The crowd falls under Jones’s spell
Unlike other festivals, Wilderness doesn’t have a VIP section. This might be why David Cameron was roaming freely at the three-day event, where punters swig Veuve Clicquot and dine at banquets hosted by Yotam Ottolenghi when they’re not watching Benedict Cumberbatch read out letters from his mother on stage. In this bosky Oxfordshire setting, fancy dress is near-obligatory; the grass was covered in sequins by Sunday night.
Grace Jones, then, had stiff costume competition from the crowd. But the 69-year-old easily trumped them all, slicked as she was in white body paint (“It’s not a body stocking; it’s the raw deal!”) and a variety of ever-wilder accessories. The Jamaican-born former model and formidable Bond henchwoman (in 1985’s A View to a
Kill) is an unlikely lure of modern festival line-ups. Her last major hit – of a mere handful – was in 1985. And, to some, she is possibly better known for slapping television host Russell Harty live on air after finding him rude, during the same decade.
Yet, she has become one of the most consistently entertaining headliners around in recent years, igniting enthusiasm among sleep-deprived audiences at Festival No 6, in Portmeirion, and jazz shindig Love Supreme. Her performance at Wilderness completed two months of European touring.
While her songs make good party fodder – they compellingly stir up reggae, new wave and funk with anthemic choruses – Jones outshines them all. A lifelong provocateur, she has an unfailing ability to perform, and retains the kind of energy that allows her to Hula-hoop for 20 minutes straight while singing Slave to the
Rhythm and introducing her eightpiece band.
Her set was uncomplicated: a rambunctious stomp through a dozen favourites including Nightclubbing and a cover of Roxy Music’s Love is the
Drug. Each had their own costuming (a chain-mail scarf! a waist-length mane! a bustle made of grass!) and gyratory routine. Jones even mounted an unsuspecting security guard to perform 1981’s explicit come-on Pull Up to the Bumper.
Genuine musical prowess lay beneath the spectacle, though. For
Amazing Grace – a track that both hinted at her Pentecostal upbringing and aptly summed up what we were witnessing – her vocals were surprisingly dexterous, despite the fact that she’d wrapped herself around a pole in a Bride of Frankenstein outfit.
Back in London, which the majority of Wilderness’s clientele had abandoned for the weekend, newsrooms were amused by a photo appearing online of David Cameron, the former prime minister, being accosted by a Jeremy Corbyn fan in a sparkly sequinned coat.
But in the wilds, there was only one name on the revellers’ lips: that of Grace Jones.