6. Grace JonesSlave To The Rhythm
She’s a tremendous influence, personally speaking, as a strong, powerful and fierce figure. For me, both musically speaking and through her live performances, she’s right up there with Iggy. Iggy is one of the ultimate performers because he’s so in touch with the id in himself, and I think Grace Jones is a more controlled version of that: she’s very in touch with that unselfconscious side of herself, but it’s married to this very conscious and manipulative side, too. She’s this fabulous creature who’s not quite human and seems to exist on a different astral plane to the rest of us. She’s a very sexy performer, but there’s an androgynous nature to it, and that’s what I’ve always tried to do, too – to try and straddle both the masculine and feminine in myself. And with this album, there’s also Trevor Horn’s production, too. It’s basically the first remix album: he’s taking all these disparate elements of her character and re-envisioning them over and over again through different glasses. It’s a really seminal record in terms of where dance music ended up, and that’s partly down to him as a producer, too. This is a record that Andy turned me onto, and it’s an important one for him, too. It’s nice when you have that working relationship with somebody and they can turn you onto something that becomes really important to you, because it’s expanding your common ground.
