Song 8: Prince Charming

Prince Charming - Adam and the Ants
I watched Jools Holland's dreaded annual Hootenanny last night, and, you know what, it was actually fabulous. I think it's fantastic about once every five years - right combo of guests, right mood for me, absence of anyone spectacularly irritating (there was Paloma Faith, but I was just about in a good enough mood to deal with it).

The level of bearability would have been significantly affected, I suppose, by how much of Kevin Rowland and his reincarnated Dexys you can stomach - I know plenty of discerning music fans who can't even stomach the tiniest mouthful of vintage Dexys, let alone 2012/3's crazed cabaret Dexys, but, as you should well know, to me the sun shines out of Kev's backside right into my heart (it's not heartburn, it's not heartburn), so his extended presence was a rich delight.

But Kev was not the only fiercely single-minded, deeply eccentric, spectacularly-successful-in-the-early-80s-only-to-suffer-profound-and-extended-mental-health-issues showman on 'Jools' last night. No, indeed, with his new band, in classic pirate get-up, we also had the pleasure of seeing Stuart Goddard aka Adam Ant playing a bit of new, a bit of old.

He didn't actually play 'Prince Charming' - he played  a new song called 'Vince Taylor' (Vince Taylor was an early British rock'n'roll look who both did the original of The Clash's 'Brand New Cadillac' and is also cited by Bowie as the inspiration for Ziggy Stardust), 'Stand and Deliver' and 'Antmusic'. Pretty sweet.

I actually saw Adam Ant at Latitude 2011 and it was great - it was a rainy afternoon, which suited him as everyone crammed into the tent he was playing and the atmosphere was absolutely rocking, by far the best of the weekend, as the middle-aged not-particularly-music-fans who can make Latitude a bit of a letdown suddenly found themselves going mental for music they knew and loved. In fact, I'd put my recent experience of Adam Ant above my recent experience of Dexys - Adam was pure crowd pleaser, and also something of a bonus belter for me. I hadn't really been a massive Ants fan (or thought I hadn't) but I, like the rest of the crowd, realised I loved the Ant-hits way more than I'd thought.

That's why I've chosen 'Prince Charming' rather than 'Stand and Deliver', though the latter is, I think, even more of a faultless pop classic. 'Prince Charming' is, I do believe, the first pop song I knew. I'm just trying to check up on this - first or second! My and my siblings all remember jumping from mattress to mattress in a holiday in Valencia in 1982, but I can't quite remember when in 1982. The other contender, you see, is a Number 3 hit of the time, 'I Won't Let You Down' by PhD, a synthpop outfit which happened to contain our next door neighbour of the time, which was terribly exciting.

But anyway - "Don't you evah, don't you evah!" "Prince Charming, Prince Charming! Ridicule is nothing to be scared of!" Utterly brilliant. But Adam Ant hasn't generally carried the same kind of critical weight as, say, Dexys, since then, and perhaps I tied him in with the New Romantics a bit. I mean, he was an New Romantic in a way, but he was a one-off, a post-punk showman of extraordinary thought and precision. Whether he invented it or not, the Ants had a unique African drumming sound which still sounds striking today. Adam Ant was also, of course, a handsome devil, a heart throb, which has also perhaps reduced his love from the music critics.

Even before they both appeared on the same TV show last night, I'd begun to think about the similarities between Kevin Rowland and Adam Ant - they were both former punks who emerged with a new sound, were obsessed with the look, fell out with bandmates, produced stunning singles and signature albums, are thought of as something they're not by the general populace, and had fairly well publicised falls from grace, Adam Ant particularly so, to the extent he became something of a tragicomic figure. One can continue to see the likes of him and Kevin Rowland as such if you wish to be mean-spirited, but I actually find their survival and regeneration inspiring and I think "Ridicule is nothing to be scared of" has never carried more weight.

I wonder if they know each other, if they had a friendly word last night. One kind of imagines not. A bit of a headfuck. [I've just looked this up. They certainly did know each other, Kev even co-wrote the Adam Ant song 'If You Keep On' and Adam Ant apparently almost joined a Kevin Rowland-led band. The Adam Ant song 'Goody Two Shoes' was even rumoured to be a bit about Kevin. Tremendous pop esoterica!]

And my final, obvious point is this. Jeez, the singles chart used to be a much more exciting place than it is now! These were the biggest songs in Britain in the early 80s, transatlantic hits too, and in both cases, the band are dressed up to the absurd, producing singular and sensational songs which people still love to hear 30 years later.
I don't mean music is not what it used to be, music's great, but what constituted a singles artist has changed a fair bit, it's true to say. Adam Ant would probably have been shoehorned into a boyband and, as for Kevin Rowland, with his face, his voice, his attitude, he wouldn't have got within a million miles of the charts.

Anyway, I've started asking a very simple question about 'Prince Charming' at quiz nights - simply "What is nothing to be scared of, according to Adam and the Ants?" and then I play the reveal when I give out the answer. It's barely a question, everyone gets it right, but it gets the biggest singalong of the night, as well as countless strangled yelps as people relive their youth and try to mimic one of the great popstars history (almost) forgot.