1. The Eye of the Hurricane
She is an icon, and she is an iconoclast, a Caribbean bird of paradise and the
disco-era’s Queenof the Night. Now she has written a surprisingly formidable
autobiography, titled I’ll Never Write My Memoirs. Love is her drug and her
name is Grace Jones.

2. Most of us spend our whole lives trying not to offend anyone, to conform
and to not be noticed. Born in Jamaica, in 1948, Beverly Grace Jones
grew up in a deeply conservative dynasty of black Christian preachers.
She could have spent her life ducked down as a nun or a house wife, but
she realised that she was born for self expression, for the stage, the cat
walk and the show biz and she followed her calling. She escaped,
rebelled, and the world became her oyster.
Embedded clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0XLzIswI2s (Slave to the Rhythm
Official Video Reworked)
Over the past 35 years, Grace Jones, the tall, tomboyish girl from
Spanish Town has grown to become a constant part of our culture’s
stylistic and musical mosaic. She continues to symbolise the cosmically
androgynous African warrior, striding the glowing waste land of a
garishly tropical future, or an untameable Josephine Baker for the space
age. Her shape is that of two triangles standing on their tips, on top of
each other. Primal, simple, arresting. Her looks can kill. But the truth is:
in her heart of hearts Grace Jones is such a sweet soul, she’d rather die of
a laughing fit before seriously contemplating your execution. It is this
Grace Jones that gladly comes to the surface a lot in her memoir.
Still, to this day, journalists and colleagues are scared out of their wits,
being confronted with the grim glances she can throw: Roger Moore,
who was the Bond opposite Jones’ opulent villainess May Day in 1985’s
A View To A Kill is reported to have asked her, between takes, to stop
staring at him that way, because it felt too unsettling.
In her memoirs, we learn that she not only picked her own costumes for
the part of May Day (unheard of from any other female character in a
007 franchise), but also that she picked up her diabolical eyeball rolling
from her Grandmother’s second husband. He went by the name of Mas P
and by all accounts seems to have been a sadist and fear monger in the
cloak of a preacher, under whose iron hand the Jones children suffered

3. until they moved to the US in their teens, to join their parents who had
found employment in Philadelphia.
Cultivating her pioneering afro at High School, in the early 1960s.
From there we follow her on a wild escape into the world of theatre, the
arts, the 1960s’ blooming counter culture and New York’s state of grace

4. as the world’s epicentre of fashion, style and disco in the late 70s. She
thrives on dropping acid, motorcycle excursions and table top dancing,
and as a model witnesses the Studio 54 scene, joining forces with Andy
Warhol and Helmut Newton.
A lot of space in Grace Jones’ story and a lot of head space in her life is
dedicated to the hard struggle to define herself and her aesthetic idiom,
the constant invention and reinvention within a publicly recognisable
frame of style. Her breakthrough moment comes (along with her first
orgasm), by befriending a hair stylist who creates the predecessor of her
famous flat top coiffure, emphasising her sinewy, masculine-muscular
silhouette, her high cheekbones and the slightly upward sloping nose.
Famous New York model agency founder Wilhelmina suggests that
Grace could become something like an ebony Gene Thierney, and Grace
runs with the ball, frivolously exploiting her edgy physique and
complementing it with outrageous techno-tribal outfits or sharp, shoulder
padded suits.
Embedded clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwkRKXjURdM (Warm Leatherette /

5. Walking In the Rain LIVE)
In Paris, where she relocates in the early 80s, she will find another
mentor of visual arts, Jean-Paul Goude, who went on to design not just
her record covers but her entire persona publica, and who fathered
Grace’s only child, Paolo, making her a proud and gentle mother, and, by
now, a grandmother – Grandma Grace, a surprising, but pleasant
imagination.
The 80’s, seemingly Grace’s defining decade, see her finding her groove
in singing – Chris Blackwell of Island Records hooks her up with hyper-
organic riddim soldiers Sly & Robbie and the Compass Point All Stars,
resulting in her classic albums Warm Leatherette (1980), Nightclubbing
(1981) and Living My Life (1982) –, and playing an untameable slave,
fighting alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in Conan the Destroyer
(1984). She is also seen going out with some of the He-Men of the me-
decade, such as Dolph Lundgren or Sly Stallone. The gay community
and the outré of the world of fashion regard her as a muse and a
subcultural den mother.

6. Grace and Ahnuld joining forces, 1984.
Although AIDS begins to take the lives of many of her friends in the
party communities of New York, Paris and London, Grace Jones
continues to be inhibited by the party spirit, and to be outrageous, in
dress as well as in behaviour. Her famously slapping the slightly
patronising talk show host Russell Harty live on TV, for not granting her
enough attention, is still a worthwhile study of character to be watched
on youtube. Grace Jones is being admired globally for her predatory
dance floor moves, still her stage antics are sometimes even more
effectively show stopping than her costume, as she proved by falling
from stage at various gigs. All these haps and mishaps are taken into
account in a level headed and, one can’t really deny it, almost spiritually
strategic way throughout I’ll Never Write My Memoirs: You take some,
you lose some.
Embedded clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgMn2OJmx3w (Corporate Cannibal / from
Hurricane, 2008)
On the reader’s winning side of these remarkably readable memoirs are
the lively and wise voice at its core and the yarn of stardust that is spun
along her stellar journey: We hear about her admiration for the only
other wild black diva out there in the early 1970s, Tina Turner. We read
about creating a New Wave amalgamation of rock, funk, reggae and
outlandish lyrical meditations with Sly & Robbie, sharing and scaring
lovers with Jerry Hall, amusing Queen Elizabeth I with her hula hoop
skills, conquering and learning to detest Hollywood, being asked by Fela
Kuti to join his harem, the pleasures of anal cocaine consumption, fun
rhyming with Mick Jagger, the critical perceptiveness of Village Voice
music reviewer Robert Christgau, the Rock’N’Roll optimism of Kate
Moss, discussing family troubles with Michael Jackson and singing
opera with Luciano Pavarotti.

7. Grace with friend and label mate at Island Records, Marianne Faithfull, in 1979.
On the diaspora of her heritage as a true diva, however, Grace Jones has
not much uplifting to say: Her verdict on shrill media phenomena such as
Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga, Nicki Minaj or Rihanna, who obviously walk
in her footsteps is as clear as it is sobering: According to the author,
these young ladies just haven’t found themselves yet, but are trying to
channel her artful flamboyance with the help of an army of stylists. Fair
enough, since it really is hard to imagine anyone who could claim Grace
Jones’ throne in the pandemonium of pop performers.
Embedded clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzX9DKNlYDg (Grace Jones
interview on singers copying her style)
Surprising facts in I’ll Never Write My Memoirs, even for die hard fans:
Grace is a distant cousin of former US secretary of state, Colin Powell;
she turned down the role of the Snake Lady in Blade Runner; and, more

8. delightfully, she is momentarily working on a video project with Chris
Cunningham.
A more obvious special connection comes to light in the book between
Grace and her musical godfather, Island Records founder Chris
Blackwell. In an interview with the Jamaica Observer that takes place on
James Bond author Ian Fleming’s famed Goldeneye estate, owned by the
Blackwells since the 70s, a proud and slightly inebriated Grace points
out in the direction of Blackwell the importance of having a partner in
artistic spirit: „It’s nice to have somebody who doesn’t think like
everybody else, somebody who understands how you think. I don’t want
to be remembered, I want to be understood!”
Embedded clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ck7ecNGS89E
(Dinner with Grace Jones @ Goldeneye)
To enhance the understanding of her colourful life and the movements of
her unpredictable mind, Grace Jones has told her tempestuous story to
ex-NME journalist Paul Morley. Paradoxically named I’ll Never Write
My Memoirs, after a lyric in her song Art Groupie, the book was
published in October 2015 to wide critical acclaim, and it really delivers
on many levels: overcoming her Dickensian upbringing in Jamaica,
dishy tales from the glitzy world of glamour, a lucid and wise outlook on
life, music, fame and how she dealt with it all, in her own unique, erratic
and gloriously irreverent way. Some of the most sincere and remarkable
passages in her book are those describing Jamaica’s overflowing nature,
in which Grace still finds a constant source of soothing and solace.
And most of all, we read greatly unfiltered, elegantly edited Grace Jones
on the pages, her distinctive, instinctive choppy rhythm rocking each
paragraph like the neon turquoise swell of the Caribbean. Her life story
is a wild ride lived with a hot heart, but observed and recounted by a
very cool mind. In the foreword to her memoirs, she talks about the fear
of destroying the myth by giving away too many details from behind the

9. scenes. That she pulls off just this, and still keeps her mystique intact,
makes her book even more powerful and Grace even more amazing.
I’LL NEVER WRITE MY MEMOIRS
By Grace Jones as told to Paul Morley
Illustrated. 386 pp. Gallery Books. €22.95.