In the past you’ve referenced or used quite a few different artists like Picasso, Bragaglia or Lichtenstein , do you keep up with art that’s going on at the moment say like Goldsworthy, Gormley or Banksy?

Oh yeah, I think that there’s always something in a gallery, if you go to the Royal Academy, I always admire someone that can do it, sit down and paint or do something and you think “that’s really beautiful” and then you get something that’s quite experimental as well which is good.

I went to school with Anish Kapoor, he was at my college. I remember him doing various things, he’s gone on to do some very sculptural things, he does quite nice stuff.
I think that its got very kind of slick, there’s so much money involved with it that some of it is a bit suspicious, you know people wandering around in bear suits (Mark Wallinger, Turner prize winner) and it has literally got to the point where anything is art and that’s fair enough. That’s what Dadaism was all about and I love Dadaism. I thought that that was extraordinary, maybe it will take me another 30 years to appreciate what’s going on now. I’d rather keep an open mind about it! (laughing)

Initially, with people like Damien Hirst, I can understand what he’s doing now a bit more than when he was just slicing things in half, as it seemed like one idea. Some of the things he does now are quite subtle. They’re more worked out, there seems to be more work involved in it.

The For the Love of God skull and the huge sculptures that he did of body parts (Virgin Mother)?

Yeah, I thought that some of that was good, he turns his hand to different things. I think that he gets very good people involved to execute it, but it’s the idea that matters.
I like Joseph Beuys as well, people like that mainly through my friend David John Gibb, who I went to Hornsey College of Art with, he’s always kept me abreast of the art scene.
I’d have to say from that point of view that you can’t really beat Francis Bacon. You can’t really go anywhere after that, from that I loved Stanley Spencer, I love the way that he painted, being able to paint canvases that way with such a vision.
Whenever I go into a gallery there’s always 10 things where I’ll come out thinking I’ll keep an eye on that.

Are you tempted to get involved again as I’ve seen a few pictures from when you were at college, have you done anything since?

Not really, just sketches and things. Whenever I do things, whether it’s the booklet or the cover or whatever, I do a number of sketches of what they would look like or a kind of photographic idea I was after. I can draw that all out, I do keep that going. That’s very useful to be able to do that.

You’ve always referenced films like Apolocalypse Now, Bladerunner etc… are you still an avid film goer?

There are quite a lot of good films that you see that do come up now on TV, it’s quite surprising, how recent they are like “This is England” that was on the other night, it was an extraordinary film.

Shane Meadows?

Yeah, it was interesting, ‘cos that was set in , I think ’78 or ’79, so it was weird because at that time I was doing early Adam and the Ants and the biggest pain in the arse was all of the skinheads that invaded it via Sham 69 and more or less destroyed the scene. I always thought that they were mindless, it’s just thuggery, which a lot of it was unfortunately, but having been brought up in a council estate in the original skinhead era…

Bluebeat?

Yeah and sitting doing my homework and listening to Tamla Motown from all of the skinheads dancing to that music, it was a very, very accurate depiction of the kind of… although they were second generation skinheads it wasn’t that far removed from the kind of feel of the first generation skinheads growing up in a run down council area. There was nastiness in that film but it was only when those guys got out of jail.
What I liked about the film was the warmth prior to that.

It was split between the ones on the music side of things and then the others that brought along the racist element.

East is East was a good film, there are some interesting cultural films out there and it’s nice to see a sort of new generation of movie coming along that are quite exciting and I really get a good feeling from them.
On the other side it’s nice to go and see a James Bond film or a Pirates of the Caribbean because you just sit there for 3 hours like this (holds arms out, head back going aargh!) you don’t have to think, you just go with the flow, it’s very nice to keep the mood light, going out to the cinema is still a wonderful thing to do, it does give you a lot of hope and a lot of inspiration sometimes.

Do you still go to gigs?

I don’t go to a great deal of concerts, I saw The Killers play and thought that they were really good, they put on a good show.
When the Pistols played again I really wasn’t attracted to seeing that too much. I thought I’ll keep it in my mind how they were, because I think that they were very much suited to that, they had that dungeon essence to them that I liked. I’m sure that they were very good on a big stage, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be, they can play so… they’re really good.

Do you feel any pressure to produce new things or do you pressure yourself to produce new work or do you feel that there is any pressure from the fan base to be productive?

I wouldn’t produce any work as a product of outside pressure from anybody, I think that if you do that you’re just going to produce work for the sake of it.
I think that what you do produce when you come up with new stuff should be, this is it. It doesn’t matter how long its taken. I’m ready, this is it, judge me on this.
The only pressure that I put on myself creatively or artistically is my own and I think that’s the way it should be.

With your own products, books, videos etc… do you keep any of your own, do you have a collection?

I’ve got most of them, I’ve got most of the vinyls tucked away and most of the acetates and stuff like that. I think I’ve pretty much got a copy of everything that was released or what I could get hold of from the company because I was interested in checking that it was right, you know? That looks good, check it and keep it.

I think it’s nice to have a bit of everything that you’ve got, but I don’t think that I’ve got everything.
I don’t think I’ve got some of the reissue box sets and things like that. But I like the original ones, I’m a bit of a traditionalist. I like it in its original form and I think that anything outside of that is ok, but its never going have quite the same magic.

From when it first came out?

It’s like trainers, some people go to queue outside shops in the west end from 5 in the morning to get a particular one that Nike are putting out, limited edition of 1200, good luck to them.
Then you’ve got other kids up north that want an original pair of this particular one that was done in 1972 and that is it, they’ve got the original ones and it doesn’t matter how much they’re offered for them they’ll keep them. It goes beyond an investment it’s just something that you don’t want to part with.

Is there anything that you collect?

I had a large collection of the early SEX and SEDITIONARIES clothes, I used to do that, but I don’t really collect things too much. I’ve got loads and loads of books, I read a lot, I’d just have to move out if I got any more! (laughs) but that’s a nice exercise to say I’ll cut down.

Is the thing with books that you get them to read or that they look good, they have nice prints in them, say for example books from the turn of the last century like The Strand, Art Nouveau or Art Deco books

Yeah, there are some lovely books, I think that books and reading in general is an important part of my life. All through my life I’ve always enjoyed a book. A book has always got me through hours of boredom on tours and just being in awful hotels or in airports or whatever.
I much more enjoy reading a book than listening to anything on an MP3. Personally I find it quite sad when you stop for one second and look in any situation in any city, people are… it’s like I am a robot. God forbid anything noisy should happen, because they’d never know it. If there was a 2 second warning that something was going off they’re gonna miss it because they’re too busy tuned into... yeah you can put 2000 selections on your MP3 player and it can be the size of a matchbox, hooray, great!
I think that that film Wall-E was very good in that respect, it’s a great film but it’s a bit of a warning really, with all of those people in those floating things, we could end up a world of those, it’s like MP3’s and such, look I can go right around the world from this table, great (sarcastically) it’s a good job Ernest Hemingway didn’t do that or Magellan or Frobisher or Scott of the Antarctic or anybody that you’d like to name. It’s a good job they didn’t have that attitude, it’s almost as if, no, give up, you can do it at home.

I take it you don’t have an MP3 then?

I do, well Clare has one and I listen to it, I find it useful for research and for listening to songs on a long train journey or whatever. I’m just saying that there’s room for that but there’s also room for the more traditional things like books as well and I think that’s exciting, it’s nice to have a balance of both, or just observing people, looking out of the window is quite a good idea sometimes, you can watch things you can see life. Take a moment sometimes, but I suppose that’s a bit of a phase that I’m at.
Don’t get me wrong computers are quite extraordinary, they are quite outrageously efficient, but there has to be a balance and I think that if you’re not careful you can get into that mindset, I’ll look it up on Google, anything you can look up on and its there.

I think that the internet perpetuates a lot of myths.

There are books out there with details that haven’t been put online and if you’re after a particular thing, a rarity or something that hasn’t just been classified and put into a list, there are things that are outside of that and I do like that.
I do like the idea of finding something that isn’t just at a click, you can click up something and you get a very broad outline and it’s really inaccurate a lot of the time and that’s not good enough you’ve gotta get it right. That’s why I tend to be very wary of it. I’ve always been like that, on USSA, there’s a line in USSA off the Manners album The synthesisers made us slaves, so we smashed them up to decorate our caves and I still live by that sometimes.

Do you pay any attention to what is Adam Ant on the internet?

Yeah I do! I breeze it and I have a look at it and I think the generic stuff on iTunes and all of that stuff is all like footnotes. He did this, he did that then he went into this phase and it’s a couple of paragraphs, ok. It’s quite amusing some of it actually.

Do you take it all with a pinch of salt?

Yeah, you have to. I suppose that’s people liking to use their imagination. They like to assume that something is happening or rumours get round and they build it up from there and then you have the opportunity when you are doing something fresh and something real, you can say no, there it is and it makes them look a little bit silly really as it’s all been supposition and rumour and you go here’s the real deal and that’s the way it should be.
I feel that there are so many sites and there’s so much out there that it’s quite hard to be that discerning. You’re not quite sure if it’s a joke or whether there’s a big company behind it making it look amateurish but they’re actually selling you something. There’s always something being sold. Adverts flash up every few seconds when you look up a particular artist and it’s like look at these too. We think you should listen to this and it made me laugh because I was looking up on my site and it said you should refer to the following people and it was all of the usual suspects, the 80’s people and then there was the Anti Nowhere League! I spent a good hour on there looking it up, thinking what are they up to? And listening to their stuff I thought that it was quite humorous actually. Well I thought that that was quite nice, if they are interested in Adam and the Ants then it would have been the very, very early Adam and the Ants and that’s quite cool.

Do you listen to other bands that have covered your work, do some of them make you cringe or do you like the fact that somebody wants to record your music?

Strangely enough there are really interesting ones with Prince Charming by R&B and Rap groups, quite heavy hardcore rap groups that are very contemporary in the essence of Master Shortie and people like that, I thought that that was ok, it was pretty good. I gave them permission.
If they wanna do something they should ask your permission, otherwise you have no control and I think a lot of that stuff is not of the best quality.
One of them made me laugh as they said we took out Marco’s guitar and we improved on that! I thought, no, hang on, wait, well take me off then! You know what I mean? (laughing) why don’t you take us all off and start from scratch and do your own song! If you’re going to take someone’s work and experiment with it at least give them the credit that you are somewhat impressed with the original or you wouldn’t have bothered to mess around with it in the first place!
It never fails to astonish me and in a way it’s quite pleasing like when you hear this rapper singing Prince Charming, sampling the chorus sweetly and the verse is like really violent and he’s singing it really well, with a beautiful harmony then going back to this heavy stuff.