Here's a nice interview and session that appeared on line some 10 years ago from the time of the 'Dead Son Rising' release in 2011.
Disc image: https://we.tl/t-RGf4xMz1AL
Sleeve: https://we.tl/t-j6Vy2bB178
Here then is the 'Replicas' set from Manchester on the occasion of Gary's 50th birthday no less.
FLAC: https://we.tl/t-h84IUnrM4s
Artwork: https://we.tl/t-kBwsgoycIZ
I have read recently on some Numan fan facebook pages heated discussion about the virtues or lack of virtues of the 'Intruder' album. Interesting stuff and completely understandable. To like everything an artist has done over such a long career is in my opinion a near impossibility. For my part I stopped buying Numan's albums after 'Metal Rhythm' and only picked up on him again with the release of the back to form 'Sacrifice'.
However, in 'Replicas' I think that we have an album that all fans, old and new can be aligned on. As Tubeway Army's breakthrough album it has withstood the test of time and remains a classic album of the post-punk era (that is not to say that it is 'post punk').
I find 'Tubeway Army' or the 'Blue Album' difficult to separate from 'Replicas', the former being the awkward teenage brother of 'Replicas', its 20-something, ever so slightly more worldly older sibling. The dystopian bleakness of 'Tubeway Army' is carried through onto the next album, minus young Gary's obsession with knocking one out left, right and centre across the tracks of the band's debut!
As much as I love 'Tubeway Army' on their second album Gary appears to have a firmer hand on the synthesiser reins. Some of the electronic sounds on 'TA' sound rather clumsy when compared to the more measured electronic creations that followed, from the fairly minimalist 'Replicas' to the phenomenal wall of sound that made 'Are 'Friends' Electric? such ground breaking tracks.
One thing that I love about the album is that, for me, it is one of the most evocative albums in my rather large collection. In this sense I mean that when I hear the opening bars of say 'It Must have Been Years' I am not just thrust into the grimy lamp lit bedroom of Numan's imagination, I am propelled back to my own teenage bedroom, the one with a 5 foot Tubeway Army logo painted on the wall. That room wasn't quite as bleak as the one in the parallel universe of 'Replicas' (although as it was a badly built, badly insulated dormer extension to my parent's bungalow, it was only a rather pungent smelling oil radiator that melted the ice that formed up on the inside of the single pane windows!).
'Replicas' was a powerful statement of intent from the soon to be 'solo' Numan and great things followed in the form of 'The Pleasure Principle'. As a huge fan of Tubeway Army, the 1983/1984 period were about as good as it got, with the earlier release of the first two singles plus 'We Are So Fragile' on a 12" compilation followed by the more exiting red and blue compilations that contained genuinely unheard material... including three additional tracks dating back to the 'Replicas' related sessions, 'Only A Downstat', 'We Have A Technical' and 'The Crazies'. I have to say though that for the teenager, finally developing a profound appreciation of punk.... albeit 6 or 7 years after the event, it was the release of 'The Plan' that topped it all. Maybe a topic for another thread, but whilst Numan had thrown in much of 'Tubeway Army', the first two singles and select material from 'The Plan' into his sets over the 28 years I would love to see a pre-Replicas Tubeway Army mini-tour!
I often wonder about the success of the album, Tubeway Army and Gary in general at this time. As he is always at great pains to point out, this 'electronic pioneer' tag is something of a misnomer... as certainly Ultravox were doing something similar '76/'77, as were Kraftwerk earlier still.... and will a considerable degree of commercial success. Again from the horses's mouth it was the happy coincidence that Beggars ploughed additional money into the novel format of the picture disc that clinched the bubbling under spot for Tubeway Army over Simple Minds (sorry Mr Kerr.... I dunno why but I have always had an irrational aversion to Simple Minds....). A TOTP appearance propelled new bands directly into the front rooms of the young record buying public at prime time on a Thursday evening. A band like Ultravox never had that opportunity during John Foxx's tenure. Couple the exposure afforded by a TOTP tea time appearance with the appeal of a pop star coming across as someone rather leftfield as Numan certainly did on that first appearance and you have a potent potential spell for success.
Here is a positive review of 'Replicas' from the 21st April 1979 edition of Record Mirror, a supportive branch of the UK music press, at least in the first couple of years.
Sadly Numan's live performance career stalled not just once after the Wembley 'retirement' but also for the 'punk' Tubeway Army following a bloody evening with The Skids in Acton. For these reasons, 'Replicas' was never toured in it's own right, the first UK major headline tour embracing both of his 1979 No. 1 albums. As a result, fewer 'Replicas' tracks received a contemporary airing than would normally be the case for your average album/tour.... album/tour band.
The good news was that this touring anomaly was at last addressed in 2008 when Numan finally felt comfortable enough with his then level of revitalised success to allow him to revisit past glories.
To this end another 'Replicas 2008' gig will be posted in the next couple of days.
An anniversary gig now and once again this is from Manchester on this day in 2002.
FLAC: https://we.tl/t-8D60T0MVMM
Artwork: https://we.tl/t-Me4ZGCR2aP
Still on a 'Telekon'/'Teletour' theme, here is a recording that proports to be a soundboard recording of the second night at the Manchester Apollo (i.e. 8th September 1980). This was the first bootleg cassette I ever bought. That was in Brighton in about 1982 I think. Posted elsewhere on this site (accessible from here) is the recording of Manchester Apollo on 7th September. They are different sources, but are they actually of the two shows on consecutive dates? I haven't been thorough in comparing them, but it is tricky. Usually, with other bands distinguishing gigs is a relatively easy process based on in between song dialogue from the stage... different and unique to each and every gig. In Numan's case, at least for the early shows, this simple principle hardly applies. Aside from a final 'Thank you, goodnight' there isn't much dialogue to be had that allows an easy comparison. Maybe if someone could let me know. Are there Numan bootleg aficionados that can confirm whether recordings of both Manchester nights are in circulation?
So, please accept my apologies if this is just a rehash of something that is already on this site and as such offers nothing new.
What is new is a review, culled from the pages of Record Mirror of one of the two nights at the Apollo. As you might expect it is pretty much a slating of the man and his music once again.
In early September 1980, Gary Numan released ‘Telekon’, his fourth album and the third and final installment on what became a kind of ‘Machine Music’ trilogy (having been preceded by ‘Replicas’ and ‘The Pleasure Principle’).
By the autumn of 1980, Numan it could well be said was spent. Since the unexpected success (‘too long to make the cut’) of ‘Are 'Friends' Electric?’ in May 1979, propelled to Number 1 in the UK singles chart and pile-driven into the record buying public’s consciousness by two remarkable TV debut appearances (‘The Old Grey Whistle Test’ and ‘Top of the Pops’), Numan had not stopped.
An industry rapidly took shape around this new musical phenomenon which took the bewildered 21 year old and his band along with it at a pace over which he had little, if any, control. Constant touring (two world tours in the space of 18 months) and an intense pressure to repeat and repeat again the success of ‘Are 'Friends' Electric?’ took its toll and led him to take decisions that he was to subsequently regret. To Numan’s credit, he was indeed able to maintain the momentum of ‘Are 'Friends' Electric?, with ‘Replicas’, from which the single was taken, reaching the Number 1 slot in July. ‘Cars’ and ‘The Pleasure Principle’ following later in the year performed in similar fashion.
All well and good for the record company executive and young fan alike, but for the musician it was a different story entirely. This young, vulnerable and industry naïve individual (he has stated on many occasions that prior to those TV appearances his only interviewers had been the kids behind DIY xeroxed fanzines popularised by punk) learned in a quick and hard manner that the rock ‘n’ roll star existence enjoyed by his confessed heroes Bolan and Bowie also carried a significant downside. And the caffeine in Gary’s Coca Cola wasn’t a patch on the coping substances that Dave and Marc were using!
Gary Numan’s relationship with the music press, or perhaps more accurately the music press’s relationship with him was also toxic. Intellectual snobbery abounded across the UK’s ‘Big 4’ music weeklies. In the ‘70’s and ‘80’s these newspapers had huge circulations and, such was their clout, they could make or break an artist through their reviews, interviews, editorials and letters pages. The New Musical Express (NME), being the most overtly political of the press quartet, treated Numan with contempt from the very outset. On the rare occasions that he was afforded some column inches the reportage was mostly negative. Now, her whist declaring myself to be a huge fan of Numan, some of the press hostility came as no great surprise at the time. The times were hard, unemployment was rife, heavy industry in the country was decimated and the National Front made the streets unsafe. For these reasons, the NME (and their print companions) considered that the music and opinions of bands like The Clash, Gang of Four and The Specials were far more important than the thoughts of a ‘pop star’ who in interviews made no bones about the extent to which he enjoyed the trappings that came with rock ‘n’ roll stardom. Back in ‘79/’80 Gary Numan was like a lamb to the slaughtermen of the music press. And he paid a heavy price as a result. Compare and contrast the excruciating awkwardness of any early interview with the assuredness of interviews conducted within the last 10 years or so. The latter represents a confidence that comes from 40 years plus in a brutal business, coupled with a better self-understanding of how hehimself is hard wired.
In his candid views on his appreciation of fast cars and big pads, he was once again ahead of his time. The release of The Clash’s call to arms in the form of ‘Guns of Brixton’ to Duran Duran’s ‘Rio’, a song that arguably heralded in the ‘Yuppie’ era, were separated in time by little over two years! Had Numan broken through a couple of years latter, the press may have treated him a little differently... but we can never know.
However, evil NME aside, even Record Mirror, with a previous supportive track record when it came to Gary’s career, turned. Chris Westwood’s review of ‘Telekon’, reproduced below, is perhaps the worst album review I have ever read!
A review that appeared in the 18th September 1980 issue of Smash Hits was somewhat more positive, although it can hardly be described as glowing.
What then of ‘Telekon’? Perhaps the first thing to say about it is the extent to which it departs from the previous year’s runaway success that was ‘The Pleasure Principle’, an album which in turn contrasts with its predecessor, ‘Replicas’, in that it is sharp, bright and generally up-tempo. It was also devoid of guitars, a decision that Numan later perceived to be a musical error and one which he was at some pains to redress in the recording of ‘Telekon’ which saw a solid reappearance of his beloved sun burst Les Paul. The name was a fusion of the paranormal phenomena of telepathy (direct thought transference between individuals without the involvement of the normal channels of communication) and telekinesis (the ability to move objects with the power of thought alone without physical intervention), but the title bears little relevance to the subjects explored on the album itself.
‘Telekon’ with its complex arrangements of overlaid synthesizers is at once dark, brooding and rather claustrophobic, the perfect creation from the mind of a man overwhelmed by his situation, the positives of fame blunted by huge negatives. Opening with the gargantuan, thunderous bars of ‘This Wreckage’, Numan dives straight into the overriding dual themes carried by the album of personal damage and departure (the Japanese for ‘I leave you’ is ‘hidden’ in the lyrics of the track). Elsewhere on the album the lyrical cries for help give way to some beautifully melodic musical passages, for example the sweeping synths that come in towards the end of ‘The Aircrash Bureau’. Brooding replaced with melancholia. On ‘Please Push No More’, Numan expresses his disenchantment with the fame game. Everything that he had ardently wished for and set an unwaivering path towards, since the earliest days of the original Tubeway Army, he had at this point in abundance… and yet it left him wanting none of it. The dream was shattered. ‘Sleep By Windows’ drips with the sense of paranoia. If I remember correctly the song was a response to the young fans who would regularly lay siege to his Surrey mansion in the hope of catching a glimpse of their hero. Thankfully, these lyrical laments on the price of fame are interspersed with material that takes the listener back to more familiar ground i.e. dystopian visions of the future, best described by ‘I Dream of Wires’, arguably the best song on the album.
At the beginning of this post I mentioned that ‘Telekon’ marked an end to Numan’s dominant reliance on synthesizers. Very much at the fore on ‘Telekon’ they are used to great effect to create a rich orchestral feel, in sharp contrast their futuristic deployment on earlier albums. The combination of electronic with traditional instrumentation, the piano arrangement of ‘Down in the Park’ from these sessions as well as the B-side, ‘Photograph’ being good examples, was an indicator of Numan’s future direction….. fretless basses, saxophones and even an harmonica!
The tour, the ‘Teletour’ was itself iconic and for many, myself included, represented the essence of Gary Numan and his musical vision…. whether the music press hacks liked it or not.
In the week after Gary's very candid interview with Melody' Makers' Ray Coleman, he was on stage in New York with further 'Teletour' shows.
FLAC: https://we.tl/t-xPSImswF04
Artwork: https://we.tl/t-NrBbXM36fX
