Stuart Leslie Goddard (born 3 November 1954), known professionally as Adam Ant, is an English musician and actor. He gained popularity as the lead singer of new wave group Adam and the Ants and later as a solo artist, scoring 10 UK top ten hits from 1980 to 1983, including three UK No. 1 singles. He has also worked as an actor, appearing in many films and television episodes.
Ant began his musical career playing bass in the band Bazooka Joe. From 1977 to 1982 he performed with Adam and the Ants. Their debut album Dirk Wears White Sox (1979) reached number one on the UK Independent Albums Chart. Between recording and releasing his debut album as Adam and the Ants, he asked producer Malcolm McLaren to manage his band; McLaren instead took his backing band to form Bow Wow Wow. Ant regrouped with new members, including Marco Pirroni, to release his second album Kings of the Wild Frontier (1980). It reached number one in the UK Album Chart, spawned three hit singles, became the UK number-one selling album in 1981, and won Best British Album at the 1982 BRIT Awards. He released his third and final album with the group, Prince Charming (1981), which spawned two UK number-one singles "Stand and Deliver" and "Prince Charming".
In 1982, he began a solo career, retaining Marco Pirroni as co-songwriter. His first solo album was Friend or Foe (1982), from which the debut single "Goody Two Shoes" reached number one in the UK and Australia in 1982, and became his first top 20 hit in the United States on the Billboard Hot 100. The album reached number five on the UK Albums Chart and number 16 on the US Billboard 200 album chart, becoming his most successful solo album. His next two solo albums Strip (1983) and Vive Le Rock (1985) were less commercially successful. Ant began to focus on an acting career, performing on stage and in film and television roles throughout the 1980s and 1990s. He released his fourth solo album Manners & Physique (1990) which was produced by André Cymone and featured a Minneapolis sound. Despite the US top 20 success of the single "Room at the Top", Ant was dropped from MCA Records, and his album Persuasion (1991) was shelved and never officially released. He signed with Capitol Records to release Wonderful (1995). The single "Wonderful" became Ant's third US top 40 hit single.
Since 2010, Ant has continued his music career, recording and releasing a new album Adam Ant Is the Blueblack Hussar in Marrying the Gunner's Daughter (2013, UK number 25), and completing nine full-length UK national tours, six US national tours, and two Australian tours. A further album, Bravest of the Brave, was recorded in 2014 and is still awaiting release.
Contents
Early life
Stuart Leslie Goddard was born in Marylebone, London on 3 November 1954, the only child of Leslie Alfred Goddard and Betty Kathleen Smith. His father had served in the Royal Air Force (RAF) and worked as a chauffeur, and his mother was an embroiderer for Norman Hartnell. His home was two rooms in the De Walden buildings, St John's Wood. He recalls: "There was no luxury, but there was always food on the table." He is of partial Romani descent; his maternal grandfather, Walter Albany Smith, was Romanichal. This heritage became a basis for a theme in his later work: a concern for oppressed minorities.
Goddard's parents divorced when he was seven years old and his mother supported him by working as a domestic cleaner, being briefly employed by Paul McCartney. Goddard's first school was Robinsfield Infants School, where he created a considerable stir by throwing a brick through the head-teacher's office window on two consecutive days. In the aftermath of this incident, Goddard was placed under the supervision of teacher Joanna Saloman, who encouraged him to develop his abilities in art and whom he later credited as the first person to show him he could be creative.
Goddard then attended Barrow Hill Junior School where he boxed and was a member of the cricket team. He passed the eleven plus exam to gain a place at St Marylebone Grammar School, an all-boys school, where he enjoyed history, played rugby, and became a school prefect. After passing six O levels and three A levels, in English, History and Art, Goddard attended Hornsey College of Art to study graphic design, and was a student of art historian Peter Webb for a time. He dropped out of Hornsey, short of completing his BA, to focus on a career in music.
Early musical career
The first band Goddard joined was Bazooka Joe, in which he played bass guitar. He has said that the idea of Adam Ant came to him after watching the Sex Pistols play their first gig opening for Bazooka Joe at Saint Martin's School of Art in 1975: "After seeing the Pistols, I wanted to do something different, be someone else, but couldn't work out what and [who].": 92, 94
He renamed himself Adam Ant, choosing the name because "I really knew I wanted to be Adam, because Adam was the first man. Ant I chose because, if there's a nuclear explosion, the ants will survive." He formed his own band, the B-Sides, with Lester Square and Andy Warren.: 94 In 1977, together with drummer Paul Flanagan, they went on to form Adam and the Ants (initially named just "The Ants"), with the inaugural band meeting held in the audience at a Siouxsie and the Banshees performance at The Roxy in London's Covent Garden.
Musical career
1977–1982: Adam and the Ants
Adam and the Ants began performing around London while Ant acted in Derek Jarman's film Jubilee in 1977. They were initially managed by Jordan from the SEX boutique on Kings Road. His debut as a recording artist was the song "Deutscher Girls", which featured on the film's soundtrack, along with "Plastic Surgery" which was performed in the film. In late 1979 they released their debut album Dirk Wears White Sox (1979, Do It Records) featuring Matthew Ashman on guitar, Andy Warren on bass and Dave Barbarossa on drums.
Ant approached Malcolm McLaren to manage the band, who subsequently hired the rest of the Ants to form Bow Wow Wow fronted by Annabella Lwin. The second version of Adam and the Ants featured Marco Pirroni (guitar), Kevin Mooney (bass guitar), and two drummers, Terry Lee Miall and Chris Hughes (formerly of Dalek I Love You), who used the name "Merrick". The band signed a deal with CBS Records and recorded Kings of the Wild Frontier during the summer of 1980. The album gained success in the United Kingdom, and the "Antmania" that ensued put the band at the forefront of the New Romantic movement. The single "Antmusic" went to No. 2 on the UK singles chart by December 1980. Following the departure of Mooney in February 1981, bassist Gary Tibbs, formerly of Roxy Music, joined the band.
In November 1981, Adam & the Ants released the album, Prince Charming, that featured two United Kingdom No. 1 singles – "Stand and Deliver" and the title track, "Prince Charming" – as well as the No. 3 UK hit "Ant Rap". In March 1982 the group disbanded.
1982–2001: Solo career
A few months after Adam and the Ants split, Ant launched his solo career and retained Pirroni as guitarist and co-songwriter. Merrick also briefly stayed as drummer and producer for the UK edition of the first solo hit single "Goody Two Shoes" – which made it to No. 1 in the UK – and demos for the upcoming Friend or Foe album, before moving on to other production work. The Friend or Foe album also produced another top ten single, its title track "Friend or Foe", which reached No. 9 in September 1982.
Ant recruited a new band for touring, consisting of new dual drummers Bogdan Wiczling (ex-Fingerprintz) and Barry Watts (ex-Q-Tips), plus guitarist Cha Burns (also ex-Fingerprintz), bassist Chris Constantinou and the former Q-Tips brass section of trumpeter Tony Hughes and twin saxophonists Stewart van Blandamer and Steve Farr. The new band made its debut at London's Astoria Theatre on 1 October 1982. A US tour began in New York on 8 November. On the 19th tour date on 20 February 1983 in Cleveland, Ohio, Ant suffered a knee injury onstage (a relapse of a previous injury suffered while filming Jubilee in 1977), forcing the postponement or cancellation of dates throughout February and March while he recuperated. Ant eventually returned to performing, appearing as a guest on the NBC special Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever, singing "Where Did Our Love Go" with Diana Ross. He resumed the US tour, completed on 18 May 1983 at the Bronco Bowl in Dallas, Texas.
During his recuperation from the knee injury, Ant worked with Pirroni on new material that formed the basis of Ant's second solo album, Strip. With promotion on the Strip album complete, Ant reduced his band to the quartet of himself, Pirroni (now out of retirement again), Wiczling and Constantinou. The latter two adopted the stage names Count Wiczling and Chris De Niro respectively and were upgraded from live backing musicians to being full-time band members, featured on record sleeves, logos and even in song lyrics. The LP Strip produced a top ten single, "Puss'n Boots", that reached No. 5 in the UK charts in October 1983. Ant formally unveiled his new four-piece band at the 1984 Montreux Pop Festival,
In July 1985, Ant secured a spot at the Live Aid concert – the first live performance of the "Ant/Marco/Wiczling/De Niro" band – but was asked to cut his set to one song, for which he chose his new single, the Vive Le Rock title track Ant later said he regretted playing the fundraiser, stating, "I was asked by Sir Bob to promote this concert. They had no idea they could sell it out. Then in Bob's book, he said, 'Adam was over the hill so I let him have one number.'... Doing that show was the biggest f**king mistake in the world. Knighthoods were made, Bono got it made, and it was a waste of f**king time. It was the end of rock 'n' roll."
2002–2009: Autobiography
In 2003, the Channel 4 television special titled The Madness of Prince Charming was aired in the UK documenting Ant's career and his struggle with mental illness (he was diagnosed as suffering with bipolar disorder).
In 2003, Ant and Wonderful collaborator, Boz Boorer, teamed with the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund (now called The Gorilla Organisation) in a reworking of "Stand and Deliver" as "Save the Gorillas" for an EP of the same name along with four primate/rainforest-themed covers. Originally intended as a benefit record for the endangered mountain gorilla, it was never released, due to copyright and licensing issues relating to the title track. One track from the EP, "Jungle Rock", was eventually released on Boorer's 2008 solo LP Miss Pearl.
Ant made a guest appearance on an EP released in 2005 – Mike's Bikes by former Ants bassist Kevin Mooney's new band, the Lavender Pill Mob, on Mooney's own label Le Coq Musique. Ant provided lead vocals for "Black Pirates", a reworking of the song "Chicken Outlaw" by Mooney's earlier band Wide Boy Awake, inspired by Mooney's departure from the Ants.
In September 2006, he published his autobiography, Stand & Deliver. Marking the release of the book, Ant did a UK book signing, which went from London to Edinburgh. After the success of the first edition the paperback edition was published in September 2007, which contains a new epilogue that covers the year following the initial hardback release. As part of the promotion of the paperback, Ant performed a reading of selected passages of the book along with acoustic songs (accompanied by childhood friend Dave Pash on guitar) at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London on 24 September. A live CD of highlights of the gig, Live at the Bloomsbury was released the following year.
2010–2012: Independent label and return to touring
On 4 March 2010, Adam Ant registered his new label Blue Black Hussar Ltd. as a private limited company at Companies House. That month also marked a return to live music. Ant's first live performance since The Bloomsbury in 2007 was at Through The Looking Glass bookshop in London on 18 March, at which he played "Ants Invasion", "Cartrouble", "Physical", and a cover of Iggy Pop's "The Passenger". A day later, on 19 March, Ant guested at a Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction gig at the Pipeline Bar, London E1, in which he provided lead vocals for the band's Top 20 hit "Prime Mover".
Ant performed another low key show at the Southwark Playhouse on Saturday 20 March. During the intervals Ant talked about Sony Records, how he rejected an alleged £2.6 million O2 deal, and a new album collaboration with Chris McCormack.
Ant played a sold-out headline concert, dubbed The Pirate Metal Extravaganza at the Scala in London on 30 April. He also performed some smaller guerilla gigs in Autumn 2010, which received no advance billing, including a solo show at the Dark Mills festival at London's Colour House Theatre on 4 September 2010, the launch party of the Illamasqua store on 16 September (at which Boy George served as DJ), and a guest spot at the Monster Raving Loony Party's annual conference in Fleet, Hampshire, on 25 September. On 21 October, Ant performed at the Union Chapel, London.
Ant headlined at the Scala again on 18 November, joined by a trio of female backing singers. The gig received positive reviews and three days later again topped the bill at a tribute concert for former Ant Matthew Ashman on 21 November at the same venue, in a show also featuring later Ashman bands Bow Wow Wow, Chiefs of Relief, Agent Provocateur and London rock act Slam Cartel. Ant was back playing live two days later on 23 December, when he and backing vocalist Georgina Baillee guested onstage at the Christmas party of West Rocks at Shepherds Bar in Shepherd's Bush and played live again at Proud, Camden on 5 January 2011 and at Madame Jojo's in Soho on 17 January. He finished the month by playing further dates of his World Tour of London with a two-night stand at the 100 Club on 26 and 27 January 2011.
Ant spent time in Paris where he played low-key shows (his first gigs outside the UK in nearly 16 years.). On 29 March 2011, BBC Radio 4 transmitted an interview of Ant by John Humphrys for the On the Ropes series in which Ant discussed his bipolar condition and its impact on his career. That same day, Ant held a press conference and media preview gig at Under The Bridge in Chelsea at which he formally unveiled plans for an eleven date UK concert tour (as with the Paris concert, the first such event in 16 years) due to run from 16 May to 4 June 2011. Also announced at the Chelsea event was a public screening of the December 1981 Prince Charming Revue concert video plus a question-and-answer session to be held in South London's Coronet Cinema on 11 May 2011. By the time the tour got underway on 16 May in Brighton, the original eleven date itinerary had been expanded to fifteen dates. Ant completed the schedule of tour dates which were overwhelmingly enthusiastically received.
2013–present: Release of new album, touring
Ant's album, the focal point of the comeback since 2010, finally received its release on 21 January 2013. Its gestation had a long history which had been running alongside the live comeback; in 2009, it was announced that Ant was planning on putting a new record out. He also expressed interest in working with The Kaiser Chiefs.
In an April 2010 interview for the NME, Ant announced he was also working on a new album, with the title Adam Ant Is the Blueblack Hussar in Marrying the Gunner's Daughter. This featured collaborations with former 3 Colours Red guitarist Chris McCormack, Ant's long-time songwriting partner Marco Pirroni, Morrissey's writing partner Boz Boorer and was also due to feature a member of Oasis (later identified as Andy Bell). According to Ant, the album is a "live record that lends itself to performance" and will feature a "kind of concept. It's a very old-fashioned, old-school, step-by-step album". He also described the album as "very autobiographical, very personal." In addition, Ant re-recorded a song in tribute to the late Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren, who died earlier that month, and who also once managed Adam & The Ants. Named "Who's A Goofy Bunny Then?", the track was only previously available as a demo recorded in the early 1980s, but Ant stated he wanted to release a new version in tribute to the late punk manager. "Malcolm was a sort of mentor in my life", he said. "As close as you can get to a surrogate father". The song took its name from a term of endearment bestowed upon McLaren by Ant – referring to his "quite prominent teeth".
On 31 December 2010, Ant gave an interview for The Sun (featured in the "Something for the Weekend" segment) in which he discussed in considerable detail the various controversies surrounding his recent life and musical activities. He summed up his upcoming album thus: "The Blueblack Hussar is me coming back to life. I'm like The Terminator – I was a dead man walking". He also discussed individual songs on the album – as well as "Gun in Your Pocket" (which, aside from the Troubador live performance, had also been given a club dancefloor play by Ant himself as guest DJ at the Family Affair club night in Shoreditch, London on 24 April 2010), The interview in The Sun also made mention of "Shrink", a song about Ant's experiences in the mental healthcare system. Ant had previously discussed both of these songs in his April 2010 interview with Simon Price for online fanzine The Quietus. On his second visit to Iain Lee's show on Absolute Radio on 4 January 2011, two further new tracks were debuted, "Hard Men, Tough Blokes" and "punkyoungirl" [sic]. In an interview for Bizarre magazine published that month, Ant named the song co-written with Andy Bell as "Cool Zombie".
Musical style
The tone of Ant's debut solo album, Friend or Foe, was defined as glitzy glam pop with "tongue-in-cheek tunes, delivered with an excess of flair and good humour". It was also described as being "one of Ant's best records and one of the best new wave albums".
In a review for Strip, the songs were considered to contain a "mixture of driving, danceable rock with humour".
The music on Vive Le Rock has been said to be a "50s-style rock & roll sound".
The fourth studio album, Manners and Physique, was said to be a combination of "contemporary dance tracks" and Ant's "old flair for mockery". Ant himself later said that the album was styled after the bass-heavy Minneapolis sound of which André Cymone, in Ant's words, was "one of the architects".
Discography
Adam and the Ants
Dirk Wears White Sox (1979)
Kings of the Wild Frontier (1980)
Prince Charming (1981)
Adam Ant
Friend or Foe (1982)
Strip (1983)
Vive Le Rock (1985)
Manners & Physique (1990)
Persuasion (1992)
Wonderful (1995)
Adam Ant Is the Blueblack Hussar in Marrying the Gunner's Daughter (2013)
Concert tours
Headlining
Young Parisians Tour, Great Britain, January–February 1979, 15 dates including London Electric Ballroom support slot for The Lurkers
Zerox Tour, Great Britain, July–August 1979, 17 dates plus private preview show
Ants Invasion Tour, Great Britain May–June 1980, 15 dates plus private preview show
Kings of the Wild Frontier Tour, Great Britain, November–December 1980, 32 dates
Stand and Deliver Tour, worldwide, March–October 1981, 54 dates (not including April 1981 London charity show)
Individual legs:
Stand and Deliver UK Tour, Great Britain, March 1981, six dates
US Ants Invasion Tour, United States and Canada, April 1981, 13 dates
Stand and Deliver European Tour, assorted Western European nations, May–June 1981, 19 dates
Kings Of The Wild Frontier World Tour, United States, Japan and Australia, September–October 1981, 16 dates
The Prince Charming Revue, Great Britain, December 1981 – January 1982, 25 dates at ten venues
Friend or Foe Tour
Great Britain: Six dates, October–November 1982.
United States and Canada: 83 dates, November 1982 – May 1983.
Strip Tour United States: 60 dates, January–April 1984.
Residency
Marquee Club, London, England
5–26 January 1978 (four successive Thursdays)
Acting career
Ant's acting career began in 1977 when he appeared in Jubilee. During the 1980s and 1990s he was living in Hollywood and pursued his acting career, taking roles in films such as Nomads, Slam Dance, Sunset Heat, and Love Bites. Ant also appeared on American television shows, including The Equalizer, Sledge Hammer!, Tales from the Crypt and Northern Exposure in which he played a rock musician.
Ant has also worked in theatre: he starred in Joe Orton's Entertaining Mr. Sloane and appeared in Funeral Games.: 257, 326 He produced the musical Be Bop A Lula about rock 'n' roll singers Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran's days on tour in England, with a set designed by L.A. artist Michael Pearce.
Literature
Ant, Adam (2007). Stand and Deliver: The Autobiography. London: Pan Books. ISBN 978-0-330-44012-7.
Personal life
Ant married Carol Mills in 1975, when they were both still students at Hornsey College of Art.:92 They divorced in 1977. He dated Amanda Donohoe between 1977 and 1981, Jamie Lee Curtis in 1983 and Heather Graham in the early 1990s. He featured a song about Vanity of Vanity 6, the female vocal group associated with Prince, on the Strip album. In 1997, Ant married Lorraine Gibson, a 25-year-old PR assistant for Vivienne Westwood. The ceremony took place in Dayton, Tennessee. The couple had a daughter. They divorced in 2002.
Ant, who does not own a television, enjoys reading, particularly historical novels. He has tattoos depicting Lord Nelson's last prayer before the Battle of Trafalgar, an image of his grandfather and a quotation from Oscar Wilde: "Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes."
Mental health issues
Ant has spoken candidly about his mental health issues and experiences with the effects of the illness. In 1975, when he was living with his first wife at her parents' home in Muswell Hill, he suffered from depression and became dangerously underweight. "I just didn't eat," he has said of this period, "I wasn't attempting to slim, I was attempting to kill myself." He took an overdose of pills and, after having his stomach pumped, was sent to Colney Hatch psychiatric hospital in North London; he was diagnosed as having bipolar disorder and discharged after three months. "I was totally fucked-up in the head. Things went wrong and something snapped. I just became a vegetable for three months. I couldn't talk to people. I was very ill and that was part of the reason I left college."
In 2002 Ant was poised to join the 1980s-focused Here & Now tour, but was unable to do so when he was arrested and charged, after throwing a car alternator through a window at the Prince of Wales pub in Camden and then threatening patrons with a starting pistol. Ant's court trial was held later that year at the Old Bailey in London. The charges against him, which included criminal damage and threatening members of the public, were reduced to a single count of causing affray, to which he pleaded guilty. He was fined £500 and placed under a 12-month Community Rehabilitation Order for psychiatric care, with a suspended sentence. In June 2003, it was reported that Ant had been arrested again on suspicion of criminal damage, before it was decided that he should be hospitalised for treatment.
On 18 May 2010, Ant was returned to psychiatric hospital, where he remained until mid-June, subsequently returning home under outpatient supervision. In his 31 December 2010 interview for The Sun, Ant discussed the side effects of medication for his bipolar condition: "In the past I've been a robot. It's been an out-of-body experience. Bipolar means up and down and that's me ... Music has always been the best medication. I was on sodium valproate for seven years ... . I couldn't get to sleep and I didn't make love for seven years. My hair fell out and I couldn't pick up a book as I couldn't concentrate. I didn't write a song or pick up a guitar in that time – and piled on the weight. I might as well have been dead. I work very closely with my GP and any decisions I make are made with him". During an interview with BBC Radio 6 Music, he declared that "mental health needs a great deal of attention. It's the final taboo and it needs to be faced and dealt with." Ant is involved in the Black Dog campaign, which promotes better understanding of mental illness.