What follows is a very candid, early-ish, interview with Smash Hits magazine, a nationwide publication in the UK, targeted at the record buying teenage readership. Smash Hits enjoyed a very high circulation back in the day. Some of their reportage was rather on the lightweight side, but in this interview you really get the feeling that here is a young man with (as yet undiagnosed) Aspergers Syndrome caught in the full glare of the media spotlight following a meteoric rise to fame in just a few short months in the second half of 1979.
See what you think.
PLAYING TO THE ALIENS
John Savage finds out what success means to Gary Numan.
In the space of a few months, Gary Numan has emerged from
complete obscurity to having two number one records, "Are Friends
Electric?" and "Cars", two no. 1 albums, "Replicas"
and ''The Pleasure Principle", and, at one stage, three LPs in the Top 20
at once. Clearly, Gary Numan 's a phenomenon.
The background to his rise to fame is by now quite well
known. What's most interesting (now) is his reactions to his fame; whether, now
that he's got it it's what he wanted; and, what he feels about performing.
On October, Gary Numan finished his first tour since
becoming a star. Fifteen dates earlier, at Glasgow's Apollo, he'd played his
first live gig since a tiny pub date in Acton (London) in mld-78.
The tour was a complete sell-out but even allowing for
£3,000 given to 'Save The Whale' from one of his Hammersmith London dates, Gary
still lost £30,000 or so on the tour.
By his own admission not a natural performer, he decided to
do the show as it was and lose money, because…
"I thought there
was no point in going out unless you were going to give people something to
remember and to make It worthwhile. There's no point in being top of the pile
unless your show’s going to be top of the pile as well."
Some people have said that the lavishness of the show was to
distract attention from his (understandable) inexperience.
"You mean to take the limelight away from me a bit?
No, it wasn't really. To be honest, the show was put
together to be something to look at. I merely thought that being new at it, I
wouldn't be very interesting to look at for one and a quarter hours.
" I don't think l am: I can't do enough different
things or look in enough different ways to keep people interested for that time
- apart from the real diehards who'll gaze at me for hours.
Obviously the majority of the audience isn't like that -
especially at this early stage. Half of them are just going to see what the
fuss is an about. "
Fair enough, but what was, say, the point of the pyramids?
"On the cover? It was image. On stage, the robot are
pyramid-shaped - that's to tie in with the cover, and also because I thought
that robots … you say a robot and people think of something that does this
(gesticulates mechanically) and clanks about, and really
that's the most unpractical shape you can think of because it's so unstable. It
keeps falling over all the time.
"A pyramid is, I think, the most stable shape you can
have. It really is hard to budge. Talking about a straight-thinking machine,
It'd have to be that shape where it didn't fall over and damage Itself.
"So I thought - well, if I'm going to do it, let's do
it realistically, in the proper shape of what they'll be and not go for the
image. We had enough impact in the show itself -it'd be nice to put some
realism into it.
"I also think that the panels, the walls, it looks like
they just light up. I think that one day probably we'll have buildings like
that where you don't have street lights, but the walls of the buildings themselves
light up outwards, so it's not like street lights and shadows and little quiet
corners that you could get mugged in … "
The shows were certainly beautifully staged, but it's
difficult to see them without being reminded of the difference between Numan's
lavish showmanship and the ideals of the punks through whom he seems to have
emerged. Did he want the new kind of relationship with his audience?
"I think… no, I'm not really interested in a new
relationship. I'm sure what can be done. I've really no idea ... apart from the
fact that you talk to the audience and claim to be one of them, or admit
that you're not one of them, which is
why you're singing and they're not, and get on with it, which is what I've done
... I've very little to say to them.
"They know what the songs are, I'd imagine. I really
wouldn't want to tell them what the songs are about before each number: there's
no need to tell them what they are, because they already
know. There really isn't much more to say - you can't have a
conversation -it's very false with between two and four thousand people ...
"
This Is certainly very different from many of the new
groups, who just want to be "one of the people".
"I think it's just taking it back to cabaret - showbiz
for showbiz's sake more than anything. That's trying to explain what we're on
about, and use what we're on about, and use this as a visual expansion of our
Song.
"To be honest I used to hate all that stuff (cabaret),
but fairly recently I've got to really like Bing Crosby and now I like Frank Sinatra.
I never did before, but the way he just breezes among his crowd as if they're
in circle and not on stage, and he's so relaxed."
AS YOU may have gathered, Gary Numan is very honest. If you
ask him question, provided it's put clearly, he'll answer it as clearly and as
directly as he can. It's a quality very rare in most pop stars, who, when asked
a difficult question, will for some reason evade the point or get angry.
Perhaps they're afraid.
From being unknown, Gary has suddenly become very famous . He’s
prepared to talk with as much honesty about what it means to him, and what it's
doing to him.
It's Monday afternoon in a small room in Sheffield hotel.
Gary answers the questions, carefully and quietly, with some humour. While he’s
talking, he teases his newly washed hair in a mirror opposite.
The same day, one of the national papers has done a story on
him, pronouncing his image as "cold and aIoof". Is he really, and what
does he feel about the artlcle?
"Most of what I said had been blanded out. I didn't
actually say what he wrote down; he took the gist of it only. It wasn't done in
a nasty way, so I didn't mind it - it was a bit sweet and sickly. I'm not like
that.
"The imag. doesn't worry me. From an outsider’s view, it's
probably accurate. I think I'm quite strong-willed and know exactly what I'm
doing – which is mistaken for arrogance. The 'aloof' bit is my wish not to get
too close to the audience… which isn't being aloof. It's more survival really."
-I wouldn't venture any more than that.
"The ... pose
element is an image. They'll see that, and then they'll go home and imitate it
in a mirror and do G. Numan handclaps. That's thought out the same as the image
is thought out, to give people something to latch onto.
“It's taken everything I did when I was young and when I was
a fan - and using that, knowing that other people somewhere must be similar to me:
I'd like them to do what I did to my heroes.”
When he was listening to his heroes, Gary was , he says, a
lonely, troubled adolescent. The spoken parts in "Are Friends Electric"
was about one of his experiences before
he was famous. At the time, he was
hanging around with a group of friends, and they:
.....” got rid of me because I was singing in a group and
they didn't want me writing the songs anymore, so I said. 'It really doesn't
bother me: I didn't intend at that time to become a big frontman pop-star anyway
- I was js.t doing it to gain experience, but they weren't writing any songs.
"So I said, 'Well, write them then, I don't mind,' but
that weren't very good. And so they got rid of me, then went out and did their
own set.
“It took them about six months to write their set, and they
had a couple of my songs in it anyway – there was only about a 30-minute set,
and it really was awful. They group? It was Mean Street. They were on
the Vortex live aIbum.
"I was disgusted. And all my so-called friends at that
time would follow them around religiously, and pogo at every gig. It was like
rent-a-crowd. And they dropped me completelyfrom parties, from anything at all.
"And then obvlously being deserted made me very paranoid
in my attitudes towards friends. I often tended to write 'friends' in inverted
commas in a lot of the songs.”
If he was lonely before, being a star doesn't always help. It's
a lot of pressure, even more so because Gary tries to manage as much of his own
career as possible, from writing the songs to performing and producing them,
working out his finances and designing the stage set.
Many of his songs are about the loneliness, the distance between
people put just a little into the future: was
this how he lived?
"I used to live it out quite a lot before, really, because
I didn't go out much, I've never gone to parties ... if I go out, normally I go
out on my own, in the car, driving .. '
Is he treated as an object?
"Completely. As a product, yes.”
Would that encourage him to treat others in the same way?
“ I think It would do. I think it's a bit early yet for me
to change my personality to that extent. I find it difficult when the audience
meets you, because when they do they're obviously nervous or edgy because
they're not sure how you're going to be.
"Most of them you meet are completely unnatural.
They're not giving you their real personalities at all, and you have to accept
that.
"Obviously a lot of them are impolite because of that,
and a lot of them try to give the impression that they're not bothered a bit about
meeting you, and put on this big air of indifference. That upsets me a bit,
because it's unnecessary, as weII."
Does he feel under pressure?
"Not consciously, but all of sudden things get on top
of me for no reas on whatsoever, and really it can come on within minutes. I
feel as though I have to do something, but I don't know what it is, and nothing
you do seems to be it.
"I'd imigine it's like getting stuck In a lift, it's
the same sort of helplessness. It's very frightening sometimes.”
If the pressures of touring are now over for a while, others
begin. The next day, Numan and the band are going into the studio to begin demoing
the new aIbum, "TeIekon", which is about:
"A man who can finally harness the power of telekinesis,
who can move things by thinking about it. He realises he can do it, and it just
increases and snowballs. Because of his power he ends up destroying
everything, including himelf.
"Thats' planned, but it's not definite yet.”
Then it's Europe, America, Japan, the world.
