WHITE BOY AND HERO
Gary Numan's Triumphant Return
 This article, written by RazorBurn's Rik Millhouse, originally appeared in Interface Magazine, for which Millhouse served as Managing Editor and Marketing/Promotions manager until it's demise in 1999. 



"There's one line where (the song references) the true wise men on their way to Jesus. They're not doing that at all; they raped Mary," Gary Numan explains about his new album, Exile, which considers the possibility that the Bible, over the years, has been very badly misinterpreted and that God and the Devil may in fact be the same person. "There's a line about the angels pissing on the graves of children and things like that. And Jesus on a cross, standing on a hill, with girls dancing beside him because he doesn't care." 

"Exile supposes that maybe this might be the truth. This might be what it was all about to begin with. And we've turned it into this sort of good and bad, God is lovely and the Devil is bad type of thing because we understand that better and it's more comforting to us." 

Certainly, there are few images less comforting than the idea of some holy winged cherub relieving itself over the sacred ground of an interred infant, but Numan insists that Exile is not meant to shock the world, as much as it is to cause its civilizations to question perhaps the singular idea they hold most dear: religion. Talk about sacrilege, Exile appears to be Numan's express ticket to Hell; yet the artist is not swayed in his beliefs. 

"The premise of the album is basically: what if God and the Devil are the same thing? And what if Heaven and Hell are the same place, and it's only our perception of what is happening to us when we get there that makes it one or the other? Exile collects certain problems and understandings in what religion is all about and it re-interprets them based on the idea that God and the Devil are the same thing. It paints God as something very savage, very cruel and without conscience, without feeling." 

It might seem counterproductive for an artist attempting to make a bit of a comeback in his musical career to release an album that is sure to turn off, and possibly even offend, a large segment of his potential audience. Even Numan himself would have to acknowledge that his fans around the world are not altogether different from the typical person on the street who, although he may be a self-fulfilled agnostic or proclaimed atheist rather than a devout religious enthusiast, still has a tendency to steer clear of such aggressive unorthodox activism. 

Many non-believers may scoff at the stoicism and Pavlovian repertoire of organized religion, especially Catholicism, but few feel so compelled as to actually voice their opposition, if at all, in such a raucous manner. Fact is, even the more dedicated of Numan's followers could be expected to express their opposition to his latest offering, to deem Exile more maleficent than controversial. 

Numan, however, is hoping for a more cognizant, intelligent reaction from those who may feel threatened or repulsed by the concepts presented on the new album. 

"I would hope that they, if they're bothered at all, would take the opportunity to explain why I'm wrong," Numan requests, insisting that he's not simply ranting and raving on Exile, but attempting to offer an hypothesis contrary to the traditional school of thought on the identity and characteristics of God. Stressing that the album lacks the sort of banal profanity so many other bands resort to when confronting the subject of religion, Numan asserts that he made a conscious effort to construct the lyrics in a way that they would not only fit together well, but also express the subject matter intellectually and philosophically, not offensively. 

"It's not there to shock, I'm just saying 'What if?' What if there is a God? Because of the way the world is today, I can't believe in the goodness of God to man. How do I reconcile all of these things that make me tend to think that there isn't one, if there is in fact one? It stems from that thinking really. I'm not trying to offend anyone. If having that kind of faith makes them happy or gives them something that was missing in their lives without it, then I'd be the last one to want to take that away from them." 

Numan backs off a bit by admitting that the new album is not necessarily a true representation of his personal convictions, stating that while he does acknowledge the existence of a myriad of paranormal abilities and "alternate existences" --- he believes in ghosts, for example --- he does not accept the idea of an all-powerful super being. Numan purports that the new album is simply a fictional piece of work designed to beg an explanation for the apparent paradox that exists in all forms and denominations of organized religion: if God is good, why is there so much horror and misery in the world? 

Since the beginning, churchgoers have always been taught to accept these seemingly contradictory conflicts as a product of God's will. Doubters are told of the Lord's mysterious ways and asked to herald His commandments without challenge. But Numan, even as a child, has always had trouble reconciling these inconsistencies, refusing to trust in the hollow acquiescence of blind faith. 

"I remember when I first became aware of this whole God thing, as a kid. Right from day one there seemed to be all these contradictions that no one cold answer for me. And it was always there. I never never, from the moment I first heard the word "god," could fully understand how such a thing could be. I didn't believe it and I wanted people to prove it. I asked questions about it and no one could seem to answer them. They'd just say things like 'it's not ours to question why' or whatever. But I say it is ours to question why because we're the ones whoa are supposed to live our lives a certain way because of it." 

It was not only the inability to understand the dogma of the church that caused Numan to doubt, but also the character inconsistencies he witnessed in the congregation itself. Sunday's flock seemed to him to be a questionable assemblage, consistent of those who were the children of god whilst the Mass was being held, but less so during the week. This duplicity only further contributed to Numan's disbelief.  

"This thinking that you can't really be a good person unless you believe, well, excuse me but I believe that I've been a pretty good person and I don't believe at all," Numan offers further. "And just the hypocrisy of people who go into church and talk about understanding and forgiveness and then walk out and see a punk rocker on the street and say 'Look at the state of that...'" 

Although Numan has always had his doubts about the existence of God --- at age 13, he was the only student in his school excused from religious instruction, on the grounds that he didn't believe --- they've begun to weigh on him increasingly more heavily over the past decade. The catalyst for his renewed questioning was the passing of his best friend and bassist Paul Gardiner, who died of a heroin overdose in 1984. 

Numan took the news particularly hard. Having witnessed his friend's painful battle with, and ultimate loss to, drugs, Numan became outraged at Gardiner's funeral, where the priest predictably attempted to soothe the bereaved with parables of God's kindness and love. 

"If God so wanted to take Paul home, as they said, then why did he have to drag it out for over a year and make him go through all that pain?" Numan asks. 

So angered was Numan by the occurrence that it not only resulted in an increased appearance of sacrilegious sentiment in his recorded work (1994's Sacrifice is replete with religious imagery), but the event also spurred the artist to author a fiction novel. Yet to be completed, The Final Treachery of God centers on the idea of God as a malevolent super-being who creates life only as a diversion, as a plaything for his entertainment, to be destroyed once it no longer amuses him. 

Though to those who remember Numan simply as the voice behind the international new wave hit "Cars", the artist's outspokenness and dabbling as a writer may come as a surprise, the truth is that Numan's nature led to him being dubbed a renegade and recluse early on in his career. It wasn't just the dark apocalyptic electronics that captivated audiences for Numan's Tubeway Army, it was the musician's odd indescribable behavior as well. After all, we're talking about a man who, in addition to releasing over twenty albums in a twenty year span and scoring three successive number one albums, is also an experienced aerobatic pilot who's flown solo around the world; was arrested in India on suspicion of spying; was detained by English police and charged with carrying an offensive weapon anger lining up at a hamburger stand with a baseball bat in hand; sponsored race cars; is skilled automatic weaponry; and was chastised by the "liberal" British music industry for supporting ex-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher during the Falklands War. 

It seems hard to believe that this eccentric personality is the same Gary Numan who once was so shy that he needed to mask himself in face paint and mascara in order to appear on stage. Yet Numan professes to a childhood of awkward, and occasionally oppressive, timidity. 

Born Gary Webb (he lifted his professional surname from a plumber in the yellow pages named Neumann) in England on March 8, 1958, Numan found expression in the short stories he began writing at the age of four. Science fiction magazines and comics had an early influence on him as he dreamt of the freedom and discovery their otherworldly locales could provide one who didn't feel altogether at home in his present environments. As he grew older, Numan gravitated towards the futuristic and conventional compositions of such authors as William Burroughs, Philip K. Dick and J. G. Ballard. 

However, the draw of becoming a pop star had a firm hold on Numan and, by the time David Bowie released the acclaimed The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars album in 1972, the impressionable introverted youth was a confirmed fan. Then only fourteen, Numan was clearly enraptured by the freakish and outlandish glam rocker image, notably that of Bowie and T-Rex's Marc Bolan. Perhaps even more attractive for Numan was the propensity for these artists to create music that, in its innovation and originality, seemingly transcended what was considered to be normal pop music at the time. 

In 1977, while he was merely nineteen, Numan recruited his best friend (bassist Gardiner) and uncle, Jess Lidyard, to accommodate his dreams of becoming a pop star. 

With Numan on guitars and Lidyard on drums, the trio dubbed Tubeway Army began hashing out three-minute punk songs full of energy, youthful brashness and Numan's deadpan vocal delivery. The group signed to Beggars Banquet later that year and it was during a recording session for the band that Numan discovered his first Moog synthesizer. 

Immediately recognizing the keyboard's musical possibilities and drawn to its paradoxically cold yet appealing tones, Numan began incorporating the instrument into Tubeway Army's decidedly punk material. What emerged from his experimentation was a hybrid musical melange: electro-punk that, while influenced by the previous output of artists like Bowie, Kraftwerk and Roxy Music's Brian Eno, sounded refreshingly new. Numan instinctively realized that he was on to something special. 

When the band's self-titled debut hit the streets in 1978, punk had already begun its descent from popularity. Nonetheless, Numan found and important source of support in famed BBC Radio One jock John Peel, who praised the band and brought them in for a broadcast session in January of the following year.  

Not content with his early successes, Numan returned immediately to the studio to record the band's follow-up, Replicas. Concentrating more and more on the synthetic sound for which he would later become known, Numan could not have envisioned just how successful his cold, calculated doleful visions would become. While the album and its first single, "Down In The Park," seemed to draw as much criticism as praise from the press; the public immediately voiced their support, sending the follow-up, "Are Friends Electric?," straight to the number one slot. Weeks later, Numan made his first appearance on Top of the Pops, in complete costume, glorious melodrama in tow. 

Fans of this young performer may have first found themselves enamored with the artist's chilling musical prophecies, but it was Numan's ghostly apparition that fascinated them. Alternately, critics defamed Numan's appearance as pretentious and fake. In actuality, Numan relied on the eccentricities of makeup and costume as much for protection as theatre. While it is true that Numan has always been a showman at heart, live performances always unnerved him. Numan simply could not face an audience without something behind which he could hide, wile the popularity of his music obligated the artist to perform not only often, but also in front of sold-out arena-sized gatherings. 

It seems ironic that what originated as a shield would become Numan's trademark image. For each subsequent album, Numan would assume a different character motif, shifting from a pre-Star Trek: The Next Generation Data likeness to Bogart-styled mystique (the accompanying fedora was employed to cover the scars from a recent hair transplant) to holocaustic road warrior. And the crowds loved it. 

"I created these images not only for the stage, but also to sort of hid emy true identity," Numan recalls. "I've always valued the sort of theatrical aspect of being on stage and I think It's very important to offer the total live experience, but the mask is definitely something to hide behind. Right now, I look a bit like Hellraiser. I look like Pinhead but without all the pins." 

Just about the only dilemma that faced Numan at the time was an ongoing battle with the label to be recognized as a solo artist, though it was obvious that he essentially was the band. Numan recalls the power struggle that ensued: "Beggar's view was that we'd built up a small following --- and it was very small --- as a punk band and they wanted to keep the name Tubeway Army. I had my following and that's what they said I had to do. At the time I was a small artist and I had no clout with them at all." 

"But once 'Friends...' went to number one, I had the power to sort of decide my future and I went with the solo identity that I wanted. But essentially, I was a solo artist from the get go, from day one. I wrote all the music and lyrics and played everything except the drums and bass. I recorded everything and produced everything. I even designed the album covers and the single covers and everything myself." (Something Numan continues to do to this day.) 

The Pleasure Principle album followed in the fall of 1979, making the artist's thired full-length release, and first as a solo artist. By now, Numan had blazed enough of a path through the British music industry that the album's first single, "Cars," not only went straight to number one, but also became an international hit; breaking into the American Top 40 chart even as Pleasure Principle became England's number one album. In addition to being a phenomenal success for Numan, "Cars" proved to be beneficial for nearly every UK band with a synthesizer; the song's popularity softened the American market for the New Wave invasion of the early 80's, opening the door for such later synthpop stars as OMD, The Human League, Duran Duran, Soft Cell, Eurythmics and many others. 

Although Numan never intended to become such a trend-setting trailblazer, he's magnanimous towards those who rode his coattails to individual successes. And once Numan proved the electronic format to be a viable one, there were a lot of imitators. Yet, rather than view the newcomers as competition, Numan used his position of influence to dole out the spotlight to those he felt deserving. 

One such band to benefit from Numan's Midas touch was the equally synthy Ultravox, then led by the enigmatic John Foxx. Though the band had actually beaten Numan to the punch, so to speak, releasing their self-titled debut a year before Tubeway Army's, the band received little more than critical distaste from most circles. Like Numan, Ultravox also originally set a course for glam rock/punk crossover and Numan appreciated the similarities to his work. Launching a sort of one man campaign, Numan commended the band repeatedly in press interviews; affording Ultravox a higher degree of exposure than they had been able to garner in their own right. 

By 1980, however, Foxx had left the group to pursue a solo career and was replaced by former Slik/Rich Kids vocalist Midge Ure. The band's subsequent recording, that year's Vienna, was arguably their best album to date, yielding such hits as "All Stood Still," "Sleepwalk," "Passing Strangers" and the title cut. But, it seemed, as the band found commercial success, its members began to forget part of the manner in which they'd achieved it. 

Ure, who'd not been a part of the group during the time in which Numan had attempted to help them along, challenged the value of Numan's own work. Accusing the artist of stealing freely from early Ultravox material, Ure lambasted Numan in the press, cultivating an antagonistic relationship that exists to this day. 

"I was always very envious of (Foxx-era Ultravox's) sound. I thought that their sound was always more fleshed out than mine and better put together than mine," Numan admits. "They didn't maybe have some of the more strangeness that I did..." 

"I had a problem with Midge Ure...with some of the things he said about me. I thought it was unnecessary. Then when I listened to the things he did to Ultravox, and its ultimate demise, I really thought he should've kept his mouth shut." 

"When I first got to number one here," Numan recalls, "Ultravox had split up. People were asking me, 'who are your influences?' I was going around saying, 'Ultravox.' I had two number one albums in a year; I was massive and selling millions. Every time I opened my mouth, I said 'Ultravox.' On my first tour, Billy Currie (an Ultravox founding member) was playing keyboards for me and I did everything I could to say that Ultravox was the greatest band in the world." 

"After the end of that tour, the band reformed. Midge Ure came into the scene and they became very successful. Midge then goes to the press and says, 'the only reason why Gary Numan praised us is because he stole all our ideas in the first place.'" 

"'Our ideas?' He hadn't even been in the fucking band!" Numan remembers incredulously. "So, I really got upset because, and I'm not trying to say that I 'made' them, but I was a huge influence, if you like, in getting people to listen to them again. If you went to an Ultravox concert, (you'd see) 99% (of the crowd, wearing) Gary Numan t-shirts. Then they developed their own audience and I said 'good luck' because they were a great band. I did really like them, but for him to say that, I thought was unforgivable and unnecessary." 

Inter-artist rivalries aside, Numan encountered few challenges over the next two years, as "We Are Glass" and "I Die: You Die" both hit the Top 10. His second "solo" album, and fourth overall, Telekon was another huge success for the artist, becoming his third consecutive number one album. Delving even deeper into the synthetic realm, Telekon was Numan's most ambitious work to date; even the guitar, which had previously been pushed to the lower levels of the mix, began to reappear as a focus instrument. The artist, then a mere twenty-two years of age, seemed to be on top of the world. 

No one could have predicted what Numan did next. Non-stop touring and live appearances, coupled with a relentless writing and recording schedule that produced four albums in here years, had left Numan physically and emotionally fatigued. The British charts had been invaded by a new wave of synth acts that'd taken Numan's lead; Human League, Duran Duran and Adam Ant were well on their way to success. Horrified by the possibility he may not be able to compete, Numan bowed out of the race altogether. Announcing his intent to withdraw from live performances, he hosted three final shows at London's fame Wembley Arena, to the bittersweet appreciation of his fans. 

This trio of 1981 performances effectively marked the end of Gary Numan's career as pop superstar. Though he would continue to record and release new albums every year or so through the present day, success came in smaller doses with each consecutive work. Though Beggars Banquet stood by their young eccentric through three more albums (Dance ['81], I, Assassin ['82] and Warriors ['83]), even Numan's chart success with "Music for Chameleons," "We Take Mystery to Bed" and the title track from his final release on Beggars couldn't hid the fact that the artist was becoming increasingly more reclusive. 

As Numan began to occupy himself with more non-musical pastimes throughout the mid-80's, such as piloting his own aircraft, his visibility as a musical force began to bottom out. Now releasing albums on his own label, the artist once again began touring in support, but fewer and fewer fans seemed to appreciate his return to the live setting. Through the release of his next six recordings (Berserker, The Fury, Strange Charm, Automatic, Metal Rhythm and Outland), the crowds got smaller and sales plummeted. The charts, which Numan had once so easily dominated, became for the first time difficult targets to hit, with each release hovering around the bottom end of the UK Top 40.  

Finally, when 1992's Machine and Soul album failed to make an impression Numan was near giving up. Nothing was working for him musically, and he considered packing the Moog away in the attic for good. "It all had to do with a lack of self-confidence, strange enough," Numan explains. "I never felt that I was a good guitar player or even a good synthesizer player. And I knew I'm not a great singer. I'm never going to be a great singer. I'd listen to other (albums) and think that they were much better than mine." 

"I had a very bad time with the press here," he continues. "I mean the press, almost from day one, pretty much said that I'm crap. After a while, especially when you don't have any success for a while, you begin to lose faith in what you're doing. I did. I began to get guitar players to play on the tracks and I began to get another keyboards player because they could play better than I could. So, musically, it got more professional, but as far as doing a Gary Numan album, style-wise it became lesser than it was before. It began to become diluted." 

"I began to listen to other people's opinions about what I should and shouldn't be doing, whereas before all my work was focused in my own ideas. I began to lose that. I eventually reached a point where I really wasn't happy even making records and I said, 'this isn't right; I'm not enjoying this. I don't like anything I'm doing.' I went through one period where, for about three or four months, I didn't keep a single note of what I had written because nothing seemed good enough. Then one day you wake up and you go, 'oh, yeah, I know.' You have to stop and think about it, and then you get yourself together again. I think that's what I did just in the nick of time, really." 

If 1994's Sacrifice offered a positive prognosis for Numan's musical career, then Exile proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that his artistic recovery is finally complete. Far more aggressive musically than any of his previous offerings, Exile is a sign of the times. Over recent years, Numan has developed an affinity for the harsher post-industrial movement (he's a self-proclaimed fan of Gravity Kills and Nine Inch Nails) and the abrasiveness and heavy beat orientation of that genre has had an overt affect on his songwriting. The classic Numanesque coldness and isolation characteristic of earlier works melds perfectly with the percussive structure of post-industrial dance music in a way that seems so dramatically obvious that one wonders why Numan hadn't attempted it before. 

"I think it's quite anthemic," he professes. "There are some parts of it that are almost quite Arabian. It's very melodic, but it's also very bland; it's a very bleak record. It's not aggressive in a Gravity Kills' kind of aggression. It has a tremendous amount of atmosphere and is very groove oriented. Some of it is really quite somber." 

Not only is the album sure to appeal musically to both older Numan fans and those who follow the post-industrial scene, but even Numan himself likes the way Exile turned out. "I think with the next one I am going to take the same sort of style, the same sort of approach, but I am going to make it more aggressive, with various changes of temp. It's all very loop-based; I'm using all sorts of noise for production rather than musical parts or lines for the melody. I'm happier now with my music than I have been in nearly fifteen years. I seem to be a lot busier, too, which I like." 

Busy, indeed, in addition to touring in support of the new album (a plan to target the States is in the works, pending an American licensee). Numan was married in August to his longtime girlfriend, whom chased the musician as a fan, and has recently published his autobiography. He's also heavily involved in the maintenance of his own website (www.numan.co.uk) and only months ago was cast as the villain for an upcoming British thriller feature film, Kinsmen. 

"I play a nightclub owner who's manufacturing and distributing this designer drug that kills people," Numan laughs. "It's a great role. I get to walk around and shoot lots of people." 

But don't queue up at the local movie house just yet. Numan insists that the music comes first and a proposed tour of the U.S. might force him to bow out of the film. "I've finally got an opportunity to get back into things musically," he smiles. "I don't want to mess it up."