Strike Sparks Anywhere’s Keith Haworth talks to the Godfather of synthesized music Gary Numan.
SSA. Hello Gary, the past few years have seen a critical renaissance for you. Whereas before you were I believe unjustly vilified somewhat in the music press, now it seems as if you have once again been universally embraced not only by critics from publications as diverse as Uncut, Clash, Mojo and Artrocker, but many artists from Primal Scream to Prince (who has described you as a “Genius”) to name but two, along with a whole new fan base, many of whom were not even born when you were first troubling the pop charts. Why do you think this is happening now?
GN. I think it’s becoming far more noticeable now but my ‘renaissance’ started back in the mid 90′s. A double album called Random, which consisted of cover versions by some pretty cool people, was released and that seemed to start a slow burning re-evaluation by the media. Then, more and more people started to do cover versions of my songs, samples were being used everywhere, bands like Basement Jaxx and the Sugababes had massive hits using my songs, or bits of them, people started to name check me as being influential, bands started to ask me to collaborate with them or remix their stuff and it all helped to generate a new interest in me and what I was doing, as well as what I had done before obviously. Throughout all that period of increasing interest from the media and the public my own music got heavier and heavier and it was noticed frequently that I was one of the very few that kept well away from the nostalgia route. This seemed to help my credibility enormously. My own albums have had mainly very positive reviews over the last 12 – 15 years so the career has just been slowly building up to a good level again. It’s something I’m enjoying very much as I thought my career was dead and buried in the early 90′s. It’s almost impossible to believe that things have changed so much.
SSA. Whereas most artists arguably seem to have a finite shelf-life you have been able to sustain your career for several decades. You have also previously spoken about the low points of your career, whereby you have said that you lost a lot of your confidence. So what was it that helped you get it back again?
GN. I’ve never been the sort of person that brims with confidence to be honest but it’s true to say that I’ve been through periods where it was absolutely destroyed. But I love making music more than anything, certainly more than being ‘famous’, so when things are going badly you just put your head down and get on with it. Confidence is such a fragile, brittle thing. It comes and goes on a daily basis for me, especially when I’m working on new songs in the studio. I’m almost bipolar in those situations. I am driven to do this I guess, more than it comes naturally to me. I do it despite it going against my personality traits in many ways. But I’ve got used to it over the years, worked out all kinds of ways to deal with it, but I still have a small amount of envy when I watch those people who were simply born to do it. The ease at which they become the centre of attraction. I’m not good at that.
SSA. Last year you revisited The Pleasure Principle album and I had the pleasure of seeing you in action in LA, which was one of the best shows I have ever seen to be honest. Not only in terms of the over all sound quality, but I actually believed that you surpassed the recorded version of the album and I was blown away by how good your band were. You finished the show by suggesting that you were considering a move stateside. Has this happened yet? And if so what would be your motivation for such a move?
GN. It hasn’t happened yet but we are going ahead with our plans to try and leave the UK and move to Los Angeles. Obviously the biggest hurdle is getting a yes decision from the U.S. Immigration Department. To that end we are using an immigration lawyer who is guiding us through the process. The motivation comes from a genuine feeling that my children would have a better life there and more opportunity as they grow. For me it’s a similar story in fact as I believe that my own future has a greater variety of opportunities there than here in the UK. The weather is obviously better as well which after yet another shit British summer is quite appealing. For me though, it’s about planning for the future, being in the best place for the career to evolve into new areas.
SSA. You now seem to be able to play your older material and blend it effortlessly with your newer, heavier, arguably more aggressive sound, pleasing both new and old fans alike.
GN. I’m not a big fan of mixing too much older stuff in with the new but I’m getting better at finding a balance that seems to please most fans, and keeps me interested of course. The earlier songs are much easier to rework so that they sound as though they belong with the new stuff. The middle years period of my career is much more difficult as the instrumentation that I used in those years is quite different to what I’ve been using for the last 15 years or so. Plus, I’m a lot less keen on the music I made in those middle years so I have no real desire to bring that stuff into the set.
SSA. Do you see this as tying in with your earlier Tubeway Army material? I say this, as you have taken to playing tracks like Bombers in the set again, which has the same visceral punch that a lot of the newer songs to my ears also seem to project.
GN. Yes, we have started to bring in a few things from that very early Tubeway Army album. Some of it works quite well, some of it not so good. Fans seem to really enjoy it though. I will always keep the older material to about one third of the set though. Like any new act I’m most passionate and excited about what I’m writing now, and that’s what I want to focus on when I play live. Adding some of the better older songs is great but it will always be the newer songs that excite me the most.
SSA. You are fearless in pushing not only your own limits artistically, but also you seem very unafraid of experimentation and seeing your vision through to the end both, in terms of music but also artistic direction. I am thinking specifically about the way in which you still take great care in putting on a stunning stage show. How easy is it to oversee such a holistic approach?
GN. It seems easy to me. I have a real love for the visual side of what we do and my big regret is that I’m not in a stronger position career wise to really indulge my wilder dreams and ambitions with that. I often think of how a song could be presented live when I’m writing it. Even down to changing certain lyrics if I think the song could be lit in a more effective way and so presented better. We have some cool ideas for the future but we need to build up to a bigger level to see some of the more ambitious ideas realised.
SSA. Dead Son Rising has been quite rightly acclaimed as being one of your finest recorded moments, not only in terms of your song-writing prowess, but also in terms of your production.
GN. It’s important to remember that Dead Son Rising is very much a collaboration album between me and Ade Fenton and much of the credit for the way it sounds belongs to Ade. I think he did a fantastic job on the album in more ways than one. The reviews have been, in the main, extremely positive and we will do our best to build on that with the next album ‘Splinter’ which we will have ready by May and released late summer 2012. DSR has given us a lot to live up to but I’m very hopeful that ‘Splinter’ will be the best album I’ve ever made.
SSA. You have also devised very different ways of marketing and formatting the new album. Why have you done this and do you think that it ostracises some fans that are unable to afford such a deluxe package?
GN. Not at all. We made it clear from the very beginning that if people just wanted the audio, without all the fancy packaging and DVD extras, then they could buy that standard version. We have made three different versions available to try and cater for fans with a wide variety of enthusiasm and interest. Some people prefer vinyl, some don’t like it at all, some like extra remixes, some just want the basic album and nothing else. The best I can do for fans is to offer choice and let people decide themselves what they want, based either on interest, desire or affordability. I cannot help people with their finances but I can make sure a version of my album is available cheaply. The Standard version of DSR is the cheapest album I’ve ever released. The Super Deluxe version of DSR is the most expensive.
SSA. You have been refreshing honest in terms of your career retrospectively frequently talking about what you perceive to be your artistic failures and so I was wondering if you could talk a little about some of the high points?
GN. For me the high points come at the start of the career and then the current period. I liked the early albums, Replicas in particular, as I thought I was doing some interesting things with synths and merging them with conventional instruments. Are ‘Friends’ Electric? came from that album and that song started everything for me. Cars came from the next album, The Pleasure Principle, and has become pretty well known globally. More recently the albums have become much heavier, more anthemic and I’m very proud of them, especially Pure, Jagged and Dead Son Rising. But they are clearly not pop music and so I’m trying to push forward from a creative point of view, not a commercial one.
SSA. I also heard that you may be embarking on a spoken-word project. If so, what is it about the medium of spoken-word that attracted you and why not use the words in lyrical form instead?
GN. I narrated a short film called Odokuro recently for Voltaire which was good fun but I have no plans to get into spoken word any deeper than that.
SSA. Do you have any future projects in the pipeline?
GN. Nothing concrete outside of music although I continue to put ideas together for what I hope to be my first novel. Writing books is something I have dreamed of doing in my later years but I really don’t know if I would be any good at it. Writing has always been a hobby and something that I’ve used many times in the past to feed ideas into my lyrics. I would love to take it further but I always seem to have so many other things going on.
