LEFT WITHOUT ANY BAND MEMBERS FOLLOWING A MALCOLM MCCLAREN-LED MUTINY, ADAM REGROUPED STRONGER THAN EVER AND MADE THE SEEMINGLY UNLIKELY TRANSFORMATION FROM LEATHER-CLAD ABRASIVE POST-PUNK TO VIBRANT CHART DARLING
FELIX ROWE
CLASSIC ALBUM
The scent of revolution hangs heavy in the air. Enter a motley crew of reprobates (who nonetheless look so dashing), arriving on a thunderous roll of tribal drums to herald in a new fashion. A new royal family, a wild nobility, with their own soundtrack to boot: Antmusic. At their head, their shamanic leader, Adam Ant.
Released on 7 November 1980, Adam And The Ants’ Kings Of The Wild Frontier is less an album, and more a call to arms. And an extremely compelling one at that. For something so inherently bizarre, it’s shamelessly self-assured, so brimming with confidence and laden with swagger that it’s literally drunk on its own hype.
Thankfully, it’s as wonderful as it is brazen. Far from empty posturing, Kings Of The Wild Frontier fully delivers on its manifesto. The album topped the UK charts and won a Brit Award, while pre-empting even greater success for its swiftly-released follow-up.
Culturally, it ushered in a new era – paving the way for the second British Invasion. Some retrospective appraisals pitch Kings Of The Wild Frontier as the very catalyst that shifted the paradigm from punk to New Romantic. But while the movement may have borrowed his frilly blouses and impeccable coiffure, Ant was entirely distinct from the Blitz Club scene that launched the likes of Spandau Ballet and Visage.
In reality, though often lumped in with the New Romantics – much to his chagrin – Adam emerged from that earlier mid-70s punk scene, lorded over by Malcolm McClaren. His pre-Ants pub rock group, Bazooka Joe (in which he played bass), famously gave the Sex Pistols their first opening. And his first forays fronting his new group, the Ants, were characterised by an angular art-rock.
But ultimately, punk’s destructive nihilism would prove too limiting to contain Adam Ant’s vision. While much of that scene was fixated on tearing down the old order – as if that was an ultimate end in itself – Kings Of The Wild Frontieris more concerned with building something new and exciting in its place. Adam retained the attitude and ‘last gang in town’ mentality, but laced it with vivid colour, oversized ch
