Happy 40th Anniversary to Grace Jones’ fourth studio album Warm Leatherette, originally released May 9, 1980.
In 1979, Grace Jones’ singing career was in desperate need of a reset.
Besides being a fashion model, she was known as a disco artist with several club hits under her belt and a huge following in the gay community. Her third album Muse (1979) came along at a time when there was a heavy backlash against disco music and the “Disco Sucks” era pretty much derailed the careers of many performers who were associated with the genre.
In her 2015 autobiography I’ll Never Write My Memoirs, Jones stated that disco was “as much an assault on the corniness and narrow-mindedness of rock as punk. Where it ended up was the fault of the white, straight music business, which drained (disco) of all its blackness and gayness, its rawness and volatility, its original contagious, transgressive abandon.”
Her fourth studio album Warm Leatherette began what is known as her Compass Point trilogy, which included Nightclubbing (1981) and Living My Life (1982). The album was Jones’ pivot towards a mix of new wave, reggae, post-punk, which has been her signature style ever since.
Warm Leatherette was co-produced by Island Records founder Chris Blackwell and Alex Sadkin, who enlisted heavy hitters like Sly and Robbie, Wally Badarou, Barry Reynolds, Mikey Chung, Uziah “Sticky” Thompson to be Jones’ in-studio band. This group of musicians became known as the Compass Point Allstars and they gave her a sound that was new, refreshing and unlike anything she had previously done or anything we heard before.
Jones’ makeover was not relegated to her music. Visually, she transformed herself from disco diva to an androgynous, larger than life badass whose persona can take over any room at any time. It’s a quality that very few can possess, with David Bowie being the one name that comes to mind.
When you first glance at the track listing, one could easily write off Warm Leatherette as just another covers album, but Jones takes the songs and makes them special, unique, and undeniably in her own voice. The title track is a cover originally performed by The Normal in 1978 and it was an early example of electronic music. “Warm Leatherette” and “Private Life” were the first two songs recorded for the album sessions. Sly Dunbar once noted that “Grace was cool. I don’t know if it’s because she was Jamaican, so she feels very relaxed and comfortable. When we were playing, we kept looking at the poster of her like we were making a movie score. We rehearsed in the studio and just cut what we had immediately to get a groove. The first song was ‘Warm Leatherette’ and the second was ‘Private Life.’ Those two songs we nail to the bone and from there the sound just develops. And everything was smooth. Even ‘Pull Up to The Bumper’ was from that first session.”
“Private Life” is possibly my favorite track on this album and I actually prefer this version over The Pretenders’ version (which was great as well), which appeared four months earlier on their eponymous debut album Pretenders (1980). In the liner notes for Jones’ album Private Life: The Compass Point Sessions, Chrissie Hynde is quoted as saying, “Like all the other London punks, I wanted to do reggae, and I wrote ‘Private Life.’ When I first heard Grace’s version I thought, ‘Now that’s how it’s supposed to sound!’ In fact, it was one of the high points of my career—what with Sly and Robbie being the masters, and Grace Jones with her scorching delivery. Someone told me it was Chris Blackwell’s idea—thanks Chris!”
Warm Leatherette puts Jones’ magnificent gift for covering songs on display while using material from a wide range of acts you would not normally put together in a sentence. “The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game” (The Marvelettes), “Love Is the Drug” (Roxy Music), “Pars” (Jacques Higelin), and “Breakdown” (Tom Petty) all get an excellent re-imagining of their songs. Tom Petty even wrote an extra verse for “Breakdown” for Jones.
Even though it did not do well with respect to sales and chart performance, Warm Leatherette is one of the highlights of Jones’ catalog. The album’s blending of new wave, reggae and pop yielded tremendous results and set the tone for what is arguably the most brilliant and creative stretch of her career. Not only do I highly recommend giving Warm Leatherette a spin, check out the other two albums in the Compass Point trilogy (Nightclubbing and Living My Life) as well. It’s time we all give Jones her due.
LISTEN: