Magazine


Numan's back in the driving seat

Conrad Astley
28/ 4/2006

HAVING a pair of internationally-known hits under your belt can have its drawbacks, as Gary Numan knows only too well.

"Whenever I go on the radio, they play me in with Cars and play me out with Are `Friends' Electric," he said. "I'm proud of them, but it's as if my career's been book ended by those two songs.

"It's the preconceived idea that I've only written those songs, and I can't get people to look beyond that.

"I feel as if everyone's sprinting past me wearing brand new trainers and I'm lumbering along wearing a pair of great clod-hopping boots - one with Cars written on it, and another with Are `Friends' Electric on it."

Although the two hits, which defined his career in the late 70s and early 80s, are occasionally revisited in his live performances now, he often chooses to drop them.

"Of all the e-mails I've had from fans saying they liked the show, I've only had one asking why I didn't play Cars," he said. "So it looks like the fans are sick of it as well."

After suffering years of ridicule from the music press throughout the 80s and 90s, the last few years have seen a new generation of artists hailing Numan as a major influence.

Sugababes sampled Are `Friends' Electric on their single, Freak Like Me, and snippets of his early tunes have been used by DJ Armand Van Helden and Basement Jaxx.

His praises have also been sung by artists including Beck, Tricky, and Marilyn Manson, as well as older stars such as Afrika Bambaataa and even David Bowie - ending a 20-year-long war of words between the two singers which started when Bowie refused to appear on the same TV show as Numan.

"If people start covering your songs and name-checking you then that's all got to help," the former Tubeway Army singer said. "But all it does is draw people's attention to what you're doing now. If what you're doing is rubbish then it won't help you sell records.

"I've benefited from the fact that there's been people sampling my stuff and talking about me, but I feel like I've been justifying it.

"I was fortunate that it started at the same time my own music made a dramatic change. If that interest had happened a year or two earlier, I'd have been in trouble."

Although Numan is often referred to as "the godfather of electronic music" now, his career as a hit-maker lasted only a few years. After growing tired of the pressures of fame, he announced his retirement in 1981, but changed his mind about the decision after a series of farewell concerts at Wembley Arena.

Numan made numerous attempts to restart his career, but chart success eluded him, and he had reached a low point by 1992's Machine + Soul, which only sold a few thousand copies. But a reversal of fortunes came when he abandoned pop for a harder sound.

"When I was trying to write pop songs and be commercially successful it was a disaster," he said. "I was selling no records, my career was pretty much finished, and that's when I decided to go back to making music for the love of it.

"Ironically, that's when my music got a lot better. I wish I could say it was because I was really clever and sharp, but that would be as far from the truth as you could get."

His new direction has earned him a younger generation of followers, including nu metal fans as well as those who first heard his music through the dance artists who sampled it.

Although he still has older fans, the Numanoids - the loyal army who copied his many stylistic changes throughout the 80s - are no longer a noticeable presence. "I don't know if they refer to themselves as Numanoids," he said.

"I was never too keen on that anyway.

"The lookalike thing has pretty much disappeared now, it's been such a long time since I've gone for any particular image. I don't have any of the old costumes - but my mum might have one up in the loft some- where."

Gary Numan plays The Academy tomorrow (Saturday).


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