Andrew Lloyd Webber - Every UK Number 1

The Intro

Adam and the Ants captivated children of the 80s – myself included. Adam Ant was my first ever musical hero, and where my love of music began. Here’s how a new wave band with niche appeal became a sensation and shot to number 1 for the first time with Stand and Deliver!.

Before

Adam Ant was born Stuart Leslie Goddard in Marylebone, London on 3 November 1954. Goddard’s grandfather on his mother’s side was Romanichal, which planted the seed of protecting minorities that would become a common theme in Goddard’s music.

His parents divorced when he was seven, and his mother worked as a domestic cleaner to make ends meet. In 1967, she briefly cleaned Paul McCartney’s house, and her son later vividly recalled going round there after school.

Goddard was educated at Robinsfield Infants School, where he got into trouble by throwing a brick through the headmaster’s office on two consecutive days. Ironically, this proved to be a wise move, as he was placed under the supervision of a teacher who encouraged his creative side.

At Barrow Hill Junior School, Goddard enjoyed boxing and cricket. He passed his A-plus and went to St Marylebone Grammar School, an all-boys school, where he became a prefect and gained three A-levels. Next was Hornsey College of Art, where he studied graphic design. But before he could complete his BA, he was swayed by a growing love of music, and he dropped out.

Goddard joined the pub rock band Bazooka Joe in 1975 as their bassist. Although the band also featured John Ellis, who became one of The Vibrators, they are most famous for being the headliners of the first ever Sex Pistols gig, at Central St Martins College of Art and Design on 6 November. Goddard was fascinated by the Pistols, while the rest of Bazooka Joe disagreed so strongly, he decided to leave the group and an idea began to form.

Under his new guise, Ant (named ‘Adam’ after the first man and ‘Ant’ after a creature that would survive a nuclear explosion) formed the B-Sides, featuring lead guitarist Lester Square and Andy Warren. On 23 April 1977, with drummer Paul Flanagan, they became The Ants, holding their first band meeting at a Siouxsie and the Banshees gig at the Roxy in Covent Garden. Ant was in the right place at the right time, as the punk scene was exploding, and he became close friends with Jordan, who worked at Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s SEX boutique. She soon became his band’s manager.

Square only lasted a month before leaving to concentrate on his course at art school, though he later formed The Monochrome Set. He was replaced by Mark Ryan, and The Ants began performing regularly around London. Flanagan was replaced in early June by Dave ‘Barbe’ Barbarossa, and The Ants entered a studio for the first time, recording Deutscher Girls and Beat My Guest. These two songs featured in Derek Jarman’s drama Jubilee (1978), in which Ant made his acting debut as The Kid. The Ants sacked Ryan, replaced him with Johnny Bivouac, and became Adam and the Ants.

The leather-clad, post-punk Adam and the Ants had a penchant for controversial fetishist imagery, and were unpopular with the music press, but they gained a cult following. 1978 was a big year, as they made their radio debut, recording a session for John Peel in January. Jordan featured on vocals for their final track Lou, which she used to do regularly at their gigs, but she quit as their manager in May and a day later, Bivouac left the band, to be replaced by Matthew Ashman.

Adam and the Ants recorded a second Peel session in July and at the end of the month they signed a two-single deal with Decca Records. Young Parisians was released in October, but plans for a follow-up were shelved by Decca.

A third Peel session was recorded in March 1979, and the band signed with independent label Do It Records. Second single Zerox was released in July and a month later they began recording their debut album, written and produced by Ant. Soon after, he sacked Ashman and Warren, and the latter joined The Monochrome Set, but Ashman was allowed back. Warren was replaced by Lee Gorman. The LP, Dirk Wears White Sox ( a reference to actor Dirk Bogarde), was released in November. It’s an interesting album, but don’t expect any of the brilliant pop that was around the corner. It did however make it to number 1 on the fledgling UK Independent Albums Chart that launched in early January 1980.

Ant asked Malcolm McLaren to take over as manager of the band, and the former Sex Pistols manager proved to inadvertently have a positive effect on Ant’s career. How? By dropping him and stealing his band. By the end of January, McLaren had persuaded Ashman, Gorman and Barbe to jump ship and join his new group, Bow Wow Wow. Their lead singer was 13-year-old Annabella Lwin, who was briefly joined by George O’Dowd before he became better known as Boy George. Whether Ant

Undeterred, Ant went looking for new Ants. Marco Pirroni, who had been one of Siouxsie’s Banshees, became the new guitarist. They were briefly joined by future Culture Club drummer Jon Moss (using the name Terry 1+2) to remake Dirk Wears White Sox opener Cartrouble as a contractual obligation for Do It, with Pirroni also on bass. The single was produced by Chris Hughes, who Ant subsequently asked to become his new drummer.

Kevin Mooney picked up bass duties, and unusually, there were now two drummers as Terry Lee Miall also joined the band. Ant was to co-write the new material with Pirroni and they signed a publishing deal with EMI. They worked on new material at Matrix Studios and went on the Ant Invasion tour while Ant took the new material to prospective record companies.

The change in direction was startling. Ant and Pirroni used Hughes (now known as Merrick) and Miall to create Burundi-style African drumming to underpin a new sound that was a commercial yet unique mix of pop and new wave. They ditched the leathers and instead of a monochrome look they added tons of colour, dressing as pirates with Native American make-up, and looking and sounding not unlike Johnny Kidd and the Pirates.

Whether these ideas were stolen from McLaren (as their former manager claimed) or vice versa, Ant, who was always incredibly handsome and charismatic, now looked and sounded like a real pop star. It wouldn’t take long to persuade the public he was, either.

Kings of the Wild Frontier was their next single, and what a call to arms it was. Over that soon to become familiar Burundi beat and Pirroni’s rockabilly guitar, Ant began his mission statement by chanting ‘A new Royal family, a wild nobility, we are the family’. He also sang about Native American suffering and declared ‘Antpeople are the warriors, Antmusic is our banner!’ Tremendous stuff, that somehow only scraped into the charts at 48 that summer.

In October came their next single, Dog Eat Dog, which streamlined the formula into a more chart-friendly format. This song, about bands in competition with one another and inspired by a phrase used by Margaret Thatcher, deservedly went all the way to number four.

The following month saw the release of their first hit LP. Kings of the Wild Frontier proved Adam and the Ants weren’t going to be a one-hit wonder. Released as the New Romantic movement was exploding, it contained another mission statement in Antmusic, which peaked at number two in January 1981, being held off the top spot by Imagine in the wake of John Lennon’s death.

Adam and the Ants were so popular, Decca and Do It rushed to plunder their earlier material for a cash grab. Incredibly, Young Parisians climbed to nine. In February the band performed on The Royal Variety Show in a spellbinding performance that caused Ant to shout at Mooney at the close for seemingly going off script. It would be Mooney’s last performance with the Ants, and Gary Tibbs, who had starred in Breaking Glass (1980), took his place. A re-release of the single Kings of the Wild Frontier soared to two.

The band set to work on what was to be the final Adam and the Ants album. Prince Charming’s lead single was to be Stand and Deliver!, in which Ant adopted a new image as ‘the dandy highwayman that you’re too scared to mention’. Ant was a history buff and loved the Georgian era of bawdy flamboyance. He saw it as a perfect vehicle for ‘looking flash and grabbing your attention. And it definitely worked.

Inspiration may have come from several places, including the film The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968), the Monty Python’s Flying Circus 1973 sketch ‘Dennis Moore’, Carry on Dick (1974) – the final entry in the series to star Sid James – and the London Weekend Television series Dick Turpin, that was running on ITV at the time.

Review

It was inevitable that Stand and Deliver! should become Ant’s first number 1, after several near misses. The drums are toned down from previous singles, now providing an exciting underpinning to pure brilliant pop, and Pirroni’s guitar is more modern than the rockabilly sounds of what came before.

There’s memorable vocal hook after hook here, too. If it’s not the opening line, or the triumphant chorus, or the ‘HUH’ after the drums in the chorus, it’s the nonsensical but suitably camp ‘Fa diddley qua qua’ as the song draws to a close.

While you can argue Adam and the Ants were too retro or rock to be New Romantics, this song fits the template, as Ant bemoans the lack of colour and fantasy in pop music. The Blitz Kids may have preferred more electronic sounding music, but they’d have totally agreed with lines like ‘The way you look you’ll qualify for next year’s old-age pension’. And the idea of using fashion as a weapon – ‘Not a bullet or a knife’ will have greatly appealed. It certainly did to little young me, and boys across the country. Ant was already cool, but mutating into a Dick Turpin-style character was bloody genius. In the early 80s I thought Sid James in Carry on Dick was cool. Ant as similar? Simply mind-blowing.

To change from edgy S&M stylings to cartoon childhood heroics is quite a transformation, but Ant more than pulled it off. As a child, he was just amazing. Incredibly handsome, charismatic, flamboyant and fun, Ant was a cartoon hero brought to life. I may have missed out on Beatlemania and Flower Power, glam rock and punk, but I feel proud to have been a young boy when Ant was at the height of his fame.

In theory I was too young – I was only two when this was number 1. But I can remember leaping from chair to settee in our living room to Adam and the Ants’ videos, and there’s a photo of me proudly holding an Ants’ single. So the band must have already split by the time I was in love with them, so brief was their fame. But listening to this and watching the video now, it’s clear that Adam and the Ants could only ever be huge for a short time – in a similar way to early T Rex. But what a time!

Ashes to Ashes may have heralded the start of the rise of music videos in the 80s, but with Stand and Deliver!, Ant grabs the torch and gallops away with it. Ant worked with director Mike Mansfield to create ‘a Hollywood movie in three minutes’, and they certainly succeeded. Ant is going round holding up mirrors to his victims – including a man who looks scarily similar to Boycie from Only Fools and Horses, which started this same year. The video, which also features Ant’s then-girlfriend Amanda Donohoe, climaxes with our hero about to be hanged before escaping with the rest of the Ants, and then ends with a topless Ant staring at himself in the mirror, alone. What did this mean? Was it Ant contemplating his own lyrics? Was it his true self, behind the mock heroics? Or was it just a chance to look hot and make his female fans swoon? Whatever it was, it hinted at the title track of their last LP, and next number 1.

After

Stand and Deliver! was an instant smash, debuting at number 1 and staying there for five weeks. It was the third biggest-selling single of 1981, and solidified Ant as a household name that year.

The Outro

20 years later, a troubled Ant made a well-meaning but ill-advised new version of his first number 1, called Save the Gorilla. Ant was trying to raise awareness of the plight of mountain gorillas in Central Africa, and the production is decent enough, but an overweight Ant trying to squeeze his new lyrics into one of his classics just seemed a bit silly. Pirroni helped to block its release.

The Info

Written by

Adam Ant & Marco Pirroni

Producer

Chris Hughes

Weeks at number 1

5 (9 May-12 June)

Trivia

Births

13 May: Labour Party MP Luciana Berger
15 May: Equestrienne Zara Phillips
16 May: Actor Joseph Morgan/Actor Jim Sturgess
17 May: Footballer Leon Osman
20 May: 5ive pop star Sean Conlon
22 May: Comedian Sara Pascoe
26 May: Broadcaster James Wong
29 May: Rugby union player Rochelle Clark
9 June: Backstroke swimmer Helen Don-Duncan/Scottish football plater Alex Neil/Musician Anoushka Shankar
11 June: Scottish field hockey goalkeeper Alistair McGregor

Deaths

9 May: Footballer Ralph Allen/Socialite Doris Harcourt
10 May: Conservative Party MP Geoffrey Stevens
15 May: Liberal Party MP Margery Corbett Ashby
17 May: Classical scholar WKC Guthrie
18 May: Novelist Verity Bargate
19 May: Ornithologist Collingwood Ingram
23 May: Radio producer Rayner Heppenstall
24 May: Actor Jack Warner
27 May: Scientist Kit Pedler/Philologist Anne Pennington
28 May: Archaeologist John Bryan Ward-Perkins
29 May: Organist John Dykes Bower
31 May: Economist Barbara Ward, Baroness Jackson of Lodsworth
10 June: Welsh journalist Sir Trevor Evans

Meanwhile…

9 May: The 100th FA Cup final at Wembley Stadium ends as a 1-1 draw between Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur.

11 May: Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Cats debuts at New London Theatre.

12 May: 25-year-old Francis Hughes becomes the second IRA hunger striker to die in Northern Ireland.

13 May: The New Cross fire inquest returns an open verdict on the thirteen people who died as a result of their injuries in the New Cross fire.

14 May: Spurs are victorious in the FA Cup final replay with a 3-2 win. It’s the sixth time they’ve won the trophy.

15 May: The Brixton riots inquiry opens.

19 May: Peter Sutcliffe is found guilty of 13 charges of murder, and a further seven attempted murders.

21 May: The IRA hunger strike claims two more deaths – Raymond McCreesh (24) and Patrick O’Hara (23).

22 May: Peter Sutcliffe is sentenced to life imprisonment.

27 May: Liverpool FC becomes the first British team to win the European Cup for the third time, defeating Real Madrid 1-0 at Parc des Princes in Paris.

30 May: More than 100,000 people march to Trafalgar Square in London for the Trade Union Congress’s (TUC’s) March For Jobs.

3 June: Sherman wins the Epsom Derby.

11 June: Queen Elizabeth II opens the NatWest Tower.

The Intro

Before becoming another hit musical for Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, Evita, their story of former Argentine First Lady Eva Perón, was a concept album. Such was its immediate popularity, this song, performed by singer and actress Julie Covington went all the way to the top. Despite the long-term success of Lloyd Webber and Rice’s music through the decades, few of their songs have stayed in the public consciousness. This one definitely has.

Before

Lloyd Webber and Rice first met in 1965. The former was a 17-year-old composer, the latter a 20-year-old aspiring pop songwriter. Their first work together was The Likes of Us, a musical based on the life of Thomas John Barnardo. They produced a demo in 1966, but it wouldn’t be performed in public until 2005. Their first performed work is one of their most famous – Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in 1968. Jesus Christ Superstar followed. The hugely successful rock opera began life as a concept album in 1970 and Lloyd Webber and Rice decided to repeat this formula with their next project, Evita, based on the life of Perón, the second wife of Argentine leader Juan Perón. The idea originated when Rice listened to a Radio 4 documentary about Perón’s wife.

Don’t Cry for Me Argentina appears at the opening of the first and second acts and near the end of the show. They selected an all-star cast of British pop stars in the LP’s cast, including former Manfred Mann members Paul Jones and Mike d’Abo, Mike Smith from the Dave Clark Five, Barbara Dickson and singer and actress Julie Covington in the lead role.

Covington, a Londoner, was born 11 September 1946. She attended Brondesbury and Kilburn High School, where she began acting. She took part in two Edinburgh festivals and won the first ever Edinburgh Festival Fringe Best Actress Award. Her career in singing began with performing material by Pete Arkin and Clive James after joining the Footlights while at teachers’ training college in Cambridge. In 1967, while studying at Homerton College, Cambridge, she was invited to appear on The Frost Report. This earned her a recording contract with Columbia Records and she released her debut album, While the Music Lasts.

Covington’s career went from strength to strength throughout the 70s. She starred in the musical Godspell alongside fellow number 1 artist David Essex in 1971. Two years later she starred as Janet Weiss in the original production of The Rocky Horror Show. For the next few years she appeared on Play Away and regularly as part of the National Theatre and Royal Court Theatre. Lloyd-Webber saw her performing in cabaret one night in 1976, and recognised her from her role in acclaimed ITV musical drama Rock Follies. This series, following the exploits of a female rock band called The Little Ladies, won multiple BAFTAs, and the punk band Buzzcocks got their name from a Time Out review of the series with the headline ‘It’s the buzz, cocks!’, which was a reference to Covington’s character Dee. With her short cropped hair, Covington even resembled a punk at the time. She was intrigued by the idea of Evita, wondering how on earth Lloyd Webber and Rice could make a commercial musical out of Perón’s life.

Don’t Cry for Me Argentina was among the first, piano-only, demos for Evita. Despite reticence that they weren’t going to sell many records, MCA agreed to release the album, and the cast began recording the album at Olympic Studios in 1975. The completed version of this single featured Johnny Kidd and The Pirates’ guitarist Joe Moretti, plus Simon Phillips on drums, Mo Foster on bass, Ray Russell on guitars, Anne Odell on keyboards, David Snell on harp and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. As it came to completing the album, Lloyd Webber and Rice couldn’t decide on the song’s title, flitting between It’s Only Your Lover Returning and All Through My Crazy and Wild Days, amid fears that mentioning Argentina may reduce commercial appeal. Shortly before the LP was mixed, Lloyd Webber suggested the line ‘Don’t cry for me Argentina’ was a good fit. It originated from an epitaph on a plaque at Perón’s grave in the La Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires.

Review

Stirring, stately strings set the tone as the song begins. We are to picture Covington as Evita, addressing the crowd from the balcony of the Casa Rosada. It’s a powerful performance from Covington, full of nuance, sometimes gentle and hesitant in the opening, other times defiant. It’s as complex a rendition as Rice’s lyrics, which I’ll be honest, took some researching. I’ve said before on this blog that most musicals just leave me cold, and I’ve never seen or heard Evita, nor do I know much about the history behind Perón’s story.

All this can’t help but affect my enjoyment of this number 1, which is highly regarded by so many. But for that reason I tried to appreciate it more this time around, and I could. A classy rendition of a complex, mature moment in pop. I’d still never seek it out otherwise though.

After

Although Covington totally owned her role on the LP, playing the part of a hard-right political leader didn’t sit comfortably with her. She had wanted the song to remain tucked away on the album and turned down planned TV appearances, including Top of the Pops, resulting in a montage of images of Perón as a promo video. When Radio 1 refused to add it to their playlists, Lloyd Webber and Rice thought it would sink. But the BBC changed its mind eventually and it helped push the song up the charts. When Don’t Cry for Me Argentina reached number 1, Covington was in the audience on Top of the Pops.

Lloyd Webber and Rice won the Ivor Novello award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically with their number 1 later in the year. Naturally they asked Covington to reprise her role when planning the stage show of Evita, but were likely unsurprised when she declined. The part went to Elaine Page instead. In 1982 the song took on a whole new meaning due to the Falklands War, and when the UK was victorious, the song was heard in many pubs, sung sarcastically by gloating Brits. The BBC refused to play the former number 1 during the conflict and it was also banned in the Philippines during the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos, as the life of his wife Imelda was said to mirror Perón’s.

The Outro

When the stage version of Evita opened, Covington had moved on, starring in the English National Opera’s version of The Seven Deadly Sins. That year, 1978, was a big one for Covington, as she also performed the role of Beth in Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds. She also peaked at number 12 with a cover of Alice Cooper’s Only Women Bleed, taken from her eponymous album. It was her first LP in seven years and also her last. After that, she notably appeared in the 1982 National Theatre production of Guys and Dolls and has mostly disappeared from the public eye since.

The Info

Written & produced by

Andrew Lloyd Webber & Tim Rice

Weeks at number 1

1 (12-18 February)

Trivia

Births

18 February: Triathlete Chrissie Wellington

Meanwhile…

13 February: Foreign Secretary Anthony Crosland has a massive stroke. He does not regain consciousness and dies six years later in hospital.

15 February: The very first Aardman Animations character, Morph, is introduced on BBC children’s TV series Take Hart, hosted by Tony Hart.