ADAM ANT ALBUMBY ALBUM

FROM PUNK TO MATURE ACOUSTIC MOODS VIA FUNK AND VISIONARY POP, THE NINE OFFICIAL (AND ONE UNRELEASED) ADAM ANT ALBUMS HAVE BEEN A WONDERFUL RIDE…

JOHNE ARLS

ALBUMB YA LBUM

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In some ways, Adam And The Ants’ Dirk Wears White Sox is a classic punk debut album. From other viewpoints – including Adam Ant’s – it’s not really punk or even a debut album at all. It was released on indie label Do It, founded by Pop Muzik hitmaker Robin Scott (aka M) and future Yello manager Ian Tregoning, who were more used to working with dance musicians than fiercely single-minded punks like Adam Ant.

The fact that Dirk didn’t emerge until 1979 is the biggest clue at how many punk anthems didn’t make its tracklisting. By then, the Ants had been on the verge of signing to just about every record label in town, writing all the time. It meant their early cult tales of eroticism such as Rubber People and Beat My Guest were left behind, eventually emerging either as B-sides of the hits or on obscure compilations including The Peel Sessions and Antbox.

As Adam put it in our Classic Albums feature on Dirk Wears White Sox, “It’s my second album, really. We didn’t want to go back and record punk songs from 18 months ago.”

”EVERY KID WANTS TO GET DIRK SIGNED BEFORE A SHOW. THAT CAN BE SHOCKING – IT’S SUCH A DARK AND SEXY ALBUM.”

Adam had grown disillusioned by punk audiences becoming hostile and – towards Ants drummer Dave Barbarossa – openly racist. Instead, Adam’s love of science-fiction and the art history he’d studied at Hornsey College Of Art became the subject of complex, murky stories of alien invasion such as Never Trust A Man (With Egg On His Face) and Italy’s 1910s futurist art movement (Animals And Men).

Adam ended up producing the album by default. Robin Scott left Do It before production talks got serious. Having produced the Zerox single, Adam and Do It decided he might as well take it on.

The production style lent the album a proto-industrial rock edge that saw Trent Reznor become a fan, but it certainly hides Adam’s original aim. “Dirk is me trying to make a Donna Summer record,” he told us. “I know it doesn’t sound like that, but check out Dave’s drumming. We weren’t interested in being a cult, we wanted hit records.”

Foolishly dismissed by NME writers Paul Morley and Nick Kent on its release, Dirk Wears White Sox is a wonderfully strange, distinctive record, which marries the original Adam And The Ants’ punk energy with a genuinely menacing atmosphere and a wealth of evocative novelistic lyrics. You’re far more likely to hear Cartrouble and Catholic Day at Adam’s current live shows than the commercial-era album tracks.

“Every single kid wants to get Dirk Wears White Sox signed before a show,” summarises Adam. “That can be shocking, considering it’s such a dark and sexy album.”

As if the critical panning of Dirk Wears White Sox wasn’t enough to contend with, Malcolm McLaren stealing the Adam And The Ants lineup to form Annabella Lwin’s backing band in Bow Wow Wow really should have finished Adam as a cult hero. It did.