Grace Jones, 76, still stunning audiences from 60 feet in the air

Dan Gentile, SFGate, San Francisco (TNS)

Grace Jones knows how to make an entrance. As the sun held onto its last light on Saturday at San Francisco’s Outside Lands, the curtains at the Lands End stage unfurled to reveal Jones towering over her band, standing on a riser several stories high. A 60-foot-tall, black-and-white skirt flowed down to the ground, originally designed by Keith Haring in 1986 for the music video “I’m Not Perfect (But I’m Perfect For You).”

Jones, the main legacy act playing the festival, was a contemporary of Haring, as well as Andy Warhol, who makes an appearance in the same music video. The Jamaican-American multihyphenate has been a fixture in the worlds of fashion, film and music since the ‘70s, working with titanic musical figures like Tom Moulton (the original pioneer of the disco remix) and Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare (Jamaica’s most legendary rhythm section). Her covers of songs like “Warm Leatherette” (The Normals), “Love is the Drug” (Roxy Music) and “Nightclubbing” (Iggy Pop and David Bowie) have eclipsed the originals in the minds of many listeners, and her Paradise Garage classic “Pull Up to the Bumper” (1981) remains a staple in many DJ sets today (I’ve owned the single for 15 years, and it still regularly ends up in my crate).

Jones was booked for the 7 p.m. time slot on the festival’s largest stage, which given the Gen Z demographic of Outside Lands, was a bit of a gamble. The Polo Field was sparsely populated in the minutes leading up to her set, mostly with older attendees who had trouble naming many other acts at the fest. But when she took the stage (about 10 minutes late), her colossal presence was undeniable and quickly drew a large crowd.

With a hotshot backing band powered by basslines as heavy as anything heard on the SOMA DJ stage, Jones opened with a dubbed-out version of “Nightclubbing” punctuated by vocals and dance moves that showed her decade’s worth of confidence. Jones’ coy smile betrayed her often-stoic image, although she apologized for a few tears that were presumably due to a makeup malfunction (I thought she might be teasing “Cry Now Laugh Later,” one of her many disco singles that couldn’t be fit into the tight set). Instead she performed a hypnotic version of “My Jamaican Guy” wearing a gold skull mask that floated just above her face.

An earnest and moving cover of “Amazing Grace” served as a reminder that there’s plenty of substance under her style, and a new, unreleased song called “The Key” proved that she still has her finger on the pulse. “My Private Life” and “Williams Blood” rounded out the set, which included costume changes into a sci-fi golden helmet, a high-five tour through the crowd riding piggy-back on a security guard and an impressive display of hula-hooping during closer “Slave to the Rhythm.”

With any performer over the age of 70, especially those with as mercurial a reputation as Jones, there’s always a bit of nervousness involved in seeing them live — even more so if they’re a bucket list figure like Jones — but my fears were put to rest as soon as she hit the stage, quieting any doubts from 60 feet in the air.

Jones, 76, was born in Jamaica and moved to Syracuse at a young age, first performing while attending Onondaga Community College. Her late father has a street named after him in Syracuse, Bishop Robert W. Jones Way, and Grace Jones has a star on the Syracuse Walk of Fame outside the Landmark Theatre. In addition to her music career, she’s also known for modeling and acting, including roles in movies like “Conan the Destroyer,” James Bond’s “A View to a Kill,” and “Boomerang.”

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