Fuck adam ant

F or the first few minutes I'm not even sure this interview should be taking place at all. The greeting is an awkward shuffle of hunched shoulders and downcast eyes; he can't look at me, and I can't hear him. His gaze averted, hands stuffed into pockets, he mumbles in haltingly reluctant whispers, as if words can cause him physical pain. The man should be talking to a doctor, I worry, not a nosy journalist.

Pre, they were a raw, spiky post-punk band with sharp, fetishy lyrics. Things changed quickly for them in , when their manager, the infamous Sex Pistols impresario Malcolm McLaren, poached most of the band for a new project called Bow Wow Wow. But eviscerating the group proved not to be such a terrible idea. On the presentation end, the band dove headlong into an embrace of the new romanticism, favoring an overwrought leather-pantsed-new-wave-pirate look which unaccountably struck people at the time as just absolutely dead sexy. Well, it actually DID look good on Ant. Most of the rest of the band just kinda looked goofy. The band broke up in , and Ant embarked on a solo career, but it was an in-name-only breakup, really, as the creative nexus of Ant and Pirroni remained together.

Wow - you were nearly an Ant! Had that been me seeing as I was 12 at the time, lived in the midlands, and had never picked up a guitar, I would have been an unorthodox choice I would never have shut up about it, so it's great to read the perspective of someone who was there. Listened to Il Duce only the other day oddly enough - still seems odd that people could have taken them for genuine right-wing types. Kent-based musician with Clash covers band Clashback, among others.

After a year period away from the music business Adam Ant is back in the spotlight once again. Simon Price meets a musical maverick and iconic star of the 80s to talk inspiration, madness and coming back fighting. Something very strange has been happening across London clubland this Spring.