A tiny clarification before you start reading this page: even though the biography is written in first person, Adam never said any of the things below, only what is written like this. These quotations are taken from Adam And The Ants - Superstar by John Tobler. Adam never spoke to me, never gave me an interview and most certainly never wrote anything that is written here. So think of this biography as a nice way to write a biography and nothing more. Thanx.

Ladies and gentlemen, ANTics and ANToinettes, aNTeMiSS' NoN oF THe oRDiNaRY HoMePaGe is proud and delighted to present to the pleasure of your viewing eyes: The man, the legend, THE SHOULDERS! Ladies and gentlemen, the man with the stripe across the nose and the heart above the eyebrow. The man who gave you legendary songs such as Stand And Deliver, Antmusic and Wonderful, the man whom without, your lives would be empty as Kelly Bundy's head... ladies and gentlemen, I give you...

"My name is Adam Ant. I was born as Stuart Leslie Goddard on November 3rd, 1954 to a chauffeur and a house cleaner (my mom even cleaned Paul McCartney's house!). I grew up in Marylebone, London as an only child in a house without running water or private toilets. There was no luxury, but there was always food on the table. Around when I started school, my mum and dad got divorced. It was a bit of a drag and very tedious, but later it had an effect on me. It was quite emotionally difficult for me to sustain.

"In school, one of the teachers saw my paintings and encouraged me to paint more and more, but I eventually moved to St. Marylebone Grammar School, a school that emphasized sports and good grades rather than arts. So I let go of drawing and became captain of the cricket team and was in the rugby team, but I never gave up painting. My grades were always high, but I started to wonder what's the point of it. I gave up on university and went to art school there I was the only person in the art 'A' level course and sometimes was called to teach the lower classes. From there I was transferred to Hornsey ArtSchool where I chose to study graphic design. In that school, I met Danny Kleinman who was in a band called Bazooka Joe, and since they needed a bass player (and I knew how to play the bass), Danny asked me to join. Stuart Goddard sounds bad as a rocker's name, I came up with Eddie Riff as a stage name. It wasn't the only one, but it's the only one I can remember right now... I left Bazooka Joe after I understood that it's going nowhere and it's not really what I'm looking for. I called Andy Warren, another schoolmate and together we formed the B-Sides. The concept of the band was that we were going to be playing the B-Sides of singles that were never even hits. But we never went public, we always played in rehearsals in my living room.

"Anyways, around that time I married Carol Mills, another student who I fell madly in love with (who later changed her name to Eve for me). I was 21 and didn't even know what's marriage life is all about, I thought that's what I wanted to have in that time. Boy... I was wrong... between playing in the band and maintaining good grades at school, and keeping healthy family life, I just fell apart. I started eating less and less and eventually had Anorexia Nervosa, my musical ideas became more important to me than art or art school, so I stopped attending college. I just became a vegetable for three months. I was at my final year at college and I had to choose between graphics and music. I think the conflict wiped me out. One night I swallowed a large amount of pills and was rushed to the hospital where they gave me psychiatric treatment. I came back home and even though Eve really cared about me and we were very good friends, we both knew that the marriage was over. Slowly I became Adam Ant, it's like Stuart Goddard has died and now Adam Ant was born. After that, no one would even think of calling me Stuart, it just wasn't me!

"Now, that I'm a brand new person, I started doing brand new things for me. Like, I formed Adam And The Ants in 1977 and met Jordan..."

-A woman in the crowd:"Who's Jordan?"

-Adam Ant: "Jordan was a salesperson in Malcolm McLaren's shop 'Seditionaries'. Her real name is Pamela Rooke. She was my girlfriend and the Ants' first manager. Later she even got the Ants a role in Derek Jarman's movie: Jubilee."

-A guy in the crowd: "Yeah, yeah. But what about the Ants' story?"

-Adam Ant: "Right, back to that.

"In my first Adam And The Ants line-up I had Andy Warren, Johnny "Bivouac" Becket, Matthew Ashman, Dave Barbarossa and sometimes Jordan would pop for a song or two. We played around, everything went well. We had a record deal with Do-It and Decca, we even had a single out called 'Young Parisians' (It's actually supposed to be Lady, but for some reason Lady turned out as the B-Side), we got a role in Derek Jarman's 'Jubilee' and life were just great. until one day I got down to the rehearsals room, and there was this really strange atmosphere. I started talking to Dave and he suddenly stood up and said 'I'm leaving the Ants'. I was really shocked, but I said 'I'm sorry, but I wish you well'. Then I said to the other two 'We'll have to find another drummer'.They all looked sheepishly at each other, then the bass player said 'I'm with Dave'. So I said to the guitarist 'It's you and me then, Matthew', and he said 'No, I'm with Dave'.I walked out the door and I haven't seen them since. It nearly broke my heart, but Malcolm was very helpful at the time. He wasn't as heartless as he'd like to make out. Anyways, now that my Ants were gone, I needed a new band. The first name I thought about was Marco Pirroni, a guy I knew was there, but never really got to know. Marco agreed to join me even though he had an offer to join the Banshees. As a drummer we found Chris Hughes (Merrick), Marco got me another drummer (I wanted two drummers because we couldn't get the authentic sound we wanted with just one. Besides, we wanted to put on a show, Tin Pan Alley and all that; I'd have 57 drummers if it looked good!), then we got ourselves a bass player: Kevin Mooney, who we hired just because he looked good. I got us a deal with EMI and got 5000 pounds in advance so I could put the band on the road. I took Malcolm's idea of a Pirate-Indian-Romantic kind of look and assembled what you all know now as the Ant Warrior look. (I thought it looked amazing) and we did the Kings Of The Wild Frontier album and tour in 1980. I felt like the Kings album was like a new beginning for the Ants.

"Kings was a number one spot album, but we never got a number one with the singles that were released from it. But we were huge, really big, and I thought it was time to do the next album. In the meantime between that decision and actually putting it out, I kicked Kevin out of the band because he was addicted to drugs (and because he ruined a performance in front of the queen! that was the second I knew that he's out of the band). I found Gary Tibbs that used to play for Roxy Music (one of my favorite bands). I got two new looks: the Prince Charming and the Dandy Highwayman, and started working on the album. We released 3 singles from it before we released the album itself in November of 81'. We got 2 number ones from it: Stand And Deliver, a song where I used the Highwayman look and Prince Charming where I used to Prince Charming look. The album went number one too and when we saw we're quite successful we did the Prince Charming Revue, a 3 hour long show that included all of the songs we ever recorded. After the Revue, I knew that the Ants were history. We were all so sick of each other, all we thought about was money, we didn't do it for the music and fun anymore, rehearsals were a mess... I just had to leave.

-A person in the crowd: "So we're supposed to remember you for something you did 18 years ago?"

-Adam Ant: "Actually, no, cos I just LEFT the band, I didn't gave up on singing... in 82' I took Marco with me went solo. I released Goody Two Shoes if you remember that one..."

-The person in the crowd: "OH!!! I know what you're talking about! 'Goody two goody two goody goody two shoes...' you sang that??"

-Adam Ant: "Yes, that was me"

-The Person in the crowd: "Wow! I didn't know that! please go on!"

-Adam Ant: "Thank you very much. Now, with Friend Or Foe, my first solo album I went for a whole different sound than the one I had with the Ants. I still had the tribal sound, but didn't use two drummers. It moved towards New Wave (not that what I did before wasn't New Wave, but you know what I mean), I used horns, saxophones, but didn't lose my original sound. I even did a little tribute to my best friend Marco on this album, I let him write and do a whole guitar piece called Man Called Marco on the end of the album.

"With Friend Or Foe I was big in the UK, but I wanted to be big on the US too, so we did a massive Friend Or Foe tour all across the United Stated. There isn't much to tell about that, except maybe for the fact that I had only one number one hit from this album: Goody Two Shoes.

"After that, in 83' I found Phil Collins who was willing to produce two songs from my new album Strip. In that album I had somewhat sexy kind of tune and looks too (I know that aNTeMiSS loves that look), but I think that because of that I was banned by the BBC, and my popularity went down down down.

"In 85' I released Vive Le Rock which was my tribute to rock music. It was totally rock, nothing but guitars and drums (and maybe sometimes a piano or a harmonica, but that's it). I was invited to play at the Live Aid in 85, I got on the stage and performed 'Vive Le Rock', but the audience didn't ask for encore. After that I said 'It's enough' for real and went to the US and stared acting all over again.

"I took acting lessons and shared classroom with Michelle Forbes (which later co-starred with me in Love Bites) and Daryl Hannah and a few more. I did about 7 movies from 86' to 89' (you can find a listing in aNTeMiSS's Friend Or Foe - Movie roles page).

"In 1990 I released Manners & Physique, a pop album that was something between New Wave and the 90s music. Many of my fans say it's the worst album I could ever release. Besides, the period between 89' and 92' was the worst time of putting out an album because the music style wasn't quite clear. I believe that everything sounded bad these days. After that one, I continued acting but finally went back to London cos I got sick of the earthquakes and riots of Los Angeles. I sat down and started working on my new album back then, Persuasion, I even did demos and everything but because of a few problems MCA records had, it's not released until this day. It was back at 92'. But I am trying to release it, I really am! It's a shame it didn't see the day light because this album is damn good.

-The guy from the crowd: "I can't believe you're the one who sings Goody Two Shoes... wow..."

-Adam Ant: "Uh huh, yeah, o.k."

"*sigh* After that... well, nothing much happened. I kept on acting, released the B-Side Babies album which includes all of the B-Sides from 80-85 including a few songs that weren't released until then. In 1995 I released my latest album Wonderful, it was a big hit and I think it still is. Me and Marco were supposed to go on a tour, and we did manage to do a couple of shows but all of the sudden both of us got ill with some mysterious disease so we had to cancel it. We didn't complete it until today. And... this is the end of my story I guess..."

-A woman in the crowd: "Well... that was in 95', we're at 99' what's happening with you now?"

-Adam Ant: "Well, in 1997 I got married to my lovely wife Lorraine and we had a little baby girl on April 10th of 1998. We called her Lilly. I am currently working on my new album which I have no idea when it's going to be released, hoping sometime this year. I continue acting, never stopped for a second, but now people are doing all sorts of shows about the 80s and ask me to be interviewed, so it's another thing I do. I always write, and I never stop thinking about my fans even though they think I couldn't care less about them, but that's not true, they're always on my mind and I'm hoping to please them once again soon."

A man in the crowd: "And that's it?"

Adam Ant: "Yeah, that's it. If I forgot something, if I said something wrong, if there's something you think I should've said and didn't, please let aNTeMiSS know so I'll say it next time. Thank you very much for listening, you're a wonderful audience. Please continue browsing around aNTeMiSS' site, I think it's just great..."

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