April 14, 2026 • 38 mins
Grace Jones was one of the era-defining multihyphenates of the 1980s, an icon of the music, fashion, and movie worlds. From Jamaica to Studio 54, she broke down barriers and smashed glass ceilings at every turn – but she was also a magnet for true crime in the process. She was arrested numerous times. She was set up, the victim of a home invasion, and she wielded a loaded gun in order to get her way. At the height of her fame, she found herself fighting to defend her honor and her truth in the face of serious jail time.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners.
Please check the show notes for more information. Disgraceland is
a production of Double Elvis. The stories about Grace Jones
(00:24):
are fascinating. She was a true crime magnet, arrested, set up, invaded.
She was a global superstar, an actor, model, a multi
hyphen icon of the nineteen eighties, as big an attention
grabbing as Max Headroom in New Coke. And she of
course made great music, unlike that music I played for
(00:48):
you at the top of the show. That wasn't great music.
That was a preset loop for my melotron called New
Kind of Bond Girl MK One. I played you loop
because I can't afford the rights to the look by Roxette.
And why would I play you that specific slice of
platinum flat top Cheese? Could I afford it? Because that
(01:13):
was the number one song in America on April eighth,
nineteen eighty nine, And that was the day Grace Jones
was arrested and thrown into a Jamaican jail cell, where
she feared that her incredible life up to this point
might be coming to a quick end. On this episode
and arrest a setup a home invasion in eighties icon
(01:38):
and true crime magnet Grace Jones. I'm Jake Brennan, and
this this Disgrace Land. April first, nineteen eighty nine, Stony Hill, Jamaica.
(02:20):
Forty year old Grace Jones was hearing voices, too many
to count and too muffled to know their true purpose.
They sounded vengeful, diabolical, like a living, breathing conspiracy. At first,
she thought they were coming from inside the room, that
she was becoming one of those paranoid types here on
the island. Perhaps the voices belonged to duppies, the malevolent
(02:45):
spirits of Jamaican folklore, souls of the dead, veil piercers,
somehow lurking in the land of the living, mumbling, searching
for the flesh and blood of an unsuspecting warm body,
somebody scared, somebody afraid, some one like Grace Jones. She
shuddered at the thought. She looked around the dark room,
(03:07):
and there were no duppies here. There was only her boyfriend,
the record producer Chris Stanley, fast asleep in bed. This
was Chris's place, which also housed his recording studio, where
he and Grace were putting the finishing touches on her
new album, bullet Proof Heart. But Chris had been sick.
The stroke put him in a brief coma, left him
(03:29):
with brain damage, and now sleep came often, and as
Chris slept, the voices continued a little clearer. Now Grace
could tell they weren't coming from inside the bedroom. They
were coming from the next room over, the room where
she dumped her stuff when she arrived here today, her jacket,
her hat, her purse. She assumed the voices belonged to
(03:52):
one of Chris's studio employees, who was probably here with
her friends. Grace barely knew the girl, which she didn't
trust her. There was tension anytime the two were in
the same room. The girl didn't hide the fact that
she was jealous of all the time Grace spent with Chris.
Grace had no evidence, but she imagined a scenario in
which this employee did something that led to Chris's illness,
(04:15):
poisoned hisus food. Perhaps it sounded crazy, but then again
it didn't. And now Grace wondered if a horde of
kleptos were currently going through the contents of her things
in the other room with their sticky fingers, desperately seeking something,
just like Duppies, those ghosts out for blood, seeking something
that belonged to Grace Jones. Grace Jones, the enduring icon
(04:42):
of disco club fashion, Grace Jones the model, Grace Jones
the singer, the actress, the bond villain, the woman with
a face as recognizable as Princess Die, as Boy George,
as Max Headroom, Pee Wee Herman, or any other face
that came to define the nineteen eighties. Grace Jones, however,
(05:04):
exuded a different kind of cultural energy. With her chiseled jawline,
her flat top fade, her oversized shoulder pads, and one
of the deepest and most cutting edge closets in the game,
Grace Jones looked like she had simultaneously stepped out of
the past and the future, like when she once made
her entrance into New York City's famed Studio fifty four
(05:25):
for her own birthday party, dressed as the ancient Egyptian
queen Nephertiti while riding a Harley. Her look, her style,
her vibe, even the music that she made it pushed
the envelope and did so by design. Ever since she
left her home country of Jamaica for the United States.
Since she was a teenager. She had built her life
(05:48):
and her art around risk because she had been denied
taking those risks growing up. If you, like Grace Jones,
took those risks as a kid in Jamaica, you were punished.
You felt the sting of your grandmother's new husband's leather belt,
the whack of the headmaster's cruel ruler, and the curse
of your hometown's Pentecostal bishop, who made sure Grace's parents
(06:10):
knew in no uncertain terms that their daughter was the devil.
The best way that Grace knew to distance herself from
the trauma of her past was to take risks. It
was what separated her from those who wanted her to
be so terrified that she would remain a meek, safe,
boring person just like all the rest. But Grace Jones
(06:34):
was not like anyone else. She knew this, and so
did the man sleeping in the bed next to her
in this house high in the hills above Kingston, Grace
watched chrisle while listening to the voices in the next
room rise and fall, and suddenly they stopped. The silence
was deafening, and then cutting through the bedroom window the bright,
(06:58):
blinding blue swirl of police lights. She heard a knocked
front door of the house, followed by more voices, this
time louder, deeper, male voices, a couple of police officers
talking with Chris's employee and her friends, and then another
moment of silence, followed by another knock, this time on
(07:21):
the door of the bedroom Grace was in. Grace opened
the door, confused and even more out of sorts than
when she was when the voices had begun minutes ago.
Standing before her were two Kingston cops. It wasn't so
much their presence that surprised her, it was what they
were holding, Grace's purse in one hand and in the
(07:42):
other a bag of cocaine. Twenty something years earlier, in Syracuse,
New York, Grace Jones was arrested for the first time
disorderly conduct for kicking a CoP's car. She and her
siblings had just moved to the United States, sent for
by their parents, who had already emigrated years earlier. It
(08:05):
was the late nineteen sixties. Grace began wearing her hair
in an afro with two pairs of false eyelashes, just
like the Queen Supreme Diana Ross. She painted her lips
orange in her eyelid's bright green so that the colors
would really pop against her skin, skin that was so
dark they used to call her Firefly back home because
(08:26):
at night he could only see her eyes and her teeth.
She lived as a nudist for a month and dropped
acid for the first time at a hippie commune. She
moved Philadelphia, where she was arrested for the second, third,
and fourth times, each time for simply walking down the
street holding her white Italian boyfriend's hand. The cops took
(08:46):
one look at the Caucasian with the flamboyantly dressed black
woman on his arm and assumed she was a prostitute.
When it came to the Philadelphia police, they were no
different from that Jamaican bishop. Grace was there because she
stood out, because she was unorthodox and dared to live
out loud, cracking a whip on stage as a go
(09:07):
go dancer, an androgynous vision in black leather pants for
one of her first fashion shoots alongside the Chamber Brothers
in Essence magazine, and soon she upped the ante from
Philly to New York City, where standing out was held
against her audition after audition, it was the same thing.
She was too black, her features were too angular, too strange.
(09:30):
No matter, Grace was not discouraged. She was fueled by
the rejection. She sought out modeling agencies that were looking
for something different, the same ones that like her, were
seduced by risk, and she went to the places where
the strange ones congregated. At Les Jardin, a discotheque located
at forty third and Broadway, she danced to the sounds
(09:52):
of early disco while lou reed, Jackie on Nassis and
Eliza Manelli blended into a sea of drag queens, a
place where standing against a back wall, John and Yoko
gossiped with Andy Warhol. Andy, for one, never turned his
back on the room anymore, not since he'd been shot
by that crazy woman in his studio. Grace wasn't there
(10:14):
when it happened, but in a way, she felt like
she was, because what was quickly becoming apparent was that
even though she would soon become known as an exhibitionist
and a provocateur, Grace Jones was in fact something else. Entirely,
she was a magnet for true crime. The Jamaican jail
(11:03):
cell was small, a concrete floor, a bench, also concrete,
a small toilet, and a blanket. By day two, those
initial feelings of disorientation in fear that Grace Jones had
first experienced when she was handcuffed and hauled away from
her producer and lover, Chris Stanley's house, were long gone.
Those feelings were now replaced by panic. The cops said
(11:30):
it was opened and shut. They had been called Chris
Stanley's house on an anonymous tip, and when they arrived
they found a baggy of cocaine hid inside a two
dollar bill in Grace's purse. It was a small amount,
just zero point zero zero seven of an ounce, but
cocaine was cocaine, and cocaine was illegal, and now the
illegal cocaine having Grace Jones was fucked. And on top
(11:54):
of that, the voices were back, this time the voices
of police officers. Over at a desk just beyond the
cell where she now sat. They spoke in tones that
varied from loud and boisterous to hushed and protective. She
wondered if they were talking about her. She wondered what
they would say if she told them about the things
going through her head, that her sick boyfriend may have
(12:17):
been poisoned, that the cocaine had no doubt been planted,
and that there was a fifty to fifty chance that
they sworn officers of the law were actually in on it.
But they wouldn't listen. They wouldn't even let her make
a phone call, which she knew was her right if
she could only explain just how ridiculous the charges were.
If you knew her, if you really knew Grace Jones,
(12:39):
you knew the one that came to cocaine. She didn't
mess with that stuff. She never put that stuff up
her nose. Her nose was part of her face, part
of her unorthodox beauty, her moneymaker, if you will, and
she wasn't about to jeopardize all that just for a
little cocaine for a little high. Cocaine wasn't even Grace's thing.
She was more partial to coelude's value mandrex. Her ideal
(13:00):
high was chilling out, not freaking out. But on the
occasions that she did do coke, she'd opt for a
disco cigarette aka cocoa puffs, joints of marijuana laced with cocaine,
or as Grace called them Mary Anne's since she was
introduced to them by Mary Anne Faithful. Grace Jones's true
(13:21):
preferred method of cocaine intake, however, was to stick a
rock up her ass. Cocaine via one's butt meant no
white residue lingering on your upper lip, no blood dripping
from your nasal cavity, just a nice clean, small rock.
Stuff it up there and forget about it. There was
(13:42):
no forgetting her current predicament, so she sat in the
jail cell waiting for the other shoe to drop. And
the shoe did drop, but just not in the way
she was expecting. It dropped like this. The cops on
duty were eventually relieved by others, and these new guys
were more sympathetic to her plate. Grace Jones was finally
(14:03):
granted that one phone call, and as she picked up
the receiver and dialed the number, she thought back through
her life as a magnet not only for crime, but
for obstacles, barriers, and for the devil himself. Nineteen seventy nine,
New York City, an apartment at the top of a
(14:25):
commercial building in Union Square. It was the weekend, which
meant that the only people in the building were those
occupying set apartment. Its tenant, the art director for Esquire Magazine,
Jean Paul Good, and his girlfriend, Grace Jones. Grace stepped
out of the shower and wrapped a towel around her
naked body. Grace was often naked, whether it was performing
(14:48):
at the Paradise Garage Discotheque in Lower Manhattan wearing nothing
but Keith Herring's white tribal body paint, or in a
New York Magazine feature article, or at Studio fifty four,
where anything went and where Grace was often found in
which you can hear more about in our episode on
Studio fifty four. But I digress. Being naked at this
(15:08):
very moment was a bit different for Grace because she
was pregnant with her first child, and her body looked
different to her than it ever had before when she
looked at her reflection in the focked up mirror. Maybe
it was all that time spent at newdest retreats and
hippie communes when she was younger. But being naked for
Grace wasn't tantamount to being vulnerable. Being naked was being strong,
(15:30):
and being strong was what a guttner To this point
in her life and career. When her career as a
model suddenly morphed into an opportunity to make a go
of it in the music business. In nineteen seventy seven,
the year of the Blackout, the year the Yankees, the
year of garbage strikes, in the year of the Son
of Sam, Grace Jones jumped at the chance. She loved
(15:51):
music as much as fashion or art. But her management,
her record company, they all tried to make her something
that she wasn't. She would never be a wreath of Franklin,
no matter how how hard she tried. She didn't have
that voice. No one had that voice. Grace had limitations.
With the guidance of her art world friends like Andy
Warhol and Richard Bernstein, as well as her fashion world
(16:12):
friends like designer is Miake, and her music world friends
like Chris Blackwell, founder and owner of the record label
Island Records, along with the super funky rhythm section of
Sly and Robbie, Grace quickly found a way to turn
those limitations into strengths, and so after three albums in
three years that clung to the soon to be haggard
(16:34):
corpse of disco, Grace Jones pivoted for her fourth album,
Warm Leatherette. The record combined the organic feel of Sly
and Robbie's bottom end with Grace's soulful, cyborg vocal delivery,
a heady combination that you can hear on Grace's incredible
cover of the Pretender's private life. For a very public person,
(16:55):
Grace Jones valued her own private life even more so
now that she was expecting. As Jean Paul worked away
in another part of the apartment, cutting up and arranging
new photos of his views of Grace on a desk,
Grace put on clothes and stepped from the bathroom into
the living room. She was thinking about her upcoming trip
to the Bahamas to compass points studios where she would
(17:17):
put the finishing touches on the Warm Leatherette album. And
that's when she saw him, a man who wasn't Jean Paul.
And this man was just beyond the living room window,
standing on an outdoor terrace. He was tall, perfectly coughed, afro,
well dressed. Grace clocked his suit as Italian, so debonair
(17:38):
that her first instinct wasn't a panic, And then she
saw the gun. The man was coming through the window,
now one foot down on the living room floor, followed
by another calmly, deliberately, the pistol gripped tight and aimed
straight at her. She thought about screaming for Jean Paul,
and also about making a run for it. In her
elevated state, she opted for the latter instinct, and then adrenaline.
(18:03):
She wasn't even thinking about hauling ass. She was just
doing it, heart pounding, breathless. She was in the bathroom now.
As she slammed the door shut behind her and twisted
the lock, she heard the footsteps of that tall man
getting closer, and then the door was being kicked down.
She was now face to face with mister armed Debonair.
(18:24):
Jean Paul must have heard the noise because he came running,
and now the man had his gun trained on both
of them. The man wanted cash. Grace had none. Jean Paul,
being European and worldly, only had some douschemarks, two thousand
of them. Give her take, Give her take. The man
was shaking his head now. He rotated his neck in
a way that indicated either his winds or not, or
(18:46):
this couple's lack of funds was irritating him most likely
both give him cash, American cash, he demanded. He tied
them both up, one by one, and then he stood
there looking at Grace Jones and John Paul in their
faces and wondering what he was going to do with them.
Grace feared the worst. She thought about being shot dead
(19:08):
in her boyfriend's apartment, the baby still in her belly,
about not being found until Monday when the building opened
her business. She thought about Paula Kilmack aka Pola, her
friend and fellow model, and how just a few years
back Pola took a bunch of coeludes and died, and
how her ghost haunted the city in the pages of
Cosmopolitan in Vogue, that face of hers staring directly into
(19:31):
the lens, and how the rumors wouldn't quit, that it
wasn't a case of too many pills, and that Pola
had actually been high on heroin and angel dust walk
right off the roof of a building. She thought about
what it would be like to be a ghost, to
be a rumor. She thought about being laughed at by
fashion moguls who'd once doubted her, and about her first
music management team, how they wanted to make her a
(19:53):
Vegas act in a few years time. She thought about
how she'd left that cocktail lounge stuff in the dust
when she sang live for the f time, no stage,
just her and the crowds surrounding her like wolves, and
how she didn't cower with fear, but instead crawled around,
hissing like a snake, barking like a dog. If anyone
felt fear that night, it was the captive audience. And
(20:16):
now she thought about this well dressed man with the
rod in his hand, and how she was one wrong
move away from him pulling the trigger, and that perhaps
the same fear that she felt he felt as well,
how that despite being tied up, Grace Jones could still
have the upper hand. She calmly explained to the man
that he could take the Deutsche marks to a nearby
(20:38):
travel agency and convert them to cash to American cash,
and that the money was untraceable and that he would
need no idea to do so. She also said he
could take her keys and use them to activate the
elevator that would bring him down to the bottom floor
and get away without a trace, which is exactly what
the well dressed man did and within seconds, just like
(20:59):
the music execs did, not see Grace's vision, and just
like the butterflies in her stomach on the night of
her first public performance as a singer, just like Beautiful Pola,
the man was gone. The whole ordeal was absolutely terrifying,
and Grace Jones wouldn't have been criticized by anyone at
(21:20):
the experience of being held hostage in her boyfriend's apartment
had led her to dial back her public persona. But
Grace Jones's ambition was defined by the risks she took,
and there was nothing more risky than her next move,
because Grace Jones, the model, the singer, was now about
to take that next step way outside of her comfort zone.
(21:42):
Grace Jones was going to Hollywood. We'll be right back
after this word word word. There was only one person
(22:04):
Grace Jones knew would be able to help her when
she was being held inside a Jamaican jail cell in
April of nineteen eighty nine. That person was not her
ex lover Jean Paul, good father to her only child
and the man who once endured a home invasion with her.
Nor was it Dolph Lungren, the fulbright scholar turned muscle
bound Rocky Foe, Ivan Drago who dated Grace for a
(22:25):
while in the mid eighties. Hold Up Dolph Lungren was
a Fulbright scholar, the beefcake meathead who beats on Sylvester
Stallone and Rocky four. That guy was supposed to go
to MIT for chemical engineering, but instead left it all
behind to become Grace Jones's bodyguard when they met at
a club where she was performing. What Yeah, that happened? Anyway?
(22:50):
Back to the story, Grace Jones didn't turn to bo's
or boyfriends or ex's in her time of need. Instead,
she called a professional, her press agent, and it's her
belief that calling her press agent, John Carmon, not only
sprung her from custody, but saved her life. She didn't
(23:11):
tell John Carmon her whole convoluted conspiracy theory involving the
cocaine that didn't belong to her, or of Chris Stanley's
illness or as jealous employees, and that the local constabulary
force that had no doubt been bribed in the past
had something to do with what was going on here.
She just gave him the irrefutable facts. She'd been held
in police custody for a few days now with no
(23:33):
sign of being let go, her mind wandering in the darkness,
growing just like mold, now growing in the corner of
her dank little cell. But once John Carman sent out
a press release to every major publication in the world,
every newspaper, every magazine, to all those friends in places
high and low, the cops felt the pressure and had
(23:54):
no choice but to release Grace Jones, and the bail
was set at twenty seven hundred dollars. A trial now wounded,
and the prosecution had their evidence, not just the zero
point zero zero seven of an ounce of cocaine, but
evidence of Grace Jones's history as both a victim of
criminal behavior and as a perpetrator. Grace was banging on
(24:22):
the hotel room door so forcefully that she thought her
fist would go right through it, and her other hand
she held the pistol. She couldn't even remember where she
got it, not that she intended to actually fire it.
The gun was merely insurance, a tool of motivation when
her words in her fist would inevitably fail. She banged
(24:42):
on the door again and screamed his name. She knew
Dolph was in there, and she knew that Dolph knew
that she meant business. He understood that back when she
burned all of his clothes, even that nice versace suit,
all of it up in flames. Dolph, you asshole, what
the hell are you doing in there? Why aren't you
coming out? She struggled to understand, while also struggling to
(25:04):
understand who she had become at this moment. It wasn't her,
and it wasn't him either. It was this city, nineteen
eighty seven, Los Angeles. If you must get into trouble,
dude at the Chateau Marmont. Such was the advice that
Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohne once gave to actors Glenn
(25:25):
Ford and William Holden back in the nineteen thirties. He
could have easily directed the stars to Arrow Flynn's bachelor
pad up on Mohand Drive, where the Robin Hood star
hosted Anything Go as parties on the QT on the downlow,
very hush hush. But by nineteen eighty seven, ground zero
for Hollywood debauchery was not somewhere up in the hills,
(25:47):
nor was it down on the strip at the Chateau Marmont.
It was at the home of Grace Jones, who was
busy making a name for herself as the Pepsi Generations
Errol Flynn, with the bulging biceps of her unlikely live
and lover the Swedish gentle giant Dolph Lungren wrapped around her.
There was one rule and one rule only at Grace
Jones's house party. Don't die, don't smoke too much weed
(26:12):
in the designated weed room, and don't snort too much
cocaine off the gold plate in the designated coke room.
Don't pop too many pills in the quayludes room. And
if you're going to get in on the action happening
in the orgy room, then make sure you've got a
safe word ready. Parties were part and parcel of the
Grace Jones lifestyle. Back in New York at Andy Warhol's factory,
(26:33):
a good party would get you a front row seat
to the likes of Divine John waters Is drag Queen
Muse smoking an angel dust laced joint while Woody Allen
neurotically coughed nearby, or maybe another Grace Grace Kelly aka
Princess Grace of Monica chewing the fat with Robert Redford
and Beatle John over at Whole Books. Grace Grace Jones,
(26:56):
that is, even had her own baby shower at Studio
fifty four, grown for her by none other than Blondie's
Debbie Harriet. But here in La Grace didn't go out
on the town. La was the devil's workshop. It was
all asphalt and plastic. It lacked New York's authenticity. Where
were the Warhols and the Keith Harrings and the Richard
(27:17):
Bernstein's in Los Angeles. The place felt so manufactured that
it actually frightened her. Thus the parties came to her.
Hollywood was the last place she thought she'd then done.
Grace Jones was in New York City in so many
ways that it felt strange to be here in La
(27:38):
But of course strange as a cozy bedfellow of risk,
and risk is what really turned Grace on. Besides, just
two years earlier, in nineteen eighty five, there was this
new wave of stars in Hollywood, and it was a
wave that Grace wanted to catch right on before it
came crashing down. Nineteen eighty five was the year in
which Tina Turner, the R and B singer, starred in
(28:01):
the film mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. It was also the
year in which Madonna the pop singer starred in the
excellent film Desperately Seeking Susan. And it was the year
in which Grace Jones, a model turned singer, a New
Yorker turned Los Angelino, starred opposite Roger Moore in the
James Bond film of You To a Kill. Grace was
(28:24):
suddenly no longer the intimidating looking musician per Icy Stare
Piercing You from the cover of her excellent nineteen eighty
one album Nightclubbing. That's the one with the transformative covers
of songs by Iggy Pop, Bill Withers and the Police.
Grace Jones was now the intimidating looking Bond villain who
spent her time offscreen carousing with an equally intimidating, blonde
(28:46):
haired Jim Rat. Dolph Lundgren's career was rising just as
fast as his girlfriend's. But while Dolph was putting in
the work, early warnings at the gym and all that
to ensure that he looked like the kind of guy
who could knock out Sli stallone, Grace Jones, his girlfriend
was back home and she was all play the parties
were going on day and night. The parties brought her
(29:09):
closer to that New York state of mind. They made
la feel less frightening. The dancing, the drugs, the sex,
the hedonism, it was all just as much of a
coping mechanism as it was a fringe benefit of the
lifestyles of the rich and the famous. Dolph Lungern couldn't
keep up with Grace Jones. Dolph needed his rest, so
he started sleeping elsewhere. First it was slize place, and
(29:32):
later it was hotels. If you grew up in the
nineteen eighties like I did, then you know that Grace
Jones and Dolph Lungren's relationship was one of the weirdest
of the decade, but also one of the most eighties
things ever. It was bond and rocky, black and white,
the fashion and the music and the blockbuster films of
(29:54):
the era all twisted up into one indelible image. But
it wasn't meant to last. Maybe Grace knew that before
she showed up at Dolf's hotel room carrying a loaded
pistol or when Dol finally opened the door, calmly took
the gun from her hand, removed the cliff and proceeded
to talk his way back into her good side, and
(30:16):
maybe she tried to put the whole thing behind her
once her volatile romance with Dolf came to its natural conclusion,
and she at long last made her escape from La
when she once again pivoted, this time from movies, back
to music, and back to Jamaica, where she was not
welcomed as a star, as an adult who made a
name for herself, but as a defiant, corrupt child who
(30:39):
needed to be punished. January nineteen ninety Grace Jones, perhaps
(31:11):
wearing a gold pleated Bessain mackay hood at one piece
or a more ostentatious brown for her coat, sat Stone
faced before a magistrate in m Kingston, Jamaica court. The
magistrate was not yet speaking, but the voices already were
just like the voices she had heard at her boyfriend
and producer Chris Stanley's house on the night she was
arrested for cocaine possession. These voices came from an unseen source.
(31:36):
They were behind her, whispering low, and they belonged to
the audience. The rubberneckers sitting there in the gallery, eager
to learn the fate of the prodigal daughter. The voices
spoke of her transgressions, her affinity for drugs and munity,
her pact with that Gomorrah of the West Hollywood, multiple
affronts to God, the prophecy of a Pentecostal bishop. A
(32:00):
devil was in their midst. All grace Jones, ever, wanted
to do was what came naturally, and that was to
define herself by her actions in her ambitions, both of
which were reactions to the way she was brought up
as a child to not just be another meek, safe,
(32:20):
boring person. If living as a newdister dropping LSD on
a Hippi commune meant that she was some sort of
devil in the eyes of the old world, then so
be it. She knew that her lifestyle and her public
image would draw attention, but she never thought that she
would attract the attention of criminality year after year, nor
did she ever think that she would be on trial
(32:41):
for But here she was. When she was first arrested
and released on bail in April of nineteen eighty nine,
she wasted no time telling the press that the cocaine
had been planted in her purse She said that this
would be proven in court and that the identity of
the duplicitous person would be revealed. Nine months later, sitting
(33:03):
before the magistrate, Grace reiterated her claim she'd been set up, framed,
taken advantage of by someone who was not well known
to her. This person, she claimed, was a female employee
who worked at the recording studio of her boyfriend and
music producer Chris Stanley, and the woman was identified as
such under a pseudonym in Grace's memoir, though in the
(33:25):
papers at the time, the woman was referred to as
Chris Stanley's ex girlfriend. These are the same papers that
also claimed that Grace and Chris were married, which Grace
has since denied in her memoir. So who really knows.
What we do know is that Kingston Police originally responded
to Chris Stanley's house and studio on an anonymous tip.
(33:47):
The identity of that caller remained a mystery during Grace's trial,
although Grace herself would tell you otherwise. In the end,
the magistrate overseeing the case chose to give Grace, in
the magistrate's own words, the benefit of the doubt, despite
her past, despite the drug fueled industries in which she
worked as a multi hyphenate, and despite her own reputation
(34:08):
in her home country, Grace Jones was acquitted. Her trial
lasted three days, the same amount of time she'd spent
in a jail cell some nine month prior, and the
entire ordeal left her with about thirty thousand dollars in
legal fees and travel expenses, as well as a new
album to promote. That album, Bulletproof Hard, had been released
(34:29):
by Capitol Records in October of the previous year, nineteen
eighty nine. The cover photo of Grace, taken by her
old flame and collaborator Jean Paul Good, Now, feels like
a final wave goodbye to the decade that defined her,
the nineteen eighties. Grace's head, bathed in dark purple shadows,
sits atop her elongated neck, her lips bright red, her
(34:51):
ears sharp and perfectly symmetrical, her flat top like a plateau,
bright yellow light emanating from where her eyes should be.
She is the past and the future, bathed in mystery,
maybe too mysterious. The album was a disappointment both commercially
and critically. It failed to reach the heights of many
(35:12):
of her past records like Nightclubbing, Slave to the Rhythm,
or even the Nile Rogers produced Inside Story. Perhaps it
was the lackluster response from the public, or perhaps it
was the traumatic circumstances under which the record was made,
But Bulletproof Heart was the last album Grace Jones would
release for another nineteen years, until two thousand and eight,
(35:33):
when she reunited with Sly and Robbie the other Compass
Point All Stars to make her triumphant record, Hurricane. But
before taking an extended hiatus from the music world, Grace
Jones returned to the scene of the crime, or rather
to the scene where she'd been held for her crime
she didn't commit. Grace Jones rolled up to the Kingston
(35:58):
jail where she'd done her town, but now she had
a film production crew in tow. They were there to
shoot a music video for one of the tracks from
her Bulletproof Heart album. Being here, making art here, in
the very place that tried to silence her, took the
power and control out of the hands of those who
wanted to define her as something else. She knew what
(36:20):
she was, She knew what lurked behind her eyes, the
ones that had been innocent and God fearing as a child,
who were now curated with makeup and beaming with the
bright yellow light of the future. Grace Jones's eyes were
the future, a future with no fear, no rules, and
no disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgraceland. All right, guys,
(37:08):
thanks for hanging with me on another episode of Disgraceland.
Hope you dug this Grace Jones story. Listen Question of
the Week six one seven nine oh six sixty six
three eight. Leave me a voicemail, send me a text.
I want to know your answer on who's your favorite
multi hyphen it singer? Okay? Or you know which actor
turned singer do you think did it the best? Or model?
(37:28):
Or you know whatever? Whoever it is, is it Grace Jones?
Is it somebody else? Get at us again? Six one
seven nine oh six sixty six three eight to leave
a voicemail or send a text at Disgrace Lampod on
the Socials Disgrace Lampod at gmail dot com to send
an email to support the show. You can leave a
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(37:51):
dot com to sign up for exclusive and bonus free content.
All right, I gotta get out of here. Here comes
some credits. Graceland was created by Yours Truly and is
produced in partnership with Double Elvis, the Exactly Right Network
in iHeart Podcasts. Credits for this episode can be found
on the show notes page at disgracelampod dot com. If
(38:13):
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(38:39):
Rock a Roller, He the Manland
This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners.
Please check the show notes for more information. Disgraceland is
a production of Double Elvis. The stories about Grace Jones
(00:24):
are fascinating. She was a true crime magnet, arrested, set up, invaded.
She was a global superstar, an actor, model, a multi
hyphen icon of the nineteen eighties, as big an attention
grabbing as Max Headroom in New Coke. And she of
course made great music, unlike that music I played for
(00:48):
you at the top of the show. That wasn't great music.
That was a preset loop for my melotron called New
Kind of Bond Girl MK One. I played you loop
because I can't afford the rights to the look by Roxette.
And why would I play you that specific slice of
platinum flat top Cheese? Could I afford it? Because that
(01:13):
was the number one song in America on April eighth,
nineteen eighty nine, And that was the day Grace Jones
was arrested and thrown into a Jamaican jail cell, where
she feared that her incredible life up to this point
might be coming to a quick end. On this episode
and arrest a setup a home invasion in eighties icon
(01:38):
and true crime magnet Grace Jones. I'm Jake Brennan, and
this this Disgrace Land. April first, nineteen eighty nine, Stony Hill, Jamaica.
(02:20):
Forty year old Grace Jones was hearing voices, too many
to count and too muffled to know their true purpose.
They sounded vengeful, diabolical, like a living, breathing conspiracy. At first,
she thought they were coming from inside the room, that
she was becoming one of those paranoid types here on
the island. Perhaps the voices belonged to duppies, the malevolent
(02:45):
spirits of Jamaican folklore, souls of the dead, veil piercers,
somehow lurking in the land of the living, mumbling, searching
for the flesh and blood of an unsuspecting warm body,
somebody scared, somebody afraid, some one like Grace Jones. She
shuddered at the thought. She looked around the dark room,
(03:07):
and there were no duppies here. There was only her boyfriend,
the record producer Chris Stanley, fast asleep in bed. This
was Chris's place, which also housed his recording studio, where
he and Grace were putting the finishing touches on her
new album, bullet Proof Heart. But Chris had been sick.
The stroke put him in a brief coma, left him
(03:29):
with brain damage, and now sleep came often, and as
Chris slept, the voices continued a little clearer. Now Grace
could tell they weren't coming from inside the bedroom. They
were coming from the next room over, the room where
she dumped her stuff when she arrived here today, her jacket,
her hat, her purse. She assumed the voices belonged to
(03:52):
one of Chris's studio employees, who was probably here with
her friends. Grace barely knew the girl, which she didn't
trust her. There was tension anytime the two were in
the same room. The girl didn't hide the fact that
she was jealous of all the time Grace spent with Chris.
Grace had no evidence, but she imagined a scenario in
which this employee did something that led to Chris's illness,
(04:15):
poisoned hisus food. Perhaps it sounded crazy, but then again
it didn't. And now Grace wondered if a horde of
kleptos were currently going through the contents of her things
in the other room with their sticky fingers, desperately seeking something,
just like Duppies, those ghosts out for blood, seeking something
that belonged to Grace Jones. Grace Jones, the enduring icon
(04:42):
of disco club fashion, Grace Jones the model, Grace Jones
the singer, the actress, the bond villain, the woman with
a face as recognizable as Princess Die, as Boy George,
as Max Headroom, Pee Wee Herman, or any other face
that came to define the nineteen eighties. Grace Jones, however,
(05:04):
exuded a different kind of cultural energy. With her chiseled jawline,
her flat top fade, her oversized shoulder pads, and one
of the deepest and most cutting edge closets in the game,
Grace Jones looked like she had simultaneously stepped out of
the past and the future, like when she once made
her entrance into New York City's famed Studio fifty four
(05:25):
for her own birthday party, dressed as the ancient Egyptian
queen Nephertiti while riding a Harley. Her look, her style,
her vibe, even the music that she made it pushed
the envelope and did so by design. Ever since she
left her home country of Jamaica for the United States.
Since she was a teenager. She had built her life
(05:48):
and her art around risk because she had been denied
taking those risks growing up. If you, like Grace Jones,
took those risks as a kid in Jamaica, you were punished.
You felt the sting of your grandmother's new husband's leather belt,
the whack of the headmaster's cruel ruler, and the curse
of your hometown's Pentecostal bishop, who made sure Grace's parents
(06:10):
knew in no uncertain terms that their daughter was the devil.
The best way that Grace knew to distance herself from
the trauma of her past was to take risks. It
was what separated her from those who wanted her to
be so terrified that she would remain a meek, safe,
boring person just like all the rest. But Grace Jones
(06:34):
was not like anyone else. She knew this, and so
did the man sleeping in the bed next to her
in this house high in the hills above Kingston, Grace
watched chrisle while listening to the voices in the next
room rise and fall, and suddenly they stopped. The silence
was deafening, and then cutting through the bedroom window the bright,
(06:58):
blinding blue swirl of police lights. She heard a knocked
front door of the house, followed by more voices, this
time louder, deeper, male voices, a couple of police officers
talking with Chris's employee and her friends, and then another
moment of silence, followed by another knock, this time on
(07:21):
the door of the bedroom Grace was in. Grace opened
the door, confused and even more out of sorts than
when she was when the voices had begun minutes ago.
Standing before her were two Kingston cops. It wasn't so
much their presence that surprised her, it was what they
were holding, Grace's purse in one hand and in the
(07:42):
other a bag of cocaine. Twenty something years earlier, in Syracuse,
New York, Grace Jones was arrested for the first time
disorderly conduct for kicking a CoP's car. She and her
siblings had just moved to the United States, sent for
by their parents, who had already emigrated years earlier. It
(08:05):
was the late nineteen sixties. Grace began wearing her hair
in an afro with two pairs of false eyelashes, just
like the Queen Supreme Diana Ross. She painted her lips
orange in her eyelid's bright green so that the colors
would really pop against her skin, skin that was so
dark they used to call her Firefly back home because
(08:26):
at night he could only see her eyes and her teeth.
She lived as a nudist for a month and dropped
acid for the first time at a hippie commune. She
moved Philadelphia, where she was arrested for the second, third,
and fourth times, each time for simply walking down the
street holding her white Italian boyfriend's hand. The cops took
(08:46):
one look at the Caucasian with the flamboyantly dressed black
woman on his arm and assumed she was a prostitute.
When it came to the Philadelphia police, they were no
different from that Jamaican bishop. Grace was there because she
stood out, because she was unorthodox and dared to live
out loud, cracking a whip on stage as a go
(09:07):
go dancer, an androgynous vision in black leather pants for
one of her first fashion shoots alongside the Chamber Brothers
in Essence magazine, and soon she upped the ante from
Philly to New York City, where standing out was held
against her audition after audition, it was the same thing.
She was too black, her features were too angular, too strange.
(09:30):
No matter, Grace was not discouraged. She was fueled by
the rejection. She sought out modeling agencies that were looking
for something different, the same ones that like her, were
seduced by risk, and she went to the places where
the strange ones congregated. At Les Jardin, a discotheque located
at forty third and Broadway, she danced to the sounds
(09:52):
of early disco while lou reed, Jackie on Nassis and
Eliza Manelli blended into a sea of drag queens, a
place where standing against a back wall, John and Yoko
gossiped with Andy Warhol. Andy, for one, never turned his
back on the room anymore, not since he'd been shot
by that crazy woman in his studio. Grace wasn't there
(10:14):
when it happened, but in a way, she felt like
she was, because what was quickly becoming apparent was that
even though she would soon become known as an exhibitionist
and a provocateur, Grace Jones was in fact something else. Entirely,
she was a magnet for true crime. The Jamaican jail
(11:03):
cell was small, a concrete floor, a bench, also concrete,
a small toilet, and a blanket. By day two, those
initial feelings of disorientation in fear that Grace Jones had
first experienced when she was handcuffed and hauled away from
her producer and lover, Chris Stanley's house, were long gone.
Those feelings were now replaced by panic. The cops said
(11:30):
it was opened and shut. They had been called Chris
Stanley's house on an anonymous tip, and when they arrived
they found a baggy of cocaine hid inside a two
dollar bill in Grace's purse. It was a small amount,
just zero point zero zero seven of an ounce, but
cocaine was cocaine, and cocaine was illegal, and now the
illegal cocaine having Grace Jones was fucked. And on top
(11:54):
of that, the voices were back, this time the voices
of police officers. Over at a desk just beyond the
cell where she now sat. They spoke in tones that
varied from loud and boisterous to hushed and protective. She
wondered if they were talking about her. She wondered what
they would say if she told them about the things
going through her head, that her sick boyfriend may have
(12:17):
been poisoned, that the cocaine had no doubt been planted,
and that there was a fifty to fifty chance that
they sworn officers of the law were actually in on it.
But they wouldn't listen. They wouldn't even let her make
a phone call, which she knew was her right if
she could only explain just how ridiculous the charges were.
If you knew her, if you really knew Grace Jones,
(12:39):
you knew the one that came to cocaine. She didn't
mess with that stuff. She never put that stuff up
her nose. Her nose was part of her face, part
of her unorthodox beauty, her moneymaker, if you will, and
she wasn't about to jeopardize all that just for a
little cocaine for a little high. Cocaine wasn't even Grace's thing.
She was more partial to coelude's value mandrex. Her ideal
(13:00):
high was chilling out, not freaking out. But on the
occasions that she did do coke, she'd opt for a
disco cigarette aka cocoa puffs, joints of marijuana laced with cocaine,
or as Grace called them Mary Anne's since she was
introduced to them by Mary Anne Faithful. Grace Jones's true
(13:21):
preferred method of cocaine intake, however, was to stick a
rock up her ass. Cocaine via one's butt meant no
white residue lingering on your upper lip, no blood dripping
from your nasal cavity, just a nice clean, small rock.
Stuff it up there and forget about it. There was
(13:42):
no forgetting her current predicament, so she sat in the
jail cell waiting for the other shoe to drop. And
the shoe did drop, but just not in the way
she was expecting. It dropped like this. The cops on
duty were eventually relieved by others, and these new guys
were more sympathetic to her plate. Grace Jones was finally
(14:03):
granted that one phone call, and as she picked up
the receiver and dialed the number, she thought back through
her life as a magnet not only for crime, but
for obstacles, barriers, and for the devil himself. Nineteen seventy nine,
New York City, an apartment at the top of a
(14:25):
commercial building in Union Square. It was the weekend, which
meant that the only people in the building were those
occupying set apartment. Its tenant, the art director for Esquire Magazine,
Jean Paul Good, and his girlfriend, Grace Jones. Grace stepped
out of the shower and wrapped a towel around her
naked body. Grace was often naked, whether it was performing
(14:48):
at the Paradise Garage Discotheque in Lower Manhattan wearing nothing
but Keith Herring's white tribal body paint, or in a
New York Magazine feature article, or at Studio fifty four,
where anything went and where Grace was often found in
which you can hear more about in our episode on
Studio fifty four. But I digress. Being naked at this
(15:08):
very moment was a bit different for Grace because she
was pregnant with her first child, and her body looked
different to her than it ever had before when she
looked at her reflection in the focked up mirror. Maybe
it was all that time spent at newdest retreats and
hippie communes when she was younger. But being naked for
Grace wasn't tantamount to being vulnerable. Being naked was being strong,
(15:30):
and being strong was what a guttner To this point
in her life and career. When her career as a
model suddenly morphed into an opportunity to make a go
of it in the music business. In nineteen seventy seven,
the year of the Blackout, the year the Yankees, the
year of garbage strikes, in the year of the Son
of Sam, Grace Jones jumped at the chance. She loved
(15:51):
music as much as fashion or art. But her management,
her record company, they all tried to make her something
that she wasn't. She would never be a wreath of Franklin,
no matter how how hard she tried. She didn't have
that voice. No one had that voice. Grace had limitations.
With the guidance of her art world friends like Andy
Warhol and Richard Bernstein, as well as her fashion world
(16:12):
friends like designer is Miake, and her music world friends
like Chris Blackwell, founder and owner of the record label
Island Records, along with the super funky rhythm section of
Sly and Robbie, Grace quickly found a way to turn
those limitations into strengths, and so after three albums in
three years that clung to the soon to be haggard
(16:34):
corpse of disco, Grace Jones pivoted for her fourth album,
Warm Leatherette. The record combined the organic feel of Sly
and Robbie's bottom end with Grace's soulful, cyborg vocal delivery,
a heady combination that you can hear on Grace's incredible
cover of the Pretender's private life. For a very public person,
(16:55):
Grace Jones valued her own private life even more so
now that she was expecting. As Jean Paul worked away
in another part of the apartment, cutting up and arranging
new photos of his views of Grace on a desk,
Grace put on clothes and stepped from the bathroom into
the living room. She was thinking about her upcoming trip
to the Bahamas to compass points studios where she would
(17:17):
put the finishing touches on the Warm Leatherette album. And
that's when she saw him, a man who wasn't Jean Paul.
And this man was just beyond the living room window,
standing on an outdoor terrace. He was tall, perfectly coughed, afro,
well dressed. Grace clocked his suit as Italian, so debonair
(17:38):
that her first instinct wasn't a panic, And then she
saw the gun. The man was coming through the window,
now one foot down on the living room floor, followed
by another calmly, deliberately, the pistol gripped tight and aimed
straight at her. She thought about screaming for Jean Paul,
and also about making a run for it. In her
elevated state, she opted for the latter instinct, and then adrenaline.
(18:03):
She wasn't even thinking about hauling ass. She was just
doing it, heart pounding, breathless. She was in the bathroom now.
As she slammed the door shut behind her and twisted
the lock, she heard the footsteps of that tall man
getting closer, and then the door was being kicked down.
She was now face to face with mister armed Debonair.
(18:24):
Jean Paul must have heard the noise because he came running,
and now the man had his gun trained on both
of them. The man wanted cash. Grace had none. Jean Paul,
being European and worldly, only had some douschemarks, two thousand
of them. Give her take, Give her take. The man
was shaking his head now. He rotated his neck in
a way that indicated either his winds or not, or
(18:46):
this couple's lack of funds was irritating him most likely
both give him cash, American cash, he demanded. He tied
them both up, one by one, and then he stood
there looking at Grace Jones and John Paul in their
faces and wondering what he was going to do with them.
Grace feared the worst. She thought about being shot dead
(19:08):
in her boyfriend's apartment, the baby still in her belly,
about not being found until Monday when the building opened
her business. She thought about Paula Kilmack aka Pola, her
friend and fellow model, and how just a few years
back Pola took a bunch of coeludes and died, and
how her ghost haunted the city in the pages of
Cosmopolitan in Vogue, that face of hers staring directly into
(19:31):
the lens, and how the rumors wouldn't quit, that it
wasn't a case of too many pills, and that Pola
had actually been high on heroin and angel dust walk
right off the roof of a building. She thought about
what it would be like to be a ghost, to
be a rumor. She thought about being laughed at by
fashion moguls who'd once doubted her, and about her first
music management team, how they wanted to make her a
(19:53):
Vegas act in a few years time. She thought about
how she'd left that cocktail lounge stuff in the dust
when she sang live for the f time, no stage,
just her and the crowds surrounding her like wolves, and
how she didn't cower with fear, but instead crawled around,
hissing like a snake, barking like a dog. If anyone
felt fear that night, it was the captive audience. And
(20:16):
now she thought about this well dressed man with the
rod in his hand, and how she was one wrong
move away from him pulling the trigger, and that perhaps
the same fear that she felt he felt as well,
how that despite being tied up, Grace Jones could still
have the upper hand. She calmly explained to the man
that he could take the Deutsche marks to a nearby
(20:38):
travel agency and convert them to cash to American cash,
and that the money was untraceable and that he would
need no idea to do so. She also said he
could take her keys and use them to activate the
elevator that would bring him down to the bottom floor
and get away without a trace, which is exactly what
the well dressed man did and within seconds, just like
(20:59):
the music execs did, not see Grace's vision, and just
like the butterflies in her stomach on the night of
her first public performance as a singer, just like Beautiful Pola,
the man was gone. The whole ordeal was absolutely terrifying,
and Grace Jones wouldn't have been criticized by anyone at
(21:20):
the experience of being held hostage in her boyfriend's apartment
had led her to dial back her public persona. But
Grace Jones's ambition was defined by the risks she took,
and there was nothing more risky than her next move,
because Grace Jones, the model, the singer, was now about
to take that next step way outside of her comfort zone.
(21:42):
Grace Jones was going to Hollywood. We'll be right back
after this word word word. There was only one person
(22:04):
Grace Jones knew would be able to help her when
she was being held inside a Jamaican jail cell in
April of nineteen eighty nine. That person was not her
ex lover Jean Paul, good father to her only child
and the man who once endured a home invasion with her.
Nor was it Dolph Lungren, the fulbright scholar turned muscle
bound Rocky Foe, Ivan Drago who dated Grace for a
(22:25):
while in the mid eighties. Hold Up Dolph Lungren was
a Fulbright scholar, the beefcake meathead who beats on Sylvester
Stallone and Rocky four. That guy was supposed to go
to MIT for chemical engineering, but instead left it all
behind to become Grace Jones's bodyguard when they met at
a club where she was performing. What Yeah, that happened? Anyway?
(22:50):
Back to the story, Grace Jones didn't turn to bo's
or boyfriends or ex's in her time of need. Instead,
she called a professional, her press agent, and it's her
belief that calling her press agent, John Carmon, not only
sprung her from custody, but saved her life. She didn't
(23:11):
tell John Carmon her whole convoluted conspiracy theory involving the
cocaine that didn't belong to her, or of Chris Stanley's
illness or as jealous employees, and that the local constabulary
force that had no doubt been bribed in the past
had something to do with what was going on here.
She just gave him the irrefutable facts. She'd been held
in police custody for a few days now with no
(23:33):
sign of being let go, her mind wandering in the darkness,
growing just like mold, now growing in the corner of
her dank little cell. But once John Carman sent out
a press release to every major publication in the world,
every newspaper, every magazine, to all those friends in places
high and low, the cops felt the pressure and had
(23:54):
no choice but to release Grace Jones, and the bail
was set at twenty seven hundred dollars. A trial now wounded,
and the prosecution had their evidence, not just the zero
point zero zero seven of an ounce of cocaine, but
evidence of Grace Jones's history as both a victim of
criminal behavior and as a perpetrator. Grace was banging on
(24:22):
the hotel room door so forcefully that she thought her
fist would go right through it, and her other hand
she held the pistol. She couldn't even remember where she
got it, not that she intended to actually fire it.
The gun was merely insurance, a tool of motivation when
her words in her fist would inevitably fail. She banged
(24:42):
on the door again and screamed his name. She knew
Dolph was in there, and she knew that Dolph knew
that she meant business. He understood that back when she
burned all of his clothes, even that nice versace suit,
all of it up in flames. Dolph, you asshole, what
the hell are you doing in there? Why aren't you
coming out? She struggled to understand, while also struggling to
(25:04):
understand who she had become at this moment. It wasn't her,
and it wasn't him either. It was this city, nineteen
eighty seven, Los Angeles. If you must get into trouble,
dude at the Chateau Marmont. Such was the advice that
Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohne once gave to actors Glenn
(25:25):
Ford and William Holden back in the nineteen thirties. He
could have easily directed the stars to Arrow Flynn's bachelor
pad up on Mohand Drive, where the Robin Hood star
hosted Anything Go as parties on the QT on the downlow,
very hush hush. But by nineteen eighty seven, ground zero
for Hollywood debauchery was not somewhere up in the hills,
(25:47):
nor was it down on the strip at the Chateau Marmont.
It was at the home of Grace Jones, who was
busy making a name for herself as the Pepsi Generations
Errol Flynn, with the bulging biceps of her unlikely live
and lover the Swedish gentle giant Dolph Lungren wrapped around her.
There was one rule and one rule only at Grace
Jones's house party. Don't die, don't smoke too much weed
(26:12):
in the designated weed room, and don't snort too much
cocaine off the gold plate in the designated coke room.
Don't pop too many pills in the quayludes room. And
if you're going to get in on the action happening
in the orgy room, then make sure you've got a
safe word ready. Parties were part and parcel of the
Grace Jones lifestyle. Back in New York at Andy Warhol's factory,
(26:33):
a good party would get you a front row seat
to the likes of Divine John waters Is drag Queen
Muse smoking an angel dust laced joint while Woody Allen
neurotically coughed nearby, or maybe another Grace Grace Kelly aka
Princess Grace of Monica chewing the fat with Robert Redford
and Beatle John over at Whole Books. Grace Grace Jones,
(26:56):
that is, even had her own baby shower at Studio
fifty four, grown for her by none other than Blondie's
Debbie Harriet. But here in La Grace didn't go out
on the town. La was the devil's workshop. It was
all asphalt and plastic. It lacked New York's authenticity. Where
were the Warhols and the Keith Harrings and the Richard
(27:17):
Bernstein's in Los Angeles. The place felt so manufactured that
it actually frightened her. Thus the parties came to her.
Hollywood was the last place she thought she'd then done.
Grace Jones was in New York City in so many
ways that it felt strange to be here in La
(27:38):
But of course strange as a cozy bedfellow of risk,
and risk is what really turned Grace on. Besides, just
two years earlier, in nineteen eighty five, there was this
new wave of stars in Hollywood, and it was a
wave that Grace wanted to catch right on before it
came crashing down. Nineteen eighty five was the year in
which Tina Turner, the R and B singer, starred in
(28:01):
the film mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. It was also the
year in which Madonna the pop singer starred in the
excellent film Desperately Seeking Susan. And it was the year
in which Grace Jones, a model turned singer, a New
Yorker turned Los Angelino, starred opposite Roger Moore in the
James Bond film of You To a Kill. Grace was
(28:24):
suddenly no longer the intimidating looking musician per Icy Stare
Piercing You from the cover of her excellent nineteen eighty
one album Nightclubbing. That's the one with the transformative covers
of songs by Iggy Pop, Bill Withers and the Police.
Grace Jones was now the intimidating looking Bond villain who
spent her time offscreen carousing with an equally intimidating, blonde
(28:46):
haired Jim Rat. Dolph Lundgren's career was rising just as
fast as his girlfriend's. But while Dolph was putting in
the work, early warnings at the gym and all that
to ensure that he looked like the kind of guy
who could knock out Sli stallone, Grace Jones, his girlfriend
was back home and she was all play the parties
were going on day and night. The parties brought her
(29:09):
closer to that New York state of mind. They made
la feel less frightening. The dancing, the drugs, the sex,
the hedonism, it was all just as much of a
coping mechanism as it was a fringe benefit of the
lifestyles of the rich and the famous. Dolph Lungern couldn't
keep up with Grace Jones. Dolph needed his rest, so
he started sleeping elsewhere. First it was slize place, and
(29:32):
later it was hotels. If you grew up in the
nineteen eighties like I did, then you know that Grace
Jones and Dolph Lungren's relationship was one of the weirdest
of the decade, but also one of the most eighties
things ever. It was bond and rocky, black and white,
the fashion and the music and the blockbuster films of
(29:54):
the era all twisted up into one indelible image. But
it wasn't meant to last. Maybe Grace knew that before
she showed up at Dolf's hotel room carrying a loaded
pistol or when Dol finally opened the door, calmly took
the gun from her hand, removed the cliff and proceeded
to talk his way back into her good side, and
(30:16):
maybe she tried to put the whole thing behind her
once her volatile romance with Dolf came to its natural conclusion,
and she at long last made her escape from La
when she once again pivoted, this time from movies, back
to music, and back to Jamaica, where she was not
welcomed as a star, as an adult who made a
name for herself, but as a defiant, corrupt child who
(30:39):
needed to be punished. January nineteen ninety Grace Jones, perhaps
(31:11):
wearing a gold pleated Bessain mackay hood at one piece
or a more ostentatious brown for her coat, sat Stone
faced before a magistrate in m Kingston, Jamaica court. The
magistrate was not yet speaking, but the voices already were
just like the voices she had heard at her boyfriend
and producer Chris Stanley's house on the night she was
arrested for cocaine possession. These voices came from an unseen source.
(31:36):
They were behind her, whispering low, and they belonged to
the audience. The rubberneckers sitting there in the gallery, eager
to learn the fate of the prodigal daughter. The voices
spoke of her transgressions, her affinity for drugs and munity,
her pact with that Gomorrah of the West Hollywood, multiple
affronts to God, the prophecy of a Pentecostal bishop. A
(32:00):
devil was in their midst. All grace Jones, ever, wanted
to do was what came naturally, and that was to
define herself by her actions in her ambitions, both of
which were reactions to the way she was brought up
as a child to not just be another meek, safe,
(32:20):
boring person. If living as a newdister dropping LSD on
a Hippi commune meant that she was some sort of
devil in the eyes of the old world, then so
be it. She knew that her lifestyle and her public
image would draw attention, but she never thought that she
would attract the attention of criminality year after year, nor
did she ever think that she would be on trial
(32:41):
for But here she was. When she was first arrested
and released on bail in April of nineteen eighty nine,
she wasted no time telling the press that the cocaine
had been planted in her purse She said that this
would be proven in court and that the identity of
the duplicitous person would be revealed. Nine months later, sitting
(33:03):
before the magistrate, Grace reiterated her claim she'd been set up, framed,
taken advantage of by someone who was not well known
to her. This person, she claimed, was a female employee
who worked at the recording studio of her boyfriend and
music producer Chris Stanley, and the woman was identified as
such under a pseudonym in Grace's memoir, though in the
(33:25):
papers at the time, the woman was referred to as
Chris Stanley's ex girlfriend. These are the same papers that
also claimed that Grace and Chris were married, which Grace
has since denied in her memoir. So who really knows.
What we do know is that Kingston Police originally responded
to Chris Stanley's house and studio on an anonymous tip.
(33:47):
The identity of that caller remained a mystery during Grace's trial,
although Grace herself would tell you otherwise. In the end,
the magistrate overseeing the case chose to give Grace, in
the magistrate's own words, the benefit of the doubt, despite
her past, despite the drug fueled industries in which she
worked as a multi hyphenate, and despite her own reputation
(34:08):
in her home country, Grace Jones was acquitted. Her trial
lasted three days, the same amount of time she'd spent
in a jail cell some nine month prior, and the
entire ordeal left her with about thirty thousand dollars in
legal fees and travel expenses, as well as a new
album to promote. That album, Bulletproof Hard, had been released
(34:29):
by Capitol Records in October of the previous year, nineteen
eighty nine. The cover photo of Grace, taken by her
old flame and collaborator Jean Paul Good, Now, feels like
a final wave goodbye to the decade that defined her,
the nineteen eighties. Grace's head, bathed in dark purple shadows,
sits atop her elongated neck, her lips bright red, her
(34:51):
ears sharp and perfectly symmetrical, her flat top like a plateau,
bright yellow light emanating from where her eyes should be.
She is the past and the future, bathed in mystery,
maybe too mysterious. The album was a disappointment both commercially
and critically. It failed to reach the heights of many
(35:12):
of her past records like Nightclubbing, Slave to the Rhythm,
or even the Nile Rogers produced Inside Story. Perhaps it
was the lackluster response from the public, or perhaps it
was the traumatic circumstances under which the record was made,
But Bulletproof Heart was the last album Grace Jones would
release for another nineteen years, until two thousand and eight,
(35:33):
when she reunited with Sly and Robbie the other Compass
Point All Stars to make her triumphant record, Hurricane. But
before taking an extended hiatus from the music world, Grace
Jones returned to the scene of the crime, or rather
to the scene where she'd been held for her crime
she didn't commit. Grace Jones rolled up to the Kingston
(35:58):
jail where she'd done her town, but now she had
a film production crew in tow. They were there to
shoot a music video for one of the tracks from
her Bulletproof Heart album. Being here, making art here, in
the very place that tried to silence her, took the
power and control out of the hands of those who
wanted to define her as something else. She knew what
(36:20):
she was, She knew what lurked behind her eyes, the
ones that had been innocent and God fearing as a child,
who were now curated with makeup and beaming with the
bright yellow light of the future. Grace Jones's eyes were
the future, a future with no fear, no rules, and
no disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgraceland. All right, guys,
(37:08):
thanks for hanging with me on another episode of Disgraceland.
Hope you dug this Grace Jones story. Listen Question of
the Week six one seven nine oh six sixty six
three eight. Leave me a voicemail, send me a text.
I want to know your answer on who's your favorite
multi hyphen it singer? Okay? Or you know which actor
turned singer do you think did it the best? Or model?
(37:28):
Or you know whatever? Whoever it is, is it Grace Jones?
Is it somebody else? Get at us again? Six one
seven nine oh six sixty six three eight to leave
a voicemail or send a text at Disgrace Lampod on
the Socials Disgrace Lampod at gmail dot com to send
an email to support the show. You can leave a
review for disgracelam on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You can
also become a Patreon All Access member go to disgracelampod
(37:51):
dot com to sign up for exclusive and bonus free content.
All right, I gotta get out of here. Here comes
some credits. Graceland was created by Yours Truly and is
produced in partnership with Double Elvis, the Exactly Right Network
in iHeart Podcasts. Credits for this episode can be found
on the show notes page at disgracelampod dot com. If
(38:13):
you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you
for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not,
you can become a member right now by going to
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(38:39):
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