TUNE-UPS NEWS + NOTES
ADAM AND THE Ants released Kings of the Wild Frontier at the tail end of 1980. By the end of the following year, they’d become the biggest band across pretty much the whole world, with Kings selling 8 million copies. It seemed that only the U.S. was resistant to the waves of hysteria that “Antmania” generated.
Prior to teaming up with Adam Ant, U.K.-born guitarist and co-writer Marco Pirroni had been active on the early British punk scene, playing with Siouxsie and the Banshees at their first-ever show (with Sid Vicious on drums). He’d also been in indie bands the Models and Rema Rema, but he’d enjoyed only modest success. Meanwhile, Ant — with the original lineup of Adam and the Ants — had become a fixture on the U.K. indie live circuit and had built a cult following — but he seemed to have peaked. Pirroni agrees. “The music Adam was making was entirely different from what we came up with,” he says. “This change in direction was a deliberate move on Adam’s part to reinvent
