Untitled #3

by Grace Jones

  A lot of people assumed that I was at home in England. It was completely foreign. I had a lot of trouble understanding people’s accents, and to this day have to turn the TV up to really understand English-speaking British people who speak fast. I need them to speak slowly. This also added to my sense of dislocation, these men talking in a way I didn’t quite understand, very comfortable with each other, treating me as a temporary impediment, actually as a kind of freak.

  The people at my record company, Island, were so mad at me. They were embarrassed and hostile. They thought they would never book an act on the show again, or even on all of the BBC. They thought I had blown it for the whole label. I wanted to get out of the country immediately, but it was late so I couldn’t even get out of the city. I skulked back to my hotel, put my head under the covers, and started sobbing. I felt very alone.

  Naturally, the next day, the incident got blown up by the media. There were pictures of me in the tabloids, wearing boxing gloves. Grace was a disgrace. Bonkers. Drunk. Some of the press was in my favor, and there was an enormous amount of coverage. Island thought it would go against me, that I would be more or less kicked out of the country. Faced with the amount of coverage, they started to see it as an unexpected promotional opportunity.

  They said, “Everyone wants to interview you.” I was in no mood to see anyone. I wanted to escape, to get the hell out of the country.

  I said, “If you send any journalists around to my hotel, I will throw chairs at them.” They didn’t mind that—it was what people were expecting now! I had to sneak out of the country. The boyfriend whose name I don’t want to say, even now, helped to smuggle me out of Britain.

  I said, “I need to get on a flight. I want no press anywhere near me.” I didn’t want it to look like a stunt. I made my plans to fly back to New York.

  Everyone at the label was calling Chris Blackwell, the Island boss, to complain about my behavior. They were moaning about what I had done on the show and how awful and unforgivable it was. Then, after all the attention and front pages, they were moaning that I didn’t want to do any interviews and exploit the situation. First, I’d messed up by acting so bratty, and then I acted up by not playing along.

  I was screaming, “Keep everyone away from me! I am going to resign! I am going to marry somebody, anybody, and have a whole bunch of babies and plant trees. No more of this. This is not what I wanted.” I got a flight back to New York. Sanity, in all its insanity. A New York insanity I could understand. A New York insanity I thrived on.

  Chris was bombarded by calls, but luckily I had a number where I could get straight through to him. I said, “I want you to hear this from me first. I am leaving London, and they are pissed off that I have snuck off when everyone and his mother wants to talk to me. This is what happened, and I don’t want people to think it was a cheap PR stunt. I am not well. I have been infected by bird shit!”

  He said, “You’re right, you don’t want it to look like it was all set up and planned.” I didn’t like the way all the PR people flipped on me either—one minute treating me like a leper, and then suddenly all jumping on it and seeing how they could make it work. It was a spontaneous act, for better or worse, and I think it has probably lingered as an event because it wasn’t contrived. My instinct afterward was to not laugh it off and make it seem contrived.

  Chris didn’t see it when it happened, but he has seen it over the years. He saw the bigger picture. He once said it was like when the Stones peed on some petrol pumps. It becomes one of those career-defining moments, and however badly you think you were treated, however much the press made a meal of it, there is always a grain of truth in what happened in terms of reflecting some part of what you are.

  Harty was rude. I wasn’t going to put up with it. I lashed out on live television. It takes balls to do that, which could be seen as a little crazy. I didn’t give a damn that it was on live TV. The man was rude. Fuck him.

  And then they tried to get me back on the show! The ratings soared. I had done him a favor. They wanted a rematch. It was all so tacky. I suppose it was me being ahead of my time, the idea of the event, the stunt, the scandal, amplified by social media, which is now very much what goes on. It was always bubbling under back then, but now it is the whole thing. Entertainment has become pure self-promotion, a sequence of mere “look at me” stunts. I wanted what I did to be entertainment, but the entertainment that is really art that likes to party.

  Russell Harty never got so much press in his life. For all the things he did do in television—and I’ve now discovered he was very original and even influential, if a little strange—this incident was the one thing he would really be remembered for. He must have known what a fuss I would cause very soon after it had happened. Maybe he even contrived to produce this kind of response from me, or at least once it was obvious I was angry with him, made sure it got worse. If you Google his name, what comes up immediately is “Barmy Diva Grace Jones.” If you Google me it’s pretty near the top of the most popular searches. We were married in some fraudulent media ceremony, manacled together whether we liked it or not.

  Afterward, I was doing a lot of talk shows in America, like Joan Rivers, David Letterman, and Johnny Carson, and I became notorious for beating up the English talk show host live on TV. Those kinds of hosts relished it—We heard what you did over there. We promise to treat you with respect! Joan and I became very good friends; she respected me for standing up for myself when faced with boorish condescension. I became a great booking because of it, and they would act scared, like they didn’t want it to happen to them, the unleashing of the hot-tempered virago. Of course, that’s exactly what they did want.

  It’s the first thing many people think of when they think of me. It gets voted as the top moment in TV talk show history. I don’t mind at all that, despite whatever else I might have done, that’s what they remember. I am glad I had a hit record. “Private Life,” that’s what I was promoting—private life, drama, baby: it all fit. That’s why I was on the show, and I followed it up with a hit album. In the end, that is what it is all about—to be noticed, to be remembered. Had I not had a hit record afterward, it would be my only claim to fame, but at least I would have done something for people to talk about.

  It’s funny that such a spur-of-the-moment thing as the Russell Harty incident is remembered after all these years, but my attitude is that when these things happen, then clearly they are meant to happen. If you can’t think of me without thinking of me slapping Russell Harty, then that is because it was always meant to be. It’s part of my story, and it’s a part of me—I like to think I did it because I was standing up for myself, and that’s very much an important part of who I am. I had a hit record, but because of the incident, I also had a hit life.

  When he died, my phone never stopped. It rang off the hook. What do you think about Russell Harty dying? Well, I am very sorry, but what do you want me to say? I didn’t know him at all. I didn’t kill him. I had nothing to do with it. I wasn’t there at all. I had an alibi.

  * * *

  I would give people something more to talk about at the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations in 2012. When the invite came through to perform in the show, I kept saying no, because I didn’t think I would fit. The request came through the BBC, and they seemed to think I might not fit as well, as the show featured more light entertainment that I thought very tacky. I didn’t see where I would fit among Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Tom Jones, and Sir Elton John, and many people I had never really heard of, junior British pop stars. It was very British, and it wasn’t like there was a Commonwealth feel to the show so that I was representing Jamaica.

  The BBC didn’t seem put out when I said no. But they kept asking me. I kept saying no for a month, and they kept coming back. Eventually, they had to tell me that I had been asked by royal request. I was never officially told who actually asked for me, but I guess that it was Prince Charles. He had a sense of humor, which was something the BBC didn’t s
ee, and must have thought that I would bring something seriously lighthearted among a lot of earnestness.

  I had met him before, at the premiere of A View to a Kill. We were all standing in a line waiting to be introduced, as is the ritual, and when he got to me, he leaned in close to my ear and said something, winking knowingly, about one of the blond actresses in the film, along the lines of, I wonder how she got the part. As he said this, Diana was right behind him. We both laughed out loud, and the picture of us laughing made the papers. Everyone was asking me afterward, What did he say that was so funny? I didn’t tell anyone.

  A similar thing happened after the Diamond Jubilee performance. I performed “Slave to the Rhythm,” which some might have considered a discreet commentary on the slave trade of the British Empire, wearing a barely there Eiko Ishioka costume that let my bare legs do a lot of the talking and gave me plenty of space to show off my hula-hooping and challenge people to wonder about my age. There was no one else on the show—or elsewhere in pop, of whatever age—who could have done that, or even thought of it. That was my gift to the Queen! I thought, You shouldn’t take all this too seriously, not as seriously as some of the others took it. I decided to have some fun with it.

  Everyone was worried before the performance, and couldn’t believe my nerve that I wasn’t wearing more formal clothes and was revealing so much flesh, but afterward, once it all worked out, the BBC were desperately trying to interview me. They hadn’t allowed a backstage pass for my mom or for Paulo so they could come to my dressing room, so I said, “Well, I will give you an interview next time if you give my mom a backstage pass.”

  It was cold, naturally, so after the show I put on a long coat to keep warm while I was waiting to be introduced to the Queen. When she got to me in the lineup she did seem a little disappointed that I had changed, and said to me that it was a shame I was wearing something else. I think she might have hoped I was still hula-hooping. I said I didn’t think it was appropriate to be introduced to the Queen with my legs all on show and my ass hanging out! We both laughed and everyone afterward was asking, What did she say to you? I didn’t tell anyone. Perhaps I should have said she was congratulating me on how I had dealt with the rudeness of Russell Harty.

  9.

  One Man

  I had been on tour while Jean-Paul stayed in New York, working. After it was over, I tried to take him with me on vacation. He couldn’t understand why I needed a vacation, because as he saw it, when I had been touring, I had been in this exciting place, and then this exciting place. He thought being on the road was a holiday. He’d say, “That’s not work.” He didn’t get it.

  To show him what it was really like, I took him on tour with me—I was on my own, without a band, still using playback. It was all my responsibility, the performance, and I wanted him to see how much work it was, even if I was traveling to exotic places. The show was full of set pieces we had designed together. It was not only me standing there singing the songs to the backing music. It was like a minimal musical starring me, and I carried the whole show. He had a nervous breakdown on the third day on a rooftop in Saint-Tropez. I said, “Now do you see how much hard work it is? Now do you understand? This is no holiday.” He couldn’t take the pace, and he wasn’t even performing. He had to go back to New York.

  Another time he came with me for some American shows and I got a knee infection during a show in Florida, from crawling onstage. I would throw my body about during a performance. Someone had dog shit on their shoes, and some of it was left on the stage. It got into a cut on my knee, which became infected and extremely inflamed. They had to put my leg in a cast—I almost lost the knee.

  I was on a lot of painkillers, but I still went out and performed. The pain was so bad for me that Jean-Paul decided to go back home—he couldn’t bear to see me suffer. He couldn’t just stay with me and help me. I was pregnant at the time as well—before Paulo—and because of the knee, I had to abort. They said that because of the antibiotics I was taking the baby would be born without limbs. Jean-Paul had trouble dealing with these practical problems. I became very disillusioned, concerned that he preferred the illusion he had created, not the actual me.

  That scared me. It made me feel very insecure. It made me think that if I wasn’t this perfect human being, it would not satisfy him. I couldn’t count on him to be there for me when I really needed him, because if I needed him, he saw that as weakness. The Grace Jones he had designed with me was not weak. She would not need a holiday, or get sick with fever. He didn’t want to see that I could be vulnerable.

  I wanted to get pregnant again, having lost the first one. There was no doubt in my mind that Jean-Paul was going to be the father of my child. There might have been doubt in his mind, but he didn’t use condoms, so I figured he wanted a child with me. I’m not sure he really thought about it. We carried on, and we had Paulo. When I told him I was pregnant, there didn’t seem to be any joy in his response, not like the first time. I think he thought it was going to interfere with everything going on between us. That was his fear; I didn’t think it would.

  The pressure to be perfect for him started to get to me. He said I had a problem with authority, that I don’t like to be told what to do. He wanted to be the authority in our relationship, and I wouldn’t lie down. I was never mute, like the image he invented based on me that said nothing. I had plenty to say. I was not a bed warmer. He was used to bed warmers—your basic housewife types. Go to the spa, keep yourself busy, do your nails, come home, fuck, go to sleep. I was too manly. I always kept my own apartment. I felt that was necessary. God bless the child that’s got his own. I could say, “This is my house, you get out.”

  I could always feel when a fight was coming. I was never diplomatic—I would put my foot in it and we would end up in a big fight. I would say, “Okay, I’m going home.” But if he really wanted to let it out, then I would have to wait and have it out. My mouth was cutting. I would never mince words, always saying exactly what was on my mind. Jean-Paul and I would get pretty personal. Now and then our fights would get quite physical. There would be blows. He whacked me once, took me by surprise, retaliating for something I had said or done. Then I would write a song about it and he would turn it into an image.

  I laughed when he said, “In this picture I am going to have you shoot yourself.” It made perfect sense as a metaphor. He was angry with me in an argument and it turned into an image where he had me hold a gun to my head. As an idea, fabulous; as a way of getting things out of your system, great; but you don’t want that to leak into real life.

  Whatever was going on in my private life I would channel into my performances. Jean-Paul knew that; sometimes he would upset me so much I would be in tears before a show. I began to wonder if he was doing it on purpose. It’s like that movie All About Eve, when someone says to Anne Baxter as Eve Harrington, once she has gone through something torrid: “After this, you will give the performance of your life.” I had a couple of moments like that with Jean-Paul, because he was provoking me. Why else do what he did before I went onstage? Either that or he was nervous for me. Sy and Eileen used to be so nervous for me. It was as if they were going onstage. They would be shaking, and they would touch me before I went onstage. I would say, “No, don’t do that,” because it would change my state of mind and make me feel something I hadn’t been aware of. I tended never to be nervous before I went onstage; if I was, it would go the other way and I would have yawning fits. Early on, I would clear the dressing room and meditate. I would isolate myself from whatever chaos was going on around me.

  My vocal coach told me there is no such thing as nervous. You are excited, not nervous! I liked that—nervous is negative, excited is positive. It’s a different way of looking at the same thing.

  * * *

  Jean-Paul was using me. And I was using him. I thought what he did to me as an object was beautiful. He loved my lines, my shape, my color, and he loved manipulating those things to reproduce me and remake me.
The universe to him is visual. It is a fantasy he wants to control.

  I was so in love, and I realized that he didn’t love me as I loved him. The way he loved me was not how I wanted. He showed his love through the work, but he couldn’t do it any other way. At that time, I didn’t understand that.

  I would tell him about being a nudist. I realized that I preferred to cover my head, not my pussy, and that would become an image. He would put my head on my brother Chris’s body, knowing the tangled nature of our relationship, the mix of me and him, her and me. He transformed the story of my life into a series of visions and fantasies. Talk would lead to him thinking, I will do you like this. There was a lot of talking, and then the idea. It was collaborative, never him only doing me. I was not a model. I was a partner in design.

  An idea is worth so much. It’s beyond money. Jean-Paul has a store of ideas that could last a thousand years. He’d talk about the war, when he was growing up, seeing the Nazis walk into his village when he was a kid, monsters in stylish uniforms, evil dressed up to the nines.

  I had a thing about uniforms at school. I had to make sure that every pleat on my skirt was still in place after a day at school, even after all that moving around and sitting down. My beret had to be absolutely just so after a whole day of it being crushed into my pocket. I never want to have to go through that kind of thing again, wearing a uniform to be so obviously obedient to a repressive force. The uniform represented how there was no escape from having to be perfect.

  This combination of his memory and mine led to me goose-stepping in a video. We would talk about real stuff—horror, cruelty, fear, pain—and it would become an image, a way of dealing with the horrible, truly a kind of fairy tale in the tradition of the Brothers Grimm, where nastiness is cast aside through storytelling and imagination.