I'll Never Write My Memoirs

by Grace Jones

  I was still excited by the DJs in the smaller clubs who were breaking away from disco and generating other forms of dance music, because disco was becoming such a corporate monster. The ones who had helped invent disco were rebelling against disco, as much as any punks or rock ’n’ rollers.

  Imagine that the club music of New York didn’t get labeled disco, and carried on as these DJs experimented with embellishing the ritual of playing records and creating and breaking communal tension. That was what interested me. I definitely had one foot in the 54 world, but not really for the music—more for the theater of the place, the combination of people craving spontaneous excitement. Musically, I was going with the flow along with the DJs who were resisting disco as a trend, as a headline, a dead end.

  My shows were getting attention; “Trouble” was my second dance hit, and I was refining my stage show so that it was more than exciting and a long way from what Gloria or Donna or Sister Sledge would be doing. I was determined not to perform like other singers. This was one of the reasons I originally didn’t want to go into the music business. There seemed to be a lot of bad taste in the way the female singers were expected to perform. It seemed fabricated. It was not connected to the fast-forward vitality of fashion. I don’t know why. Singers seemed as removed from what was happening in fashion as sports stars. There was no coordination between the two worlds, no individuality—certainly not in America. It was either bad taste in fashion, a tackiness in how pop singers looked, or a looking down on the fashion world, as though it was not important, and never could be. Moving between the two worlds meant that I could see how progressive Issey and Kenzo were, and how that could make dramatic music presentation something surprising and new.

  I wanted to combine what was happening in new fashion with new music. I thought that was what it was meant to be about, to make the music presentation seem more magical. It was more apparent in Britain—Twiggy did actually look like a pop star, and treated modeling as a type of performance. But America didn’t have that; they were always behind the Brits when it came to trends and looks. A female entertainer was expected to look very square and wear blandly glittery clothes that could have come from the 1950s, or to not care at all, and be very punk. I thought more like a punk than a disco queen, but I didn’t want to dress like a punk. Ultimately, I didn’t want to walk in anyone’s shadow.

  Sy and Eileen created the momentum for what happened next by signing their Beam Junction label to a licensing deal with Island Records. Island was owned and run by Chris Blackwell, and he had made it one of the great independent labels. He was raised in Jamaica, and his mother, Blanche, descended from Portuguese Sephardic Jews, dates 1765 as their arrival on the island, where they began working as merchants. He came from colonial aristocracy, but he always felt that the British “had fucked up everything.”

  Jamaica is why Chris’s label, formed in 1959, was called Island, and he had his first international hit in 1963 with a tremendous Jamaican record, “My Boy Lollipop” by Millie Small. It still has enough cockeyed modern—and very female—energy to sound great today. The guitarist and arranger was Ernest Ranglin, who had played on the first album Island released in 1959, Lance Haywood at the Half Moon Hotel, Montego Bay. (Chris taught water-skiing at the hotel.) It was an album of jazz played by the blind Lance Haywood from Bermuda, and one of only two Island releases recorded, at the Federal Record Studios in Kingston, and released only in Jamaica.

  In the early ’70s, Chris had worked hard in tricky circumstances to help Bob Marley and the Wailers take reggae, catchy but political and abrasive, to soft-rock ears, off the island, and establish it globally. He’d had huge success with Cat Stevens, Free, and Traffic. (It’s interesting to note that perhaps his three biggest signings, Cat, U2, and Bob Marley, all had a very religious dynamic, and there’s a tempestuous religious dimension hidden, or right out there, in much of my music.) I knew very little about him, and for a while, as I had the disco hits and made my first three albums, I never got to meet him. He was somewhere in the background, which is where he likes to be, making an impact by moving things around from afar.

  I came from the fashion world, and Chris was not involved in that. He knew nothing about it and didn’t really care. Beam Junction was simply one label among many that Island distributed, and he had no direct contact with it. He wasn’t a disco kind of guy, and when it came to yet another actress/model who wanted to break into the music business, he said he would have had his fashion blinkers on.

  People around him at the label were saying, She’s Jamaican, she’s different, you have to meet her! He’d seen a photograph of me in New York magazine accompanying an article about me by Nik Cohn, the writer of the story that became the film Saturday Night Fever, and he loved the look of it. The photograph was actually the first thing that I did with Jean-Paul Goude. Nik had seen me do my three songs at a small club, freaked out at the sweat, flesh, and fearlessness, and he gave an amazing description of what I did. It was my first appearance in a serious magazine, profiled by one of the greatest ever writers about pop music.

  He was friendly with Jean-Paul and asked him to do the illustration for the article. That was where the photo of me naked and shining with one leg in the air came from—Jean-Paul wanting to reflect in his way what it was I was doing, and what Nik had seen: this brutal, animalistic energy that was part disco, part theater of cruelty, two lucid ways of representing an appetite for life. It was a visual description of an impossible original beast, only possibly from this planet, a voracious she-centaur emerging from an unknown abyss and confronting people’s fears. Perhaps in this image you can see Jean-Paul falling for me, and turning it into a visual love letter.

  I thought it was beautiful and, of course, I would eventually realize that as much as it was about me, it was also about Jean-Paul. He had trained as a ballet dancer, and it’s a ballet stance in a challenging, Africanesque way, so he tangled us both up, edited between us, collaged our desires and dreams together. There was an erotic mingling of the two of us, one life penetrating the other. From this very first image, this was going on. No building up to it. Suddenly, there it was. A blueprint for our relationship. Something impossible made possible.

  I was thrilled. It looked right to me and how I felt: athletic, artistic, and alien. It obscured and revealed my origins. It was like no other image I had ever seen. Often with photographers and the way you are styled, you could really be anybody. This image could only be me. It was a long, long way from where Sy and Eileen saw me; this was Vegas on acid. This was show business and performance as a super trip. It also represented me outside time, outside my age. It didn’t tie me to a period, the ’70s, or the ’60s, or a vision of the ’80s. It belonged in all those decades, because it was telling my story—where I had come from, where I was then, and where I was going, in one image at the same time. I loved that, because that was how I thought about age and time. I didn’t want you to look at me and think of an age, whether I was young or old for my age. I wanted you to simply see energy.

  I saw in it the shedding of skin, flimsy disco sheen being ripped back to reveal something poised on the verge of striking, like a snake, with the upper-body strength of a galley slave. It was the opening up of a brand-new me, totally secure in my darkness, which was merely an abstract shade, not political, and it was me almost with my savage insides on show. It was hard to work out what I was thinking, but I was obviously thinking something.

  I didn’t like wearing clothes in the house; I liked to walk around naked. Jean-Paul had gotten that. This was where I was the most comfortable. I didn’t need to wrap myself up. All of me on show, and that all of me on show then boosted to the max. It wasn’t nudity to shock, or titillate, or sell something—or maybe obliquely all that; it was nudity as something natural but placed inside a danger zone.

  Jean-Paul’s photo-elaboration of me put me inside my very own fantasy, connected to Jamaica, and New York, and Paris, and performance, and worship, and hallucination,
but ultimately in a world of my own. The picture became like the ground zero of how every solo female singer since wants to be when she tries to be a little edgy, potentially a bundle of headline-making trouble. Once Jean-Paul had created that image, it became more and more apparent that the music I made should reflect it, be the soundtrack to that suggestive, analytical perversion of me.

  When I realized what Jean-Paul wanted to do—strip me back to take me forward, bend me out of shape—I said to Nik and Jean-Paul, “I am not going to show this to my managers, but please go ahead and do it. Just don’t tell them, whatever you do.” I had to perform all sorts of maneuvers to get that butt-naked picture published. There was no way I wanted the sweet, trusting Berlins to know, or they would have asked for it to be scrapped. That was not their image of me.

  For me, it was a real sighting of how I saw myself: unreal, untamed, utterly dramatic. I managed to get it into the magazine without them knowing what it was going to look like—I was used to keeping things from my parents, and this was the same thing. I had to make sure they didn’t know that I was up to something fabulously naughty.

  The article was very powerful and unforgiving—Nik lovingly talked about me farting and drinking from the bottle, and I was thinking, Yes, yes, yes, I don’t want to be anyone’s example, this is who I am. I do not want to be the girl you feel safe taking home to meet your mother. Anything but Sy and Eileen’s Virgin at Vegas in a nice pretty dress! How boring is that. I would rather sing in church with my mother than go down that road.

  Nik described me as the ultimate beast—a troublemaker out to disrupt harmony. He tore down all the soft, shiny glamour they were trying to drape around me. He ripped it apart and portrayed me as this hungry, horny, mannish animal, warts and all. Thoughts and all. I loved it. This to me was glamour—not the maintenance of ordinary glamour, but something that was unknown, even occult, examining the idea of glamour based on its original meaning. Witchcraft.

  When the magazine came out and Sy and Eileen saw it they were totally furious. I suppose I knew the picture, and the article that went with it, would really shock them. It was my way of taking control, which some would say was not nice, considering all they had done for me. “It is so disgusting,” they said. “You broke wind, you drank wine from the bottle, how could you!” They felt they had treated me like family. I had stayed at their place. They had advanced me rent. Their son had a crush on me, and we might even have gotten up to something if they didn’t think of me so much as a daughter. They were lovely to me, and they worked hard on my behalf.

  The problem was I was not a Vegas act. I remember seeing Diahann Carroll and Diana Ross in the old lady wigs and high heels doing Vegas, and it’s really hard—no one listens, you might as well have a robot onstage. No one pays attention, and I need the attention.

  We fought. We really fought. I got so frustrated being pushed in their direction. I was drinking a milk shake at some rehearsal and I was getting so angry with their cabaret vision that I poured it all over Sy’s head. It was so childish, but I was like a child. I wanted things to be the way I wanted them to be. I felt I was being forced, and then I ended up sneaking behind their backs.

  It was the start of the parting of the ways between me and the Berlins. We were fighting so much. I loved them and we had a great relationship, but I could see the divorce coming. They were not going to be flexible. And I needed to be with people who understood where I wanted to be. I always need to be excited with what it is I am doing. As soon as I am not excited, I pull back, I give up. I will even sabotage it! To this day, if there is something I do not want to do and it is not exciting me, I will not do it.

  Chris didn’t know me from the modeling, or from the Studio 54 world, and in fact, those things didn’t interest him. Chris was not someone you necessarily got to meet even if you were signed to his label. I think in the end, he thought, Well, she is from Jamaica, and she’s making some noise; maybe I should check her out. He loved the picture in New York magazine because, he said, I didn’t look like just another model, I looked like a creature. Sy and Eileen were happy to sell their contract with me to Island. Chris had called them Ma and Pa Kettle, and they were very different from the kind of rock managers and industry manipulators Island usually worked with. The Berlins recovered their investment and then some. And the sale meant that Chris and I could start working together.

  Chris and I finally met at the opulent Russian Tea Room in New York on Fifty-Seventh Street. You pay the rent as soon as you walk in there. I don’t remember much about the meeting. I was living at the Wellington Hotel around the corner, and he had his offices inside the nearby Carnegie Hall alongside the dancers’ rehearsal rooms.

  I don’t remember what we talked about. I only know that I don’t talk about what I don’t know, and I don’t ask questions, and Chris doesn’t give a lot away. I suppose we talked about Jamaica, and living in Paris, and what I wanted to do next. The Russian Tea Room is very loud, so I guess we carefully circled each other.

  I remember that he never seemed to wear shoes—he’s in sandals all year round even when it is cold. But despite wearing little but shapeless T-shirts and faded shorts, he is one of the most truly glamorous people I have ever known. You can tell he used to hang out with Noël Coward and Errol Flynn when he was young in Jamaica—the most glamorous thing he said he ever saw was Flynn dressed for cocktails, clutching a long, slender cigarette holder and carrying a groomed dachshund under his arm—and he spent a few months hanging out with the notoriously intimidating Miles Davis in New York. They would swim together at a health club near Central Park. Because of his experiences in Jamaica, Chris was completely comfortable in the company of blacks, but for Miles it was something very unusual coming across a young white boy so at ease with him.

  Chris and I got along really great, and he seemed impressed that I knew what I wanted to do with my music and image. I think he could tell that, like him, I was absolutely committed to being in control of my own destiny. Such ambition and determination surprised him, coming from someone he thought was going to be a pushy, superficial Jamaican model.

  I was definitely determined. If I still lacked focus, I didn’t lack self-belief. I didn’t want to be babysat. I wanted to be in control, and I certainly didn’t agree with Sy and Eileen’s vision of me in Vegas, a kind of cut-price Diana Ross. I need that to be clear, right away. I was definitely a reigning disco queen, one of the glitter-ball dynasty alongside the likes of Sylvester and Donna Summer, but I wanted to progress, not get stuck being part of something that was becoming a laughingstock. I knew that Chris could help me change. He likes to build things, make things happen, put people together who he thinks will fit and see what unfolds. He stays in the background, watching how things play out.

  I was very demure that day. I made sure it wasn’t one of my crazy days. I didn’t want Chris to think that the rumors he might have heard of my wildness were anything more than show-business hype. I wanted him to see the determined, professional side, and not the unruly disco barbarian.

  I know that I was the wildest party animal ever. I pushed myself to the limit and started from there. I had no limits. If you asked me to do something, I would do it. Dare me. There was nothing I wouldn’t try. “Whatever it takes” was my catchphrase. Experiencing life itself was the point: to propel myself out of my comfort zone, to feel alive, to take revenge on reality. I was the ultimate specialist in pursuing insatiable appetites and shameless lusts, even at the risk of disaster.

  I was always in control, though. I might have lost control a couple of times, but if I had been totally out of control I would have died. I wasn’t going to do anything that threatened my life, even though I came close. I didn’t want to die, but if you take risks, you can come close. I took risks, I had no fear, I drove as fast as I could, but not because I was being self-destructive. In a way, it was the opposite. Speeding to the limit was a form of self-preservation.

  I was all over the place, taking naughtiness t
o a whole new level, in the press, on TV, in jail, at the most explosive parties, with friends, lovers, and fellow fantasists who ended up dying all around me. But still, built into me was this button—when pressed, the button would save me. I don’t know if I was in charge of this button, or if someone somewhere praying for me was in charge of it. I would abandon myself, like when I took the super pill. I would return, though, I would recover. Others stayed out there, in a lovely but remote place. Because of the church thing there were a lot of prayers keeping me alive, however underground I went, however far out I went.

  I was split between Beverly of Church Jamaica and Grace of Club America. Getting rid of Bev was the most important thing. I landed in America as Bev, and then set about becoming Grace. With a vengeance. But Bev has not totally gone, even now. That’s why I still say that prayers protected me. There is still Bev the believer, and there always was, whatever I got up to, however much I chased experience, however much I lavished myself with pleasure and adventure. In the middle of this, Beverly still believed that whatever I did, I would be saved. Grace relied on Bev to protect her from destruction. It was sex, drugs, and the Holy Ghost.

  I received the Holy Ghost when I was baptized at eight as Beverly, and it penetrated so deep into my being it never disappeared. I don’t know if that was discipline or faith, but subconsciously I thought, Whatever happens to me, whatever I do, I will be safe. I was desperate to escape the church, to escape the punishment, this most uncomfortable of upbringings, but even as I fled, there were still inside me the remains of faith. They’re still there. I know where I am going. I know what my goal is. And how I get there is God’s grace.

  Faith, however perverted, was hammered into me with such force that nothing could eradicate it, not even being the sybaritic Grace Jones bare-skinned in Studio 54 lathered in foam and coke, tongued and flailed by drag queens, total strangers and horny hedonists, entertaining the creeps, weirdos, strays, and lionized, living the un-American dream. Deep down, Bev believed. And either because Bev believed or because the church and my family believed in Bev, no harm came to me. Nothing could stop me. There was always something happening next. There was always love, sex, food, beauty, fame, work, bliss, money, success, identity, art, parties, common things, and gossip.