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“Ant fans – please send me postcards at the Chelsea & Westminster Hospital, Fulham Road,” he wrote to his followers. “Please don’t come down here as it may upset the staff who have been really pleasant.
“I am having a well earned rest at Her Majesty’s Pleasure and am painting and continuing being an art student. I have a great view and am considering gigs later in the year.”
He hit the road earlier this year, crediting his 12-year-old daughter, Lily. But things eventually went off the rails, amid troubles that included the death of the punk/pop genius Malcolm McLaren, whom Goddard called his surrogate father.
Last week, he was scheduled for a half-hour set in Portsmouth to raise money for starving children in the Phillipines. But he invited a 4-year-old boy onstage and began teaching him the words to The Who’s “My Generation.”
When frustrated audience members began leaving, he cursed them. He also asked whether there were any Christians among them — then told them to “f*ck off.”
Two 22-year-old twins he was with then got into a fight backstage with the promoter’s son.
Goddard has a history that dates back more than 25 years, when he threatened customers in a North London pub with a fake gun after throwing a carburetor through the window. He was found mentally unfit to stand trial at the Old Bailey.
A year later, he threatened to smash in a neighbor’s patio doors with a shovel and was eventually found sleeping in the basement of a café with his trousers down.
A couple of months ago, Goddard told reporters that manic depression led to the episodes — and, with them, several hospital stays. But he was adamant about his intentions to stand and deliver for his only child, because “she has never seen Adam perform and doesn’t know what The Ants were all about.”
Members of a subgroup of New Wave known as the New Romantics, their music was tribal, almost warlike. Goddard was the deviously handsome lead singer in a military coat who, thanks to MTV, leapt to fame with the video “Goody Two Shoes,” an indictment of instant fame.
“I lost my mind,” Goddard told reporters. “But I’m back.“
He returned to the studio, hoping to produce an album this year, and took to barnstorming clubs, playing a few songs here and there. Critics and fans were excited to hear he’d done “Stand & Deliver” and “Prince Charming,” as well as a new tune, ironically titled “Gun in My Pocket.”
He even joined Gary Numan, another 80s icon, onstage in London for “Cars,” and delivered a triumphant set of Ant tracks that spanned 1977-1985.
Like the performances, however, the comeback didn’t last very long.
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