A Conversation with
ADAM ANT By Eileen Shapiro, edited by Adam Kluger
Adam and the Ants followed on the heels of the punk explosion. What are your memories of the end of punk and the evolution of your band? I think punk had become very much a caricature of itself and it got very grey and very political. The kids were wearing the same kind of drab outfits. I’ve never been a political artist. I keep that out of my work. I’ve never been interested in that. I think it had become quite excessively violent, the gigs were getting more violent because of that, and it was just not enjoyable. Post-punk brought out some interesting music, but I felt that I just needed a way to suddenly make it a bit more colourful. Up until that point, I’d only used black and white in the graphics, in the handbills and record covers and stuff like that. So I suddenly just wanted to do the opposite of that, something heroic and celebratory, really. That’s where “Kings of the Wild Frontier” came out, I wanted to be like a king; not just some guy hanging on the corner moaning about everything and spitting, and wearing safety pins, which I’ve never been interested in!
Looking back, was Malcolm McLaren’s career advice to you worth the heartbreak of him stealing your band? At the time it was devastating because obviously we were buddies. Dave and Mathew, myself, and Leigh Gorman was the new kid who had just joined. There’s one thing a band splitting up, but with that there’s a friendship, and there’s the camaraderie, and that came into question. I think Malcolm saw a situation where he could conveniently get a really good band to back up the idea that he had. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then, we’ve made up and everything, but it was devastating on a personal level. On a professional level, it turned out to be pretty good for both parties. I couldn’t have seen it happening without that. We were very close doing our thing, and then someone else came in and started casting doubts amongst us. That created a kind of mutiny if you like. But gladly they did Bow Wow Wow which I thought was a really good project and sounded great, and I did “Kings” which was my view of things. Is it true that when you were going to release “Kings” with your signature ethnic beat, that Bow Wow Wow were trying to steal that sound in recording their album?
We’d all sat around listening to hours and hours of philosophy by Malcolm about taking rock n’ roll back to its basics, and playing us all kinds of records from Django Reinhardt to Charlie Parker, through to various ideas that Malcolm had in his head. He’d talk to you for about an hour on something, and if you were lucky you would understand a minute of it.
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Making those kind of ideas turn into reality just involves a lot of work. I just sat there and listened, and it sparked off certain directions for me. But what he was talking about in those meetings was pretty much what you hear when you hear the Bow Wow Wow sound. Mine was more…there are timpani drums in “Kings of the Wild Frontier.” There are 30 layers of vocals on it, which I did, so I didn’t fit into that idea that Malcolm wanted us to fit into. I had to put my hand up and say “this really isn’t working for me, I’m not quite getting the vibe off this.” When he got the band to say they wanted to leave, I certainly had the name and I had these threads of ideas, but nothing that fitted in with what they were doing, so I came out of it and went and started again. There was still a competitiveness. I thought, I’m not going to waste all this time sitting, listening to this lot and not use it, because I paid for it. I gave Malcolm £1,000 to manage the band. I think I got my money’s worth. When you released Kings in the USA, you changed the tracks. “Making History” was removed and “Physical” and “Press Darlings” replaced it. Why was that? I didn’t change them, they were changed for me. I was quite shocked to see various tracks taken off. I know they had a meeting and they decided that they wanted to take certain tracks off, and they did. At the time there was nothing I could particularly do about it. So it was a big shock to me. That was one of the nice things about doing the “Kings” gold boxset is having it in its original form. They made the decision for me, I wasn’t consulted, there it was. Why didn’t your label want you to tour “Kings” in the USA At the time?
