Chart entered : 2 August 1980
Chart peak : 48 ( 2 on reissue in 1981 )
Number of hits : 11
This follows on neatly from the previous post as Adam, unceremoniously evicted from his own band at the instigation of McLaren, took some of his ideas and achieved a level of success that stamped on Bow Wow Wow from a great height.
Stuart Goddard was born in 1954 , had a somewhat wayward though ultimately successful school career and ended up at Hornsey College of Art . There he met and married fellow student Carol Mills and moved in with her parents. He started out in music as bass player in a pub rock band called Bazooka Joe who also included future Vibrator John Ellis and Dan Barson, brother of Madness's Mike. In November 1975 they were famously supported by the Sex Pistols playing their first gig at St Martin's College of Art. Stuart was the only member of Bazooka Joe to be impressed which prompted him to quit and form his own group The B-Sides with Andy Warren and Lester Square ( aka Thomas Hardy ) .
The B-Sides never played a gig because Stuart had some form of mental breakdown and spent time in an institution. On his release he renamed himself Adam Ant with Carol becoming Eve. He renewed contact with Warren and Hardy , got a drummer in Paul Flanagan and started The Ants ( as they were originally called ) in 1977. After one bedroom gig in May 1977 Hardy left to finish his art course and was replaced by Mark Ryan. A month later Flanagan was replaced by Dave Barbarossa. This line up of the band featured in Derek Jarman's film Jubilee where Adam played a character called Kid and they "played" a song called "Plastic Surgery" worth checking out on YouTube because it's so bad. Shortly afterwards Ryan was replaced by Johnny Bivouac ( are you keeping up here ? ).
By the time they recorded a session for John Peel early in 1978 they had acquired a new manager in famed punk scenester Jordan. The day after the session they re-recorded "Deutscher Girls" and "Plastic Surgery" for the Jubilee soundtrack. " Deutscher Girls " is surprisingly musically competent and after a stinging intro, adopts a tango rhythm and an air of art school whimsy more associated with bands like Stackridge and Hatfield and the North than punk. Despite the embarrassingly bad lyrics - "We'll do the tango, we'll try the foxtrot / I'll eat a mango, you drink a straight Scotch" it was a number 13 hit on reissue in 1982.
The band formed a friendship with Siouxsie and the Banshees and toured extensively with them building a fierce live reputation but alienating much of the music press who didn't like the emphasis on sex and fetishism. Bivouac was lost along the way being replaced by Matthew Ashman. Like The Banshees they were slow to get a deal but eventually lended one with Decca who released their first single "Young Parisians" in October 1978. Adam chose this even more whimsical acoustic jazz ballad with even more ridiculous lyrics - "Young Parisians are so French, talk nothing but French " to confuse the critics and certainly succeeded. The song was an unlikely number 9 hit at the start of 1981.
Unfortunately it succeeded in confusing Decca too and the Ants were dropped shortly afterwards. They had to turn to the label Do It to release their next single "Zerox" in June 1979. A vast improvement, the song has a clever lyric about plaigiarism but what's most striking is how much it sounds like Joy Division with Andy putting down a classic Peter Hook melodic riff and Adam as producer achieving the same dry sound in the studio. It reached number 41 on re-release in 1981
They continued in this post-punk direction with the album "Dirk Wears White Sox" released in October 1979 and co-produced with young producer Chris "Merrick " Hughes. Second track "Digital Tenderness" bears a heavy Gang of Four influence , "Nine Plan Failed " sounds like XTC, "The Day I Met God" threatens to turn into Hong Kong Garden at any moment and so on . Lyrically Adam developed his interest in fetishism and violence with obscene ditties like the Alice Cooper glam stomper "Cleopatra " and the less than reverent tribute to JFK " Catholic Day ". There were no obvious singles and though it subsequently reached number 16 in a six-month chart run at the height of Antmania in the first half of 1981, it was a commercial failure at the time. Andy then jumped ship to join Hardy in The Monochrome Set. He was replaced by Leigh Gorman.
Adam then made the tumultuous decision to hire McLaren's services . McLaren denounced the album as esoteric rubbish; he hated the whole post-punk scene and particularly its long raincoat aesthetic , the antithesis of all his ideas on fashion. He urged Adam to become a pirate or a Red Indian to bring some colour back to the music scene and sold him on the idea of using the Burundi beat. Adam had enough ideas about sex of his own and McLaren soon realised he was uncontrollable , hence his running off with the band in January 1980.
Adam quickly made good the losses. He knew Chris was a decent drummer and persuaded him to become a band member as well. Chris had recently been in a band called The Blitz Brothers putting out two singles "Gloria " and the soft rock leaning "Rose Tattoo " before switching attention to running a new label Back Door and producing synth-pop also-rans Dalek I Love You . Adam then turned to Marco Pirroni . Marco ( born 1959 ) was another art school graduate and a well known guitarist on the punk scene who'd been part of the initial Siouxsire and the Banshees line up as a seventeen year old. After that he formed The Models whose line up included Terry Day on drums, co-writing their one single in June 1977 ,"Freeze" an incendiary punk number on which they sound like a tighter Damned. Marco had a brief spell in Cowboys International led by Ken Lockie who seemed like less a band than a clearing house for displaced punk musicians. He played on their last single when they were moving towards synth pop, "Today Today", and appeared on Old Grey Whistle Test with them He then joined Models bassist Mick Allen in Rema-Rema who put out an EP of experimental industrial music "Wheel in the Roses "just prior to Marco joining the Ants.
Adam owed Do It one more single so he re-recorded part of the album's opening track "Car Trouble" ( thankfully not the part with the line " I dreamt I was a spastic but my boots were clean ) with Marco who played both guitar and bass and Chris. Wanting to take the opportunity to experiment with the dual drummer sound, Adam engaged Jon Moss under the pseudonym "Terry" but as he was contractually tied to Jane Aire and the Belvederes he never actually joined the band. In single form this wry suggestive song about guys enjoying a bit of vehicle-bound nookie had some commercial kick but again it wasn't a hit until 1981 when it reached number 33.
Back in 1980 Adam then acquired two new members . Marco recommended Terry ( now Terry Lee Miall ) for the drum stool and teenager Kevin Mooney was recruited from Irish agit-rock band The European Cowards on bass.
"Kings of the Wild Frontier " was the new line up's first recording and it secured them a deal with CBS after a short UK tour gave evidence of their continued popularity as a live draw. Despite a rather thuggish appearance Marco was a levelheaded guy who, for a time at least, reined in Adam's wilder ideas and gave them a coherent musical shape. Without him on board I suspect this would be as unlistenable as C60 C90 C30 Go as most of the musical ingredients are the same. Instead, it's probably my favourite of all the Ants singles , its raucous excitement still infectious thirty-five years later. It starts off with Adam's vainglorious claim for the Ants being "A new royal family, a wild nobility" three times before the Burundi beat kicks in and it's a rollercoaster ride from then on in. Kevin's bass picks out the Spaghetti Western riff on his bass while Marco veers between power chords and feedback howl . Adam sings some guff about his inner redskin in his feline howl before puncturing his own myth - "you're just a shade too white"; Marco's re-entrance as Adam hammers home that point is absolutely thrilling. Terry and Chris hammer away throughout and the Native American howls in the instrumental break are the icing on the cake. This is a record that sounds better the louder you play it.
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