Unlike contemporary divas Nicki Minaj, Rihanna and Kim Kardashian, Grace Jones never had to pick a fight or go half-naked on the red carpet to make headlines.
She was the headline whether singing songs with ambiguous titles like Pull Up to The Bumper or stealing scenes from Eddie Murphy in the 1992 movie Boomerang.
Jones, 67, is back in the news. Her highly-anticipated autobiography, I’ll Never Write My Memoirs, will be released tomorrow by Simon & Schuster, and already it is being touted as a best-seller.
In it, the Spanish Town-born model/singer/actress speaks openly about life in the fast lane (group sex, drugs, multiple affairs with white men). But she is also typically frank about her Jamaican upbringing and Chris Stanley, the musician/producer she was reportedly married to.
In an interview with Britain’s Guardian newspaper, Jones denies she was married to Stanley, who died of a stroke in late 1999.
Stanley was a flamboyant figure who ran the Music Mountain Studio in Stony Hill, St Andrew during the 1980s. He was comatose for several years until his death.
According to The Guardian interview, Jones ‘claims he was murdered in Jamaica’.
Stanley and Jones were arrested in April 1989 after police found a small amount of cocaine at the Music Mountain complex. She spent three days in jail.
Possession of cocaine charges against them were later dropped.
Jones also details her move at 13 years-old to Syracuse in upstate New York in 1961 to live with her family. It was there that she met her pious step-grandfather, Mas P, whose rigid religious beliefs impacted her views on sexuality, even as an adult.
An original provocateur, Jones addresses the emergence of the international gay movement. She was embraced by them in the late 1970’s while a regular with avante garde figures like painter Andy Warhol at the risque Studio 54 in New York, a favorite spot for gays.
She clears up another ‘mystery’ in the book. Pull Up To The Bumper, the 1981 hit driven by Sly and Robbie, is not about anal sex.
“If you think the song is not about parking a car, shame on you,” she writes.
There is a chapter on the current crop of female stars, several of whom have either cited or ‘sampled’ the bombastic Jones as an influence.
“I’m disappointed in them. I would like to see some originality. You listen to a record and you can’t tell who is singing, because they’re all the same, in the same key. It annoys me, but I still don’t give up on them,” she writes. “I think, well, maybe you’re going to find yourself, maybe not now, maybe not in 10 years, but maybe later. I like to believe that.”
By Howard Campbell
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