I don’t say the other explanations for this song’s meaning posted on here are incorrect, but in their original form, the lyrics had a very specific meaning.
You see, it’s not very well know that Ms Jones’ initial title had been ‘Slave to the Higgins’, and the song told of her brief but tempestuous romance with the bad boy of snooker, none other than the People’s Champion, Alex ‘Hurricane’ Higgins.
Grace and Alex first met in a London photographers’ studio; her record label had paid for her to fly over to the UK as they required some promotional images. At the studio of celebrity photographer Terry Lodowicz, she first encountered the Hurricane on the stairs, where he was discreetly relieving himself after a long morning’s photoshoot for a muesli advert.
Smitten, she embarked on a passionate love affair with the hard-drinking Irishman, but even the legendarily tough, no-nonsense Grace Jones was not woman enough to keep up with Higgins’ dubious and unhealthy lifestyle, often involving nights of hard drinking and smoking countless cigs in the company of dubious underworld characters, gallons of Guinness followed by three hours sleep and a raw egg in the morning.
She was besotted with his outlaw persona and even began to learn the rudiments of snooker, but his notorious womanising drove her to despair. During the 1982/83 season when he would have been number one in snooker’s world rankings if he hadn’t had points docked for bad behaviour, she followed him round the world - Belfast, Sheffield, London…
After one too many infidelities her notorious temper caused her to hurl a fire extinguisher at his head, and they split. After his legendary UK Championship victory, coming from behind against Steve Davis, they were briefly reunited, but the fiery Jamaican realised she had met her match in Higgins, and, unable to keep up with his wild ways, tearfully separated from him for the last time.
The song tells the story of that tumultuous 1982-82 period when, despite her good sense and pride, she kept returning to the caresses of his cigarette-stained fingers. Truly, she had been – for one year at least – a Slave to the Higgins.
I don’t say the other explanations for this song’s meaning posted on here are incorrect, but in their original form, the lyrics had a very specific meaning.
You see, it’s not very well know that Ms Jones’ initial title had been ‘Slave to the Higgins’, and the song told of her brief but tempestuous romance with the bad boy of snooker, none other than the People’s Champion, Alex ‘Hurricane’ Higgins.
Grace and Alex first met in a London photographers’ studio; her record label had paid for her to fly over to the UK as they required some promotional images. At the studio of celebrity photographer Terry Lodowicz, she first encountered the Hurricane on the stairs, where he was discreetly relieving himself after a long morning’s photoshoot for a muesli advert.
Smitten, she embarked on a passionate love affair with the hard-drinking Irishman, but even the legendarily tough, no-nonsense Grace Jones was not woman enough to keep up with Higgins’ dubious and unhealthy lifestyle, often involving nights of hard drinking and smoking countless cigs in the company of dubious underworld characters, gallons of Guinness followed by three hours sleep and a raw egg in the morning. She was besotted with his outlaw persona and even began to learn the rudiments of snooker, but his notorious womanising drove her to despair. During the 1982/83 season when he would have been number one in snooker’s world rankings if he hadn’t had points docked for bad behaviour, she followed him round the world - Belfast, Sheffield, London…
After one too many infidelities her notorious temper caused her to hurl a fire extinguisher at his head, and they split. After his legendary UK Championship victory, coming from behind against Steve Davis, they were briefly reunited, but the fiery Jamaican realised she had met her match in Higgins, and, unable to keep up with his wild ways, tearfully separated from him for the last time.
The song tells the story of that tumultuous 1982-82 period when, despite her good sense and pride, she kept returning to the caresses of his cigarette-stained fingers. Truly, she had been – for one year at least – a Slave to the Higgins.