Marco Pirroni, if you didn’t already know, was the guitarist in Adam & the Ants.
Adam & the Ants was my first musical love. They weren’t just a band they were a cultural phenomenon. One that ignited in me an interest – nay, a passion! – for music that continues to this day. And it all started the first time I heard the Kings of the Wild Frontier single.
Everything about that song and video was different and thrilling; the tribal drumming, the iconic warpaint, the attitude. More trailblazing singles followed such as Antmusic, Stand and Deliver, Prince Charming and… erm… Ant Rap. Britain went crazy for it and the Ants were everywhere, plastered across TV, radio, magazine covers and newspapers. We just couldn’t get enough of them. Me included.
Much of the focus was obviously on Adam, the hussar-jacketed frontman, but lurking just behind him, guitar in hand, was Marco.
In this memoir, Marco paints a vivid, exciting and often hilarious picture of what it was like to be caught up in the punk firestorm in London in the 1970s, and in the eye of a pop stardom hurricane in the 80s. Marco was a young man, passionate about music, who was in the right place at the right time and surrounded by the right people. Honestly, it seems he couldn’t move back then without bumping into some future icon or other (Sid Vicious, anyone?).
It’s the sort of life people daydream about, but throughout it all Marco appears perpetually grouchy. Hilariously so. No matter where in the world he goes or who he meets, he’s always monumentally underwhelmed. The funniest part for me was when Marco and his fellow Ants are descended upon after a show in the US by none other than Liberace, complete with his significant entourage.
“The sheer quantity of plastic surgery that’s just walked into the room is unnerving.”
Comedy gold. Actually, I think his entire attitude is summed up neatly in the quote on the back over: “If you’re going to be a band, do it properly – you go on Top of the Pops to sell records and to make a lot of money, have big cars. Don’t fuck around like you’re embarrassed.”
This book whizzes along at a cracking pace; bombarding us with anecdote after anecdote after anecdote. But there is a darker side to fame, as we all know. Here it reaches its hubris when a disturbed fan, a distraught young woman, comes knocking on Marco’s door in the dead of night clutching a polaroid of a baby she has apparently lost, and begging him to help her.
This memoir takes us up to the end of the Ants as a band and the beginnings of Adam’s career as a solo artist, with Marco along for the ride. On the way our grumpy yet loveable narrator tops the charts numerous times, tours all over the world, performs for royalty and falls in and out of love – all by the time he’s 23.
This really is a hugely entertaining book. As entertaining as Adam & the Ants were as a band, in fact. So unplug the jukebox, do yourself a favour and pick up a copy.
See what I did there?
YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE by Marco Pirroni is published by New Modern Books and is out now.
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