If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be one of the biggest pop stars there is — and to have at least one UK magazine name you the sexiest man in the world — then Adam Ant can tell you: It’s a lot of fun and a little bit of a hassle.
“Your anonymity goes out the window, so suddenly you’re not able to go down to the local store and buy a pint of milk — but you know, there are worse things in life than that. I think people on the whole were very gracious and nice to me, and 99 percent of the time they’d come up to me and say how much they enjoyed the music. Maybe you’d be a store and go through the record racks, then you’d turn around and see people moving toward you, so you’d need to sneak out the back. But you work for years and years to get that kind of notice, so you’re not going to knock it when you get it.”
Adam will revisit the glory days of Antmusic at the Wilbur April 1, with the venerable English Beat opening. He promises a show that will include the Ants-era hits and a taste of everything he’s done since. “We’re trying to keep it as close to the records as we can. And that’s not always easy, since there were 30 vocal parts on some of those songs.”
With their glammy flamboyance and campy sense of humor, Adam & the Ants hit in the early ‘80s as an alternative to the seriousness of punk—an Ant-idote, if you will.
“We were all pretty much from a punk background and we were all loyal to our influences — Iggy, Roxy Music, early Bowie and the Alice Coopers of this world. That was all precious stuff to us, it was part of our DNA and we took it with us. But the whole punk rock thing got very ugly with the spitting and the violence. It wasn’t something I wanted to be associated with, it wasn’t beautiful anymore So we wanted to move it forward a bit. Something like ’Antmusic’ was an anthem, a ‘here we are’ type of song. And it helped to put a sense of humor into it, since that was something people checked at the door in those days.”
Adam was already an established UK star before he hit the US charts; it was his first post-Ants single “Goody Two Shoes” that did the trick. And it didn’t hurt that a new channel called MTV was starting up at that time. “The brass section gave it a sound that the American audience seemed to adopt. I’d been to art school, so I was able to storyboard the video and get my ideas across visually. Then the whole MTV generation kicked in at the same moment. I remember being invited to go to a studio in London, pick a phone up and say ‘I want my MTV.’ I had no idea that Mick Jagger and other luminaries had been in the studio the same morning. So I thought, ‘If Mick’s having some of it, it must be worth doing.’
“It didn’t feel like any kind of important moment that was going to change everything. I was glad I was able to be a part of something that was new. But at the same time, my attitude was quite traditional. I’d always come from playing live, and I liked to get out and play for people, look in their eyes, get the response. Nothing much has changed there.”
As for the song, “It was true that I didn’t smoke, drink or take drugs. So that put me outside the standards of rock and roll bad boy. And I thought I’d wind up the journalists who always asked about it.” But now it can be told: When journalists posed that question — “Don’t drink, don’t smoke, what do you do?” — What did he actually answer? “I’d say, That’s for me to know and you to think about — and watch the videos.”
