Diane Jones followed an unlikely path from her Trenton neighborhood to the heights of the music industry. Her story includes singing backup for Taylor Dayne and Guns N Roses, touring with Michael Jackson and being part of the production staff of fellow Trentonian Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf.
In the fall of 2014, Jones gave an oral history to students in the Trenton Makes Music First Seminar class. The unedited audio from that conversation is at the bottom of this post.
In addition, she is mentioned in the following online citations:
- Taylor Dayne talks how she and Jones met Prince and were invited to sing with him:
By the time I met him I was a breaking arti st, this was the Lovesexy Tour, so it was 1988 and I had just finished my stint opening up for Michael [Jackson] on the Bad tour, which were all these arena dates. I had probably my first couple of singles out on my first record. We were watching Prince play in Hamburg — me and my girlfriend Diane Jones, who I took from Brighton Beach when I was working in the Russian clubs and I said to her ‘when I get famous I’m gonna take you with me!’ We were up in the front in the VIP, press section in the pit and this big beautiful man comes up to us and he was security and he says, ‘Hey Taylor, I’m so-and-so, I’m security but I’m Prince’s brother.’ He was talking to us and said ‘Prince wants to come meet you later and have you come to the after show’ and I’m like this isn’t real.
- Discogs listing
- Guns N Roses Wikipedia listing
