FT273

Ever since 'Are 'Friends' Electric?' reached the top of the charts in 1979, Gary Numan has ben hailed as a pioneer of electronic music whose obliquely dystopian lyrics and weirdly alien stage persona announced a new personality in British pop. So is he really from outer space?


FT:  On your first two single releases with Tubeway Army – before you were known as Gary Numan – you used the pseudonym 'Valerian' and drummer Jess Lidyard was 'Rael'. Could you tell us more about this choice of names, or the  –'spaceman' image you created?

Gary Numan:  I used to drive by a building in West London that had ‘Valerian’ written on it and I thought it had a nice ring to it. I didn't realise it was a flowering herb until later. That name and the 'spaceman' image are just two of the many embarrassing things that come back to haunt me from time to time. I was, and still am, very interested in stories about people that have been, or claim to have been, abducted by aliens. I'm not the sci-fi fan that I used to be, but I still find all that stuff fascinating.



FT:  You were a big Philip K Dick fan in your youth though, weren’t you? What in his work particularly inspired you?

GN:  I couldn't put my finger on any particular part of his writing as being more inspiring than another – it was his work overall. He was one of several people that I was into as a teenager – Asimov was another; Ballard and William Burroughs. Burroughs was probably the most important to me, actually.

FT:  

Did you follow Dick’s later writings, such as Valis, and in which his work and his personal life seemed to merge in all sorts of bizarre ways?

GN:  Not really. I lost interest in sci-fi soon after I started to have some success with my music. I'm not sure why. I became obsessed with reading biographies and autobiographies about people who had done very special things. I think I felt embarrassed by fans thinking of me as some sort of hero, and so reading about genuine heroes kept me grounded.

FT:  I read that Replicas – the album which features ‘Are 'Friends' Electric?’ – was originally a book idea before it became a musical one. What was this original concept, and how did it evolve from one medium to another?

GN:  The Replicas album was originally a series of short stories that revolved around what I thought London might become in the near future. It was all very sci-fi and unlikely but I enjoyed writing it. When I started to make the album I just adapted the storylines into lyrics, and so ended up with a vaguely themed album.

FT:  Is it true that the original concept for the Telekon album involved someone with telekinetic powers? What was the idea, and where did it come from?

GN:  It's possible, but I don't remember for sure. I do remember that album became something of an outpouring for my feelings of shock and disillusionment with the fame situation I had recently found myself in. It was nothing like I expected and I handled it quite badly. Much of that confusion, and my very mixed feelings, are clear to see in the lyrics on Telekon.

FT:  I wonder if the idea of telekenisis might not have appealed to you at this point in your career because it's about having power over things, and Telekon was released at a time when, paradoxically, you seemed to lose a little control over your career and the media because of how successful you had become...

GN:  
It's certainly true that I felt my life had got out of control at that time and it's also true that I was looking at ways of getting that control back. One of the reasons I announced my so-called 'retirement' from live performance at that time, albeit it was a somewhat heavy-handed and clumsy attempt, was to try and calm things down and to regain some control over what had been quite a mad period.



FT:  You worked with Dick Morrissey, famous for playing sax on the Blade Runner soundtrack. Being such a fan of the film, and of Dick’ s work, have you ever been interested in doing any soundtrack work yourself? Certainly some of the material on albums like Dance veers more towards an ambient sound. What kind of film would you ideally like to work on?

GN:  I’ve always harboured the desire to work on film soundtracks and, strangely enough, I have two projects on the table at the moment. In the distant past I worked on a low-budget horror film called The Unborn with Mike Smith, but that's been about it. I'm up for pretty much most film genres – although I think historical costume drama might not be the most suitable for my kind of music.



FT:  What kind of cinema do you enjoy?

GN:  I don't like anything that makes me sad or depressed. Apart from that, I'm up for pretty much all kinds of film. Recent favourites include Inception, Paranormal Activity 2, Rec 2 and Avatar.



FT:  You’ve sometimes talked about having Asperger’s and how it's reflected in your work. In retrospect, do you think this might be a reason why the whole 'alien/ated' image of your original persona was so believable, even if the press sometimes found it contrived? Did it actually reflect, whether consciously or subconsciously, that part of your personality or experience?

GN:  I think Asperger’s made a major contribution to that early persona and the lyrics I was writing then. In fact, I think it continues to have a big effect on what I do. I have always felt 'outside' – even if I couldn't tell you what I feel outside of – and so prone to lifelong feelings of unease and awkwardness.

FT:  How does your Asperger’s affect your creative work? Some people have argued that autism is linked to synaesthesia. Have you ever experienced anything that would make you think you might be synaesthetic?

GN:  No. All it means to me is that I sometimes annoy people and have no idea why; that I have a disturbing ability to detach emotion; that I have a ridiculous degree of focus, and that I have obsessive tendencies. Three of those four things are actually quite useful when it comes to a career in music, so I don’t see Asperger’s as a handicap in any way at all, far from it. I see it, overall, as a positive advantage. The one other thing it means to me is a crippling inability to interact socially with other human beings and that can be, and usually is, a real pain.



FT:  There are many documented cases of pilots reporting sightings of UFOs, or at least things they couldn't explain. You were once a very active pilot... in all your years of flying, did you ever see anything that, whether you're sceptical or not about such things, remains hard to explain?



GN:  Nothing at all, I'm sad to say. I wish I had. The most alarming thing that happened to me in the air was when I had bits fall off an aeroplane I was flying upside down, which certainly came as a surprise. I've also had them catch fire, break down, and scare the shit out of me on more than one occasion, but nothing of an alien or supernatural nature.

I did see something that I have never been able to explain when I was driving home from the studio one night – a large light in the shape of an upside down pyramid focused at a point on the road near me. I also saw a ghost once, so I am completely open to the existence of such things, both alien and supernatural.



FT:  Was this the ghost you saw on the tube at Piccadilly Circus? Could you tell us about this? 



GN:  I was with a friend of mine, on our way to buy a guitar in Wardour Street. We used to sit in an end carriage, as they were a little less crowded most of the time. We got off the train at Piccadilly Circus and, chatting to each other about the band we were going to put together, we followed, without paying too much attention, the stream of passengers that had got off the train ahead of us. Directly in front of us was an older man wearing a hat and a long grey coat, and further in front of him was a group of girls, and so on. A few people were behind us, but not many. As we reached the top of one of the escalators we followed the man in front around a corner to the left, walked a few more steps, and then came up against a wall. It looked as if the corridor we were in had been sealed countless years before. No sign of the man. We both checked with each other that we had been following the man and then realised that all the other passengers had gone. We ran as fast as we could out of the station. The man we saw has played a big part in my career ever since. He is drawn leaning on a wall on the cover of my Replicas album, and I am dressed as him on the cover of Dance and I, Assassin album covers. He’s also mentioned in many songs, including 'Are ‘Friends’ Electric?'.



FT:  You've said in the past that ‘Cars’ was autobiographical, and referred to a frightening incident when you were attacked and managed to lock the doors of your car to escape. Do any other lyrics you've written refer to strange or disturbing things that have happened to you?

GN:  Most of my stuff relates to things that have happened to me, or people close to me. Accidents, betrayals, things to be ashamed of, ghosts – it's all in there somewhere. I've had well over 300 songs released and written many more than that, so it all blurs a little over time.



FT:  You are on record as being an atheist... does that rule out belief in other kinds of strange phenomena for you?

GN:  I believe in pretty much everything apart from God. I believe aliens are real, demons, possession, poltergeists, all of that. I believe in ghosts but I do not believe in Heaven; to me, a ghost is just one of nature’s tragic mistakes. They shouldn't be there, but they are. It does indicate some kind of life after death, but that has nothing to do with a Heaven. If you believe in one God creating everything then I don't understand why the idea of many Gods is so laughable. None of the God ideas make any sense to me but one God is perhaps the most ridiculous of all.

FT: Your latest albums benefit from a more industrial, layered sound, and could be described as musically less cold and ‘alienating’ than the early records you became famous for. What about the subjects and themes you sing about now...  If your earlier inspiration came from a feeling of  ‘alienation’, where do you now look for inspiration and ideas?

GN:  I've gone on about my lack of belief quite a bit on recent albums, plus I explored many of the seedier memories from my past with the Jagged album. I still think a slight feeling of not really belonging, or of not being truly understood, the Asperger’s angle I guess, is still a strong force in what I'm doing today. The new album, Splinter, will be dark, heavy, anthemic and aggressive. If it comes out the way I intend it to it will be something of a sonic onslaught. Either that or a big bag of poo.

Gary Numan's official website: www.numan.co.uk

Gary Numan will be playing live at the Manchester Academy on 1 April. And at The Troxy, London on 2 April, along with John Foxx. For more info and to purchase tickets visit:

www.backtothephuture.net