected the attempt to manufacture a star, and Jobriath, whose real name was Bruce Campbell, faded quickly.But Mr. Brandt’s successes, especially with the Ritz, caught their cultural moment and propelled it forward. At the Ritz, he not only booked an expansive range of bands; he also brought new technologies into the mix.“The Ritz opened May 14, 1980, with a video screen the size of the proscenium arch it hung from,” the WFUV disc jockey Delphine Blue, who was a Ritz D.J. for five years, said by email. “On it were projected cartoons, movie bits, psychedelic montages, while the D.J.s played records and jockeyed back and forth with the V.J., who played music videos. This was over a year before the debut of MTV in August of 1981.”There was, she said, a rope dancer who was lowered from the ceiling. There was a cameraman lugging a huge video camera around the dance floor, capturing the dancers and projecting the images on the big screen. The club was often packed and the chaos barely controlled. Sometimes it was not controlled at all.“A full house at the Ritz began throwing bottles at the club’s video screen two weeks ago when the British band Public Image Ltd. performed behind the screen, refused to come out from behind it and taunted the audience,” The New York Times reported in the spring of 1981. “Several fans then stormed the stage, ripping down the screen and destroying equipment. There was a moment of near-panic on the crowded dance floor, though apparently no one was hurt.”Mr. Brandt was the center of it all.“Jerry,” Ms. Blue said simply, “was the P.T. Barnum of nightclubs.”Mr. Brandt made a career of trying to catch whatever wave was cresting on the pop-culture scene. With the Electric Circus, which he opened in 1967, it was psychedelia.Credit…Larry C. Morris/The New York TimesJerome Jack Mair was born on Jan. 29, 1938, in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, to Jack and Anna (Cohen) Mair. His father, Mr. Brandt wrote in his memoir, “It’s a Short Walk From Brooklyn, if You Run” (2014), left when he was 5. When his mother subsequently married Harold Brandt, Jerry took his stepfather’s name.After graduating from Lafayette High School in Brooklyn, he served in the Army from 1956 to 1958. Back in New York, he eventually got a job as a waiter at the Town Hill, a Brooklyn club that featured top Black performers like Sam Cooke and Dinah Washington.“It was a dream come true,” he wrote in his memoir. “I could see great performers and make money at the same time. It made me realize that I wanted to be in the music business.”The Coronavirus Outbreak More
