Grace Jones
Grace Beverly Jones is a Jamaican singer, songwriter, model and actress. She began her modelling career in New York, signing with Wilhelmina Models. After moving to Paris, she worked for fashion houses such as Yves St. Laurent and Kenzo, while appearing on the covers of Elle and Vogue Hommes. Jones was photographed by Helmut Newton, Guy Bourdin, and Hans Feurer, and emerged as one of the most prominent Black models of the 1970s. She earned recognition for her androgynous appearance and bold features, and has been cited as influential in early discussions of gender expression.
Beginning in 1977, Jones embarked on a music career, securing a record deal with Island Records and becoming associated with New York City's Studio 54-centered disco scene. During this time, she was often referred to in the media as "Disco Queen", with Jet dubbing her "the greatest of them all" in 1979. In the early 1980s, she moved toward a new wave style that drew on reggae, funk, post-punk, and pop music, frequently collaborating with both the graphic designer Jean-Paul Goude and the musical duo Sly & Robbie.
She scored Top 40 entries on the UK Singles Chart with "Private Life", "Pull Up to the Bumper", "Love Is the Drug", and "Slave to the Rhythm". In 1982, she released the music video collection A One Man Show, directed by Goude, which earned a nomination for Best Video Album at the 26th Annual Grammy Awards. Her albums include Warm Leatherette, Nightclubbing, and Slave to the Rhythm. She later continued to collaborate with contemporary artists such as Gorillaz and Janelle Monáe, and received another Grammy nomination for her work as a featured artist on Renaissance by Beyoncé.
As an actress, Jones appeared in independent films before landing her first mainstream role as Zula in the fantasy-action film Conan the Destroyer. She later appeared in the James Bond film A View to a Kill as May Day, and starred as a vampire in Vamp, all of which earned her nominations for the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress. In 1992, Jones acted in the Eddie Murphy film Boomerang, and contributed music for the accompanying soundtrack.
Jones has been cited as an influence on numerous artists across music and fashion. She was ranked 82nd on VH1's 100 Greatest Women of Rock and Roll, and received a Q Idol Award in 2008. In 2016, Billboard ranked her as the 40th greatest dance club artist of all time.
Biography and career
1948–1973: Early life and modeling career
Grace Jones was born on May 19, 1948, in Spanish Town, Jamaica, to Marjorie and Robert W. Jones, who was a local politician and Apostolic clergyman. The couple already had two children, and would go on to have four more. Robert and Marjorie moved to the East Coast of the United States, where Robert worked as an agricultural labourer until a spiritual experience during a suicide attempt inspired him to become a Pentecostal minister. While they were in the US, they left their children with Marjorie's mother and her new husband, Peart. Jones knew him as "Mas P" and later noted that she "absolutely hated him"; as a strict disciplinarian he regularly beat the children in his care, representing what Jones described as "serious abuse". She was raised into the family's Pentecostal faith, having to take part in prayer meetings and Bible readings every night. She initially attended the Pentecostal All Saints School, before being sent to a nearby public school.As a child, Jones was shy and had only one schoolfriend. She was teased by classmates for her "skinny frame", but she excelled at sports and found solace in the nature of Jamaica.
Marjorie and Robert eventually brought their children – including the 13 year-old Grace – to live with them in the US, where they had settled in Lyncourt, Salina, New York, near Syracuse. It was in the city that her father had established his own ministry, the Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ, in 1956. Jones continued her schooling and after she graduated, enrolled at Onondaga Community College majoring in Spanish. Jones began to rebel against her parents and their religion; she began wearing makeup, drinking alcohol, and visiting gay clubs with her brother. At college, she also took a theatre class, with her drama teacher convincing her to join him on a summer stock tour in Philadelphia. Arriving in the city, she decided to stay there, immersing herself in the Counterculture of the 1960s by living in hippie communes, earning money as a go-go dancer, and using LSD and other drugs. She later praised the use of LSD as "a very important part of my emotional growth... The mental exercise was good for me".
She moved back to New York at 18 and signed on as a model with Wilhelmina Models. She moved to Paris in 1970. The Parisian fashion scene was receptive to Jones's unusual, androgynous, bold, dark-skinned appearance. Yves St. Laurent, Claude Montana, and Kenzo Takada hired her for runway modelling, and she appeared on the covers of Elle, Vogue Hommes, and Stern working with Helmut Newton, Guy Bourdin, and Hans Feurer. Jones also modelled for Azzedine Alaia, and was frequently photographed promoting his line. While modelling in Paris, she met Jerry Hall and Jessica Lange. Hall and Jones frequented Le Sept, one of Paris's most popular gay clubs of the 1970s and 1980s, and socialised with Giorgio Armani and Karl Lagerfeld. In 1973, Jones appeared on the cover of a reissue of Billy Paul's 1970 album Ebony Woman.
1974–1979: Transition to music and early releases
Jones was signed by Island Records, who put her in the studio with disco record producer Tom Moulton. Moulton worked at Sigma Sound Studios in Philadelphia, and Portfolio, was released in 1977. The album featured three songs from Broadway musicals, "Send in the Clowns" by Stephen Sondheim from A Little Night Music, "What I Did for Love" from A Chorus Line and "Tomorrow" from Annie. The second side of the album opens up with a seven-minute reinterpretation of Édith Piaf's "La Vie en rose" followed by three new recordings, two of which were co-written by Jones, "Sorry", and "That's the Trouble". The album finished with "I Need a Man", Jones's first club hit. The artwork to the album was designed by Richard Bernstein, an artist for Interview.In 1978, Jones and Moulton made Fame, an immediate follow-up to Portfolio, also recorded at Sigma Sound Studios. The album featured another reinterpretation of a French classic, "Autumn Leaves" by Jacques Prévert. The Canadian edition of the vinyl album included another French-language track, "Comme un oiseau qui s'envole", which replaced "All on a Summers Night"; in most locations this song served as the B-side of the single "Do or Die". In the North American club scene, Fame was a hit album and the "Do or Die"/"Pride"/"Fame" side reached top 10 on both the US Hot Dance Club Play and Canadian Dance/Urban charts. The album was released on compact disc in the early 1990s, but soon went out of print. In 2011, it was released and remastered by Gold Legion, a record company that specialises in reissuing classic disco albums on CD.
Jones's live shows were highly sexualized and flamboyant, leading her to be called "Queen of the Gay Discos". In the same year she was cast in the highly controversial Italian TV program Stryx, aired by Rai 2, where she portrayed the character of Rumstryx.
Muse was the last of Jones's disco albums. The album features a re-recorded version "I'll Find My Way to You", which Jones released three years prior to Muse. Originally appearing in the 1976 Italian film, Colt 38 Special Squad in which Jones had a role as a club singer, Jones also recorded a song called "Again and Again" that was featured in the film. Both songs were produced by composer Stelvio Cipriani. Icelandic keyboardist Thor Baldursson arranged most of the album and also sang duet with Jones on the track "Suffer". Like the last two albums, the cover art is by Richard Bernstein. Like Fame, Muse was later released by Gold Legion.
1980–1985: Breakthrough, ''Nightclubbing'', and acting
With anti-disco sentiment spreading, and with the aid of the Compass Point All Stars, Jones transitioned into new wave music with the 1980 release of Warm Leatherette. The album included covers of songs by The Normal, The Pretenders, Roxy Music, Smokey Robinson, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Jacques Higelin. Sly Dunbar revealed that the title track was also the first to be recorded with Jones. Tom Petty wrote the lyrics to "Breakdown", and he also wrote the third verse of Jones's reinterpretation. The album included one song co-written by Jones, "A Rolling Stone". Originally, "Pull Up to the Bumper" was to be included on the album, but its R&B sound did not fit with the rest of the material. By 1981, she had begun collaborating with photographer and graphic designer Jean-Paul Goude, with whom she also had a relationship. An extended version of "Private Life" was released as a single, with a cover of the Joy Division song "She's Lost Control", a non-album track, as the B-side.The 1981 release of Nightclubbing included Jones's covers of songs by Flash and the Pan, Bill Withers, Iggy Pop/David Bowie and Ástor Piazzolla. Three songs were co-written by Jones: "Feel Up", "Art Groupie" and "Pull Up to the Bumper". Sting wrote "Demolition Man"; he later recorded it with The Police on the album Ghost in the Machine. "I've Done It Again" was written by Marianne Faithfull. The strong rhythm featured on Nightclubbing was produced by Compass Point All Stars, including Sly and Robbie, Wally Badarou, Mikey Chung, Uziah "Sticky" Thompson and Barry Reynolds. The album entered in the Top 5 in four countries, and became Jones's highest-ranking record on the US Billboard mainstream albums and R&B charts.
Nightclubbing claimed the number 1 slot on NMEs Album of the Year list. Slant Magazine listed the album at No. 40 on its list of Best Albums of the 1980s. Nightclubbing is now widely considered Jones's best studio album. The album's cover art is a painting of Jones by Jean-Paul Goude. Jones is presented as a man wearing an Armani suit jacket, with a cigarette in her mouth and a flattop haircut. While promoting the album, Jones slapped chat-show host Russell Harty live on air after he had turned to interview other guests, making Jones feel she was being ignored.
Having already recorded two reggae-oriented albums under the production of Compass Point All Stars, Jones went to Nassau, Bahamas in 1982 and recorded Living My Life; the album resulted in Jones's final contribution to the Compass Point trilogy, with only one cover, Melvin Van Peebles's "The Apple Stretching". The rest were original songs; "Nipple to the Bottle" was co-written with Sly Dunbar, and, apart from "My Jamaican Guy", the other tracks were collaborations with Barry Reynolds. Despite receiving a limited single release, the title track was left off the album. Further session outtakes included "Man Around the House" and a cover of "Ring of Fire", written by June Carter Cash and Merle Kilgore and popularized by Johnny Cash, both of which were included on the 1998 compilation Private Life: The Compass Point Sessions. The album's cover art resulted from another Jones/Goude collaboration; the artwork has been described as being as famous as the music on the record. It features Jones's disembodied head cut out from a photograph and pasted onto a white background. Jones's head is sharpened, giving her head and face an angular shape. A piece of plaster is pasted over her left eyebrow, and her forehead is covered with drops of sweat.
Jones's three albums under the production of the Compass Point All Stars resulted in Jones's One Man Show, a performance art/pop theatre presentation devised by Goude and Jones in which she also performed tracks from the albums Portfolio, Warm Leatherette,, Nightclubbing and from Living My Life, "My Jamaican Guy" and the album's title track. Jones dressed in elaborate costumes and masks and alongside a series of Grace Jones lookalikes. A video version, filmed live in London and New York City and completed with some studio footage, was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Long-Form Music Video the following year.
After the release of Living My Life, Jones took on the role of Zula the Amazonian in Conan the Destroyer and was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress. In 1985, Jones starred as May Day, henchwoman to main antagonist Max Zorin in the 14th James Bond film A View to a Kill; Jones was also nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress. That same year, she was featured on the Arcadia song "Election Day". Jones was among the many stars to promote the Honda Scooter; other artists included Lou Reed, Adam Ant, and Miles Davis. Jones also, with her boyfriend Dolph Lundgren posed nude for Playboy.