A fight against record companies and attitudes to mental health are inspiring Adam Ant to get back on the road. He swapped make-up tips with Chris Price.

After years of troubles which saw him refuse to pick up a guitar for seven years, Adam Ant has found a purpose in life again.

He was the make-up-clad pin-up of the 1980s as frontman of Adam and the Ants but his career took a slide after 20 years of stardom.

Diagnosed with bipolar aged 21, Adam found himself disillusioned with the music industry after his last album Wonderful in 1995. His time away from the spotlight saw the Prince Charming singer found guilty of affray in 2002 after brandishing an imitation firearm in Camden while looking for someone he thought had threatened his daughter. He was sectioned after another charge of affray a year later.

Now with a new album set for release in the spring and a year’s worth of touring under his belt, Adam Ant is back. Yet his mission is as educational as it is musical.

“Having been sectioned, I would have rather gone to jail,” said Adam, 57, whose hits include Antmusic, Stand and Deliver and Goody Two-Shoes. “The conditions that exist in these places are bad.

“Everyone has a right to put what they want in their body. When I was sectioned, I was plied with drugs. It is not right. Do you realise that if you are thinking about committing suicide you get a criminal record? That is wrong.

“It is not a sexy subject. It is a nasty subject which people are ashamed of. If people have someone in the family with problems they don’t talk about them. It is a taboo that has to be addressed and the 1983 Mental Health Act has to be changed.”

As well as talking openly about his mental health problems, Adam is also on a crusade against what he sees as another of society’s ills – the music industry.

The title of his forthcoming album – Adam Ant Is The Blueblack Hussar in Marrying The Gunner’s Daughter – references a naval term for a form of corporal punishment in which sailors were tied to a ship’s cannon and flogged. It is a metaphor for how he feels he was treated by the music industry. In his 1980s heyday, he was given a share of just nine per cent of all the earnings from his music by his record company Sony – a typical contract for the time.

“I’m not a fan of people exploiting people who do all the work,” said Adam, whose real name is Stuart Goddard.

“These contracts are archaic. Musicians have no choice now. The X Factor is ruining the music industry because if you don’t do karaoke, which is what that is, you have got a fight on your hands. That is why festivals are doing well. At festivals people see real music.

“My advice to young musicians is get a lawyer and don’t sign anything. Play them something good and then do the record company a deal where they only get 10 per cent because they do nothing. What does a record company do? Put out the occasional token album and jump on the latest gimmick. They just count the money. There are no music-lovers in the industry.”

Pioneering video work

As well as being bastions of the post-punk movement in the early 1980s, Adam and the Ants were pioneers in making music videos, particularly on hits like Stand and Deliver and Prince Charming.

“Like anything new, the record company didn’t want to know about it,” said Adam.

“I’m a big film fan and I did a film series at art school. I did the stuff very British. I wanted to make them quite well known to people here. Simple stories so that everyone knows them.

“I didn’t know what the videos would look like. I shot it and directed it myself but I didn’t know they would be such a big thing. For a while it was a thing of beauty. Then it went back on itself as soon as MTV became a record company.

“Record companies didn’t finance my videos. I paid for them all out of my nine per cent advance. Their idea of a video was a band strumming in front of a camera.”

Adam Ant will perform at the Assembly Hall Theatre, Tunbridge Wells, on Friday, December 2, at 7.30pm. Tickets cost £27.50. Call 01892 530613.