Gary Numan
Gary Anthony James Webb (born 8 March 1958), known professionally as Gary Numan, is an English musician. He entered the music industry as frontman of the new wave band Tubeway Army. After releasing two studio albums with the band, he released his debut solo studio album The Pleasure Principle in 1979, topping the UK Albums Chart. His commercial popularity peaked in the late 1970s and early 1980s with hits including "Are 'Friends' Electric?" and "Cars" (both of which reached number one on the UK Singles Chart). Numan maintains a cult following. He has sold over 10 million records.
This article is about the musician. For the rabbi with a similar name, see M. Gary Neuman.
Gary Numan
Gary Anthony James Webb
London, England
- Musician
- singer
- songwriter
- record producer
- Vocals
- guitar
- keyboards
- synthesizer
1977–present
- Atco
- Beggars Banquet
- Numa
- NBR
- Illegal
- I.R.S.
- Eagle
- Machine Music Ltd.
- Jagged Halo
- Cooking Vinyl
- Metropolis
- Cleopatra
- Mortal
- BMG
Numan is regarded as a pioneer of electronic music. He developed a signature sound consisting of heavy synthesiser hooks fed through guitar effects pedals, and is also known for his distinctive voice and androgynous "android" persona. In 2017, he received an Ivor Novello Award, the Inspiration Award, from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers, and Authors.
Early life[edit]
Gary Anthony James Webb[11][12] was born on 8 March 1958 in Hammersmith, London.[13] His father was a British Airways bus driver based at Heathrow Airport.[14] He was seven when his family adopted his cousin (father's nephew) John,[15] who would become a musician and play in Numan's backing band. He was educated at Town Farm Junior School in Stanwell; Ashford County Grammar School; and Slough Grammar School,[16] followed by Brooklands Technical College in Weybridge, Surrey.[17] He joined the Air Training Corps as a teenager and briefly held various jobs including forklift truck driver, air conditioning ventilator fitter, and accounts clerk.[18]
When Numan was 15, his father bought him a Gibson Les Paul, which became his most treasured possession.[19] He briefly played in various bands and looked through advertisements in Melody Maker for bands to join. He claims to have unsuccessfully auditioned as guitarist for the then-unknown band the Jam[20] before joining Mean Street and the Lasers, where he met Paul Gardiner.[21] The latter band would soon become Tubeway Army, with his uncle Jess Lidyard on drums and Gardiner on bass. The band signed a recording contract with Beggars Banquet Records.[22] His initial pseudonym was Valerian, probably in reference to the hero in French science fiction comic series Valérian and Laureline.[23] He later picked the surname Numan from an advertisement in the Yellow pages for a plumber whose surname was Neumann.[24]
Music career[edit]
1977–1979: Tubeway Army and The Pleasure Principle[edit]
Numan came to prominence in the 1970s as lead vocalist, songwriter, and record producer for Tubeway Army. After adopting a punk rock-style they signed a recording contract with Beggars Banquet Records and released their debut single "That's Too Bad" in February 1978. It was followed by the recording of an album's worth of demo tapes in March 1978 (released in 1984 as The Plan),[25][22] and a second single, "Bombers", which like the first single did not chart.[26] The two singles were released again as a gatefold doublepack in 1979, and in 1983 a re-release of "That's Too Bad" reached No. 97 on the UK Singles Chart.[27]
Tubeway Army's self-titled, new wave-oriented debut studio album, released in November 1978, sold out its limited run and introduced Numan's fascination with dystopian science fiction and synthesisers.[28] During the recording of the album Numan found a Moog synthesizer left behind in the studio and the transition towards an electronic sound began.[29] Though the band's third single, the dark-themed and slow-paced "Down in the Park" (1979), did not appear on the charts, it became one of Numan's most enduring and oft-covered songs. It was featured with other contemporary hits on the soundtrack for the American drama film Times Square (1980),[30] and a live version of the song appeared in the British concert film Urgh! A Music War (1982).[31] Following exposure in a television advertisement for Lee Cooper jeans with the jingle "Don't Be a Dummy",[28] Tubeway Army released the single "Are 'Friends' Electric?" in May 1979.[32] After a modest start at the lower reaches of the UK Singles Chart at No. 71, it steadily climbed to No. 1 at the end of June and remained on that position for four consecutive weeks. In July its parent studio album Replicas also reached No. 1 on the albums chart.[33]
At this point Numan was recording his next studio album with a new backing band.[34] At the peak of success, Numan opted to premiere four songs in a John Peel session in June 1979 rather than promoting the current album and the Tubeway Army group name was dropped.[34]
In September "Cars" reached No. 1 in the UK.[35] The single found success in North American charts where "Cars" spent 2 weeks at No. 1 on the Canadian RPM charts,[36][37] and reached No. 9 in the US in 1980.[38] "Cars" and the 1979 studio album The Pleasure Principle were both released under Numan's own stage name. The album reached No. 1 in the UK,[39] and a sell-out tour (The Touring Principle) followed; the concert video it spawned is often cited as the first full-length commercial music video release.[40] The Pleasure Principle was a rock album with no guitars; instead, Numan used synthesisers connected to effects units to achieve a distorted, phased, metallic tone. A second single from the album, "Complex", made it to No. 6 on the UK Singles Chart.[41]
Aviation career[edit]
Numan joined the Air Training Corps as a teenager, when he wanted to be either a pilot or a pop star. In 1978, he started learning to fly at Blackbushe Airport, but the success of his music career in 1979 meant that obtaining his pilot's licence was delayed until 17 December 1980.[127][128] The following day; 18 December 1980, Numan bought his first aeroplane for £12,000; a Cessna 182 Skylane. On 1 July 1981, Numan founded Numanair, a small charter flight company operating from Blackbushe, and acquired a Cessna 210 Centurion (registered G-OILS) and a Piper PA-31 Navajo (registered G-NMAN). He also indulged his passion for motor racing in 1981 by sponsoring Mike Mackonochie who drove a Van Diemen RF81 in Numanair livery in the Formula Ford 1600 class.[128]
In November and December 1981, Numan successfully flew around the world in his Piper PA-31 Navajo with co-pilot Bob Thompson on their second attempt. The first attempt, in the Cessna 210 Centurion, had ended in India with Numan and Thompson being arrested on suspicion of smuggling and spying.[129] This aircraft was written off on 29 January 1982 when it ran out of fuel near Southampton and made a forced landing while Numan was flying on it as a passenger.[130][131]
In 1984, Numan bought a Harvard T-6 trainer aircraft registered G-AZSC and had the aircraft painted to resemble a Japanese "Zero" fighter. He also gained a display pilot's licence and flew the machine on the UK air display circuit. He and friend Norman Lees, who also owned a Harvard, formed the Radial Pair, performing synchronised aerobatics from the 1992 air display season. Later they teamed up with other Harvard owners to fly up to five aircraft as the Harvard Formation Team[132] with Numan choreographing their aerobatic routines.[133]
Numan held licences for piston and turbine helicopters and had a fixed wing multi engined rating. He was an aerobatic flying instructor and was appointed by the Civil Aviation Authority as an air display pilot evaluator.[134] Then in 2005, after several of his friends and colleagues were killed in unrelated flying accidents, he gave up flying. In an interview in 2009 he said "I loved going to air shows, you'd bond really tightly with your team mates – it's an extreme thing to be doing, and you trust your life to them. And then it ended. I'd turn up and not know anyone. It got depressing. I'd sit down in the pilot's tent and there'd be all these people I'd not recognise. You'd look forward to someone turning up to have a chat with them, and they'd be dead."[135]
Numanair continued operating but after 31 years, with Numan and his family emigrating to the US, it was dissolved on 18 June 2013.[132]
Artistry and image[edit]
In the late 1970s, Numan began developing his style. According to Numan, this was an unintentional result of acne; before an appearance on Top of the Pops, "I had spots everywhere, so they slapped about half an inch of white make-up on me before I'd even walked in the door. And my eyes were like pissholes in the snow, so they put black on there. My so-called image fell into place an hour before going on the show."[56] His "wooden" stage presence was, in his words, a result of "incredible self-consciousness" and "incompetence – I didn't know to move on stage". He became enamoured by the idea of "being cold about everything, not letting emotions get to you, or presenting a front of not feeling".[56]
A prolific songwriter, Numan has written about 400 songs.[136] His starting point is usually a piano to work out melodies and chord structures. Most of the songs on his early albums were written on a piano his parents had bought him: later in his career he has used a piano preset on the computer as a starting point.[137] However, his biggest hit "Cars" was unconventionally written on a bass guitar.[136]
Numan's recognisable vocals have become one of his trademarks, along with his androgynous "android" stage persona.[56]
Personal life[edit]
In 1997, Numan married Gemma O'Neill, a member of his fan club from Sidcup, south-east London.[169][170] They have three daughters.[171] His daughter Persia, at the age of 11, contributed vocals to Numan's 2017 song "My Name Is Ruin" and appeared in its music video.[172] Numan and his family lived in Essex,[173] then Heathfield and Waldron in East Sussex,[174] and in October 2012 moved to Santa Monica, California.[175][176]
At age 15, after a series of outbursts in which he would "smash things up, scream and shout, get in people's faces and break stuff", Numan was prescribed antidepressants and anxiolytics.[56] In the 1990s, his wife suggested he had Asperger syndrome; after reading about the syndrome and taking a series of online tests, he agreed, though he has never been officially diagnosed.[177] Conversely, he said in an April 2018 interview with The Guardian that he had been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome at the age of 14.[178] In a 2001 interview, he said, "Polite conversation has never been one of my strong points. Just recently I actually found out that I'd got a mild form of Asperger's syndrome which basically means I have trouble interacting with people. For years, I couldn't understand why people thought I was arrogant, but now it all makes more sense."[179]
Numan published his autobiography, Praying to the Aliens, in 1997 (updated in 1998), in collaboration with Steve Malins, who also wrote the liner notes for most of the CD reissues of Numan's albums in the late 1990s, as well as executive producing the Hybrid album in 2003.[60] An updated autobiography, (R)evolution: The Autobiography, was published on 22 October 2020 and brings his career up to date from the earlier Praying to the Aliens.[20]
Numan is an atheist.[180]
He was an outspoken supporter of the Conservative Party and Margaret Thatcher after her election as Prime Minister.[181][182] He later expressed regret for giving his public support, calling it "a noose around my neck".[183] He has previously said that he considers himself neither left- nor right-wing and that he did not support Tony Blair or David Cameron.[182] He also said, "I'm not socialist, I know that. I don't believe in sharing my money."[181] Numan is not overly politically engaged and distances himself from political commentary.[181]