When I last saw Adam Ant, he was wearing nothing but his underwear and thigh-high boots and writhing within a tank of water, having just reenacted Harry Houdini’s Chinese Water Torture Cell escape stunt. Never mind that it was raining like mad that night at Irvine Meadows. It was the end of April 1984, the last date of Ant’s tour behind one of his lousier solo albums, Strip, and he wasn’t about to let a downpour dampen his finale.
Flash-forward nearly 30 years and the New Wave icon born Stuart Goddard has returned, once again culminating a stateside tour (his first since 1995) in Orange County, this time at a rapidly sold-out City National Grove of Anaheim, where Saturday night a rabid following of sagging and graying die-hards and youthful newcomers in retro costumes greeted him with a roaring hero’s welcome.
All these years later, they were still steadfastly ready to throw their safety overboard and join his insect nation, as commanded in one of Adam and the Ants’ best singles, “Stand and Deliver.”
Mr. Ant, who turns 58 in two weeks, looks little like his formerly lithe and camera-ready self these days. The dandy highwayman in his Victorian finery that MTV viewers once deemed the sexiest man alive now resembles Gary Oldman as a pudgy pirate, complete with Napoleon hat covering a somewhat hairless pate and a gut all too evidently hanging over the tight band of his leather pants. He didn’t strip down to his skivvies this time, thankfully, but it didn’t do him any visually appealing favors to have peeled away several layers of garb by set’s end, revealing flabby tattooed arms poking out of a sleeveless T-shirt with his former pinup self on the front.
Then again, there was something punkishly perfect about that sight. It was very much in keeping with the raw, reinvigorated performance he presented – a two-hour, 28-song bonanza that squeezed in virtually every bit of significant “Antmusic,” from early gems like “Kick!” and “Cartrouble” (half of 1979’s Dirk Wears White Sox was revived) to later hits like “Vive le Rock” and the love song “Wonderful,” with a romp through T. Rex’s “Bang a Gong (Get It On)” tossed into the encore as a nod to a key influence.
Reviews out of the U.K. after two tours before heading to America had been warmly supportive, as tends to happen when a long-absent star battling back myriad mental-health issues mounts a comeback without embarrassing himself. Yet what was rarely touched on is how dramatically different Ant’s sound has become.
The filigree of horns and Spanish guitars and such is noticeably missing from his current lineup, featuring two drummers (including an eye-grabbing but determined little glowworm in a blonde beehive ’do), a guitarist whose sound is pitched somewhere between Richie Sambora and Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols, and an unnecessary trollop in various skimpy outfits, whose supporting vocals were gratefully almost inaudible.
This bunch wasn’t designed to replicate the giddy rush of either the Ants’ lean-and-mean tribal punch or the later synthetic fun of “Goody Two Shoes” and “Desperate but Not Serious.” Indeed, their setup robbed those last two songs of any horn or acoustic accents, turning both into dumber rock (original guitarist Marco Pirroni’s deft touch was much-missed as well), with Ant barely maintaining their melodies. He had trouble keeping pace throughout the performance, actually, his vocals turning huffy and abbreviated as early as the breathless chorus of “Dog Eat Dog” just two tunes in, although his signature yelps and yodels were mostly intact.
What was heartening, apart from the mere sight of a smiling, bespectacled Adam Ant basking in adulation, was how much his current style reconnects him to his earliest punk roots. Everything about his Grove show was heavier than you’d imagine, with even the lighter refrain of “Prince Charming” reduced to a crunching stomp. Some songs didn’t bend so easily to the amped-up approach (“Strip” was a flat-out mess) but so many of his selections – particularly grinders like “Ants Invasion,” “Whip in My Valise” and the encore-closing “Physical (You’re So)” – benefited from being more like the Pistols or the Damned at their thickest.
It suits his age and demeanor a great deal more than prancing about like a fop. What’s more, fans who fought for tickets thundered their approval, elated to witness his return and hear something fresh, like the fair “Vince Taylor.” I suspect most of them were forgiving of any hiccups in his vocals (it’s a good thing he doesn’t attempt “Antrap,” though where was “Friend or Foe”?) or the indelicacy of his young band’s overpowered playing.
But I also bet a large portion of this audience ate up his newly heavy punk manner; he’d slot well on a bill with the Buzzcocks and Social Distortion. Smacking hard through the classics and staying relentlessly metallic is hardly an ill-advised way of reasserting strength as a new album inches its way into existence. Who knows – he may finally be stumbling back to some prominence after all.
Setlist: Adam Ant at City National Grove of Anaheim, Oct. 20, 2012
Main set: Plastic Surgery / Dog Eat Dog / Beat My Guest / Kick! / Cartrouble / Ants Invasion / Deutscher Girls / Stand and Deliver / Room at the Top / Kings of the Wild Frontier / Wonderful / Whip in My Valise / Vince Taylor / Strip / Desperate but Not Serious / Cleopatra / Never Trust a Man (With Egg on His Face) / Zerox / Antmusic / Goody Two Shoes / Vive Le Rock / Christian D’or / Lady/Fall-In
Encore: Fat Fun / Red Scab / Bang a Gong (Get It On) (T. Rex cover) / Prince Charming / Physical (You’re So)
