Warm Leatherette, Grace Jones, and the Art of the Beautiful Crash

April 9, 2026

Lou first encountered Grace Jones’s stylings through her movies from 1984 to 1986. Jones had a nice run with Conan the Destroyer, A View to a Kill, and Vamp. Conan, James Bond, and camp horror. All in Lou’s wheelhouse. Only years later did Lou discover Jones’s extensive music career that made her an icon in the Studio 54 disco scene of the late 1970s and then again in the new wave clubs that built on the rubble of disco in the 1980s. In everything Jones did from film, music, and modeling she was an icon, maybe nowhere more so than in music. Her androgynous look had undeniable influence. Just take a peek at Lady Gaga for example. Jones was more than an image created in collaboration with designer Jean-Paul Goude. She sounded unique as well with help from Sly and Robbie and others.

A copy of Warm Leatherette cruised into the Vogue recently and Lou snatched it up. Mostly for the title track which like most of the album is a cover. “Warm Leatherette” was first recorded by The Normal, which was the name used by producer Daniel Miller, who was the founder of Mute Records, which featured Depeche Mode, New Order, Moby, Wire, Nick Cave, and a host of others. Several of the cool kids have covered “Warm Leatherette”. Jones, of course, but also Duran Duran and Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. The song is based on J.G. Ballard’s cult classic Crash, which morphed out of a short piece in the landmark and transgressive The Atrocity Exhibition.

Lou first learned of Ballard when he was studying abroad in London. Lou developed a reputation as a Beat enthusiast, particularly of William Burroughs. One day in the dorm barwhile Lou was enjoying a pint of bitter minding his own business, a fellow student came up to Lou and said he heard Lou was a Burroughs fan boy. “Burroughs is shite. You must read Ballard.” Lou is embarrassed to say it now, but he did not know who Ballard was at the time, but this student stated emphatically that Ballard, not Burroughs, was the real deal. He recommended that Lou go to the library and pick up a copy of Crash. Lou did as he was told and was blown away. Lou promptly went back to the library and picked up The Low-Flying Aircraft collection andThe Atrocity Exhibition. Mind blown again. Was Ballard better than Burroughs? Lou would not go that far, but they were kindred spirits.

In the 1990s, David Cronenberg solidified his status as the most important director of the decade by finally bringing both the unfilmable Naked Lunch and the too-hot-too-handle Crash to the big screen after years of failed attempts and false starts. Lou was a huge fan of both films. Burroughs and Ballard fans tend to poo-poo these movies, Burroughs fans in particular, but Lou thinks they are great. They are pure Cronenberg, as much as Burroughsian or Ballardian. It works because Cronenberg is a creative genius on their level. Lou will gobble up Cronenberg’sreadings of Naked Lunch and Crash any day.

With Crash, many focus on Deborah Kara Unger. She provides much of the sex in this sex and death classic, but Lou was a Rosanna Arquette guy. She dated Peter Gabriel, but Lou will not hold that against her. People seem to love the guy for some reason. Lou doesn’t get it. Rosanna if you squinted a little and covered one eye, looked like a girl that Lou knew well in high school. She like Rosanna did not just look interesting, she was interesting. An example of a book matching its cover. Arquette became a favorite of Lou’s in 1985 with Desperately Seeking Susan, Silverado, and After Hours. Like Grace Jones in the same time period, Rosanna had quite a run. Rosanna is the best of the Arquettes. Not really all that close. Those movies from 1985 are the ones Lou keeps returning to when it comes to Rosanna. Pulp Fiction and Crash aside. Throw Buffalo ’66 in there as well, but that is getting into sacred Christina Ricci territory. Lou will have to talk about Ricci at a later date.

Lou may or may not have had a copy of the September 1990 issue of Playboy that featured Rosanna. Rosanna has stated that this pictorial appeared without her consent. If Lou did own it,he has since destroyed it out of deference to her dignity. Rosanna was also at the forefront of the takedown of Harvey Weinstein. She was one of the first to speak openly about hisabuse. If you look at Rosanna’s career until the mid-1990s, it is clear that her’s is one of the many careers altered by contact with Weinstein. Crash was one of her last big roles before Weinstein in essence shut her out of the A-list.

Ballard’s and Cronenberg’s Crash and The Normal’s and Grace Jones “Warm Leatherette” did not come out of nowhere. The art world was there first. When thinking of Crash, Lou flashes to Andy Warhol’s Death and Disaster series and Ed Kienholz’s Back Seat Dodge ’38, both from around 1964. These images were in turn inspired by the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas. Warhol’s Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) suggests the erotics that Ballard and Kienholz make explicit. In fact, Warhol seems to have predicted the car crash that killed Jayne Mansfield in 1967, which would be so influential on Ballard’s vision for Crash.

Lou must admit that he prefers The Normal’s rendition of “Warm Leatherette” to Grace Jones’s. The stark electronica of The Normal hits better than the new wave reggae of Jones’s version. But the video of Jones performing “Warm Leatherette”from the “A One Man Show” tour in 1981 seems on point with its sex, robotics, and androgyny that gets to the heart of Cronenberg’s version of Crash if not also Ballard’s. You can’t go wrong with Jones’s recordings from the late 1970s to the 1980s. Lou is keeping an eye out for Nightclubbing from 1981, which has Jones’s best song about sex and cars, the epic “Pull Up to the Bumper”, which was recorded during the Warm Leatherette sessions and was written by Jones herself. “Bumper”is Jones’s own version of Crash in a way, and, like a car crash, it is spectacular.