When Gary Numan dominated the radio waves in the early 80’s, people like Trent Reznor and Marilyn Manson were out there listening. Then they grew up and created industrial music.
"They’ve taken what I did and moved it light years forward," said Numan during a phone conversation from London. "I’m just grateful to still be around to do something about that. I listen to what they’re doing and hopefully that will fire me off. And we move forward again."
So we do. Gary Numan has just released a new CD, and it sounds conspicuously as though this forefather of industrial music has been inspired by the music of his creative children.
"The ideas for Pure came after I toured America in ’98," reminisces Numan. "I met up with Trent and Marilyn and was taken out every night to different industrial clubs. I came back from that tour and knew exactly what I should be doing musically. The problem arose when I tried to make the record. I wanted to show some real aggression but just sounded like a schoolgirl having a tantrum. . . . It stretched my production skills quite a bit."
Pure is heavier, darker, and more menacing than anything Numan has done before. Yet it does have the dynamics of something revisited – like artistic integrity.
"When I first started to write songs, it was all for the love of music. I was what I call, ‘pure of heart.’ I wrote for no commercial reasons. But when my career went downhill in the 80’s, I wrote songs that I thought would get me back on the radio. I didn’t even realize it until this bizarre experience I had. I woke up in the middle of the desert not knowing how I got there or where I was going. From that moment on I began searching for the road I wandered from."
Now Numan is on that road, currently touring the U.S. in support of Pure.
"When I was on the radio," explains Numan, "I used to do massive, massive shows with five truckloads of gear that took a week to assemble. I never had to worry about my physical performance – you know, what to do with my body while I was on stage – because I had all this other technical stuff going on.
"But the money isn’t there to do those big, exotic light shows anymore. So our physical performance must compensate for that. I can’t get away with just standing there, trying to look strange and interesting for an hour."
Speaking of strange and interesting, the crisis involving China and the detention of U.S. was similar to something that happened to Numan in 1981.
"A pilot friend and I were flying around the world in a little airplane. We were filming a documentary with a 16mm camera. While we were over the ocean, the plane began flying very badly. We were quite lucky to touch down in this little village on the east coast of India.
"The airport officials saw the camera and [detained] us for four days on suspicion of spying. It was just this little dirt village. So I asked, ‘What on Earth are we supposed to be spying on?’
"They said, ‘The Russian submarine base is three miles north of here.’ I couldn’t fucking believe it. They just told us where it was! This was the thing that we were supposed to be spying on. I thought, ‘Now they’re gonna have to shoot me!’"
"Were you tempted to say, ‘Hello, I’m Gary Numan – I’m internationally famous’? I asked.
"I said exactly that. He wanted to see my press clippings -- as if you always carry them in a big folder under your arm. I became very English and said something like, ‘Good Lord man, if you mess about with me, the weight of the British Empire will come crashing down on your head."
It didn’t play out exactly that way though.
"When we rang the British Embassy in Delhi," added Numan, "they said I was too far away and hung up the phone. Finally my dad rang a local [British] newspaper who called the foreign office. They put on the pressure and the Indians let us go."
Such is the strange and interesting world of Gary Numan.
(Originally published in the San Diego Union-Tribune)
EJD
05/03/01