Three faces engraved by a life in rock: Depeche Mode’s Andy Fletcher, Dave Gahan and Martin Gore have between them survived depression, addiction, mental instability, attempted suicide, divorce and fatherhood
❚ ON THE ROPES is a serious issue-led strand on BBC Radio 4 in which veteran interrogator John Humphrys talks tough to somebody in the public eye. This morning he discussed bi-polar disorder in depth with the flamboyant and charismatic popstar, Adam Ant now aged 56, who at one stage in his later life “would have gone to prison for a long time”.
Humphrys — “The man who dominated the pop scene in the early 80s was [20 years later] a burned-out husk locked in a mental home with people who, he said later, wanted to be dead. Adam Ant, did you want to be dead at that time?”
Ant — “It wasn’t really wanting to be dead. It was really that I felt dead, I felt I was encased in a Dante-esque purgatory. It was worse than hell. I can’t describe how terrifying it was, knowing you are in control of your faculties and being told you’re not.”
Adam Ant in 1981: in his glam-rock guise as Prince Charming, a heroic highwayman based, he says, on the film stars Errol Flynn, Marlon Brando and Clint Eastwood
Ant talks throughout in a low soft voice, but his views are heartfelt. He said he disagrees with the use of the term bipolar disorder and insisted: “At this point I don’t need medication… I am always passionate. I’m not hyper. Onstage I’m an athlete. That doesn’t make me nuts or paranoid.”
Afterwards, he was criticised for some of his blunt language, especially for saying: “I was put in a nuthouse and it is a nuthouse — it is worse than Bedlam.” His descriptions of life in care are graphic. “The only thing they are concerned with is polishing floors and making sure you take your medication… It’s like the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but there isn’t a cute nurse there being jokey and you’re sedated. I want the prime minister to know that takes place and it’s wrong.”
❚ TODAY AT A PRESS CONFERENCE Adam Ant confirmed 11 concerts for his Blueblack Hussar tour of Britain from May 16 in Brighton to June 4 in York, plus a screening of the 1981 Prince Charming Revue on film, plus live Q&A at the Coronet Theatre in Elephant & Castle on May 11.
In today’s Press Association video interview (below) at Chelsea football club’s Stamford Bridge stadium, Adam Ant announces the tour with his new band, The Good, the Mad and the Lovely Posse, based on the series of preparatory small gigs over recent months. He says: “It’s time for a little bit of real rock and roll — there’s too much sampling and karaoke going on.”
He also says that his sixth studio album, Adam Ant is the Blueblack Hussar In Marrying the Gunner’s Daughter (an old naval term for corporal punishment in which sailors were flogged), has been postponed until 2012. His own website says: “So, apparently this tour will not be to promote new material”. Adam tweets Mar 30: “I would like to say… Its not my fault the album got pushed back… there are reasons which cant be disscused [sic] at this time.”
❏ Posted April 1 by music-news.com, below — 12-minute interview backstage after the midday showcase Under The Bridge on March 29 “I don’t want to do downloads. [My new album] is not for earplugs or mobiles. If you’ve got kids, you owe it to them to play them a vinyl disc in their lifetime because once they hear it they will never get over that experience… I don’t like the people that invented the internet — it encourages children to sit in a room, not move, look at a screen and get fat. And noone cares. I do. I have a daughter. I want real records for real people.”
◼ ONCE IN A WHILE a piece of journalism actually reveals stuff you didn’t already know and a great big penny drops. For its April issue, WSJ., the glossy magazine published by The Wall Street Journal, puts Anna Wintour on its cover (photographed by ex-Blitz Club barman Mario Testino), while writer Joshua Levine explains in thorough detail how her power and financial clout reach far beyond her own editorship of Vogue, which she assumed in 1988.
By mobilising a “fully connected network” of allies and celebrity shock troops Anna shapes micro-economic forces around the world, to become “basically a global brand”, in the opinion of Deborah Needleman, editor of WSJ., “someone whose power extends beyond what she does”. Or as a former colleague who attended corporate matchmaking sessions between fashion’s biggest brands says: “She’s really the McKinsey of fashion.”
When some of New York’s 1,000 targeted stores balked at joining up to her Fashion’s Night Out initiative to rebuild sales amid post-recessionary thrift, she was calling it in from command central — “I’ll get you Sienna Miller at the store, I’ll send you Justin Timberlake!” Timberlake and Miller are among Wintour’s most zealous Hollywood allies. “She understands fashion is a frame of mind, not just the clothes,” Timberlake says. “She’s figured out that all these small moving parts come into play to make a bigger picture.” A year later FNO had become an international event in 16 countries, when Istanbul, for example, logged clothing sales of $2 million in three hours.
At the age of 61, Anna’s globe-trotting, matchmaking and event-planning have not only made her a force among fund-raisers but are fuelling rumours that she is angling for a job in Washington as an ambassador. Indeed, Michelle Obama is one of the first names Wintour mentions when asked whom she most looks up to. Read on to discover Anna’s response…
❚ “SMART PHONES, APPS AND DATING AGENCY FEES have been added to the basket of goods the government uses to calculate the cost of living. The new additions show the importance of the burgeoning digital economy. The basket is designed to reflect what Britons really spend their money on, enabling the government to calculate how rises in prices are affecting living standards… Television prices are being collected differently to separate out TVs larger than 32 inches — reflecting the rise of home cinema systems.”
❖ Welcome to all our visitors from 212 countries and dependencies, recorded at Revolver Maps — not forgetting our visitor in the world’s southernmost city, Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina (54°48′S, 68°18′W), only a smidgeon further south than our readers in Río Grande and Punta Arenas… Our northernmost visitor lives at Kjøllefjord in Norway (70°56′N, 27°20′E), a nudge nearer the Pole than others in Finnmark, and at Murmansk in Russia (68°58′N, 33°05′E). 2015 update: A special Hello to our new visitors in Iceland!
➢ Choose “View full site” – then in the blue bar atop your mobile page, click the three horizontal lines linking to many blue themed pages with background article
MORE INTERESTING THAN MOST PEOPLE’S FANTASIES — THE SWINGING EIGHTIES 1978-1984
They didn’t call themselves New Romantics, or the Blitz Kids – but other people did.
“I’d find people at the Blitz who were possible only in my imagination. But they were real” — Stephen Jones, hatmaker, 1983. (Illustration courtesy Iain R Webb, 1983)
“The truth about those Blitz club people was more interesting than most people’s fantasies” — Steve Dagger, pop group manager, 1983
PRAISE INDEED!
“See David Johnson’s fabulously detailed website Shapers of the 80s to which I am hugely indebted” – Political historian Dominic Sandbrook, in his book Who Dares Wins, 2019
“The (velvet) goldmine that is Shapers of the 80s” – Verdict of Chris O’Leary, respected author and blogger who analyses Bowie song by song at Pushing Ahead of the Dame
“The rather brilliant Shapers of the 80s website” – Dylan Jones in his Sweet Dreams paperback, 2021
A UNIQUE HISTORY
➢ WELCOME to the Swinging 80s ➢ THE BLOG POSTS on this front page report topical updates ➢ ROLL OVER THE MENU at page top to go deeper into the past ➢ FOR NEWS & MONTH BY MONTH SEARCH scroll down this sidebar
❏ Header artwork by Kat Starchild shows Blitz Kids Darla Jane Gilroy, Elise Brazier, Judi Frankland and Steve Strange, with David Bowie at centre in his 1980 video for Ashes to Ashes
VINCENT ON AIR 2026
✱ Deejay legend Robbie Vincent has returned to JazzFM on Sundays 1-3pm… Catch up on Robbie’s JazzFM August Bank Holiday 2020 session thanks to AhhhhhSoul with four hours of “nothing but essential rhythms of soul, jazz and funk”.
TOLD FOR THE FIRST TIME
◆ Who was who in Spandau’s break-out year of 1980? The Invisible Hand of Shapersofthe80s draws a selective timeline for The unprecedented rise and rise of Spandau Ballet –– Turn to our inside page
SEARCH our 925 posts or ZOOM DOWN TO THE ARCHIVE INDEX
UNTOLD BLITZ STORIES
✱ If you thought there was no more to know about the birth of Blitz culture in 1980 then get your hands on a sensational book by an obsessive music fan called David Barrat. It is gripping, original and epic – a spooky tale of coincidence and parallel lives as mind-tingling as a Sherlock Holmes yarn. Titled both New Romantics Who Never Were and The Untold Story of Spandau Ballet! Sample this initial taster here at Shapers of the 80s
CHEWING THE FAT
✱ Jawing at Soho Radio on the 80s clubland revolution (from 32 mins) and on art (@55 mins) is probably the most influential shaper of the 80s, former Wag-club director Chris Sullivan (pictured) with editor of this website David Johnson
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