Ahead of his show at Bristol Beacon this month, electronic music pioneer Gary Numan speaks to Melissa Blease about celebrating 45 years of his ground-breaking album Telekon, a dream of warp-speed intergalactic travel, and the eternal quest to make music no one’s ever heard before.
When you’re young and you read about how influential your heroes are, you dream that one day you might be like that too. But that’s a bit like wanting to become an astronaut: it’s not really a realistic ambition, is it?
Not for most people, no. But Gary Numan (né Gary Anthony James Webb, born in Hammersmith, West London, in 1958) has, for almost half a century, lived half of the childhood dreams he’s citing here: the iconic synth/electronic music pioneer may not be an astronaut (yet), but he’s a hero to many people – and an influence on many, many more.
Gary is talking to me from Portland, Oregon, on the fourth date of 35 on his current US tour. When he’s done with the US this time around, he’ll be flying straight to London to begin rehearsals for his Telekon tour, celebrating the 45th anniversary of his ground-breaking 1980 album of the same name and landing at the Bristol Beacon in a sold-out show on Sunday 16 November.
“It made good sense to celebrate the album’s 45-year milestone by touring it again,” Gary says. “Also, the new album I was intending to have out by now – which the November tour dates were originally intended for – still isn’t finished, so it made good sense to repurpose the tour dates too!” Which means, of course, that plans to tour the new album, when completed, are already in the pipeline. Gary: do you ever tire of touring?
“I get a bit tired physically, especially towards the end of a long tour like this. But I never tire of the process of touring: I enjoy the touring life, I like living on a bus, I like all the traveling. The only downside is that it takes me away from my home and my family, and I miss them when I’m on the road.”
The synth that changed it all
Since 2012, home for Gary, his wife Gemma (who was a member of his fan club before they met – how romantic is that?) and their three daughters is Santa Monica, California where, in his own words, “the sun always shines, the sky is always blue, it’s always warm. The ocean is on your doorstep, the mountains are nearby – it’s just an amazing place to live.” Indeed! And far, far removed from his formative years spent biding his time at Brooklands Technical College in Weybridge (from which he was expelled with no qualifications) prior to a stint in the Air Training Corps and various jobs including a Heathrow Airport bus driver, an air conditioning ventilator fitter and an accounts clerk. By that time, though, Gary’s dad Tony had already bought Gary the Gibson Les Paul guitar which became his most treasured possession; the rest is, as they say, history… which, in a very tiny nutshell, runs like this:
“My debut album [Tubeway Army, 1978] was supposed to be a punk album,” Gary recalls. “We were in the recording studio, and a synth had been left in the control room. While everybody else was loading the gear in, I tried the synth out and it changed everything for me; I thought it was the most powerful, exciting thing I’d ever heard. It suited me totally because my interest in music isn’t really music at all; it’s all about sound and noises, the weirder the better. Over the next few days I converted all of my guitar-based songs into synth songs and we ended up recording a very basic – and rather crude – electronic album. That’s how it all started.”
Tubeway Army’s Replicas album was released the following year (spawning the no. 1 hit Are ‘Friends’ Electric) before Gary, as a solo artist, gifted us with The Pleasure Principle album in 1979. Cars, the first single released from the album, dominated the charts around the world and is as enduringly popular today as it was when it was first released; the boy who grew up under the Heathrow Airport flightpath had rocketed to stardom, hailed as a cutting edge musical pioneer.
“I was aware that electronic music had the potential to significantly change the sound of music and I wanted to make sure I was a part of that,” says Gary. “I had no idea I’d end up being considered a pioneer, though! I’m always moving forward, musically; the celebration tours are just a rare chance to briefly indulge in happy memories while the new stuff is still underway.”
Numan on nostalgia
Those memories may be nostalgic for those of us who grew up with Gary, but ‘kids’ down the decades are as au fait with his oeuvre as the original fans are. This year, he headlined at the Glastonbury Festival (for, surprisingly, the very first time in his career) and collaborations with contemporary chart acts as diverse as Basement Jaxx, Nine Inch Nails and the Sugababes have maintained Gary’s relevance with whole new generations of fans, all of whom plunder his original releases and buy tickets for live shows within minutes of them going on sale. Gary: why does 80s music refuse to die?
“I couldn’t tell you!” he laughs. “And I don’t care one way or the other, to be honest. I don’t care about anything from the past that much! What drives me is all about what comes next, what new things can we create, what new sounds can we build and turn into music no-one has ever heard before? My career has been very up and down over the years, and not without a never-ending stream of challenges. The biggest challenge though – and the one I wanted to overcome the most – was to be able to headline at Wembley Arena once again, having first done it in 1981. I finally managed that in 2022 and it was without a doubt the proudest moment of my career so far; it proved that I’m still here, still able to move things forward.”
Moving forward – and moving on up?
Before pop stardom beckoned, Gary’s earliest ambition was to become an airline pilot – a dream that was thwarted by a careers advisor in Ashford Grammar School. Still, he went on to earn his pilot’s license in 1980 and established his charter flight company Numanair in 1981, which he dissolved in 2013 when he emigrated to the US. To the fans who know him best, Gary’s fascination with flying fits in naturally with the almost other-worldly, scientific sounds he creates – and his detached, ultra-icy, android/humanoid stage show persona. Might he have an interest in space travel?
“Very much so,” he says. “But more the Star Trek version than the Jeff Bezos plan! No disrespect intended to the various ‘commercial seats into space’ projects that are underway at the moment, but if it doesn’t go at warp speed it doesn’t feel quite like the space travel I was hoping for!”
But if Gary’s daydream ever did turn into reality, how would he describe himself to an alien? “I’m a fairly quiet person who turns noises into music and adds a tune and some words to it for people to listen to and hopefully enjoy,” he muses. “I turn a lack of confidence into a driving force to aim for things I have no right even dreaming of.”
But Gary of all people should know that dreams can be realistic ambitions: he has every right to be the influential hero that he is today.
Gary Numan is performing at Bristol Beacon on Sunday 16 November, 7pm. For more information, visit bristolbeacon.org
garynuman.com
