Adam Ant in conversation with Dave McCullough, Sounds, April 4 1981
Alice or Adam?
Also billed as a Royal Command Performance
From Rip It Up:
"Adam ended 1981 with a spectacular, no-expense-spared tour, the Prince Charming Revue. The word “revue” signaled that he’d moved into the realm of pure showbiz.
"In interviews, Adam talked in vague terms about providing kids with hope, a positive alternative to “the rock rebellion rubbish”. He claimed he was perfectly happy offering escapist entertainment a la Star Wars or Raiders of the Lost Ark. And he defended his squeaky-clean image: "I'm sick and tired of being told that because I don't drink or smoke or take drugs that I'm a goody-two shoes.… I don't like drugs and that is a threat to the rock'n'roll establishment...” The art school student who hung around McLaren & Westwood's SEX and Seditionaries stores, thrilled by the fetish clothing and images of the Queen with a safety pin through her nose, now proudly performed at the Royal Variety Show, an annual charity event featuring Britain’s top entertainers. "It would have been exactly the negative inward looking rock thing to have turned it down. If people think I'm clean and boring for shaking hands with the Queen then that's up to them... What would be outrageous? To spit at her? Drop me trousers? That's rock and roll rebellion and, like I say, I want nothing to do with that."
I think the big influence on Adam Ant was panto - Prince Charming, Puss In Boots, Dick Turpin. Also a very strong flavour of panto in his videos.
ReplyDeleteAnd you can't get more Brit Showbiz Establishment than panto, can you?
DeleteThe big influence on Adam was Malcolm - it's really kind of touching how much he adores and reveres McLaren, even after the latter nicked his entire band and turned them into Bow Wow Wow.
Adam had the last laugh, of course, and got full value from the 1000 quid he paid Malc for managerial guidance a.k.a a whole ragbag of ideas themselves pilfered from children's story book adventures, swashbuckling movies and illustrated books about the history of fashion.
McLaren himself lived on the showbiz / anti-showbiz cusp - wanting to emulate Larry Parnes and the early Brit rock'n'roll boy-star managers, getting Sid to cover "My Way", himself doing the Max Bygraves tune "You Need Hands".
DeleteEven the way he talked had that creamy, Brit-thesp, light entertainment patina to it.
He'd probably have loved to do panto.
A McLaren-produced panto would have been quite the thing, wouldn't it? He would have explored all the "forbidden" signifiers of the typical panto plot - poisoned apples, magic mirrors, frustrated aunts etc.
DeleteI actually wonder how much of Brit pop culture emerges from panto - it's the most transgressive (or hinting at the transgressive) thing we are introduced to at an impressionable age.
England lost! To France! What a happy day!
ReplyDelete