The day Grace Jones ran away with a motorbike gang
“I hated my dad, he was so strict,” said Grace Jones when reflecting on her life and upbringing, “But now I love him, because they didn’t make him bishop for a long time because of me.” After becoming one of the biggest icons in entertainment, Jones was difficult to ignore. While this benefitted her as far as her career was concerned, it made life difficult for her father, who came from a particularly religious background.
“There was an article in Ebony magazine about me with a photograph of the family around the piano. My dad wasn’t in it, but the fact that it was released in a magazine,” she explained. “He was supposed to cut me off, like in the Bible it says, ‘If your right arm offends, you cut it off’. He said, ‘I don’t care, I support my daughter’. But it held him back.”
While this paints a very positive picture of Jones’ family’s attitude and shows them in a supportive light, it wasn’t always like this. Her mother and father left her when she was young to move to the United States and make a living. This meant that Jones was left in the custody of her step-grandfather, who didn’t want children and used a concoction of religion and fear to keep everyone in line.
Eventually, she moved to the US with her parents, but once again, the strict rules that surrounded growing up in a highly religious household, paired with the strong views that opposed the way she felt about the world, meant that she never intended on sticking around forever. Jones never had one solid career path; she liked music, dancing, and acting, so she mainly just wanted to work in entertainment.
Jones didn’t have much direction but knew she had to move on and gain independence, embracing the worlds that would eventually accept her. One of the first cities she headed to was Philadelphia, where she got into hippie culture. She lived in a commune and made a living for herself as a go-go dancer, experimenting with drugs and generally trying out a different lifestyle to see if she could fit in with it.
“I called myself Grace Mendoza,” said Jones, “When was that? I don’t know. I don’t remember dates.” While it was refreshing for her to step away from her strict upbringing, it wasn’t long before being a hippie started to lose its appeal. As such, she decided to run away again, seeking solace as she joined a motorcycle gang.
She found a temporary home with the motorcycle gang despite the fact that it was a dangerous life driving around with them. While her time there is relatively undocumented, and there isn’t much information about it, it did mark an essential period for Jones. When she stayed with the gang, she didn’t have a particular destination in mind. Her time on the open road acted as a period of reflection after living two different extremes, one as the daughter of strict, religious, conservative parents and another as a fun-loving hippie with no rules. Now, with nothing but open space, dirt roads and some questionable company, she could reflect on her life and work out what she actually wanted.
The result was that she was able to unquestionably decide that she wanted to be an actor. As such, her destinationless attitude changed, and with her biker gang, she suddenly had a very specific destination in mind: New York City.
