The Intro

Adam and the Ants were one of Britain’s hottest acts of the early 80s, and when the flamboyant frontman decided to go solo, you could forgive him for thinking he had a bright future. However, despite Goody Two Shoes being an excellent debut and worthy number 1, it was the beginning of the end of Adam Ant’s peak.

Before

Ant’s solo career came about very quickly. In January 1982, Adam and the Ants were at number three with Ant Rap – a very respectable place after their two chart-topping singles in 1981, Stand and Deliver! and Prince Charming. Their album Kings of the Wild Frontier won the BRIT Award for British Album of the Year.

The split was announced in March. Ant was a workaholic and felt the band weren’t putting the effort in anymore, and guitarist and co-songwriter Marco Pirroni had decided to quit performing live. The duo decided to work together to launch Ant as a solo star.

Ant was wise to move fast and release new material as soon as possible, as his commercial standing was at its peak. And the meaning behind Goody Two Shoes couldn’t be more timely. The British press had been busy trying to find out about any scandals surrounding the hippest pop star of the era, and came up short. Ant was teetotal and didn’t smoke, and journalists wanted to know, ‘what do you do?’. So Ant moved away from the dandy highwaymen and noblemen characters that had made him famous, and turned inwards.

Goody Two Shoes was also recorded quickly, and featured three fifths of the Ants, as Pirroni was on guitar and Chris Hughes played the drums. It may well have been the case that Ant was still debating whether to release the single under the Adam and the Ants name, as there are versions of the single under that name.

Review

You can really feel the urgency in Goody Two Shoes due primarily to Hughes’ echoing drumbeat, underpinning the song and not exactly light years from the Burundi beats of Kings of the Wild Frontier. However, it’s less new wave than Adam and the Ants material and distinctly pop – actually reminiscent of 50s rock’n’roll thanks to the rockabilly style guitar.

The lyrics are great, and it was a bold move by Ant to bait journalists and fire their words back at them. ‘Subtle innuendos follow/Must be something inside’ is a not very subtle reference to Ant being a sex addict – his only vice at the time, but the problem for the press was, nobody was willing to dish the dirt on the devilishly handsome Ant’s antics in the bedroom and elsewhere.

It’s not purely about Ant’s squeaky clean image. The first lines – ‘With your heartbreak open/So much you can’t hide’, suggest Ant might not be as happy and content as his public image suggested. Although once he’s got his makeup on, he reverts to the mission statement verse that starts ‘We don’t follow fashion’ – a very Adam and the Ants proclamation that he’s the trendsetter. The next verse is actually a tribute to Dexys Midnight Runners singer Kevin Rowland – Ant was rumoured to be considering teaming up with Rowland, but didn’t want to follow his tough rules. It doesn’t come across in his heartfelt lines, inspired by a 1981 Dexys concert he witnessed:

‘When they saw you kneelin’
Cryin’ words that you mean
Openin’ their eyeballs, eyeballs
Pretendin’ that you’re Al Green, Al Green’.

As always with Ant’s hits, the video is excellent. This day shows a day in the life of the singer as he deals with being hounded by the press – one of which was played by Norman Cook, a few years from fame as one of The Housemartins and a long way off becoming Fatboy Slim. It also features comedy actor Graham Stark as his butler, Till Death Us Do Part star Dandy Nichols as a cleaner, and horror actress Caroline Munro, who plays a journalist that Ant takes home and gets it on with. Must be something inside, indeed.

It’s a shame that Ant’s star fell so quickly after Goody Two Shoes – however, his last number 1 is as great as his previous chart-toppers and a very fitting way for him to bow out of this blog.

After

Goody Two Shoes was released on 7 May and Ant pulled out all the stops 13 days later with an awesome appearance on Top of the Pops. Seemingly filmed in one take, Ant takes over the studio as the camera follows him miming and dancing in front of several backdrops, before being joined by a bevy of dancers on a dancefloor surrounded by the audience. A few weeks later, it overtook House of Fun and became number 1.

Ant then went into the studio that June to record his debut solo LP, Friend or Foe. A new version of Goody Two Shoes was recorded for the album, featuring Bogdan Wiczling on drums instead. There’s not much difference, but the single version has more reverberation and is slightly superior. The title track to the album, made it number 9, but lacklustre follow-up Desperate But Not Serious only scraped in at 33.

A year later, the album Strip saw a brief return to the limelight with the decent single Puss ‘n Boots (featuring Phil Collins on drums) reaching number five, but the title track didn’t even make the top 40. Apollo 9 peaked at 13 in 1984. The law of diminishing returns came thick and fast for Ant. His songs had lost their spark and the goodwill of his fans was evaporating.

Famously, Ant’s appearance at Live Aid was a huge misfire. His set was cut to one track, and he chose to ignore his hits and perform Vive Le Rock, the title track to his as-yet-unreleased album, produced by Tony Visconti. Despite the size of the audience at Wembley Stadium and around the world on TV, the eventual single release failed to chart. Ant decided to focus on acting instead.

In 1990 Ant returned with the album Manners & Physique, produced by André Cymone, a former bassist for Prince. It was a brief but welcome return, with the single Room at the Top climbing to 13. It did even better in the US, becoming his biggest hit there, soaring to number three.

Five years later, Ant released Wonderful, a more reflective album, featuring Morrissey’s guitarist Boz Boorer. The decent title track peaked at 32 and is his last charting single to date.

In 2002 Ant returned to the limelight, but due to his mental health problems. Pre-fame, in 1975, Ant had been diagnosed as bipolar after overdosing on pills. 27 years later he was on the nostalgia circuit when he was arrested and charged for throwing a car alternator through a pub and then threatening people inside with a starting pistol. The imagery of a former dandy highwayman behaving in such a way proved sadly hilarious for many, but Ant was unwell, and he was placed under psychiatric care. The fact that a year later he and Boorer made a well-meaning rework of Stand and Deliver into Save the Gorillas for the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund drew further laughs.

Since then, Ant has swung from acclaimed live shows of his classic albums to further mental health struggles. In 2010 he returned to psychiatric hospital. Two years later came his last album to date, the astoundingly named Adam Ant Is the Blueblack Hussar in Marrying the Gunner’s Daughter.

The Outro

Charismatic, dynamic and witty, Ant was my first musical hero and I fell in love with pop music thanks to him. His time at the top was all too brief but he burned bright and created some truly classic tracks in the early 80s. I hope that despite his demons, he knows how loved he is by his fans.

The Info

Written by

Adam Ant & Marco Pirroni

Producers

Adam Ant, Marco Pirroni & Chris Hughes

Weeks at number 1

2 (12-25 June)

Trivia

Births

12 June: Cricketer James Tomlinson
17 June: Actress Jodie Whittaker/Actor Arthur Darvill
20 June: Rapper Example
21 June: William, Prince of Wales

Deaths

12 June: Falklands War casualty Sergeant Ian McKay (see ‘Meanwhile…‘)
16 June: Pretenders guitarist James Honeyman-Scott
17 June: Olympic rower Walter James, 4th Baron Northbourne
22 June: Actor Alan Webb

Meanwhile…

12 June: The last battles of the Falklands War draw to a close at Mount Longdon, Mount Harriet and Two Sisters. Sergeant Ian McKay is killed at Mount Longdon, and is awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross.

14 June: The Falklands War officially ends as British forces reach the outskirts of Stanley. They arrive to find the Argentine forces flying white flags of surrender. The formal surrender is signed that evening. 

16 June: Welsh miners go on strike to support health workers demanding a 12% pay rise.

19 June: The body of Roberto Calvi, aka ‘God’s Banker’, is found hanging beneath Blackfriars Bridge in London.

21 June: William, Prince of Wales becomes the first birth in direct line of succession to the British throne to be born in a hospital – St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington.

23 June: Support for Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government continues to rise, largely due to the success of the Falklands War campaign.

24 June: The Coatbridge and Airdrie by-election is held in Scotland following the death of sitting Labour MP James Dempsey. Labour’s Tom Clarke is the victor.

25 June: Northern Ireland defeat hosts Spain 1-0 in the World Cup.