In his recent memoir Triggers, original Sex Pistols bassist Glen Matlock writes with great nostalgia about the camaraderie and cohesiveness of the burgeoning punk rock scene in London circa 1976-77.

It’s where you’d see the same group of people in the audience at a Sex Pistols or Clash or Damned show, with members of the city’s rapidly multiplying groups also checking out each other. That includes a group known as the “Bromley Contingent” of fans who would go off and start their own bands including Billy Idol and Siouxsie Sioux.

Several times, Matlock name checks Stuart Goddard, then the bassist for the group Bazooka Joe.

And while he and the band would not make a splash for themselves, Goddard would go on to far greater things once he formed a new group and rechristened himself with a different moniker: Adam Ant.

“Well, it was a healthy kind of competition!” Ant says today via Zoom. “The London scene was very tiny and really surrounding the Sex Pistols. They were my favorite group out of the whole lot. It was pretty much the tail end of the whole Pub Rock movement. But the punk thing sort of eventually spread out of its own. We punk rockers were kind of a minority in musical taste, so there was indeed a camaraderie.”

Ant is currently in rehearsals for an upcoming 37-date U.S. tour, which begins this month and ends with a prime slot at the New Wave/Alternative Cruel World Festival in Pasadena, California. It will find him on the bill with acts from a similar era including Duran Duran, Blondie, Simple Minds, Soft Cell, Ministry, and the Jesus and Mary Chain.
He’s also got a gig in Houston on April 20 at the Bayou Music Center. Ant’s current group of formicidae include Will Crewdson and Adam Leach (guitars), Joe Holweger (bass) and Jola and Mark Slussky (drums). The English Beat will open.

This U.S. tour has been a long time coming, planned for years but put off due to COVID and all its repercussions and reschedulings.

“I’ve just been really looking forward to it,” Ant says. “We all had to wait for the pandemic to come and go. We’re in the rehearsal process now and choosing the sets and then we’ll be on the road!”
Adam and the Arts formed in 1977 and released their debut record Dirk Wears White Sox two years later. He asked Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren for career advice and to see if he’d possibly take a similar role with him.

McLaren responded by stealing all of the Ants to form a new group to back teen singer Annabella Lwin called Bow Wow Wow. They would score their one (and only) hit in 1982 with a cover of the Strangeloves’ ‘60s hit “I Want Candy.”

Undeterred, Ant formed a new group with Marco Pirroni (guitar), Kevin Mooney (bass), and Terry Lee Miall and Chris “Merrick” Hughes (drums) for 1980’s Kings of the Wild Frontier.
Buoyed by a striking new visual look that found the band garbed in pirate/dandy/swashbuckler/Regency/Napoleonic/Hussar garb (and with Ant frequently sporting a white stripe under his eyes), they would rack up a string of hits in the US (and more in the UK) over the next few years.

Those include “Kings of the Wild Frontier,” “Stand and Deliver,” “Desperate but Not Serious,” “Antmusic,” “Prince Charming,” “Friend or Foe,” “Vive Le Rock,” “Goody Two Shoes” and “Strip.”

Videos for those last two were in frequent rotation on the then-burgeoning MTV, and likely the introduction to the band for most U.S. listeners. Guitarist Pirroni has also served as Ant’s longtime writing partner, especially on many of those hits. The band also appeared at Live Aid, though Ant has said it was not the best experience, as organizer Bob Geldof limited them to one song and later bemoaned even booking them.
“We both come from a similar kind of background with similar interests. We both liked Roxy Music and Alice Cooper and T. Rex, and of course the Sex Pistols and the New York Dolls. The influences were there,” Ant says.

“We’ve had a disciplined relationship. I’d come in with lyrics and Marco with a guitar and we’d both sort of strum guitars and then stick the lyrics in. It was a formal working relationship.”

One hallmark of the band’s music is a strong percussive sound, made possible by the fact that Ant has always favored having two drummers behind him. He was inspired directly by seeing a James Brown show at the Hammersmith Apollo as a young man.

“I was quite surprised to see two drummers playing! And that was great with one to keep the solid beat and the other having this involved and complex percussive thing. That stuck with me,” he says. “And when it came around to doing the second version of Adam and the Ants, I opted to have two drummers. And Chris also being the producer saved a lot of time in the studio.”
After his commercial peak, Ant continued to sporadically record and perform into the ‘90s and ‘00s, but mainly pivoted toward acting.

There’s been more musical activity in the past decade, with his last studio release being 2013’s fresh sounding and ambitious Adam Ant is the Blueblack Hussar in Marrying the Gunner’s Daughter. He’s reportedly been working on some new material for years but isn’t ready to announce anything yet.

One place that Adam Ant probably never thought he would see himself—or at least vestiges of his vestments—is in London’s famed Victoria & Albert Museum. He was quite surprised when they came calling a few years back looking for some of his old threads.
“That was quite an honor to be asked to give them some costumes. I had them in storage, but they really know how to keep the costumes in perfect conditions. I was only too happy to hand them over knowing they would be well looked after,” he says.

“They have some of them on display and it’s quite nice to go out and see them. They’re like old friends! I’ve seen them in different exhibitions,” he continues. “They vary a bit, but the Prince Charming outfit is on permanent display. It’s good to see the old clothes still standing up and in one piece!”

Ant remembers going to see one of the displays and standing next to a family who probably did a pronounced double take. Ant says he was able to talk to them and give the astonished visitors some background on the pieces.

Most of Adam Ant’s music over the years both with his group and as a solo artist is currently available on streaming services. And while the royalties are nothing like what he (or any artist) were collecting back in the day, he sees it as inspiration to fuel his live shows.

“I think you just have to move on with the times and that’s how people are absorbing the music at this time – and hopefully enjoying it,” he says. “As long as the music is out there and getting listened to, it allows me to go things like get out there and play it live without worrying too much about how it’s being distributed.”

Finally, when asked about any remembrances of being in Houston or Texas in general over the years, the now 69-year-old Ant says something that many English musicians raised on reruns of American TV westerns of the ‘50s and ‘60s note.

“I think I had this very romantic idea of Texas when we first went to the South, going through the desert. You actually saw the cactus and the Old West sort of things,” he offers. “I remember getting off the bus the first time it was early in the morning and we looked across the desert and were all amazed at how flat it was!”

Adam and the Ants play at 8 p.m. on Saturday, April 20, at the Bayou Music Center, 520 Texas. For more information, call 713-230-1600 or visit LiveNation.com. The English Beat opens. $54 and up.

For more on Adam Ant, visit Adam-Ant.com