Untitled #3

by Grace Jones

  I have been so copied by those people who have made fortunes that people assume I am that rich. But I did things for the excitement, the dare, the fact that it was new, not for the money, and too many times I was the first not the beneficiary.

  Every now and then a little devil sits on my shoulder and says, If you had done it that way, or If you were white, well . . . Now and then that comes into play, if you didn’t mind that the music was industrial and formulaic, and then I think, Oh no, then I would be like all the rest. All these little babies I have had.

  Rihanna . . . she does the body-painting thing I did with Keith Haring, but where he painted directly on my body, she wears a painted bodysuit. That’s the difference. Mine is on skin; she puts a barrier between the paint and her skin. I don’t even know if she knows that what she’s doing comes from me, but I bet you the people styling her know. They know the history.

  My advice to them is: Why don’t you find your own voice?! It all backfired on me, because I set out to inspire other people, but those I inspire tend not to be inspired in that they do their own thing, but in that they do my thing, a little their way, but not much. Take out the me—the dressed-up me, the disco me, the post-disco me—and there is not a lot left.

  I couldn’t sell out, but I created the space for others to be able to make it, without the pressure of being the pioneer. They can play the pioneer without taking the actual risk. Because to take the risk means to never soften enough that you can become truly successful. It means saying no to things that might give you success . . . but not necessarily.

  I am to this day a radical about not going with the flow. I decided after disco that I would not follow the formula, that I would create something else. If I had followed the crowd, by now I would be as rich as people think I am.

  Perhaps I worry too much about integrity. Perhaps that is now an old-fashioned concept. Worrying about it too much means that I become a Norma Desmond character, stuck in my ways, despairing that the world is leaving me behind.

  What is integrity? I think it’s about identity. I worked so hard finding myself that I don’t want to lose myself by becoming a caricature. It’s so easy to lose yourself by following others and joining a gang. It’s a constant fight, and people around you can be very convincing, so it is easy to say yes.

  I remember when one of the singers on the list of those who came after me first said that she wanted to work with me. Everyone around me is going, You have to do it, you have to do it, it will be so good for you, it will introduce you to a whole new audience, you will make a lot of money. . . . I had to put my foot down before I suddenly found myself pretending to take risks, singing something stupid with her in some cheap, surreal setting.

  No! It will be good for her; she will draw from everything I have built and add it to her brand, and I will get nothing back except for a little temporary attention. No one could believe that I said no, but I am okay on my own. I am okay not worrying about a new audience. If the fuck don’t feel right, don’t fuck it.

  My instinct is that such a collaboration will not work. I don’t completely shut the door, but I want her to show me what she can do that will make it worthwhile. I have been through the jungle, through stormy oceans of time, to find myself and I can’t throw that away so easily. I would be a traitor to myself if I worked with someone only because they were the biggest thing on the planet, not because it made collaborative sense. And the biggest thing on the planet these days can very quickly become a normal-size thing on the planet, a shrunken-size thing, and they might drag me with them on their rapid decline.

  I do a lot of collaborating, but I like to collaborate with people I can learn something from. I didn’t think there was anything I could learn from this person, or from those others who ask me all the time, the kind that have periods in the middle of their names.

  With this one, who I will call Doris, I thought she was trying on other people’s outfits: She’s a baby in a closet full of other people’s clothes, a little girl playing dress-up, putting on shoes that don’t fit. I could see what she wanted to be when I watched her doing something when she started out that was starker and purer. Deep down, she doesn’t want to do all the dressing-up nonsense; she loses herself inside all the playacting. All this other stuff, it was the act of someone who is lost, and saying yes too quickly, and trying on the clothes of others—she’ll have that following her for the rest of her life.

  That’s all it would be: business. Well, I’ve turned down so much business—you wouldn’t believe the business I have turned down—if I give in now, that makes a waste of all the time I stood my ground because I believe in something. I say no more than I say yes in my career. I am the worst person to work with if you want your ten percent. I say no to most things. I’ll turn up at a corporate event and spring out of a cake or an animal in full Grace Jones mode, but that is clearly a business transaction. There is no pretense that this is a creative act, and yet doing such a thing seems more creative than performing a duet for the sake of getting attention.

  My power comes from standing my ground—empowerment, it’s where my strength comes from. It’s not meant to intimidate anyone but me. It’s respect for the journey I have taken where I did not do things I felt were wrong. It makes me more stubborn now not to give in, even though I’m told, If you don’t do such and such a thing, then you are a has-been. I never feel like a has-been, only a been-to.

  I am disco but I am also dada. I am a sensualist but also a surrealist. That underground spirit—from the Beats, hippies, civil rights pioneers, punks; from the experimental artists, technicians and designers—dissolved into what became known as independent, as alternative, and that’s become less and less subversive, and less resistant to a co-opting commercial pull.

  The mainstream absorbed the idea of the underground, and in the process made it difficult for there to be an underground, because if there is, it is quickly spotted and undermined. It is difficult to explain what it was like back then, to be so careful about the kind of work you did that you didn’t feel like a sellout. A lot of people now do not get the concept of the sellout. This is another thing that sometimes makes me feel a little Norma Desmond—that I am still wary about doing something that puts me in the middle of the current MTV/streaming flow, which all looks like something I did back in the twentieth century, at five in the morning in 54 or the Garage, or with Jean-Paul and Keith Haring, or on a red carpet leading to the sort of delirious humdrum glamour now being endlessly recycled.

  I am wary, because to recycle myself means becoming a cartoon. I’d rather be a memory of something fantastic than join in with the party as it is now, filled with people copying something that happened before they were born.

  There is stealing, there is inspired by, there is nothing new under the sun, which means that if you live to be a hundred, you realize the same things come and go, come and go. There is a lot of short-sightedness now. I always saw myself as a long-distance runner. The problem with the Dorises and the Nicki Minajes and Mileys is that they reach their goal very quickly, and there is no long-term vision, and they forget or never understood that once you get into that whirlpool as the performer constantly shifting identity, the entertainer creating shock, the singer acting larger than life, then you have to fight the system that solidifies around you in order to keep being the outsider you claim you represent. There will always be a replacement coming along very soon—a newer version, a crazier version, a louder version. So if you haven’t got a long-term plan, then you are merely a passing phase, the latest trend, yesterday’s event.

  My goal was never to be controversial for the sake of publicity, of self-promotion. I wore what I wore—or didn’t wear—and acted like I acted because it was who I was, and I was making myself into a performance. I acted the same way before I was famous. I did it when I was a no one, when no one was looking, and I would have kept doing it even if I had stayed a no one. The craziness was there. I went to extremes. That didn’t come with fame. It
became part of the fame, because that was me already. It was how I had learned to guard my body from evils. The craziness was the fire I lit to keep danger at bay.

  Once you have the attention, once people know your name and think they have you figured out, that’s when the work really begins. To only be known for a year or two because you are outlandish, extreme, and nakedly in people’s faces is relatively easy. It’s what comes next that is difficult. That is really where it becomes conceptual. How you maintain the momentum, how you develop yourself, how to keep from drowning in it all. From disappearing.

  I feel sorry for a lot of them. They lose their minds. They lose their way. They get pushed around by the system. They are not driving the system, as much as they like to act as though they are. The system is driving them, which in itself completely contradicts the concept of the artistic freedom these performers claim to embody. They are not free, for all their apparent wildness. They are controlled, and living up to a very narrow set of expectations. And many of them do repeat poses and wear costumes that some of us were striking and wearing forty years ago, without the risk attached that it is for the first time, that it does symbolize outsider energy that the mainstream finds provocative and dangerous.

  They dress up as though they are challenging the status quo, but by now, wearing those clothes, pulling those faces, revealing those tattoos and breasts, singing to those fractured, spastic, melting beats—that is the status quo. You are not off the beaten track pushing through the thorny undergrowth finding treasure no one has come across before. You are in the middle of the road. You are really in Vegas wearing the sparkly full-length gown singing to people who are paying to see you but are not really paying attention. If that is what you want, fine, but it’s a road to nowhere.

  I had many chances to take the easy road and become a safe, predictable entertainer, but I always chose to reject doing the obvious because that was never part of the original vision. If I didn’t like something, if it did not make me feel comfortable, I didn’t do it. So sue me. Most of all I have to be happy in what I am doing. If I don’t like something that you are making me do, then I will make your life hell. If I am miserable doing something, I am going to let you know.

  My guard is always up when it comes to my work and my performance. I keep my eyes wide open, because to stick around in this business among all the people who want to lobotomize you and fuck you up takes a lot of inner strength. Maybe this all comes from those early, monitored acid trips, a certain clarity I have about what makes me tick, and what makes me happy.

  I’ve been told that I have been an influence on many of these new singers—on how they appear, their manner, their style. That was never my intention. I never really thought about anyone else. I was narcissistic in a militant sense. Oh, I like that, that’s different. I want that, because I want to be different. Difference attracted me. Being different was natural to me. And I was immediately attracted to people who were different.

  I look at Doris and I think, Does she look happy? She looks lost, like she is desperately trying to find the person she was when she started. She looks like really she knows she is in Vegas, now that Vegas is the whole entertainment world filtered through the Internet, through impatient social media. I don’t mind her dressing up, but when she started to dance like Madonna, almost immediately, copying someone else, it was like she had forgotten what it was about her that could be unique. Ultimately, it is all about prettiness and comfort, however much they pretend they are being provocative.

  I would like to be a tutor for some of these singers. I would like to help them avoid becoming a piece in the system. It would only take five minutes. I would say to them, Get out! Quick! Don’t go back for your possessions! Run! There is only hell ahead, the hell of having to cling onto fame by doing what others tell you, the hell of losing fame because they don’t really know what they are talking about, and are not interested in you, who you really are, or who you will be in five, ten, fifteen years. They will replace you if you don’t do what they say. They will replace you if you don’t want to be as commercial as they want you to be. They will replace you when you are not sexy anymore, and if what you are is nothing other than about being sexy, you are doomed. Get out! Run! There is more to life and entertainment than sexy, the sexy organized around you by the system, which is the system set up by men. Take time out and reflect on what inspired you in the first place that came from within you. Jump off the merry-go-round.

  I don’t want it to look as though I am moaning about them because I am jealous or feel replaced. With these singers, it’s not that they are new and amazing that bothers me. I love seeing new talent. It can be an inspiration. I like to be inspired. It is more that I am disappointed with what has happened to them, that they have fallen into the same old traps. They didn’t really learn from those of us who went there before. I’d rather be defaced by them than meekly followed.

  Some of them do have something, but they never stay true to what that is, because they get distracted by those urging them to shed those parts of their character that are truly interesting, not simply commercially attractive. Doris in her provisional, original state is the closest she gets to herself, and her public persona reflects who she really is, but she is getting further and further away from that. This other thing, the second-, thirdhand dress-up thing takes over.

  I sometimes think even though she doesn’t sing or perform in a conventional manner, Kate Moss is more of a rock-and-roll star, a pop star, than most of the singers playing that role. Certainly more than the likes of Doris. In terms of power and mystery, Kate has more going for her, and she’s a real survivor with whatever is thrown at her. The way she stays positive in dealing with all the shit is often a big help to me when I feel down. I often help her out with man trouble, women problems, with her children, with work.

  I’ve known her for twenty years. Because we are hard workers traveling the world from job to job, we would always bump into each other on airplanes. When you do this kind of job, in whatever form it takes, there are plenty of people, brands, companies, and magazines keen to suck out of you whatever it is that they need to fuel their own energy and presence. They don’t care if they suck everything out of you and leave you stranded, alone—or worse. They just move on to the next source of energy. It’s very difficult to survive for long periods of time without losing your sense of purpose.

  Kate is very good at dealing with it all. My way is often to lash out. If something hurts me or someone tries to rip me off, I hit right back, I get it out my system so that I don’t become a victim. If I don’t hit back, that’s when I end up ill, or with a nervous stomach, or worse. It’s the fight in me. I take the punches but I punch back. I don’t become defensive, I go on the offensive. I know how to fight! And I can fight dirty. . . .

  Kate has the thing I have, and Jessica, and definitely Jerry—more sometimes than me—which is why we have all survived many years in what is mostly a battering, unforgiving business that really wants to use you up, take what they need from you, and then move on to the next specimen. We end up a little warped, and probably misunderstood, but we refuse to be sucked dry.

  Kate often says to me that I am the only performer around at the moment who deserves to be called a diva. That gets us arguing, seemingly a little too serious if anyone hears us. I hate that word diva. It’s been so abused! Every singer given a makeover or a few weeks on a talent show seems to be called a diva these days! Christ almighty. Where’s the exclusivity? It’s so commercial now. Call me something else. Call me by my name. For me, a diva is like the great opera singer . . . the great film star . . . out of reach, in their own world, with a real gift for invention, even if it’s just their way of entering a room, fame in the purest form, attention-demanding performance artists with a flamboyant, compelling sense of their own importance, so special and inimitable it verges on the alien . . . and of course the word is usually used to describe an apparently erratic female whose temperamental qualities, surviva
l instincts, and dedication to perfection are seen as weaknesses, as self-indulgent, not a strength. So, Kate, I am not a diva. I am a Jones!

  Doris came to see me backstage at a concert once after a show. I was surrounded, so we never got a chance to really talk. Ever since, she has sent messages that she wants to work with me. They keep coming, although she never directly contacts me. She tries to get to me through my management, through my brother Noel.

  People are surprised that I am not interested in collaborating, but the idea does not immediately inspire me, it does not seem attractive. What would it be the point? What has she got to offer me that I haven’t got already? What would I learn?

  One thing she has got that I haven’t got is the way she plays an instrument, and that might be a way forward to a serious collaboration. A basic, unexpected musical collaboration. But I don’t think that’s what anyone is looking for from a collaboration between us—they want the wildest, crudest, most monstrous Grace Jones along with the wildest, goo-goo Doris, to satisfy a cheap expectation, a clash of egos, of costumes, of tits and crass, of managed extremes, and it would be a fuss for a day or two, analyzed to death for a few hours, recycled in pictures and headlines, and then it would be all over.

  What would that mean? It would certainly be a waste of my time. And what would she get out of it? I’m not sure, really. She would demonstrate perhaps that she is a fan, but I think she has already shown that—as Rihanna has—in the way she dresses and performs. Is she looking to pick my brains, ask me questions about why I’ve done what I’ve done the way I’ve done it? Well, we can do that in private.