May 1980, Mr Barker's classroom in the last year of junior school. This was the last term of my primary school education and a wider world beckoned. The lesson must have been music and in a rare diversion from playing simple tunes badly on glockenspiels, we were encouraged to discuss the music that we liked. My musical horizons were very limited at this point of time. My record collection ran to two 7" singles if I remember correctly....... B.A. Robertson's 'Kool In The Kaftan' and 'One Step Beyond' by Madness. Technically, 'Kool In The Kaftan' was not the first single I bought, it was in fact 'Turning Japanese' by the Vapors, but due to the fact that my next door neighbour had also bought it, I elected to exchange my copy for something else. Looking back owning 'Turning Japanese' would have been infinitely more, well, kool!
Anyway back in the class, a girl called Helen Rogers took a magazine called Smash Hits out of her school bag and proceeded to read out the lyrics to a song called 'We Are Glass' by Gary Numan. The lines piqued my interest, testified to by the fact that this is one of my few memories of primary school, but it was in no way a Eureka moment. I had heard of this chap, hadn't he been in a band called Tubeway Army? The previous year on semi-regular visits to a local pub on a Sunday afternoon, where I would have harangued my Dad for a couple of 10 pence coins so that I could play myself in a couple of pool in the backroom, I had first heard the strains of 'Are 'Friends' Electric?' on the jukebox.
Fast forward to the late summer of 1980. Me and a mate are mucking about of the beach at Climping, West Sussex. On that occasion we has an old tape recorder on which he was playing his tape of 'The Pleasure Principle'. It was at this point are started to think more clearly about Gary Numan.
In late 1980 I bought my first album, 'Kings of the Wild Frontier' by Adam and the Ants and for a year or so I was happy to declare myself to be one of Adam's Antpeople. The 'Ant Music' single was a rallying call and 'Stand & Deliver' I thought was great to. However, after April 1981 Adam and his men took some time out. The next single 'Prince Charming' was not released for another five months. Five months is a long time for a lad with a newly developing taste for music. That April, there was a buzz going around some of the lads in the 4th year. Gary Numan was playing dates at Wembley Arena and what's more, these were to be the last live shows he was ever going to do as young Gary was going into live retirement (in the event it turned out to be the shortest retirement in the history of Rock 'n' Roll!). I asked my parents for permission to go, but they refused.... London was too far. The reality was that the last thing that those 4th year kids wanted was to have a just 12 year old cramping their style.
And so it was that the cash for the Wembley ticket that never was burning a small hole in my pocket. I could only think in terms of converting it into vinyl and fittingly 'Living Ornaments '80' became the second album purchased under my own steam. Released in April '81 it truly cemented my relationship with Gary Numan. In often repeated explanations of how GN took the decision to revamp Tubeway Army from a punk outfit to electronic pioneers (hired synthesizer awaiting collection from Cambridge studios etc) he always talks of the power of the synth note over the noise capabilities of the guitar. For me this statement is played out in the opening to 'Down In The Park' from that 'Teletour' album. The gargantuan bellow that transitioned the tinkling ivories to the soundtrack of his futuristic dystopian vision (sorry I've gone a bit Paul Morley there), then as now, sends shivers down my spine. It certainly represented a challenge to my Dad's Pye Black Box turntable that I used to use when the parents were out!
Vinyl back-filling then became the order of the day. Each of the studio albums were acquired along with the associated singles. In Burgess Hill where I grew up all aspiring music heads gravitated towards Les's market stall on a Saturday. It was from here that you could pick up singles that were 1 to 2 years old for 30 pence a piece i.e. a third of the price of a new single at the time. With such prices I had the basis of my Gary Numan collection in place fairly rapidly.
After Wembley Numan expressed his disinterest in the whole black thing that had been very much a feature of his post AFE career to date. Leather was replaced with bespoke tailoring topped off with a titfer. Gary toned down the electronic power and introduced us to a new concept of electofunk. All well and good, but 'Dance' set me on a course of several fashion catastrophes that some friends to this day will not let lie. Don't get me wrong, I got very exited when Numan was scheduled to appear on Top of the Pops..... 'She's Got Claws', 'We Take Mystery (To Bed)' and 'White Boys and Heroes', but it wasn't 'Cars' and it wasn't 'I Die:You Die'.
With 'Warriors' in his sights Gary once again set his own sights on a return from exile and another tour. And now I was in for some serious ribbing from mates.... Mad Max eh? But this was but water off a duck's back. Some months previously I had written to Beryl with a request for an autograph and received a reply with a personalised signed promo photo bearing the tour dates on the reverse. This sealed the contract and meant that I became a staunch defender of the Numan brand for a few years to come.
So, whilst Wembley eluded me, Brighton on the 'Warriors' tour did not. Even at 14 I had my reservations about the album but it was only my fifth gig and not only that it was a Gary Numan gig. Even after the passage of 35 years I still recall it with surprising clarity (being underage with no access to the venue bar may explain some of that!).
Subsequent tours followed, 'Berserker' (Brighton), 'The Fury' (Guildford) and 'The Exhibition Tour' (also Guildford), but the interest was waning. To my mind, Gary was struggling to keep up, tastes were changing within the country and this once High Prince of electronic music was quite frankly being beaten at his own game. A gig at Hammersmith ('Metal Rhythm' tour) and something horrible at Camden's Electric Ballroom (the 'Emotion' tour) was the straw that broke the camel's back. In 1991, at that Camden gig, the only emotion that I was feeling was one of sadness. This man whose music had been everything to me, a once big noise in the music world, a pioneer, an innovator, was now drowning in a morass of computer generated music that had become sugar coated and vacuous! I threw in the towel.
Now living in London, I passed the Marquee on Charing Cross Road in October 1993. There I picked up a flyer for a gig that he was doing there (this was 'The Dream Corrosion' tour). I did this at the time purely from the point of view of nostalgia.... an artist that I once loved playing an iconic venue. Clearly I did not go, but when I saw the set list some time later I was kicking myself that I had missed this. A man well known for his what has passed is past attitude was here revisiting material that none of his fan base, let alone I, would have likely heard. 'Jo The Waiter', 'That's Too Bad', 'Bombers'....... Manna from (Dead) Heaven!
In the following months a long term pen-friend, Angela, sent me a copy of the tour DVD and then more importantly a tape of the 'Sacrifice' album. Moreso than the Marquee setlist, it was that album that reignited that dormant fandom in me. The penny had dropped for Numan I think and with the realisation that the charts were no longer his domain he reverted to a darker sound in the studio that also carried through his more recent involvement with soundtrack commissions. In contrast to the woeful 'Machine & Soul' album (the musical trough in Gary's career, as acknowledged by the man himself), 'Sacrifice' was a revelation, a real return to form.
I saw Gary on the 'Sacrifice' tour at The Astoria (as attended by two or three members of my then new love band, Elastica). Since then I have once again kept a keen eye on the output from Camp Numan. Not all of it has been to my taste, some of the over the top obsession with God and Christianity I have found a bit dull (as an atheist this does not offend me, just bores me a bit) but much of it is very good indeed, not least 'Savage'.
So, that is in brief my time as a Numan fan, for better or worse!
Whether or not it was the revisiting of old songs in the 'Dream Corrosion' tour that set his mind at rest with regards to nostalgia I cannot say, but thankfully something changed that meant in 2006, 2008 and 2009 and then again in 2015 I finally got my Wembley moment and then some.
I fully appreciate that music and the relationship that the listener has with the output over such a long career is an intensely personal thing, so some of my comments may grate with some and that is fine. It's just a hard fact that for me 'Replicas', 'The Pleasure Principle' and 'Telekon' (and 'Tubeway Army' and 'The Plan') are my holy of holies.
For this reason I am posting a little later the recordings of the classic album gigs of October 2015.
Cheers,
Adrian.
No comments:
Post a Comment