by Grace Jones
Trevor really tapped into me and understood that I was going through something, and that this meant the record would sound better, and more intense. He never said no to any of my ideas. He always wanted to see what I would come up with, so that he could see how it would be of use in how he was building the song. He allowed accidents to happen, and intended moments of great intensity.
This was very exciting for someone like me, who wanted to learn about the voice. About my voice. I was a student of my own voice, and a part of that learning was to get to like my voice. I never liked that people thought I was a man, how they thought my voice sounded too low and monotonous. I learned that this was my voice. Trevor played a big part in helping me reach that point of acceptance, and also of appreciation. No one else could sound like Grace Jones. A lot of pop singers sound the same. If you shut your eyes they all blend into one. It’s the pop music equivalent of the Chinese binding of the feet of young girls so their feet don’t grow but stay dainty and apparently more feminine.
I decided I would learn to go even lower. There was no point in going for the high notes. I knew also that as I grew older it would go lower, so I might as well make a virtue of it. And I would sing my old songs not as I originally sang them but as I was, and as who I was becoming. That made sense to me.
I was happy that Trevor spent so much time making the record. You never mind when a person is that talented. I want to work with someone that good all the time. He takes his time, but that was perfect for me, because I was occupied, making films. He was working closely with Jean-Paul—two geniuses working together—and I totally trusted him. Trevor did to my voice what Jean-Paul did to my face and body. Like me, they took their time. Trevor was months late delivering “Slave to the Rhythm,” but the time it ended up taking contributed to its brilliance.
I would be called to studios in London or New York to make my contribution, one day at a time, spread over many months. With Trevor bringing the best out of my voice and giving me the freedom to experiment with how I sang, “Slave to the Rhythm” turned out to be like an autobiography of my voice, and what I had been through to become the singer I wanted to be. When you make a record, as a solo singer, the producer is a kind of ghost, selecting, compiling, and organizing your thoughts and memories into a structured musical narrative; “Slave to the Rhythm” was a definitive example of this form of production ghosting that is the essence of much popular music. (The person you can hear interviewing me on the record as part of the autobiography is my collaborator on this book, Paul Morley, who was then part of Trevor Horn’s team. Without knowing it, we were starting to write my story.)
Trevor called me once in the late evening in New York, where he was recording. He had been having problems with the rhythm of the track, which was based on a music coming out of Washington, DC, called go-go that Chris Blackwell was obsessed with. It was the sound of that city, like Detroit had Motown and Chicago had house, but much more underground. Go-go was like disco funk slowed right down to half speed and turned inside out. It was hip-hop out of an alternative collection of influences. Go-go never took off like Chris imagined it would, and “Slave” is one of the few signs that it ever existed.
There was a drum pattern on this record, “We Need Some Money” by Chuck Brown, the Stevie Wonder of go-go, the Duke Ellington, and Trevor really got excited by it and based his arrangement of “Slave” on it. An old colleague of Trevor’s, Bruce Woolley had come up with the idea of the song, which was originally intended to be the follow-up to Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax.” The group had turned it down, preferring to do their own material.
When Trevor called me at my apartment, I was having an argument with Dolph. The relationship had reached a turbulent period. Trevor had called because he really needed me to get down to the studio a few blocks away and add some vocals so he could check that he had cracked the rhythm problem—he called just when I was setting fire to Dolph’s trousers. I was in a very bad mood. Trevor said, “I need you now, please get down here.” The studio was only fifteen minutes away from my apartment. It wasn’t like I had to cross the Atlantic
I made it three days later. I had some things I needed to clear up. A few more items of clothing to cut up and burn. When I got to the studio, though, I was in a very good mood. Did he want me on time and in a bad mood, and therefore of no use, or late and in a good mood, and ready for action?
Sometimes being late has nothing to do with me. One time I was asked to do a promotional event for a new Absolut product, White Vodka. There was a huge press conference to launch it in Spain. Press from all over the world were invited. I asked Jean Paul Gaultier to lend me a sumptuous white dress to go with this big white wig. I took their theme to the extreme. Doing this sort of work is a little like being a prostitute, but I still want to make it as original as I can.
I arrive at the hotel on a Saturday and everyone involved in the promotion is there, and there is no money. They can’t get the money, because the banks are shut. They say they will send me the check. My mantra remains, No cash, no show. You learn over time that if you don’t get the money immediately, you will never get the money. Once you have paraded on behalf of their product, they forget all about you. You lose your value instantly. The instant depreciation on being a luxury guest is huge.
They come to get me in my hotel room and I am all dressed up, ready to go. I look the part. That’s my job. That makes me a little late, but only enough to build up the tension. A little of my lateness comes from knowing how much time it takes to get people excited. That’s my job as well. Being Grace Jones. Well, becoming Grace Jones.
The press are all in place, waiting for my entrance. There is, though, no money. So I won’t do it. I have had plenty of experience of not ever getting the money once I have done the presentation, and I don’t want that to happen again. I lock myself into my hotel room bathroom—becoming Grace Jones—and grandly announce, “I am not coming out until you pay me.”
I am sitting in there, and I can hear the executives and party planners talking in the room. One of the guys organizing the event is on his knees to my people. They’ve got two gorgeous blondes in white fur to accompany me. Everything is all sorted. The journalists hear that I am there, but I am not coming out. Rumors circulate. They assume I am playing the diva—demanding drugs, men, oysters, champagne, some of which might be true.
We say to the Absolut people, “Well, get the money from all your friends.” In the end, that’s what they do—they manage to round up the money and pay me, and I make my entrance, all in white. I never say anything, I suddenly pop out of a cake, a giant model elephant, a scrum of shiny musclemen.
I am something like six hours late, and no one really knows why, or what was going on behind the scenes. Nothing gets explained—I am simply late, and that adds to my reputation. If the journalists ask why, I say, No comment. If you are a proper journalist, you will work it out. I don’t spoil the mystique. It would be more of a disappointment if I turned up on time. It would be boring. The wait is a part of the occasion.
I survived on corporate parties for quite a few years when I wasn’t making albums, fed up with what was expected of me, fed up with being treated as though my best years were behind me. Making personal appearances helped me carry on being my own sugar daddy without having to engage with a music industry that really didn’t suit me in the 1990s. The mix of fashion and music is perfect for the luxury brands. You can live well on five or six events a year.
They spend an absolute fortune on these parties. The money they spend on the flowers alone is staggering. I find out what they pay for flowers, and I make sure I am getting paid a little more than that. You find that they have paid $200,000 to fly flowers in from some exotic country, but they only want to pay the artist $50,000. I say, “I don’t think the flowers should be more than me. I should be the big flower, the big, unusual flower. The flower that costs the most. The people are not there waiting for the flowers to appear.” That’s one way of put
ting value on what you do.
And the more they spend on the artist, the worse they treat them. They think they have bought you and can treat you as badly as they want. They think they own you. To the extent of not paying you, at least the money they owe you, the second half of the fee. They will often pay half your fee up front, pay for five first-class fares, and they will book you into the presidential suite—I tell them I am the president . . . of my own corporation. Sometimes they try to renege on paying the final amount, as if the second half is not a real part of the fee. I have been ripped off twice in those circumstances, and I decided it was not going to happen thrice. They try to skimp once I have arrived. I don’t think they realize I will call their bluff and really not appear if they do not give me my money.
There was one event I was asked to do when LG were launching their first flat-screen television. It happened in London, and I was booked into a royal suite at the Mandarin Oriental. There was a real royal family booked at the time from some Arab country, so there was a lot of commotion on the same floor as me. It was difficult to see where the royal family ended and my show-business family began.
We are in the suite, and I am ready for action. The champagne is flowing, the oysters slipping down nicely. Again, though, no money, and it is a Saturday. They are begging me. We will have the money on Monday. No, I am not moving until I am paid. I won’t even leave the hotel and go to the venue, because there is too much pressure once you arrive.
We say, “Well, give us all your jewelry and watches, your Rolexes, as a deposit. We’ll keep them in the safe until I get paid.” They do not want to do that. They get increasingly desperate. Finally, after a couple of hours with me not budging and everyone trying to come up with a solution, they call with an idea for a deposit for the weekend until they can get the cash on Monday. They say, “We have an employee who has a baby she is prepared to offer as security. We have a baby! You can keep the baby until we bring you the money.” Brendan Coyle, my new manager, could not believe it. This is the kind of thing that happens to me, but when I tell people, no one believes it. I say, “Now do you see how crazy it can get?!” The baby is the most outrageous story of them all. I am glad Brendan took the call. The look on his face!
I didn’t take the baby. They couldn’t get the money. I didn’t do the show. Everyone waiting for me to burst out of a giant glittering TV screen at the launch party thought I had simply not turned up, that I had flounced off in a diva sulk or not even gotten out of bed or drunk too much champagne or taken too much coke or was busy slapping someone in the face for ignoring me. What else do you expect from Grace Jones?
12.
Hollywood
Dolph and I toured America on a motorcycle, which was great for me, because I had not seen much of the country outside touring either with the church or as a performer. We traveled all over the country, and I would wear this full-length Issey Miyake leather outfit with a helmet that covered my entire head. You would not know what color I was, which was important in Middle America. I was covered and masked, so no one could see me. You wouldn’t have even known I was a woman.
It helped that Dolph was as much a gypsy as me. He loved discovering new places. He liked to move around and study, and earned a number of academic scholarships. He had a Fulbright scholarship to a college in Los Angeles, but that was too far away from me living in New York so he decided to go to MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, one of the world’s great engineering schools.
We traveled to Boston to see where he would be living. I moved some plants from my apartment to make him feel at home. We had a look around and liked what we saw; then we traveled back to New York. On the way back he suddenly said, “I don’t want to do this. I am only going to school for engineering because it was what my brother did, and it is not what I want.” Dolph decided he was not doing it for himself—he was doing it for his family, because it was what they did.
I said, “If you don’t want to do engineering, try something else.” I understood the whole family thing and knew how important it was to break out of the box. I encouraged him to find something else to do, and he listened. It’s horrible to be doing something you don’t want to do.
We moved back to New York, and I cut off his hair—worried I was taking away his power, like he was Samson. He came everywhere with me. We were inseparable. He became familiar to the people I was working with and for. Kenzo put him in a fashion show, but he did it in a loving way, because Dolph was very shy and very sweet. He was briefly in the Bond film I did, A View to a Kill, playing a bodyguard, because he was hanging out with me and looked the part. He loved the atmosphere on set, and he loved studying, so he started studying with my acting coach, Warren Robertson. I told him if he wanted to take it seriously he needed to study. He relished that, as he loved to learn.
This part came up in Rocky IV, as the mighty Russian heavyweight fighter Drago. There was a long search for someone to play Drago. Warren had once roomed with Sly Stallone, so it all fell into place. Before I knew it, boom, Dolph had a career.
It quickly took a toll on our relationship. It was Hollywood that tore me and Dolph apart: the place, the industry, the bullshit. Offers for film parts would come along for him, but they often wanted me to be attached. This caused problems. We want you, Dolph, but we want Grace too. We ended up fighting about it, even though it wasn’t really our fault. We were plunged together whether we liked it or not, and that led to us falling apart.
There was ego. Out of nowhere, the ego Dolph didn’t have before, he now had. You need it as an actor, as both a form of protection and a way of projecting yourself, but it can harm you as a person. Necessary self-confidence erupts into arrogance. Ego can get in the way of growth, because it makes you think you know it all. People started to fill his head with stuff because they saw a chance of making money through him, and he believed it.
Dolph and I ended up living in Los Angeles after all, because he wanted to be where he figured the action was. We went through bad patches. The relationship failed a few times, and we would try and resuscitate it. There was a magnetic attraction that would draw us together, but then the real world would intrude. We would be wrapped up in each other, and then we would be apart for two weeks.
When we first met, Dolph had brought me and the reality around me down to earth, from a very dangerous place that was beginning to swallow me. Once we were living in Hollywood, our relationship had left planet Earth, because Hollywood is not on planet Earth. Despite the magnet that pulled us together, it didn’t work. The ending to it dragged on, really. There was too much interference, too many people were giving advice, it became very complicated. We weren’t left alone to work it out for ourselves.
* * *
After Dolph did the Rocky movie and we moved to L.A., the New York restaurateur Tom Holbrook took over his management. He had never managed anything before, other than his restaurant. He wanted to represent me, but I didn’t want that.
Tom was no good for Dolph. He ended up stealing a lot of his money. They went on tour together to promote Rocky IV, and when they came back to Los Angeles, Dolph didn’t come back to our house. Holbrook decided he would move into the Sunset Marquis Hotel with Dolph. He said to me, “Well, you are filming during the night, and Dolph is working during the day. You never see each other anyway, so Dolph might as well stay in a hotel and be looked after.” He said it was a practical decision, that we both needed space. This was where other people began taking over the management of our lives, not only of our careers. Holbrook was trying to control me and Dolph, and I was having none of it.
I was filming a camp sex horror vampire comedy, Vamp, and we ended up shooting later and later into the night, which worked for me, and also worked because I was playing a vampire, Katrina, the leader of a nest of vampires running amok in the night. I ripped hearts out of chests, wore a wire bikini, and was an erotically fucked-up stripper taking her clothes off like she was in a kinky avant-garde Japanese ballet, and had a stare as creepy
and evil as any cult overlord. For me none of this was weird. All in a day’s—or night’s—work.
I had no dialogue. I said everything I needed to say through how I moved, used my eyes, and feasted on the necks of my victims—silent-movie stuff, really. To prepare for the role I watched a few times F. W. Murnau’s gloriously sinister and brilliantly designed 1922 silent film Nosferatu. Playing a vampire, I had to honor the screen original. Max Schreck played the supernatural vampire—in this case, the hideous Count Orlock—for the first time in film. I loved how he portrayed the creature, and how the film established much of the Dracula mythology, including the idea that sunlight kills vampires. That detail wasn’t in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, which Nosferatu was closely, if unofficially, based on. Stoker added some elements to the traditional myths and legends he based his story on, such as the inability to see vampires in mirrors, but many other now accepted details came once the movie versions started. In the novel, vampires can walk around in daylight, although they lose some of their power. Really, they’re merely nocturnal. Night is their time, as it is for me. Nosferatu creates for the first time the notion that daylight is deadly to vampires.
I was enthralled by the shadow on the wall as Schreck glides upstairs, his elongated fingers and nails, the bald head, bat ears, and sunken eyes, the mental makeup—all of it was my kind of weird. The way Schreck rises abruptly from his coffin onboard a ship made a huge impact on me. The fact that the film was silent made it much more ominous.
In Vamp they wanted to give me words, and I said, “No, I am too powerful to speak!” Too many words and you can get tangled up, trying to coordinate the words and the expressions. When I saw The Artist, I thought, Well, I wasn’t that far off the mark. For me, a silent movie and the atmosphere it creates are the pure essence of cinema, and if I had been alive during their heyday I would have been in my element.