Jake Brennan (12:06)
Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. The Jamaican jail cell was small. A concrete floor. A bench, also concrete. A small toilet, and a blanket. By day two, those initial feelings of disorientation and 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 it was open and shut. They had been called Chris Stanley's house on an anonymous tip. And when they arrived, they found a baggie of cocaine hid inside a two dollar bill in Grace's purse. It was a small amount, just 0.007 of an ounce. But cocaine was cocaine, and cocaine was illegal. And now the illegal cocaine having Grace Jones was. And on top 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 her head. That her sick boyfriend may have been poisoned, the cocaine had no doubt been planted, and that there was a 5050 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, you knew that when it came to cocaine, she didn't mess with that stuff. She never put that stuff up her nose. Nose. Her nose was part of her face, part of her unorthodox beauty. Her money maker, 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 Quaaludes, Valium, Mandrax. Her ideal high was chilling out, not freaking out. But on the occasions that she did do coke, she'd opt for a disco cigarette, a.k.a. cocoa Puffs. Joints of marijuana laced with cocaine or as Grace called them, Mary Ann's since she was introduced to them by Mary Ann Faithful Grace Jones. True, 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, clean small rock. Stuff it up there and forget about it. There was 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. Her plate, Grace Jones was finally 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. 1979, New York City. An apartment at the top of a commercial building in Union Square. It was the weekend, which meant that the only people in the building were those occupying said apartment, its tenant, the art director for Esquire magazine, Jean Paul Goode, 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 at the Paradise Garage discotheque in lower Manhattan, wearing nothing but Keith Haring's white tribal body paint or. Or in a new York Magazine feature article or at Studio 54, where anything went and where Grace was often found and which you can hear more about in our episode on Studio 54. But I digress. Being naked at this 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 fucked up mirror. Maybe it was all that time spent at nudist retreats and hippie communes when she was younger. But being naked for Grace wasn't tantamount to being vulnerable. Being naked was being strong. And being strong was what had gotten her 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 1977, the year of the Blackout, the year of the Yankees, the year of garbage strikes, and the year of the Son of Sam, Grace Jones jumped at the chance. She loved 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 Aretha Franklin, no matter 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 friends like designer Issey Miyake 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 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, 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 muse, 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 Point Studios, where she would put the finishing touches on the Warm Leatherette album. And that's when she saw him. A man who wasn't John Paul. And this man was just beyond the living room window, standing on an outdoor terrace. He was tall perfectly coiffed Afro, well dressed. Grace clocked his suit as Italian, so debonair that her first instinct wasn't to 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 rock run for it. In her elevated state she opted for the latter instinct and then adrenaline. 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 Mr. Armed and debonair. 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 Deutsche Marks, 2,000 of them, give or take. Give or take. The man was shaking his head now. He rotated his neck in a way that indicated either his wins or not, or this couple's lack of funds was irritating him. Most likely both. Give him cash. American cash, he demanded, and he tied them both up one by one, and then he stood there looking at Grace Jones and Jean Paul Goode and their faces and wondering what he was going to do with them. Grace feared the worst. She thought about being shot dead in her boyfriend's apartment, the baby still in her belly, about not being found until Monday when the baby building open for business. She thought about Paula Kilmack, AKA Paula, her friend and fellow model, and how just a few years back Pola took a bunch of Quaaludes and died, and how her ghost haunted the city in the pages of Cosmopolitan, in Vogue, that face of hers staring directly into 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 and why, 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 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 first time, no stage, just her and the crowd 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 now she thought about this well dressed man with the rod in his hand. 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 travel agency and convert them to cash to American cash. And that the money was untraceable and that he would need no ID 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. It was within seconds, just like the music execs who could 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 Paula, the man was gone. The whole ordeal was absolutely terrifying. And Grace Jones wouldn't have been criticized by anyone at 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. Grace Jones was going to Hollywood. We'll be right back after this. Word. Word. Word. There was only one person Grace Jones knew would be able to help her when she was being held inside a Jamaican jail cell in April of 1989. That person was not her ex lover, Jean Paul Goode, father to her only child, and the man who'd once endured a home invasion with her. Nor was it Dolph Lundgren, the Fulbright scholar turned musclebound Rocky foe Ivan Drago, who dated Grace for a while in the mid-80s. Hold up. Dolph Lundgren was a Fulbright scholar? The beefcake meathead who beats on Sylvester Stallone in Rocky iv? That guy was supposed to go to MIT for chemical engineering, but instead left it all behind to become Grace Jones bodyguard when they met at a club where she was performing. What? Yeah, that happened. Anyway, back to the story. Grace Jones didn't turn to boas or boyfriends or exes in her time of need. Instead, she called a professional, her press agent. And it's her belief that calling her press agent, John Carmen not only sprung her from custody, but saved her life. She didn't tell John Carmen her whole convoluted conspiracy theory involving the cocaine that didn't belong to her or of Chris Stanley's illness or his 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. Days now with no sign of being let go. Her mind wandering and the darkness growing just like mold now growing in the corner of her dank little cell. But once John Carmen 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 no choice but to release Grace Jones. The bail was set at $2,700. A trial now loomed and the prosecution had their evidence. Not just the 0.007 of an ounce of cocaine, but evidence of Grace Jones history as both a victim of criminal behavior and as a perpetrator. Grace was banging on the hotel room door so far forcefully that she thought her fist would go right through it. In 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 and her fist would inevitably fail. She banged 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 were you doing in there? And why aren't you coming out? She struggled to understand while also struggling to understand who she had become at this moment. It wasn't her. And it wasn't him either. It was this city. 1987. Los Angeles. If you must get into trouble, dude. At the Chateau Marmont. Such was the advice that Columbia Pictures President Harry Cohn once gave to actors Glenn Ford and William Holden back in the 1930s. He could have easily directed the stars to Errol Flynn's bachelor pad up on Mulholland Drive where the Robin Hood star hosted anything goes parties on the QT, on the down low. Very hush hush. But by 19 1987, ground zero for Hollywood debauchery was not somewhere up in the hills. 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 generation's Errol Flynn with the bulging biceps of her unlikely live in lover, the Swedish gentle giant Dolph Lundgren wrapped around her. There was one rule and one rule only at Grace Chapter Jones house party. Don't die. Don't smoke too much weed 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 Quaaludes 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. A good party would get you a front row seat to the likes of Divine, John Waters, 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 Monaco, chewing the fat with Robert Redford and Beetlejohn over at Holbrook's Grace. Grace Jones, that is, even had her own baby shower at Studio Flowers 54 thrown for her by none other than blondie's Debbie Harry. 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 Harings and the Richard Bernsteins in Los Angeles? The place felt so manufactured that it actually frightened her. Thus the place parties came to her. Hollywood was the last place she thought she'd end up. Grace Jones was New York City in so many ways that it felt strange to be here in la. But of course, strange is a cozy bedfellow of risk. And risk is what really turned Grace on. Besides, just two years earlier in 1985, there was this new wave of stars in Hollywood. And it was a wave that Grace wanted to catch a ride on before it came crashing down. 1985 was the year in which Tina Turner, the RB singer, starred in the film Mad 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 Angeleno, starred opposite Roger Moore in the James Bond film A View to a Kill. Grace was suddenly no longer the intimidating looking musician, her icy stare piercing you from the COVID of her excellent 1981 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 a her time off screen carousing with an equally intimidating blonde haired gym rat. Dolph Lundgren's career was rising just as fast as his girlfriend's. But while Dolph was putting in the work, early mornings at the gym and all that to ensure that he looked like the kind of guy who could knock out Sly 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 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 Lundgren couldn't keep up with Grace Jones. Dolph needed his rest. So he started sleeping elsewhere. First it was Sly's place and later it was hotels. If you grew up in the 1980s like I did, then you know that Grace Jones and Dolph Lundgren's relationship was one of the weirdest of the decade, but also one of the most 80s things ever. It was Bond and Rocky, black and white, the fashion and the music and the blockbuster films of 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 Doll's Hotel carrying a loaded pistol or when Dolph finally opened the door, calmly took the gun from her hand, removed the clip and proceeded to talk his way back into her good side. And maybe she tried to put the whole thing behind her once her volatile romance with Dolph 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 needed to be punished. Foreign. Grace Jones, perhaps wearing a gold pleated St. McKay hooded one piece or a more ostentatious brown fur coat, sat stone faced before a magistrate in the 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. 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 nudity, her pact with that Gamora of the West Hollywood, multiple affronts to God, the prophecy of a Pentecostal bishop. A 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 and her ambitions. Both of which were reactions to the way she was brought up as a child. To not just be another meek, safe, boring person. If living as a nudist or dropping LSD on a hippie 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 for it. But here she was. When she was first arrested and released on bail In April of 1989, 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 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 papers at the time, the woman was referred to as Chris Stanley's ex girlfriend. These are the same papers that also claim 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. 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 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 months prior. And the entire ordeal left her with about $30,000 in legal fees and travel expenses, as well as a new album to promote. That album, Bulletproof Heart, had been released by Capitol Records. In October of the previous year, 1989. The COVID photo of Grace, taken by her old flame and collaborator Jean Paul Goode, now feels like a final wave goodbye to the decade that defined her, the 1980s. Grace's head, bathed in dark purple shadows, sits atop her elongated neck. Her lips bright red, her ears, 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 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 19 years, until 2008, 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 a crime she didn't commit. Grace Jones rolled up to the Kingston jail where she'd done her time, 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. The 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 she was. She knew what lurked behind her eyes. The ones that had been innocent and God fearing as a child but were now curated with makeup and beaming with the bright yellow light of the future. Grace Jones is eyes were the future. A future with no fear, no rules and no disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgrace. All right, guys, thanks for hanging with me on another episode of Disgraceland. Hope you dug this Grace Jones story. Listen, question of the week. 617-906-6638 leave me a voicemail, send me a text. I want to know your answer on who's your favorite multi hyphenate singer? Okay. Or, you know, which actor turned singer do you think did it the best? Or model? Or you know, whatever. Whoever it is. Is it Grace Jones? Is it somebody else? Get at us again. 617-906-6638 to leave a voicemail or send a text at Disgracelandpod on the socials. Disgracelandpodgmail.com to send an email to support the show. You can leave a review for Disgraceland on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You can also become a Patreon All Access member. Go to Disgracelandpod.com to sign up for exclusive and bonus free content. All right, I gotta get out of here. Here comes some credits. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis, the Exactly right Network and iHeart Podcasts. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page@gracelandpod.com if you're listening, as a Disgraceland All Access members, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to Disgracelandpod.com membership. Members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland ad free rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook disgracelandpod and on YouTube@YouTube.com gracelandpod Rocka Rola He's a bad, bad man.
