From her island life as a young girl in Spanish Town, Jamaica, to her art groupie days in New York City, to the towering androgyne Bond villain who could turn La Vie en Rose into a disco hit: Grace Jones is one of our greatest living performers – a disco legend and true party girl, with a penchant for fabulous hats.
With the Sydney Opera House forecourt her dancefloor and the Monumental Steps her nightclub balcony, the mad hatter claimed dominion of the night on Saturday – even though her concert happened to coincide with the 48th annual Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, and the first of two Bad Bunny stadium shows in Sydney Olympic Park.
Bathed in moonlight, she concluded her show by hula-hooping the duration of her abiding classic, Slave to the Rhythm, bringing new meaning to the song’s familiar bridge: “Never stop the action, keep it up, keep it up.” And keep it up she did for her elaborate and shambolic 90-minute high-wire act.
If you’re looking for a consummate professional, you’ve come to the wrong place. Jones is famously downright unprofessional. “I just wanna have some fun, honey. I wanna have more than fun,” she announces between songs. “I wanna end up being dragged out of here.”
After performing Private Life showered in a dazzling shawl of crystal droplets, she paused for a play-pretend cup of tea: “Can you put some wine in it?” When the paper cup was brought to her on stage by her overworked dresser Jane, Jones balked: “Seriously, get me a wine glass darling.” She quickly downed it, before resuming her spirited singing and swivelling. The only sure thing all night is that this exhibitionist will throw on another flamboyant accessory before the next song.
In fact, she wore something new for each unfolding track in her procession of night anthems. At points she refused to let the songs end, luxuriating in the moment, singing snippets of each song on repeat long after the band had stopped playing. Though Jones is less known for her vocal chops, it was her rich and redolent voice that was the true revelation in a night of surprises.
Between sit-ups hanging off the edge of her gold throne and the bug-eyed barricade parade on the shoulders of her security – to the tune of Pull Up to the Bumper, no less – Jones was having a ball.
It wasn’t all just classics: somewhere between her Libertango and Love Is the Drug, Jones snuck in a crowd-pleasing new track, The Key to Funky, from her yet-to-be announced forthcoming record. Before long she disrobed, finally taking off the fitted pants to reveal her famous legs – the ones Jean-Paul Goude cut and pasted by hand for the artwork of her first greatest hits album, Island Life. “Freedom! No pants! Can we take off some more?” Jones teased – before momentarily flashing her breasts from beneath her black corset.
Downing her third glass of red (her “communion wine”), the singer invited us to mass (“We need to go to church. We need to pray”) with a stunning rendition of Amazing Grace. Shaking her tambourine and switching out the Philip Treacy headpiece for a Sunday best church-lady hat, she paid tribute to her roots as a minister’s daughter. The Christian hymn served as the outro to her stirring late-career Williams’ Blood, a gospel rock song that traces her family history through an attachment to her mother’s maiden name. In the song Jones commiserates that she is beyond salvation (“You can’t save a wretch like me”) in a moment of rare self-admonition.
Yet on stage, she is beyond reproach. It’s true, she may not always remember her setlist (“Now which song are we doing?”), or even know some words to the songs she’s been singing for five decades.
At times, it feels as though she’s on another planet. Remarkably, six of them grace the night sky on the eve of her show. As they come into alignment, every blunder dissolves in the face of her blinding extraterrestrial light.
Grace Jones is playing Melbourne’s Palace Foreshore on 2 March, Brisbane’s South Bank Cultural Forecourt on 5 March and Adelaide’s Womadelaide festival on 7 March.
