Creation record
here are many stories in rock that uphold the idea that magnificent things can grow from abject failure, but Kings Of The Wild Frontier’s must rank among the most intriguing. In the 12 months of 1980, having undergone a dramatic, Bowie-style reinvention, its chief creator Adam Ant transformed from a cult nobody into a chart-topping superstar. Thirty-six years later, the image of Adam in braided Crimean War cavalry tunic and American Indian war paint remains as much an icon of the ’80s as Michael Jackson in red leather jacket and tousled hair. But Adam Ant ought to be revered not just for his wardrobe or his celebration of indigenous cultures, but also for Kings…’ extraordinary channelling of the avant-garde into a postpunk pop mainstream. Howling feedback, whoops, hollers and tribal drumming at Number 2? How did that happen? Adam’s tale, like all the best ones, adheres to myth: just as Robert Johnson sought out the devil at the crossroads to trade his soul for some hot blues licks, so in late 1979 Adam Ant went in search of transmutation from the closest the music biz had at that time to Beelzebub – Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren. By that time, Adam had very little to show for three tough years at the punk coalface. A belated debut LP, the art-rock-ish Dirk Wears White Sox, had just appeared but only sold a few hundred copies. At 24, the singer – alias Londoner Stuart Goddard, reborn as ‘Adam’ after a suicide attempt in 1976 – could still draw a loyal following to the Ants’ S&M-tinged shows, but somehow punk had spectacularly failed to make him a star. What McLaren told Goddard after taking a consultancy fee of £1,000 might well serve any band: think big, clarify your ideas, learn from classic pop hits and, in Adam’s case, use your dashing looks to sell your product. A list he supplied of required listening included Elvis Presley, Gary Glitter and, presciently, Burundi Black, the 1971 single sampling a field recording of African tribal drums. What occurred next was the crisis event from which Adam was to be reborn yet again: after a month of intensive rehearsals, McLaren poached the singer’s backing group and their new Burundi beat to form a new outfit, Bow Wow Wow, fronted by 14-year-old schoolgirl Annabella Lwin. Betrayed and devastated, Adam licked his wounds and on a whim sought out ex-Banshees/ Models/Rema Rema guitarist
TMarco Pirroni for help. Six months later, the pair had corralled a band of like-minded spirits, featuring two drummers (like the Glitter Band), written a bunch of songs inspired by Bowie, Roxy, T.Rex and Morricone’s spaghetti western themes, and adopted a swashbuckling image based on native warriors and 17th century buccaneers. Their visual totem was Adam’s hired military jacket, famously worn by actor David Hemmings in the 1968 film The Charge Of The Light Brigade. In the handsome 12x12-inch booklet for this deluxe box, written by the singer, Adam explains that once he’d devised the mission-statement lyric of “a new royal family, a wild nobility” in January 1980, the lyrical concept for the new Ants material and slogans like “Sex music for Antpeople” fell quickly into place. But sketchy, previously unreleased demo recordings of The Human Beings and Making History, made in April, clearly show their all-important glam-punk thunder took time – and the arrival of second percussionist Terry Lee Miall, joining producer/drummer Chris Hughes – to evolve. Dubbing himself ‘Merrick’, Hughes’s contribution to the Ants’ sound cannot be overstated. Earlier in the year, the ex-Dalek I Love You member’s production of a contractual makeweight single for Adam’s old label, Do It, a re-recording of Dirk…’ s Cartrouble, had transformed eccentric art-rock into a vibrant pop single. Hughes’s studio f lair now created the powerful rhythm tracks that would become the new Ants’ calling card, encouraging his bandmates to beat out dovetailing tattoos on f light cases, wooden blocks, cardboard boxes and drums. Recorded over the summer at Rockfield studios in Wales, tracks such as Kings Of The Wild Frontier, Dog Eat Dog, ‘Antmusic’ and Ants Invasion – all wild feedback, twangy guitars, tribal rhythms and chanted lyrics hurrahing the Ants themselves – sounded as if the group were desperate to prove something; and little wonder. In July 1980, Bow Wow Wow were already in the charts with C30 C60 C90 Go, and staking a claim to the new Burundi beat style, while McLaren denounced Adam as “too old”. The barbs stung; but Adam had the last laugh when Kings Of The Wild Frontier appeared in November, shortly after Bowie’s Ashes To Ashes and its iconic video had heralded the knowingly ludicrous New Romantic era. In this theatrical mood of futuristic-sounding eccentricity, Dog Eat Dog became a hit single; as did the peerless, selfaggrandising title track and ‘Antmusic’. The album offered more instant classics: pulsing Ants Invasion (with its curious folk-picked middle-six), eerie Killer In The Home and frolicking Don’t Be Square (Be There). Lodging at Number 1 for 12 weeks, Kings Of The Wild Frontier was a swaggering validation of Adam’s self-belief and vision, though both the 1981 live CD (from Chicago) and DVD (from Japan) show that translating the music’s power on-stage relied more on passion than polish. Within a year, Adam would ditch post-punk for the pure pop of Prince Charming, then leave his Ants for a solo career; but the job of becoming globally famous was done. Gauging the record’s legacy today might prove difficult – after all, who isn’t a fan? – but according to Adam’s notes, its inf luence extends to the present day. Apparently, Mark Ronson spins Dog Eat Dog before every session he records as a benchmark of what a truly great pop record should sound like. As indeed he should.