| [ g a r y . n u m a n : f u l l . c i r c l e ] [ t e x t . o n l y . v e r s i o n ] by Ramon Lobato Everyone has their 15 minutes of fame and throughout the career of Gary Numan no maxim could have proven more true. One minute a reclusive post-punk dabbler with a penchant for drag and the next a Top Of The Pops novelty with three No.1 albums and more money than he knew what to do with; Numan's next step was to watch it all disappear. Now 20 years down the track, Numan is well and truly back, happier than ever to be a part of what he so nonchalantly calls 'the business'. In the early 80s, Numan embarked (in truly spectacular fashion, of course) on a relentless course of self-destruction. His halcyon days of sell-out concerts and legions of pasty-faced fans were replaced by a series of embarrassments. Three huge farewell concerts at Wembley Stadium in 1981 effectively killed off whatever chart clout he had left. Beggars Banquet and the fame they had brought him were abandoned in favour of his own Numa record label. And who could forget his aborted solo round-the-world flight, marred by his arrest in India on suspicion of espionage? 'I was fucking near bankrupt. In the late 80s early 90s I was so in debt you wouldn't believe it. They tried to take my house off me -- it was absolutely grim for years. The career was down the toilet, I wasn't selling any records. I didn't have no money -- it was horrible!' says Numan candidly over the phone line from the UK, glossing over the memories of the cover versions 'recommended' by his record company, the meddling producers, the death threats and the now detested albums "Outland", "Metal Rhythm" and "Machine And Soul". 'But then slowly and surely, a little bit of luck comes your way and you work more efficiently and you start doing more and more things yourself,' Numan muses in his broad Cockney accent. 'So now I do all the music, I do all my own artwork, everything really. There were times when I just sat back and thought, "Should I be doing this or not? Is there anything else I can do which would mean more money, really?" If I wasn't doing this for a living, I'd be doing it for a hobby. I think it's that, it's just that: it's almost like a need. You need it, more than anything else.' With his most recent album "Exile", released on Eagle Records with world-wide distribution, Numan is the happiest and most productive he's been 'in a long time'. In a classic Numan style, "Exile" explores themes of death, vengeance and visitation, complete with crunchy guitars, minimal electronics and plenty of samples. One of the tracks, "Dark" was included on the soundtrack to Alex Proyas' film "Dark City". '"Exile" starts with this man who is having a nightmare -- well it isn't really a nightmare, it's more of a vision,' Numan explains, 'and he sees, for some reason, the truth about what happened when Jesus came down and so on. And it's very much darker, much more vicious than what we've been taught over the years and read in the "Bible" -- it talks about angels pissing on the graves of children and so on, people being tortured and that kind of thing. There is a sort of half-hearted substory of this man trying to tell everybody and warn them, because the second coming is actually coming, but it's going to be very very destructive. It's not going to be all wonderful and shiny and white with men coming out of clouds and that sort of shit. It's going to be really quite vicious and unpleasant. But as soon as he has the vision, God himself becomes aware of him, and He starts looking for him to try to kill him too.' Much of "Exile's" material was in fact based on correspondence from fans -- and more often from fanatical Christians. 'I did another one in 1994 called "Sacrifice" which looked a little deeper than I normally do at religion, what I believe -- or what I don't believe, really,' Numan explains. 'I got quite a lot of reaction to that, a lot of people were a bit annoyed with what I was saying, especially some of the more religious American fans that I've got. Lots of emails were coming in through the Internet site saying I shouldn't have been saying what I was saying. People were sending me copies of the New Testament in modern English so I could understand it better. They just thought I was misguided, some of them had gone to a lot of trouble to make me believe I could find God. And all it did was make me believe I was right, because I don't believe in any of it, you know. "Exile" looks at the idea that God and the Devil are the same thing, and therefore God can be very vicious and cruel and spiteful and so on. It is just fiction really, because I don't believe any of it at all. But if it hadn't been for the reaction to "Sacrifice", I probably wouldn't have written any of it.' As with all his work, "Exile" features in abundance that most unforgettable 80s accessory -- the synthesiser. However, Numan regrets that to many people this is all he is known for. 'It's funny. I've done about 20 albums and there's only been one of those that didn't have guitar on it, and that was in 1979. And so every album I've ever done has had guitars and so forth on it, yet I seem to have maintained this sort of reputation for being hardcore electronic. Although the moogs and synthesisers and so on have been a big part of what I've done, the guitar's always been there, yet it seems to have been overshadowed by this image and everything else that has gone with it. I was using loops and that kind of thing in the early 80s before samplers were even invented. We used to do it with 1/4 inch tape! We'd just make up loops and have them running all round the studio, round little pulleys and things, to make them fit the beat -- all kinds of bizarre shit like that.' Even more bizarre is Numan's penchant for sampling shotguns. 'Plenty of shotguns!' Numan laughs. 'I've got shotguns going in reverse! The slide action, I've got that in "Prophecy", the bit in the middle where the big groove comes in, and just before that there's this weird thing going shoooosh from one side of the stereo picture to the other, and that's a shotgun detuned massively with a reverse reverb on it. It's just a cool sound.' Numan is the first to admit that the sudden interest the world is now showing in this Brit stormtrooper is due partly to the recent spate of Numan covers by high-profile artists. Everyone from Dave Grohl to Jimi Tenor have tipped their hat to Numan, with last year's Beggars Banquet "Random" double-CD tribute album featuring The Orb, Moloko and every electro act in between. 'It's amazing, it really is,' he says. 'On the American tour, Marilyn Manson came on stage in Los Angeles and did the song that he had covered. Reznor from Nine Inch Nails came to see us in Baton Rouge, and he wanted to work with us on some of the new stuff. It's bringing me much closer to people in the business that I admire. I got a letter from Billy Corgan from The Smashing Pumpkins, just saying that he liked the album and wants to help me out and that sort of thing. It's just brought me right back into the business, it's helped me no end. With the tours, a lot of THEIR fans are coming along just to see what all the fuss is about, what their heroes are talking about when they're talking about me.' Numan is even rumoured to be collaborating with Tricky, who is reported to be quite a fan. 'Yeah, somebody said a few months back that he'd sent a letter to the record company but I've not spoken to him and I don't know if it's true or not, but yeah, apparently. There was a thing on MTV, one of these 10 minute focus points on an artist, and Tricky was one of them. And he said that I was one of the things that had influenced him earlier on, and he showed a little of one of my songs, my videos, and he was talking over it.' Numan is now doing a series of tours and audiences can definitely expect more of those unforgettable lightshows. 'The thing about using big lightshows was never about hiding behind it, it was about giving people value for money. If you go to something where you can see a lightshow that is as close to spectacular as you can possibly imagine, then I think that is what our job is supposed to be. I think if you're going to charge crowds a reasonable amount of money, you should give them something for it. That was my concept behind the light shows, always will be. I've just done a big American tour, and a lot of the places I was going into were clubs. And you can do sod all in a place like that because there just isn't the room for it. To me, for anyone that's successful and can afford to do it, to not put on a real presentation is a waste of an opportunity and a bit of an insult to the fans that put them there. I've always seen that as being our way to pay something back, to go in and put on a real spectacular show. Unfortunately, for many years now, I've not had the success that I can do that.' Numan has also dabbled in a little acting, this time without the lightshows and pyrotechnics behind him. However, he is far from enthusiastic about the results of his screen TV debut. 'The pain I went through for that, you wouldn't believe it,' Numan grimaces. 'I'm not cut out to be an actor, I'm really not. All I had to do was stand in a toilet and accidentally wee on somebody's boots, somebody who recognises me -- so I was playing me. I'm supposed to have a part in a big thriller as the main baddy but that didn't come together.' Acting, writing, touring, recording -- after a decade of failure and obscurity, Numan's 15 minutes have well and truly come round once more. Most would find it amazing that this peculiar paranoiac, who has compromised little and changed even less, is still creating the same music that made him an overnight sensation 20 years ago. As always, Numan is reluctant to take credit. 'I'm immensely grateful,' he concludes. 'Music, it's a need. I've tried lots of other things, and always, always you come back to this always. And I've just given up now, I've realised -- this is all I'm going to do.'
"Exile" is available
through Festival Records. |