The Ant Invasion comes to the United States and Black Flag is waiting

Adam and the Ants : Stand and Deliver

Adam and the Ants had posted six singles in the UK Top 40,  Now, as Kings of the Wild Frontier hit the US Top 20 in album sales, the Ant Invasion came to the United States with a 16-date tour. College radio has already added the album to playlists but commercial FM stations were, as usual, hesitant to try something new. As one music director put it, "'Antmusic' is getting good telephone reaction but it scares some people."

This same month, Adam and The Ants would release "Stand And Deliver", the band's first UK#1 hit.

A full page Billboard Magazine ad attempted to sell the Ants to the American music industry and, in fact, the band performed on American Bandstand.

Dick Clark gave the band a warm welcome.

When the Ants showed up at Tower Records, hundred of fans showed up. Some dressed like their idols. But some punk rockers also showed up to paper the area with stickers reading "Black Flag kills Ants on Contact". Greg Ginn of Black Flag denied having anything to do with the stickers but said " There are definite philosophical differences between Black Flag and Adam Ant...They're really  just a lame joke and represent all the things punk rock set out to get rid of."

That night Adam and the Ants performed at the Roxy. Elton John, Rod Stewart and David Lee Roth were in the audience. Kings of the Wild Frontier peaked at US#44 , selling enough product to be awarded a gold record. The advent of music television would only make the visual band more popular.

Adam and the Ants drive the "final nail in the coffin of punk"

Adam and the Ants : The Human Beings

[Purchase]

On November 3, 1980 Adam and the Ants released the UK#1 album Kings of the Wild Frontier. While the album wound up in American cut-out bins where I found a cassette copy in a Woolworth's, Kings of the Wild Frontier created a huge sensation in the U.K. and Europe where Adam Ant woke up one morning to discover he was the biggest pop star in all the land. How did they achieve such fame and sales?

"We stole what we could, like magpies," guitarist Marco Pirroni said. "We used ocarinas, echo chambers, textures from John Barry and Ennio Morricone soundtracks, rockabilly guitar riffs from Duane Eddy and Hank Marvin. We were even twanging rulers on desks and recording the results!"

Stan Keaton of Sounds gave the album a 5 star review, writing "if you're expecting a half dozen re-workings of the jungle drum beat of  (UK#4) "Dog Eat Dog" and "Kings" then forget it. A whole quilt of styles are played out here. It's the Ants' most accessible work to date, wholly satisfying and without doubt one of the year's most exuberant releases."

I played my Woolworth's cassette quite a bit, but it's not like I wore face paint out in public. Much.

As I wrote earlier the Ant Invasion was in full swing. You can't say you weren't warned. The band made their intentions known. On "Jolly Roger" they chant in unison "It's your money that we want/ And your money we shall have!" Ant called the album "the final nail in the coffin of punk".

 

"Dog Eat Dog" unleashes a new hit sound for Adam and the Ants

Adam and the Ants : Dog Eat Dog

[Purchase]

On October 16, 1980 Adam and the Ants performed their monumental single "Dog Eat Dog"on Top Of The Pops launching the single,  b/w "Physical (You're So)", to UK#4. The performance, featuring Adam Ant in his finest foppery and make-up leading bandmates in chants, captured the imaginations of UK fans everywhere even though the sound of two drummers bashing away Burundi style was already familiar. It was a big moment for Ant, who had teamed up with Malcolm McLaren only to have the latter steal his band and copy his sound with Bow Wow Wow.

"If I learnt anything from him," Ant would tell Smash Hits, "it's that if you've got an idea you've got to keep it to yourself. An idea shared is an idea halved."

 

The single and the forthcoming album King Of The Wild Frontier are the moment Ant says he learned the difference between rock'n'roll and showbiz :

 It took me a long time to discover they were two very different things and that one was more appealing to me than the other. I felt that rock'n' roll had lost all of its colour, all its flair. Show business has got more life to it. You have to be of a much higher calibre to survive it. 

I realised that the most important thing was not to compete with any other groups. Not to feel jealous of anybody else. Just to get on with your own career. Also to be vert\y colorful - and to push that to an extreme- and be very 'total' about what you do.

Adam And the Ants are the new kings of the Wild Frontier

Adam And The Ants : Kings of the Wild Frontier

[Purchase]

"A new royal family, a wild nobility We are the family"

On July 27 1980 the new Adam and the Ants single "Kings of the Wild Frontier" debuted at UK#53. The song would peak at UK#48 this time but return to the charts a year later, following the success of "Dog Eat Dog" and "Antmusic" to reach UK#2. 

"We stole what we could like magpies,"Ant's guitar playing co-writer, former Banshee Marco Pirroni recalls. "We used ocarinas, echo chambers, textures from John Barry and Ennio Morricone soundtracks, rockabilly guitar riffs from Duane Eddy and Hank Marvin. We were even twanging rulers on desks and recording the results!".

And then there were the Burundi drumbeats rattling all the way through. One of the year's most memorable singles, and a clear sign the musicians Malcolm McLaren stole for Bow Wow Wow would not be missed. 

From Smash Hits:

Adam Ant's Revenge is a UK Indie #1 smash

Adam and the Ants : CarTrouble

[Purchase]

Two months after manager Malcolm McLaren convinced guitarist Matthew Ashman, bassist Leigh Gorman  and drummer Dave Barbe to leave Adam and the Antz and form Bow Wow Wow , Adam Ant took his Pirate-Meets-Apache look and released the single "CarTrouble" ( a re-recording of a Dirk Has White Sox track)  b/w "Kick" on the Do It Records label. 

The single features new musicians guitarist Marco Pirroni (an ex-member of Siouxsie and the Banshees), bassist Kevin Mooney, and future Culture Club drummer Jon Moss. The result was not only a #1 single on the UK Independent Singles Chart but a preview of The Ants' Kings of the Wild Frontier sound. 

Eventually CBS Records would sign the band based on the success of the single and their "Ants Invasion" UK tour. Next stop: super stardom.

The song doesn't lack for clever lines:

You might have seen them very busy at the weekend / 

Licking and polishing the beep-beeps into shape / 

Then it’s proudly up the M1, M2, M3 / 

And keep your feet of the upholstery, Ronny 

The Voices From Outer Space

Adam and the Ants : Never Trust A Man With Egg On His Face

[Purchase]

On November 30, 1979, before the face paint and incessant drum sounds, Adam and the Ants released Dirk Wears White Socks, the band's debut album. It would be the first number one album on the UK Independent Albums Chart when the chart debuted in Record Week in 1980.

The album has the honor of making Rolling Stone's list of 20 Terrible Debut Albums by Great Artists. Adam Ant refers to it as "the album that got the shit kicked out of it by journalists at the time" and Rolling Stone writer Reed Fischer calls it an "all-pretentious, oft-laborious...sloppy attempt to capture the prickly subversive sounds of Wire, Television or Talking Heads."

Almost every Ant who played on this album left the band before the 1981 follow-up Kings of the Wild Frontier.

I'll Steal Your Chords

Adam and the Antz : Zerox

[Purchase]

On July 6, 1979 Adam and the Ants released their second single, "Zerox", inspired by a David Bowie confession that when it came to finding inspiration for new songs, he was a "human Xerox machine". The song was a number one hit on the UK Indie Chart, but failed to chart on the UK Singles Chart upon its initial release. Following the success of their second album, Kings of the Wild Frontier, it reached number 45 in January 1981 upon re-release.

Here's Adam Ant miming the song all by himself: