Motorcycles, panthers, and riots: Grace Jones’ early stage shows went way beyond sexy chic
Grace Jones’s transition from modelling to music in the late 1970s is usually summed up as a seamless leap from the pages of upmarket magazines to the stages of equally opulent discos. She was, indeed, the queen of New York’s Studio 54 for a while, but if you’re imagining Jones merely gliding across the stage cooly and calmly, whispering through a cigarette, you’re really missing the mark.
By the start of 1979, the 30-year-old Jones had generated as much publicity for the dangerous, anarchic, thrill-seeking elements of her concerts as any of the punk bands who’d been supposedly rebelling against the dull disco scene. Rather than strutting out on a catwalk, she insisted on extreme, theatrical entrances and stunts, including driving out on a motorcycle, swinging from balconies and chandeliers, sparring with oiled-up boxers, and even going claw to claw with a pair of actual, live panthers—presumably rented out from a shady private zoo.
This was a three-ring circus style of performance art combined with a disco beat and organised by a supermodel turned ringmaster; a woman who couldn’t help but infuse each ridiculous on-stage antic with maximum sexual energy.
“It’s a physical exercise and at the same time a very sensual exercise for me when I perform,” the Jamaican-born Jones told the Chicago Tribune in 1979. “I feel my sex when I’m on stage, and I think that’s what the audience responds to. There ain’t nothing wrong with sex.”
She was right in theory, but then again, some of the crowds at Jones’s early gigs were getting so worked up that, when she would daringly invite them to join her on stage, many would start physically grabbing at the singer like crazed zombies. A riot broke out at one show in Vienna, and in Paris, rowdy fans started tearing Jones’s clothes off.
“Thankfully, Yves Saint Laurent was in the audience,” Jones joked, referring to the Paris incident. “I needed another costume quick. I’m always getting all dressed up to go out and get all messed up.”
This was clearly a different time, and Jones making light of what most performers would now consider a dangerous physical assault is a little perplexing and sad, but also telling of just how extreme her mindset was at the time.
“I’ll do anything to reach my fans,” she explained. “Nothing intimidates me. . . . There is no performer I know of who does this kind of thing—especially in the United States—because they’re afraid of the people.”
Jones did admit that the attack in Paris had left her “with scratches all over my body,” and that police had to spray mace at an out-of-control crowd in Italy. Sometimes she had been scared, she said, “But the stage has always been a barrier between the performer and the audience, and it shouldn’t be that way. There’s got to be that involvement. People don’t always get the chance for that kind of expression in their lives and they need it.”
Jones’s publicity agent at the time, John Carmen, told the Tribune that they’d taken steps to eliminate some of the more dangerous parts of Grace’s act, “like the motorcycle and the panthers,” but that Grace was still the one controlling “what she wants from the audience.”
“Yeah, but I used to be a lot more outrageous,” Jones chimed in. “I’m calming down a lot in my old age.”
