Adam Ant is back. Rocking a look like Captain Jack Sparrow fighting in the Napoleonic wars, the Dandy Highwayman (now 58) is releasing his first album since 1995’s Wonderful. Adam Ant Is The Blueblack Hussar In Marrying The Gunner’s Daughter is his sixth solo album and ninth in total; a sprawling, rather unfocused collection of 17 songs that show flashes of his skill to concoct an agreeably rowdy racket with a chart-bothering hook. "No two are the same," he says, which is kind of the problem, but also understandable considering how long he’s been away, and how many aborted attempts there have been at a musical comeback.
"It takes as long as it takes sometimes," he reveals over the phone, when I call him up to talk through his choices for Baker’s Dozen. He has bipolar disorder, which has sometimes resulted in complete creative shutdown (and Ant being sectioned for six months in 2002), and as somebody who enjoyed ten Top 10 singles between 1980 and 1983, there is a lot for him to live up to. He insists that he isn’t chasing chart positions anymore. "I’ve had my fill of that," he says. Speaking about his condition to Chris Sullivan in The Times in 2011, Ant said, "Every creative artist I’ve ever admired – Keats, Byron and Kurt Cobain – had bipolar disorder. A lot of creative people are born like that and it’s their different take on things that give them the edge. As for me, I’m a bit of a nutcase."
Despite the grandiose title, the album is mainly autobiographical. There are songs about Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren, his old mentors from the punk days, as well as a pervy one about Kate Moss and another about the infamous Sachsgate phone prank (Georgina Baillie, subject of said call, is one of Ant’s friends and backing singers, and he is releasing an album by her band – Georgie Girl & Her Poussez Posse – on his record label). Ant still favours two drummers, lending the tracks the rousing Burundi-inspired, tribal thump of his purple period, and the guitars are slashing and raw, with the riffs equal parts razor-sharp glam to punk thrash. The majority of the songs were written with Morrissey cohort Boz Boorer, and Chris McCormack, formerly of Creation-signed hard rockers Three Colours Red, was also involved.
There is also a film, due out in the summer and produced by Jamie Reynolds of the Klaxons, following Ant over the past couple of years as he returned to performing live. "I played some of the old punk haunts, just to see what it was like to play live again," he explains. "But there’s not a lot of music in it (the film). It’s quite raw and brutal. It’s mainly behind the scenes, me getting it together. And I meet Charlotte Rampling in Paris. It’s chaotic. It culminates with me playing with Rod Stewart in Hyde Park in front of 100,000 people."
Of his choices for Baker’s Dozen Ant reveals, "It tends to change, but these are the ones that primarily helped me get into music and have influenced me songwriting wise and visually, or just albums that I go to for particular reasons. I’ve got quite a few records, but I’ve listened to them all thoroughly. I don’t just buy records for the sake of it. These are the ones I’d take to a desert island."
Adam Ant Is The Blueblack Hussar In Marrying The Gunner’s Daughter is out now on Blueback Hussar Records. Check adam-ant.com for details
Click on the photograph below to start reading Adam Ant’s selection.
