Your Money or Your Life

by Marco Pirroni

The long overdue autobiography from the renowned and much-loved Adam and the Ants songwriter and guitarist.

In the mid 1970's, Marco Pirroni was a shy Kings Road punk kid. He played guitar with a nascent Siouxsie and the Banshees at their debut 100 Club gig in 1976. Future Sex Pistol Sid Vicious could often be found round at Marco's parents with a bag of laundry and a cup of tea. But as the early promise of punk rock's cultural liberation quickly soured, Marco's dreams of proper pop stardom only grew.

In a few short years, alongside an ambitious fellow punk survivor called Adam who was also looking to break out of the musical ghetto and onto Top of the Pops, Marco became the musical architect of the global Antmusic phenomenon. By the time he was 21, Marco was the co-writer of the two classic number one singles - ‘Prince Charming’ and the Ivor Novello-winning ‘Stand and Deliver’ - alongside the million selling, idiosyncratic new pop masterpiece 'Kings of the Wild Frontier' and its follow up album 'Prince Charming'.

Your Money or Your Life is Marco’s long-overdue and much-anticipated account of his time amidst the maelstrom of Antmania. It chronicles the breakneck period in Pirroni’s life which ends in March 1982, when Adam and the Ants split up amongst heartbreak and acrimony. Revelatory, caustically hilarious and with a cast of the biggest names in entertainment including Liberace, Liza Minnelli and David Bowie, Your Money or Your Life is one of the unforgettable music stories of the 1970s and 1980s.

Genres: Music, Biography, Nonfiction

336 pages, Hardcover

Published September 10, 2026

Reviews

[Nigeyb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marco Pirroni’s detached perspective offers a grounded, reliable, somewhat jaundiced and generally entertaining account of one of 1980s pop music's biggest success stories.

This succinct memoir focuses on the the mid-1970s up to March 1982, when Adam and the Ants split up at the peak of their commercial success.

The early punk stuff is great. Marco regularly visited Let It Rock/Sex/Seditionaries and attended early Pistols gigs and also played with a nascent Siouxsie and the Banshees at the legendary 100 Club Punk Festival in 1976. He also relates his time with The Models and Rema Rema. His recollections chime with my own and come complete with the vivid descriptions of the violence and unpredictability of gigs during that era.

The heart of the book details his collaboration with Adam Ant. Pirroni positions himself as the steady, pragmatic sidekick trying to channel Adam's relentless drive, creative impulses, and theatrical ambition.

For fans of punk and 80s pop culture, Your Money or Your Life is a fascinating insight into one of the biggest bands of the early 80s.

I listened to the audiobook which I would not recommend. I usually enjoy listening to an author narrate their own words however Marco is not great and seemed to want to get the recording process over as quickly as possible.

[Richard E. Rock · Rating 5 out of 5]

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?

[Stan Barker · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

4.5 rounded up - full review coming to Ant Lib Ønline (once the umbungo is lifted 😉).

[Joe Stunner · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first "proper" gig I ever went to was on December 21st 1981: Adam and the Ants at the Dominion Theatre in London's Tottenham Court Road. This was something called The Prince Charming Revue, and I loved every second of it - not just the gig but the whole evening, especially the anticipation of what was to come. As I flicked through racks of albums in the huge HMV or Virgin Megastore (I forget which), at the foot of Oxford Street, the tension built to the point where fourteen year-old me could barely believe I was actually going to see the Ants in the flesh. In fact, this is a priceless memory, the emotion of which has stayed with me my entire life.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Adam and the Ants were apparently on the verge of breaking up. If there's one thing that Marco Pirroni's sometimes sardonic and definitely dead-pan account of everything Punk and Ants captures, it's that all that glitters most certainly isn't gold lamé. Pirroni is one of the reasons I learnt to play guitar, and his often curmudgeonly reminisces of having his dreams come true rather makes me glad mine didn't. It's impossible to count the amount of times Marco cites a hatred of everything from touring to the St. Winifred's School Choir's There's No one Quite Like Grandma. Still, it's all done with a fair dollop of humour, so he is forgiven.

At 300 pages in length, this is a memoir that bypasses any lengthy childhood memories in favour of jumping straight into Punk influences (every 430 Kings Road cast member is included), and ending with Marco and Adam's final number one single, Goody Two Shoes, in 1982. "We will never be number one again," says Marco in his book's penultimate sentence. Whether he regards that as a good or bad thing is left for the reader to decide.

Never mind, Marco. You gave us some wonderful childhood memories. The book? Unlike fame, recommended.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Funny and cynical, Marco Pirroni's memoir dives into his youth as a punk and his transformation into a prominent figure in the New Wave scene. I appreciated how much Marco referred to fashion - his own, and the outfits he witnessed while shopping or attending events. He clearly has a passion for music and it's a shame that his time in the spotlight soured him on performing but at least he found some satisfaction in creating some excellent music.

[Allen · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

Reading like a diary, Marco writes like you are there with him, from the early days of SEX, the Pistols, Siouxie, the Models and then finally the huge success of Adam and the Ants.

Minor spoiler:

The book ends at the height of the Dane which is also the end of it all, for all intents and purposes.

I would happily read a sequel.

[Sophie Ingley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Huge fan of Ant Music, so this was a joy to read.