Adam Ant (born Stuart Leslie Goddard, on 3 November 1954, in Marylebone, London) is an English musician who gained popularity as the lead singer of post-punk group Adam and the Ants and later as a solo artist, scoring 10 UK top ten hits from 1980 to 1983, including three No. 1’s. He has also worked as an actor, appearing in over two dozen films and television episodes from 1985 to 2003. Since 2010, Ant has undertaken an intensive reactivation of his musical career, performing live regularly in his hometown of London and beyond. (More from Wikipedia)
It is not unprecedented for the front man of a rock band to adopt that name as his new surname. When the British new wave band Adam and the Ants was formed in 1977 (originally called simply the Ants), the chief songwriter and lead singer was known to the world as “Adam” – he was born Stuart Leslie Goddard. Although Goddard had apparently taken the name Adam Ant before forming the band, I don’t remember anyone calling him that until he started his solo career. Of course that left Adam Ant’s former bandmates in the Ants in the lurch; however, Malcolm McLaren – best known as the manager of the Sex Pistols – recruited them to back a barely pubescent Anglo-Burmese singer that he later discovered named Annabella Lwin (that’s not her real name either as I recall, though I can’t seem to find the info online anymore). The resulting band Bow Wow Wow is one of my favorites from the early 1980’s.
(August 2013)
