Ant Misbehavin’
He’d become synonymous with eccentric behaviour, but now Adam Ant has his depression under control and feels more creative than ever. The 80s pop vagabond talks to Stuart Clark about his relationship with punk svengali Malcolm McLaren, his struggles with bi-polar disorder and being "raped" by Steve Jobs.
Stuart Clark, 21 Nov 2011
“Steve Jobs did fuck all for music. He raped songwriters and turned music to a digital hell. He was only into one thing – money!”
Adam Ant is not, it’s fair to say, a fan of Apple and their recently deceased CEO, who was somewhat more benovelently described by Bono as “the hardware software Elvis.”
“Steve Jobs has left a shit legacy for children of my daughter’s age who’ve had music reduced to a commodity,” insists the 57 year-old singer who if no longer the Dandy Highwayman, still cuts quite a dash as he strolls round his London manor. “The art’s been bled out of it by people with no loyalty to the concept of an album or developing an artist. That’s why I’m going to do my new record (Adam Ant Is The Blueback Hussar In Marrying The Gunner’s Daughter) as a double gatefold vinyl – it’s not old-fashioned, it’s just doing things the right way.
“Summat else,” he harrumphs, “there’ll be no free downloads. If an artist considers his work to be worth fuck all, that doesn’t send out a very good message. It cost me money to make it, so they’re going to have to buy it.”
Ant’s dislike of, ahem, hardware software Elvises, is matched by his aversion to major record companies.
“Do you know what royalty rate I was on in the ‘80s with CBS? Nine pence in the fucking pound, and out of that I had to finance the videos, the tours and everything. I remember going to Japan and discovering they’d scheduled 24 hours of interviews for me without a break. Since then I’ve learned three very important words – ‘no’, ‘fuck’, ‘you’.”
My first time seeing Adam in the flesh was in the London Marquee in 1978 when he was dragged onstage at the end of a dog lead by his then manager and Sex Pistols acolyte Jordan (no relation) whose riding crop and 6” stiletto spikes were both used for giddying up purposes. Being a naïve 14 year-old, I hadn’t quite picked up on the sexual subtext of songs like ‘Whip In My Valise’ and ‘Deutscher Girls’, but very quickly did so when a gentleman in an S&M rubber face-mask grabbed my crotch.
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Stuart Clark
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