Noisey have today posted the latest instalment of their British Masters series, which sees the Quietus’ editor John Doran talking to Adam Ant – have a watch above.
Ant fills us in on why it’s better to use classical grease paint than Tippex to recreate his trademark face stripe, how he got his part in Derek Jarman’s Jubilee and how Malcolm Middleton features on his recent record, Adam Ant Is The Blueblack Hussar In Marrying The Gunner’s Daughter. Additionally, he talks about the development of his vocal technique, his experiences of living with bipolar disorder and putting the effort in with stage dress.
John also asks about a particular bit of body art that Ant had done – "I wanted to go through a rite of pain, so I just asked Jordan my manager at the time to carve a certain four-letter work out in my back and see if I could take the pain and she did, and I went ‘that’s alright’, and then I fainted from loss of blood, I’d lost so much. It’s one of those things that I do not recommend, but I was taking it to the nth degree" – and gets talked through Ant’s involvement in the Motown 25 concert, preceding Michael Jackson doing the moonwalk for the first time: "I went to meet Berry Gordy and he’d seen all my videos, and [I] stayed with Berry for a while. And then I got a call from Michael Jackson, which was… it’d happened before, he called me up early one morning and I thought it was my drummer having a joke, so I told him to take a running jump… It actually was Michael Jackson.
Head to Noisey for a full archive of the British Masters films.
