"Here in my car, I feel safest of all, I can lock all my doors, it's the only way to live in Cars..." Think of Gary Numan, and you'll think of this song. Although "Cars" was the only Top Ten song Numan scored in America, back home in England he had already won fame and accolades with numerous Top Ten hits, and was called, by many, "The Godfather of Electronic Pop."
Today, top selling acts such as Beck, Weezer, Smashing Pumpkins, Shampoo, Marilyn Manson and the Foo Fighters are all paying homage to Numan's genius by covering his songs live and on record. The Foo Fighters' remake of Numan's classic "Down by the Park" appeared recently on an X-Files album.
Numan's latest, Exile, is a return to the electronic chill of his earlier work, and is already receiving praise in the British press, who are calling it his best work to date. 1998 will prove to be the busiest year yet for Numan. In addition to the release of Exile, he is set to release a remix album entitled The Mix. He is also slated to tour the U.S. in March '98 in support of Exile, and act in his first movie role as a drug dealer in the British film Kinsmen. In addition, he is also preparing for the release of his autobiography due out in bookstores at the end of October.
Rewind: Numan's (real name Gary Webb) story begins as the '70s end, when a 20-year old ex-punk ocker with the band Meanstreet from West London saw the possibility of a synthesized future. In 1978 Beggars Banquet released Gary Numan's Tubeway Army's self-titled debut, which mixed electronics and post-punk guitar with solid no-frills drumming by Numan's uncle, Jess Liddyard. He immediately created a new sounda fresh, garage-synth styleand by the time the album was released, Numan was back in the studio.
Replicas, the follow up to Tube way Army, was recorded in three days at Gooseberry Studios in London. Numan utilized a stark, synthetic sound for most of the tracks. The album's first single, "Down In The Park," proclaimed this radical change of direction, but no one believed that the alienated, rhythmical drone of the follow-up, "Are 'Friends' Electric?," would elbow its way up to the Number One slot. Within weeks, Numan was posing on Top Of The Pops (England's version of American Bandstand for the alternative set) in harsh white light, bringing a touch of showbiz camp to the clipped, motorized repetitiveness of the song.
When "Cars" and The Pleasure Principle album both topped the UK charts in autumn of '79,
Numan put together a complete package of song, video and aloof stage image which later acted
as a catalyst for a new wave of suburban no-hopers who broke through a year or two later.
These new wave and synth-pop bands influenced by Numan included Human League, Depeche
Mode and OMD, all who benefited from his success.
Over the next two years Numan scored more hits in the UK with "We Are Glass" and "I Die You Die," as well as a third successive Number One album, Telekon, which featured an increasingly opulent sound built out of synths, piano, strings and guitar. Although these albums achieved chart recognition and praise from the press, Gary Numan took a dramatic turn, announcing his intention to give up live performances. He made a melodramatic exit with three lavish shows at Wembly Arena. These farewell shows effectively ended his reign as a multimillion-selling pop star, and he took time out to enjoy the rags-to riches trappings of moneyFerraris, sponsored racing cars, and, of course, his own aircraft.
On Dance, his 1981 album, he explored sparser, more ambient textures. However, all his idealism about creating a fresh sound album by album failed to impress the British press, who weren't ready to encourage this hyper-creativity. His last two albums for Beggars Banquet, Assassin ('82) and Warriors ('83), adopted fluid funk styles which garnered more chart success with "We Take Mystery," "Music For Chameleons" and "Warriors."
Although most casual observers knew little about Numan's new releases, they were certainly aware of his activities away from the pop scene, in particular, his adventures as a pilot. A much publicized round-the-world solo flight in his own plane was initially aborted when he was arrested in India on suspicion of spying. Although he eventually achieved his ambitions, the newspapers had lost interest, and his return was hardly acknowledged. He did, however, make the news after he made an emergency landing on a road due to engine failure.
For the next decade, Numan released a new album on his own label every year, and toured every autumn. Musically, these albums combined bright pop with unique songwriting, vocal and production techniques. Titles included Berserker, The Fury, Strange Charm, Automatic with Bill Sharpe from Shakatak, Metal Rhythm and Outland, the latter released through IRS Records. Although they continued to chart in the UK just outside the Top 20, they had more affinity with the glam-slamming funk of Prince than with the British music scene.
When 1992's Machine and Soul album followed the usual pattern and stalled at 42 on the UK charts, Numan believed he'd reached an all-time low. Yet, just three years later, for the first time in over a decade, the musical climate progressively changed in his favor. This cultural backup was signaled by his best album in years, 1994's Sacrifice. At the same time, covers by the aforementioned acts created a resurgence of interest in his songs. In 1995, Caning Premier Lager was advertised with "Cars" as its musical backdrop, kicking off a chart revival which pushed the song back into the Top 20. A greatest hits compilation also peaked at 21 in Britian in the spring of 1996 which also found Numan in support of Pulp at V96. With the release of Exile, and the remix album, Mix, as well as his forthcoming autobigraphy and acting projects, Numan was starting off 1998 with a bang.
Things went well for the godfather of electronica and the years followed with several re-releases of his old stuff as well as the release of Pure, Scarred(Live) andhis recent effort, Hybrid.
"I was bankrupt in 1991," Numan says from his English countryside home on the eve of the release of Hybrid (Artful, 2003), a double CD of remixed and new material. "Only by begging and promising to pay someone who was going to take me to court did I survive. I owed a million dollars. I was selling nothing, and I was out of favor. It was absolutely grim. I never had a belief that my music had something special to say; I just loved making it. What else could I do?"
Even as his career evaporated, Numan made music on Moog Minimoog and Polymoog and Roland SH-2000 synths. His late-'80s albums were cut out almost as soon as they were issued, but Numan persisted. His '90s albums Human (Numa, 1995), Sacrifice (Numa, 1994) and Black Heart (Culture Press, 1998) found a new audience with club kids who respected Numan's pioneering sound and never-say-die attitude. As quickly as he hit bankruptcy and fell from grace, the newly hair-implanted Numan was back in black and cozying up to Moby and Trent Reznor.
"I abandoned all ideas of chart success," Numan says. "That is when this huge weight lifted. My music became much heavier and darker. Sacrifice got good reviews, and I started selling out gigs. I picked up a lot of respect for not doing the nostalgia thing. I did something I was told was suicide, and I was much better off than when I was on a major label and failing. I figured I was finished anyway, so I had nothing to lose. I was poor and in trouble. But by giving up, my career was reinvigorated."
Hybrid is a droning, industrial rock noisefest that is as black-hearted and despondent as anything by Nine Inch Nails, and it also sports a new orchestral version of "Cars" that almost betters the original. Old Numan tracks are remixed by Flood, Alan Moulder, Curve and Rico, and his newer tracks show the old man-machine can still deliver the goods.
Although Numan writes all of his music on an aged upright piano, slowly adding effects, synth sounds and big beats, he also works with modern gear: Emagic Logic Audio Platinum and Digidesign Pro Tools on an Apple Mac G4 with two iZ Technology RADAR 24 digital recorders and a Mackie d8b desk. His synths are both soft and hard: Korg Wavestation, Alesis QuadraSynth, Korg M1, Roland D50 LA, GEM S2 Turbo and a Korg electric piano. Yet in a surprising twist, Numan is wary of technology.
"Technology can't come up with a tune that will touch people and create memories that still mean something," he says. "You can go to your laptop and make something very professional with no hiss, no clicks, but does it still sound great after 12 listens? Are you listening to production or to the tune itself? Production becomes dated very quickly. You have to start with a song and cautiously add technology to it.
"I want everything to be as rhythmic and huge-sounding as possible. I will make beats from hitting chairs with a metal ruler or dragging concrete or spinning wheels on cars and then hitting reverse. I will hit things with hammers: wood, trees, anything that has a big attack to it. You can always reverse it and spin it around, but it's hard to create attack with sound that doesn't have it originally. Hitting and scraping things is a good way to do it."
After failure, resurrection and rebirth, Numan stays true to himself by using his imagination and being sensitive to atmosphere. "In a lot of what I do, there is a layer of atmosphere running through it," he says. "I have been around a long time, and I have a good memory. But I don't have a plan; I just mess around for ages. It is trial and error. I am not a skilled manipulator of sound. I just twiddle."
Now the end of the year is coming and he already has plans for the release of his latest effort, Jagged Halo. I hope this one dives deeper than ever before and goes beyond the car doors of ones mind.
