Ant People

I would just like to thank James Maw for agreeing to do this interview and returning the answers to me at blinding speed. James Maw is a true gent and I hope to catch up with him by telephone for part 2 which will appear here also (editor's note: this has been published now and can be read here ) . As James says himself, exceptional people attract exceptional people, and James is indeed exceptional.

James Maw is a writer who has written many books including ‘Hard Luck’ which won the Society of Authors Award. He has published five novels. After beginning as a presenter on an ITV rock show he went on to be a producer at Granada TV. He now lives in Brighton and is a regular presenter on BBC Radio 4 where he reports from war zones.

Cleo: Firstly, I would like to thank you very much for taking the time to answer these questions, it really is appreciated and I know many people will enjoy hearing about the man behind the ‘Ant Bible’.

JM: My pleasure. This will be the first interview I’ve given about the book in 20 years. I don’t know how you’ve charmed me into it, but you have. You’ve been a little clever. I never speak about it. I was laying in a hammock in Colombia a while ago and a million or so, leaf cutter ants came marching underneath me and, in the state that I was in I imagined that every one of the leaves had words written on them and I thought the little bastards must be writing the ‘Ant Bible’. God help you all, I thought, you write a thing like that and you’ll start getting letters from all over the world, every day, written in green ink. And dead roses, I get dead roses sometimes.

Cleo: Could you start off by telling us what made you decide to write a book about Adam. Did you know him personally or were you a fan and how did you approach him?

JM: I was the presenter of a TV show called ‘White Light’ for ITV in which we showcased new bands. I got to choose the bands and we gave the first TV appearances for outfits like U2 and Spandau Ballet. There was a publishing company called Futura who had a history of knocking out quick biographies of whoever was the latest big thing in music but their usual writer had just become a Tory MP. So they approached me. Not very romantic, I know, but business is business and that’s how it began. It didn’t stay that way.

Cleo: What is your favourite ant track and why?

JM: Killer in the Home I have affection for because I was doing a show on BBC World service during the uprising in Poland and we played it for the kids there to give them a bit more spunk. I like Dirk too, very much, because it’s nice and dark. I like all the darker tracks. I met Dirk Bogarde while I was writing the book and the first thing I said to him was ‘But Dirk you’re not wearing white socks’ and he said ‘I never do.’ So I told him about the album –which he hadn’t even heard of- and suggested that he should change his socks. You’ve never seen a man look so bemused. I told Adam about this and he laughed his socks off.

I play ‘Ant Music’ all the time these days. Antmusic is the most perfect track. But you shouldn’t ask me what my favourite track is because you’ve set me off now and I’m thinking of others. This is because they still, sometimes, all play at once in my head and I see Marco sitting in his flat showing me the chord structures, and Kevin throwing his base at Princess Margaret, and Adam casting his eyes up to the safety curtain with a look of despair. I also very much like Cartrouble because my friend Jordan was in the car at the time and they did have trouble. There’s something about a good song which takes you right back to the place where you first heard it, or the lover you were with. All of Adam’s songs have this quality: and this is exactly the quality that makes pop songs, really good pop songs that will last.

Cleo: How did you do your research for the book? Did you go to many of the ant gigs and if so, which one is the most memorable for you and why?

JM: I went round to Adam’s dad’s house. I heard that he was a caretaker in a block of flats in Chelsea and just door-stepped him. He welcomed me in and showed me all of Adam’s drawings that he’d done at school. One of them, I remember, was of Noel Coward standing with a cup of tea in the middle of the Nevada desert. At this point the book I was writing wasn’t ‘official’, it was just one of many trashy efforts being knocked out at the time. But this stunt of tracking down Mr. Goddard Senior certainly got Adam’s attention. He went mad about it. My buzzer went one evening while I was at home and this voice said ‘It’s Adam’ I said ‘Adam who?’ and he said ‘Adam Ant, I’m a pop star.’ So up he came with Don (Murfet), his manager, and we just sat and talked for hours and we agreed that I should, after all, continue to write my trashy book about him but that we’d make it something better than that and that Adam himself would be my editor.

Cleo: You said to me before, that you wrote the book quickly. How long did it take you to write, did you find it easy to write?

JM: It took me six weeks to write; locked in a room in Holland Park, day and night, writing, writing, writing, with the occasional trip out into the daylight to do interviews and days and days holed up with my friends Jordan and Kevin Mooney who helped me with the book. I couldn’t have written it without Jordan and Kevin. We had a wild time staying together at the Ritz Hotel. One morning I threw up in every bin in Piccadilly. That’s how hard I worked.

Jordan with James Maw

Cleo: Did Adam have a lot of input into the content of the book? Was there anything that you had in it he wasn’t happy with and didn’t make the final cut? Did he proof read it?

JM: After the night he came to see me at my flat, Adam was absolutely on top of the book. And I liked that because I never wanted to be a pop writer in the first place. I’d been a punk myself. I’m from Bromley- I’d been at art school like Adam and I didn’t just want to write a book for teenage girls. I wanted to write about something that I really cared about. There were awkward moments, of course, I’d interviewed one of Adam’s first girlfriends and she’d described in detail how they’d made out while her parents were celebrating Friday Evening. They were Jewish- and it was very graphic, not the sort of thing that was written into pop books at that time, and rather personal and intrusive too. When I handed that chapter over to Adam I was convinced that he’d not just cut it from the book but deck me too. But he didn’t. He just glazed over as he remembered it and said that it was just this sort of thing that would make the book special. I don’t recall him cutting anything –though I’m sure he must have done- but it was always mutually agreed. As for proof reading, I don’t think that he did, because it wasn’t necessary. I showed him all the chapters as I wrote them. I remember a particularly interesting ‘script meeting’ we had together. It was the day of Charles’ and Diana’s Royal Wedding and he called me up and said ‘I can’t ever go out for a walk these days, but today I reckon I can. Everyone’s at Buckingham Palace. Come over.’ So I went to see him with my old college chum Julian Sefton-Green, who was also working on the book. We took him out in Julian’s bright green Deux Chevaux, - you know, those French cars that look like biscuit tins. We walked down the middle of Oxford street and it was then I began to realise what enormous pressure Adam was under at that time. He was the most famous person in Britain but on that one day Princess Diana had pipped him and he was so glad about it. It was on that day that I realised how inevitable fame had always been for him, how deeply he thought about it and how much it cost him.

Cleo: You mentioned that you had difficulty in securing the rights to write the book, can you explain a bit more about this and tell us how it was resolved?

JM: Yes, it was intended to just be your run-of-the-mill pop-boiler. But I never liked the idea of that. Lots of people were writing about Adam but I said to my publishers that I wanted Adam on board with the book and they couldn’t deliver that. This is where things got a little difficult. I decided that I would have to get to Adam myself. I would have to get his attention. That’s why I tracked down his father. They didn’t exactly go on caravanning holidays together at that time. It did get his attention. Then we had the summit at my flat in Holland Park and we sorted it all out, just Adam and I, man to man. Although he had this great music business machine around him he dismissed them. I think that Adam’s bedrock is honesty: and we talked honestly and that’s what did it. He’s highly intelligent and one of the traits of intelligent people is that they can change their minds. He changed his mind and instead of working against each other we decided to work together. From that point on he made no demands on me: he treated me as a fellow artist. I could write whatever I wanted. I wish he was my editor now.

Cleo: You said you had input from Derek Jarman and Vivienne Westwood, how did they help you and did you have input from anyone else?

JM: Both Derek and Vivienne were so happy to talk about Adam, they loved him you see. Exceptional people attract exceptional people. I asked Jarman why he cast Adam in his film ‘Jubilee’ and he said ‘I saw this beautiful boy walking down the King’s Road with no shirt on just the word ‘fuck’ cut into his back with a razor blade’. You’re making me emotional now because it was because of Adam that I first met Derek Jarman and we became good friends. And because of Vivienne I became great friends with Kevin and Jordan. Jordan was then Adam’s manager and Kevin the bass player: and I loved them and still do. I can still see my little self sitting in a pub with Vivienne in the King’s Road talking about Adam. I’ve a tape of that interview somewhere but I don’t think much made the book. We spent most of the time talking about the death of Socrates, but that’s Westwood for you. All great artists, but as I said, they find each other. Sometimes before I went for meetings with Adam, Vivienne would dress me herself and he was always keen to see what she was coming up with.

Cleo: Did you make much money from the book?

JM: When I got all the money I made the bank open at the weekend to give me some of it in fifty pound notes and I carried it home in two plastic bags. I took all my clothes off and threw it up in the air; when it fluttered down it covered the whole of the living room floor and I rolled in it giggling. I should have bought a street of houses but I spent it all on shirts and trousers.

Cleo: If you had to re-write the book now would you change it in any way and if so how?

JM: I haven’t read the book. All my copies were nicked by Ant fans. But I was sent a copy of it by Mark Lamarr, the comedian. He was filming down in the West Country, he said, and picked up a copy in a cancer shop. He sent it to me with a note saying ‘I know that this is you’. I was very touched. But I still haven’t read it. Perhaps I will after this interview, perhaps I won’t.

However, I think that there is a much more interesting book to be written now, and one that the public would lap up. If Adam and I could get back together and write more of his life it would be fascinating. I’m very interested in what happens to people AFTER they’ve been through the pop thing. One of my friends is Jason Orange and I saw the whole Take That experience and when it ended I worried about him greatly. I cried when I saw that awfully sad documentary they made about them a couple of years ago. Jason just went back-packing after Take That, but he wasn’t happy. To see what they’ve done now is tremendous and I’m really pleased. Boy George too. Great men. I have enormous respect for Adam and I think that he too will have a Second Act. So, no, I wouldn’t want to re-write the book, I’d like to write an entirely new one about Adam. Adam Now!

Cleo: The book is now out of print, would you consider re-issuing it or doing an update of the biography, for example, Adam - 20 years on?

JM: I think I just answered that.

Cleo: As you know Adam has now released his autobiography. Some fans have criticized it for containing factual inaccuracies. Have you read it and what did you think about it?

JM: No, I haven’t read it. Am I in it? Or am I a factual inaccuracy??

Cleo: Do you have any photos of you and Adam from your time you spent working with him?

JM: My older brother is a photographer and for punishment as a kid I’d have to have my photo taken so I don’t lean easily into the camera.

Cleo: Are you still in contact with Adam?

JM: He’s such a beautiful and charismatic man. I did see him, long after the book was published and I sat with him in his dressing room and we chewed over the cud. He’s a very humble man and he impressed me once again. But now? Now I’d give anything just to sit down with him over a plate of sushi.

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