It’s been a long time coming but one-time Numan guitarist and sideman Richard Russell Bell (hence the RRussell spelling!) releases his first EP ‘Like-A-Human’.
Russell Bell joined Chris Payne, Cedric Sharpley, Paul Gardiner and Billy Currie’ for Numan’s ‘The Touring Principle’ in 1979.
This was during the electronic pioneer’s imperial phase, playing to sold-out crowds in the UK and then the world after Billy Currie left to rejoin ULTRAVOX, replaced Denis Haines.
But Bell wasn’t just required for duties on his chosen instrument as he told ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK in 2012: “I was the guitarist and I had five synths!! I had a Polymoog, two Minimoogs, Moog Taurus pedals, Synares and a Roland guitar synth!”
On ‘The Teletour’, he would be required to play violin while when he formed DRAMATIS with Payne, Sharpley and Haines, he would add saxophone, Chapman Stick and a Moog Liberation to his armoury.
DRAMATIS only released one album ‘For Future Reference’ in 1981. Haines left shortly after so the remaining trio of Bell, Payne and Sharpley soldiered on to issue a further three singles before disbanding and rejoining their former boss for the ‘Warriors’ tour.
Decades later, DRAMATIS announced they were reforming but sadly Cedric Sharpley passed away in 2012. A new track featuring Bell and Payne called ‘Retro Alien Thing’ had radio play in 2014 but since then, there has been something of an are they or are they not going saga with DRAMATIS. Chris Payne issued a solo album ‘The Falling Tower’ this year while the pair performed ‘Fade To Grey’ together at the Royal Albert Hall in 2018 opening for Numan on his string laden tour with The Skaparis Orchestra.
The title song could easily be retitled “Like-A-Numan”, with Bell adopting the verbal mannerisms of the former Gary John Webb in a touching homage that will be enjoyed by long-standing card carrying Numanoids. Meanwhile on guitar, Bell turns into Robert Fripp!
On ‘Haunted By You’, Bell springs a another vocal surprise in a duet with the fabulous feminine allure of Charlie Jones, while the man himself offers a deeper vocal resonance away from the strained larynx heard on the work of DRAMATIS. The straightforward rhythmic backbone is perfect for the song’s cinematic surroundings.
Cut from a similar cloth, ‘We Drown In Bars’ is exotically Eastern and airy, especially within its guitar motif with Bell offering another confident low register vocal with some Numanesque overtones. To end the EP, the gothic prog of ‘Cold Zero’ maintains the baritone while there is some fabulous frantic drum programming and a full-fat guitar solo emerging from the haunting choir filled soundtrack.
Russell Bell says there will be new DRAMATIS material and it appears that the ‘Like A Human’ EP is a welcome first step in sparking such a possibility.
Chris Payne is perhaps best known as a sideman to Gary Numan and co-writing ‘Fade To Grey’ with Billy Currie and Midge Ure for VISAGE.
But more recently, Payne released his second solo work ‘The Falling Tower’, an ambitious concept album with neo-classical stylings about “a social and political armageddon”, an all too possible prospect in the current work climate, with the twist of being sung in Latin, Esperanto AND English!
The Rouen-based Cornishman took time out to chat about ‘The Falling Tower’ and the various projects he is currently involved in…
‘The Falling Tower’ is your second solo album, but a significant part of it formed an ELECTRONIC CIRCUS album with the same title which came out in 2018?
Yes it is a rather unique situation whereby I released the album under the ELECTRONIC CIRCUS banner when it was clearly not ready. It was a bit of a disparate mix of songs as I was trying to fit the quirky synthpop songs such as ‘Roundabout’ and ‘Space Invaders’ with the more serious compositions like ‘In Red Fields Of Flanders’ and ‘Nocturne for Piano & Synths’. I decided to take a bit of an unprecedented step of redoing the album and dropping the synth pop stuff.
Do you still believe in the album as a concept and artform in this age of streaming and skipping?
Fundamentally yes. It’s true that with digital downloads and streaming etc, you don’t get the benefit of the classic album cover which is not only something that adds artistic merit to the music but also allows the listener to get information about who played on it, the lyrics etc.
Of course you can put all of that information and more on your website or social media page but it isn’t quite the same as having it directly associated with the disc, be it CD or vinyl.
Certainly ‘The Falling Tower’ has a strong message of “Look after the planet or nothing else matters”. In other words as a species that is part of this planet it’s about time to stop ego and thinking xenophobically about nations and politics and redress the damage we are doing. I know it’s a theme that is preached to us all the time, and believe you me I’m the last person to want to be preached to, but if we don’t take a different course soon the risks are colossal for the planets existence.
Whilst ‘Space Invaders’ didn’t fit in at all, ‘Direct Lines’ with its nuclear catastrophe storyline and ‘Roundabout’ with its midlife crisis metaphors weren’t that far off the “political collapse of the world” narrative you were aiming at with ‘The Falling Tower’?
I see your point, but they were still very upbeat. As I’ve mentioned before if you’re going to make an album about the collapse of the political and social global civilisation as we know it, you don’t want an album of “jigs and reels”
On ‘The Great Gates’, you perform your first lead vocal since ‘Turn’ with DRAMATIS on ‘For Future Reference’, what brought that on? How different were the two recording sessions which were 37 years apart!
Well I was never a singer and it’s still something that bothers me to be honest.
I’ve been told on numerous occasions by my wife Dominique that singing isn’t all about technique, it’s about emotion and although it took me a long time to appreciate this, she was right.
I have never felt comfortable about my own voice. It was always put down whilst I was at music college and as a result I really didn’t care that much. The DRAMATIS song ‘Turn’ was composed by me and I only recorded my own voice for either Denis Haines or RRussell Bell who were the principle vocalists on the album. But after I recorded it, everyone thought it fitted the track so we kept it.
For the recording of ‘The Great Gates’, Dominique had always told me that my voice had a more unique quality about it in a lower register, and I had had a couple of voice training sessions with a vocal trainer called Cecile Helene who used very imaginative vocal techniques to bring out the best in her pupils. She believes we all have the natural ability to sing, but the way we are structured as kids and taught in schools often condemns us to insecurity and a sense of non self-belief which inevitably blocks progression.
So this gave a certain confidence to sing the song which coincidentally happened to fall in a very nice key for my voice. The thing is, I’m not that interested in the continuing development of my singing career! So it’ll probably be a one off but it’s nice to get the feeling back of not being a vocal moron.
Speaking of DRAMATIS, what happened to the mooted reissue of ‘For Future Reference’ with those later non-album singles like ‘Face On The Wall’ and ‘The Shame’ as extras, which was trailed by the free download of a remastered ‘Ex Luna Scientia’?
Do you know what, I honestly don’t know. RRussell tracked down the owner of ‘For Future Reference’ which had been sold on so many times from our initial management team, who were a bunch of music business conmen! But RRussell bought the copyrights to the album back. As for the titles you mentioned, I’ve no idea if they were included or not. I’ll have to ask RRussell about that! Maybe they’re all for sale on eBay!!
‘Ex Luna Scientia’ was partly sung in Latin, as is ‘The Trapeze’ from The Falling Tower’ while the title track is in Esperanto, what inspired you to do that with those two tracks?
Well I know it sounds a bit musical elitist and trust me, I have no time for that nonsense! But Latin is a great language to sing in and I’m used to using it on my big orchestral choral works I’ve done in London and Prague over the years. It worked very well on ‘The Trapeze’ but when it came to ‘The Falling Tower’, I thought of Esperanto as it was created as a universal language to benefit mankind.
Now interestingly it didn’t work as a created language back in the 19th century and I’m sure that’s because a language isn’t a formal constructed thing from the outset, but a living growing and evolving form of communication that just happens on a gradual basis between us humans. Having said all of that, my wife and I looked at the language, realised it had similarities to Latin and went from there. We discovered that it’s a beautiful language to sing in and I’ve used it on the TULM project I’m working on with my daughter Marikay.
Will you do a song in Cornish next? Didn’t you work with Gwenno once upon a time on ‘Ysolt Y’nn Gweinten’, a version of which ended up on your ‘Between Betjeman, Bach & Numan’ solo debut ?
Well that’s another interesting thing about language. Take Cornish for example. It has been what I call a sleeping language for the last couple of hundred years and has recently, I guess post war, become a spoken and scholarly language once more with a lot of revivalist interest.
It worked beautifully on the CELTIC LEGEND ‘Tristan & Isolde’ project.
Through a chance connection to Tim Saunders (Gwenno’s father and Cornish language expert), I got to work with Gwen. I remember her coming to Nigel Bates’ studio in Sussex and when she sang the instrumental I’d written with Tim’s lyrics and I thought “Wow! what an amazing sound!”, so emotive and full of expression.
Of course I had no idea what was being said, but Tim had given me a translation of it so I could follow the idea. Gwenno is also fluent in Welsh and I remember hearing her on the phone to her mother in Welsh and followed by a conversation with her father in Cornish.
Both languages are from the Brythonic Celtic branch, but to me have a difference in sonority. I really find this incredible and it values a language no matter how few people speak it. It would be a tragedy to lose the likes of Cornish, Welsh, Irish, Scottish, Breton and any so called minority languages as they have so much to offer in music and literature.
I’ve lost touch with Gwenno over the last five years or so, but I know she is a huge exponent of the Cornish language and is incorporating it into her own music, which in my opinion is both brave and brilliant.
‘Nocturne for Piano & Synths’ and ‘Electro Vivaldio’ have given you the opportunity to realise some of your classical synth fusion ideas?
Yes the ‘Nocturne…’ was an experiment whereby I tried to get the same emotion of a string orchestral arrangement to back the piano with synths. At first I tried to emulate the strings with a far too complex arrangement and so stripped it down to a simple very analogue sound using the classic Elka strings. I also added some synth voices and there you go, it worked. I’m very happy with it as it’s a piece very much inspired by a great pianist Ludovico Einaudi, although the difference is he uses the real strings on his recordings plus he’s a bit good and puts me in my place.
The ‘Vivaldi’ was a way for me to express an idea which is simply this. Would the likes of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven etc have empathised with the synth and possibly changed their way of composing had it been around. I personally think yes. The ‘Vivaldi’ was just a sort of compositional metaphor to emphasise this idea.
This version of ‘The Falling Tower’ appears to be getting traction, do you think that’s because you’re actually using your own name and the exposure from The Skaparis Orchestral tour with Gary Numan?
I definitely think it helps. Having done the tour at the end of last year, it exposed me to a number of Gary’s fans again who probably thought I had retired or died! And just using my name rather than going under the ELECTRONIC CIRCUS banner probably helped as well as few would have connected EC to me.
How was that Gary Numan tour incidentally for you?
Well you can imagine that it was totally amazing. Great venues including the Royal Albert Hall, being back on tour again and having my wife with me to share the experience.
Travelling on the tour bus with Gary and his band (plus crew of course) who incidentally are a brilliant bunch, and as I’ve said before outstanding musicians all of them.
Also the massive buzz of performing my own songs and instrumentals and Gemma (Gary’s wife) who is so kind and welcoming and unbelievably funny and straight away making us feel part of the family. My only regret was it lasted for ten days. I could have done a hundred!
You are writing an autobiography on your Numan days, how is that coming along?
I have been sketching it out and it is quite daunting as I want to make it a historic book about my observations and perspective on events, but at the same time entertaining.
What has caught the imagination is my close involvement with Gary and the band members during this period from 1979 until 1990 (when I officially left) and it’s interesting writing it now from a very retrospective angle. If I had written this at the time, I don’t think it would be good. It would probably have been a bit like a diary and that’s the last thing I want it to be.
What’s perhaps not widely known is that on ‘The Pleasure Principle’, you and Gary shared the keyboard parts because from ‘Telekon’ onwards, he tended to handle the majority himself?
The difference between the two recordings was immense. ‘The Pleasure Principle’ was all of us playing together and to lay down the basis of the track and then doing overdubs.
‘Telekon’ was much more fragmented with us coming and going and sometimes hanging around all day and doing no recording at all.
I played some keyboards on it and viola, but Denis Haines had joined the band and added keyboard parts. Gary did a lot of overdubs himself on various synths and then you had RRussell adding guitar, Paul on bass and Cedric on drums. But my memory of it was that it was put together in a rather random way compared to ‘The Pleasure Principle’. It was still a brilliant album mind you and I’m well proud to have been involved.
Everyone naturally talks about tracks like ‘Complex’ when referencing your contribution, but I’d like to mention ‘M.E.’ and ‘Tracks’, what can you remember about doing those?
‘Tracks’ sadly I have no memory at all. Did I play on it? But on ‘M.E.’, I was given full license to come up with the parts under Gary’s guidance. I’d play them and he’d make the decision as to if he liked what I had done or not. This is a pattern that followed through into future recordings with Gary.
You’ve been working with German songstress Katja von Kassel and you did a new version of ‘Fade To Grey’ with her for ELECTRONIC CIRCUS. Now that version of the album has been taken out of circulation, will it reappear on perhaps your next EP with her or something?
No I doubt it. I think Katja’s better off with releasing original material to establish her own identity rather than relying on covers.
‘Fade To Grey’ is something of an evergreen, there was people like Kelly Osbourne and Kylie Minogue with their respective songs like ‘One Word’ and ‘Like A Drug’ significantly borrowing from it, are you getting any royalties from those? 😉
We all got royalties from the Kelly Osbourne record. Linda Perry the producer and writer, you know the one from 4 NON BLONDES fame, producer of Pink, Christina Aguilera etc etc realised her error and relinquished her entire rights to the song. I still have her lovely letter written to me apologising for her mistake. To be honest it could happen to anyone and for her to have been so honest and forthcoming with a solution was admirable. I think she’s a really decent person and she has my total admiration.
Minogue on the other hand is a different story. She would have known full well it was a rip off, but the massive weight of her management and herself didn’t act as decently as Linda Perry as they employed the UK’s ‘top musicologist’ so they got away with it and we ended up with nothing. But hey that’s the music business! Nobody said it was fair!
While we’re on the subject of VISAGE, you contributed five songs to Rusty Egan’s ‘Welcome To The Dancefloor’ album which were sung by Midge Ure and Tony Hadley among others, anymore stuff on the way from you with that project?
Oh definitely. He’s a fascinating character who is passionate, driven, committed 100% to the electronic music cause.
He’s extremely loud (you can hear him over an AC/DC concert!) and as I describe him affectionately to others due to his direct no nonsense approach, ‘a social grenade’ but he’s a forceful character and he gets things done. During the album ‘Welcome To The Dancefloor’, he managed to get so many good people on board.
How do you look back on it?
It took a long time and in fact five years from inauguration to finish and I was there from the start to the finish, in fact I was the only one. Many had dropped off not believing it would happen but there’s something about him that I share, and that is a driven passion to get the job done and get your music out there.
I contributed five songs to his album and the most interesting one was ‘Glorious’ with Midge Ure. I had written the basic track and had this idea about the chorus relating to the national anthem but as a love song, a sort of “You make me Glorious sometimes victorious” type of thing. Well, Rusty loved the initial idea and worked on it but it didn’t have that big anthem sound I had imagined.
It rested there for a year or so and then suddenly out of the blue Midge had got hold of it and although he kept the chord structure I had written, had revised it from verse to chorus and turned it into the song I always imagined it to be. I was stunned when I first heard it and all credit to Mr Ure, he had turned around a good song into an amazing song.
TULM is a new project with your daughter Marikay which has an eerie Medieval folk feel about it?
The TULM concept is a new project that I’m creating with my daughter Marikay. She has a passion for auditioning huge amounts of music from all over the world on the internet and has a unique ear and is also passionate about creating a project that involves not just the process of music but film, still photography, clothes design, jewellery etc. She has already connected a lot of artists in the Rouen region on this and they all are very committed to the project.
As for my role? Well that’s also different and interesting for me. I will listen to her basic story ideas which are normally based on dark fairy tales and create the music as we are going. In some cases such as the song ‘Flower Crown’, there is no standard structure. We are just going through a story told in music and lyrics and that’s it. It feels a bit like composing film music but without the film!
One thing that does show a certain generation gap is when I’m writing using a simple bed of strings and thinking to myself “Wow that sounds good”, she’ll me bring down to earth with a comment like. “Dad, that’s so 80s! No one uses that old fashioned sound now”. So I change it to something different and that’s how it works. The complete antithesis to how I normally work but an interesting learning curve. Plus as you said there are elements of folk. It’s actually a hard project to define to anyone.
You’ve been working with TINY MAGNETIC PETS on their new album ‘The Point Of Collapse’?
Yes, I was asked to contribute some piano and violin on a couple of their songs. I didn’t hesitate as they’re such an amazing band and more importantly such lovely people. It’s always a pleasure to meet up with them and I really hope they get to achieve the success they deserve with this album.
Have you had a chance to reflect on your career and how your synthy past has become a part of your creative life again in the last decade?
Well as you know I left synths when I left Gary back in 1990 as I went back to classical and folk instruments. I worked on a lot of orchestral projects for production film and media music, plus the use of the folk instruments in CELTIC LEGEND. But having said that , I was still using synths but as a background atmospheric thing rather than full on upfront.
Actually by 2010, I had got into a bit of a rut with music and this changed when Rusty contacted me and I had to get back into synths again. My entire way of looking at them has changed since then. They are an integral part of music creation and what I’ve always admired about the synth is the accessibility of the instrument to all. Think of it as a tool able to be used by non-musicians to create music.
For most instruments, it takes years to get proficient enough to be able to write with them, but the synth opens up this new world of creativity to non-musicians almost immediately which I’m convinced is a great thing. I have certainly reconnected with them and use them all the time. My poor old crumhorns, ocarinas, bamboo flutes, Bombards etc are just lying around in the corner of my studio. But I’ll find a project soon to incorporate them back into my musical life I’m sure.
What’s next for you, under whatever guise?
Simply to carry on writing in whatever form and creating music.
I have an interesting project with an old music college friend called Michael Stewart who was mentored by Sir John Tavener, and this involves setting up our own neo-classical label. I would really like this to work but it’s going to take time and a lot of commitment.
We have a project in mind to start off, with an amazing pianist from Japan called Ahuri playing one of the rare Tavener piano compositions called ‘Palintropos’. And of course I have to finish the long awaited book ‘My Numan Days’, check out my Facebook page and www.chrispaynemusic.com for updates.
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its sincerest thanks to Chris Payne
‘The Falling Tower’ is released by Gaia International Music, available as a digital album via the usual platforms
If ‘The Falling Tower’, the second solo album by Chris Payne has a familiar ring to it, then you are not mistaken.
“Last year I rushed out an ELECTRONIC CIRCUS album of the same name and I wasn’t happy with it.” said the one-time Numan sideman who returned as his boss’ opening act for last year’s shows, “Electronic Circus was a hurriedly reformed outfit with myself, my wife Dominique and two founder members Tim Vince and Michael Stewart; and the aim was to be able to have enough material for a live show. My problem was that as the album was rushed, it had some wrong elements about it that didn’t fit in with the idea of a social and political armageddon.”
While the ELECTRONIC CIRCUS version of ‘The Falling Tower’ was enjoyable and included the wonderfully quirky ‘Roundabout’ and ‘Space Invaders’, potential audiences were confused about how these synthpop tunes fitted in with the very serious concept highlighting the eventual implosion of the world’s political system. As Payne put it: “If you’re writing an album about the collapse of modern civilisation, it’s not going to be all about ‘Jigs and Reels’.”
The end result has Chris Payne reworking the album in an Industrial Classical Electronic style which he has called ‘ICE’, with seven new tracks and five retained but remixed from the ELECTRONIC CIRCUS original. In a confident mood, Payne even starts the album with his first lead vocal since ‘Turn’ in 1981 when he was a member of DRAMATIS. Sounding not unlike CRASH TEST DUMMIES collaborating with NITZER EBB, the thundering percussive backdrop of ‘The Great Gates’ sets the tone loud and clear as a simple metaphor for a society that are falling apart.
Continuing at a Goth disco friendly tempo, ‘The Science of Gaia’ will be loved by anyone who enjoys Polymoog Vox Humana sounds of the sort Numan and Payne exploited together on ‘The Pleasure Principle’ plus with Payne’s classical credentials, there’s that element of his ‘Fade To Gey’ co-writer Billy Currie from ULTRAVOX too.
With ‘The Trapeze’, the wondrous tone of humanistic unity on the main act flows over a brilliant neo-instrumental with a symphonic theme that gallops like classic ULTRAVOX. But despite the pomp, there is a dominant melancholy throughout much of this record.
Within this background, ‘The Falling Tower’ title song acts as an acute warning to the looming collapse of western civilisation.
To add further poignancy to the message, it is entirely sung in Esperanto by Dominique Hemard-Payne; the language was created by LL Zamenhof in the late 19th Century and its intention was to foster harmony between people from different countries.
“The idea was to use it as a kind of metaphor for global unification” explains Payne, “Something I personally believe we should have concentrated on a long time ago. Basically the theme is simple: ‘If we don’t look after the planet, nothing else matters’”. Ni amos! Pacon! But with Esperanto being Latin based, for aural aesthetics alone, the Cornishman confirms that “The song wouldn’t have worked half as well if it had been in English irrespective of the fact that most people won’t understand it”.
As can be expected from a violin player who studied Medieval Music, ‘The Falling Tower’ sees classical and traditional music forms figuring strongly. This comes to the fore on ‘Electro Vivaldio’; “I’ve been intrigued about this notion of how classical composers would have dealt with today’s modern music” says Payne, “Of course, we will never know but I think they would have embraced it. That’s the Vivaldi track theme”. With its frantic chopping violin, it recalls the B-side ‘Pomp & Stompandstamp’ by DRAMATIS.
The electro classical template continues on the appropriately titled and beautiful ‘Nocturne For Piano & Synths’, which Payne describes as “My way of expressing a classical piano piece using synths not orchestra”, adding “Did you know that towards the end of his life the Russian composer Dmitri Shostokovich was said to have listened to CREAM for inspiration?”.
The piano piece ‘Isolation’ and the sombre overtures of ‘Desolation’ add to the solemn air of Armageddon which is also reflected during ‘In Red Fields Of Flanders’ sung by Marikay Payne. Her father doesn’t hide his anger when he considers how despite the lessons of previous conflicts, his family could have no future: “’In Red Fields Of Flanders’’ is a poignant song honouring all war dead from all sides of the conflict in World War I. It’s about the suffering caused by the usual bunch of political f*cking idiots dragging us into conflict that could of been avoided, and how ordinary people are used to further their ends. Plus it’s been 100 years since the end of the conflict”.
Appropriately solemn, ‘A Saviour Comes’ delivers a metaphor for the religious concept of mankind being saved with a forceful tribal optimism.
But as Payne points out “It doesn’t matter that in reality a handful of survivors would rebuild society or we might just disappear from the earth entirely. Hence the poignant ‘Evensong’ that reflects either view and finishes the album.”
And with that final plaintive lament, everything ends… “It’s all a bit doom and gloom” mourns Payne “but tragically this is where I’m seeing mankind heading unless we have a new Geo political system in place….Very soon!”
A worthy follow-up to Payne’s debut long player ‘Between Betjeman, Bach & Numan’, ‘The Falling Tower’ may appear to be a bit heavy and cerebral, but its ambitious neo-classical stylings provide an intelligent and thoughtful listen, while also satisfying cravings for strong melodies and timeless musicality.
After all, when was the last time you heard a record that was sung in Latin, Esperanto AND English?
‘The Falling Tower’ is released by Gaia International Music available as a digital album via the usual platforms
It cannot be denied that it was Gary Numan who became the world’s first synthesizer pop star.
Born Gary Anthony James Webb, he joined Paul Gardiner in THE LASERS at the height of punk although the band soon morphed into TUBEWAY ARMY. Then as now, Webb was shy, so crucially it was Gardiner who handed over a demo tape to Beggars Banquet on learning of the record store chain’s intention to start a label.
Beggars Banquet saw some potential and signed TUBEWAY ARMY to take on GENERATION X with speedy pop punk tunes like ‘That’s Too Bad’ and ‘Bombers’. Webb changed his surname to Valerian and then to Numan after seeing a directory listing for a firm named Neumann in Yellow Pages. But he was starting to tire of punk and began to see electronics as the way to realise his concept of machine rock, having become inspired by the likes of ULTRAVOX, THE HUMAN LEAGUE and THE NORMAL.
Numan’s debut album as TUBEWAY ARMY was not an immediate commercial success, but it was championed by John Peel while his unusual detached vocal style was beginning to attract media attention. In late 1978, he provided the voice to ‘Don’t Be A Dummy’, a song in a TV advertisement for Lee Cooper jeans.
Still using the band name of TUBEWAY ARMY at the behest of Beggars Banquet, the astoundingly long ‘Are Friends Electric?’ with its diabolus in musica structure reached No1 in the UK singles chart in 1979 and became many an electronic music fan’s entry point into the genre. A few months later under his solo moniker, ‘Cars’ followed ‘Are Friends Electric?’ to the top spot and became a huge international hit, even making sinewaves in the more conservative territory of North America where it reached the Top 10. As a result, he won the Best Male Singer category at the 1979 British Rock and Pop Awards, the-then equivalent of the BRITS.
But despite scoring three UK No1 albums in less than two years and having a loyal legion of fans who were dubbed Numanoids, not everyone could accept the synthesizer or the man behind it. This was all beginning to take a toll on the man who had realised most of his musical dreams by the time he was 23 years old. So Numan retired from touring with three spectacular farewell shows at Wembley Arena in April 1981.
Having got his flying licence in 1980, Numan had other ambitions so later in 1981, he followed his dream of flying around the world. His first attempt ended in arrest in India for espionage after an emergency landing, but the second attempt was more successful and completed on Christmas Eve 1981.
Numan subsequently returned to touring in the summer of 1982 with a low-key jaunt in North America before a full blown UK tour in 1983. Since then, he has played live regularly while the rollercoaster ride of highs and lows and highs during his 40 year recording career have been well documented; the recent documentary ‘Android In La La Land’ revealed many of the fears and insecurities that had lingered throughout his career.
Now firmly established as a highly influential music figure with a significant number of artistic contribution awards to his name, his songs have been covered by artists as diverse as Robert Palmer, NINE INCH NAILS, FOO FIGHTERS, Beck, Marilyn Manson and Afrika Bambaataa. Meanwhile SNOOP DOGG, SUGABABES, ARMAND VAN HELDEN and BASEMENT JAXX are among those who sampled Numan’s work.
Not a best of listing, this expanded twenty-two track Beginner’s Guide chronicles the varied musical adventures of Gary Numan through his own work and collaborations, with a restriction of one track per album project.
TUBEWAY ARMY Listen To The Sirens (1978)
Despatched by Beggars Banquet to record his debut album at Spaceward Studios in Cambridge, Numan discovered a Minimoog left behind from a previous session and had that legendary Eureka moment when he tried it. He now turned his punk songs into electronic ones, although essentially ‘Tubeway Army’ was still very much a new wave record; “Mr Webb, there is no way out” was a line from album opener ‘Listen To The Sirens’ that would forever haunt him!
Available on the TUBEWAY ARMY album ‘Tubeway Army’ via Beggars Banquet
TUBEWAY ARMY Down In The Park (1979)
Whereas the TUBEWAY ARMY debut featured punk tunes with synthesizer added almost as an afterthought, ‘Replicas’ would be where Numan would see his Philip K Dick inspired vision become reality with electronic songs to soundtrack his dystopian Sci-Fi stories featuring android characters. Originally written on a second hand upright piano, ‘Down In The Park’ was the first of these songs and while it was not a hit, it was to pave the way for the success of ‘Are Friends Electric?’
Available on the TUBEWAY ARMY album ‘Replicas’ via Beggars Banquet
GARY NUMAN M.E. (1979)
With the success of ‘Are Friends Electric?’, Numan was able to drop the TUBEWAY ARMY moniker and for his next offering, he opted to make an album using no guitars. What this meant was that the power had to be arrived in a more inventive fashion, so synths were fed through guitar effects pedals to add a more sinister metallic tone. ‘M.E’, a story about the last computer on earth where humanity no longer exists, was where this aural desolation was at its most effective.
By 1980, the negative side of fame was beginning to linger into Numan’s occasionally paranoid psyche, and while his songs were never the most cheery, his new material was starting to take on a more personal downbeat nature away from the Sci-Fi nature of the previous work. Held down by a snaky Compurhythm backbeat and squealing synth, the title track of the resultant ‘Telekon’ album captured that neuroticism with a detached hum and some sinister horror flick piano.
With Numan’s retirement from live performance, bassist Paul Gardiner opted not to join DRAMATIS with the other band members. Sadly, he went into a downward spiral as a heroin addict. An attempt to give his friend since the TUBEWAY ARMY days something to focus on musically came with this collaboration between the pair, which Numan provided the lead vocal for. Gardiner sadly died in 1984 due to drug related complications; Numan later wrote ‘A Child With The Ghost’ as a tribute.
Available on the GARY NUMAN album ‘Dance’ via Beggars Banquet
GARY NUMAN & DRAMATIS Love Needs No Disguise (1981)
Live band members RRussell Bell, Chris Payne, Ced Sharpley and Denis Haines formed DRAMATIS and signed to Rocket Records to release their only album ‘For Future Reference’. On a visit to see his old band mates, Numan was played a hypnotically percussive song they had recording about their days out on the road. He loved it so much, that he asked if he could do the lead vocal. Some pretty guitar and viola were the final touches to a track that was barer than most Numan fans were used to.
Available on the GARY NUMAN album ‘Premier Hits’ via Beggars Banquet
GARY NUMAN Noise Noise (1982)
After the downtempo nature of ‘Dance’, Numan got more energetic again with ‘Music For Chameleons’ and the subsequent ‘I Assassin’ album. On the B-side was what was considered at the time, a strange collaboration with DOLLAR or more specifically, Thereza Bazar on a track that saw Numan’s first use of sung female vocals on one of his recording. Heavy and electronic, he was back on form and the song would be a mainstay of live sets for several years to come.
Available on the GARY NUMAN album ‘I Assassin’ via Beggars Banquet
GARY NUMAN My Car Slides 1 (1983)
By 1983, Numan was making a full live comeback after retiring in 1981. To add another dimension to what was to become the ‘Warriors’ album, Bill Nelson was signed up as producer but the two quickly fell out in the studio. One track that the pair completed was ‘My Car Slides 1’, a beautiful ballad featuring Nelson’s distinctive E-bowed guitar. Alas, it was not included in Numan’s revision of the ‘Warriors’ concept while modest sales saw the end of his relationship with Beggars Banquet.
Available on the GARY NUMAN album ‘Warriors’ via Beggars Banquet
GARY NUMAN I Still Remember (1985)
Co-produced with PPG operators The Wave Team, ‘The Fury’ was Numan’s best album since ‘Telekon’. Although very much with the times and in line with acts like FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD and DEAD OR ALIVE, the hard but bright digital sound complimented Numan’s downbeat lyrical outlook. One particular highlight was the haunting closing track ‘I Still Remember’, effectively a vocal reimagining of the 1979 instrumental ‘Random’ and featuring ‘Blade Runner’ saxophonist Dick Morrissey.
Available on the GARY NUMAN album ‘The Fury’ via Eagle Records
RADIO HEART featuring GARY NUMAN Radio Heart (1987)
In an unexpected collaboration, Numan teamed up with Hugh Nicholson, a former member of Scottish soft rockers MARMALADE for his RADIO HEART project. The eponymous song was catchy and got airplay, enough for Numan to attain a UK Top 40 singles chart placing despite, like ‘Change Your Mind’ with Bill Sharpe of SHAKATAK, not having written the song . Two other RADIO HEART singles ‘London Times’ and ‘All Across The Nation’ were issued but failed to make any further impact.
Available on the NICHOLSON / NUMAN album ‘1987-1994’ via The Record Label
SHARPE & NUMAN Voices (1987)
When the excellent ‘Change Your Mind’ was released as a single in 1985, it gained extensive radio play and reached No17 in UK and gave Numan a brief commercial renaissance. A SHARPE & NUMAN album was recorded and ‘Voices’, which had originally been the B-side to ‘No More Lies’ stood up as one of the best songs from what has now been considered to be his wilderness years. Indeed, Polydor in Germany had considered it so good, they released it as a single in its own right complete with a 12 inch mix!
Available on the SHARPE & NUMAN album ‘Automatic’ via Cherry Pop
NUMAN & DADADANG Like A Refugee (1994)
Despite the funk rock excursions of the ‘Metal Rhythm’, ‘Outland’ and ‘Machine & Soul’ albums, the biggest curio in the Numan catalogue has to be ‘Like A Refugee’. Composed again by Hugh Nicholson, it was a rousing number featuring strummed acoustic guitars and Uillean pipes in collaboration with DADADANG, a robotic Italian marching band! “An Intergalactic Close Meeting”, it was melodic number if nothing else and would have actually made a good Eurovision entry.
Available on the NICHOLSON / NUMAN album ‘1987-1994’ via The Record Label
GARY NUMAN A Question Of Faith (1994)
The ‘Machine & Soul’ album in 1992 had all but killed Numan’s career, but then he met Gemma O’Neill, the lady who would become his wife; she made him understand that he needed to become more of a Numan fan to understand what Numanoids saw in him. The final album to be released on his Numa label which he started in 1984 and using DEPECHE MODE’s ‘Songs Of Faith & Devotion’ as its template, ‘Sacrifice’ was his most Numan record since his heyday and ‘A Question Of Faith’ was its dark calling card.
Available on the GARY NUMAN album ‘Sacrifice’ via Eagle Records
DUBSTAR Redirected Mail (2000)
Following recording a sexily deadpan cover of the masturbation anthem ‘Every Day I Die’ for the ‘Random’ tribute album, DUBSTAR actually collaborated with the man himself on one of the B-sides to ‘The Self Same Thing’ EP. Of this almost Beatle-esque number, vocalist Sarah Blackwood said: “I was in Manchester when we recorded ‘Redirected Mail’ but Steve and Chris actually went down to Gary’s and sat and had ham and chips with him. They had a right laugh and had a really good time”.
GARY NUMAN Prayer For The Unborn – Andy Gray Mix (2001)
By 2000’s ‘Pure’, Numan had fallen under the spell of NINE INCH NAILS and embraced an intense rock gothique with industrial metal guitar on songs like ‘Rip’ and ‘Listen To My Voice’ that won him a new audience, but there were more delicate moments too. Inspired by his own personal tragedy, the heartfelt blippy cacophony of ‘A Prayer For The Unborn’ remixed by Andy Gray was a triumph that bridged the gap between his classic synth and current rock styles.
AFRIKA BAMBAATAA Featuring GARY NUMAN & MC CHATTERBOX Metal (2004)
Aside from KRAFTWERK, one of the other key influences on AFRIKA BAMBAATAA & THE SOUL SONIC FORCE was Gary Numan with the drum breaks of the late Cedric Sharpley, who played on ‘The Pleasure Principle’, particularly appealing to the youth of Urban America. So it was no big surprise that the rap and hip-hop pioneer covered ‘Metal’, a key track from the album and even persuaded Numan himself to duet on his meaty electro reworking.
2006’s ‘Jagged’ had a one-dimensional sound that proved underwhelming and stalled Numan’s momentum after the positive reception for ‘Pure’. But he returned with ‘Dead Son Rising’ which started life as a set of discarded demos from previous projects, but quickly took on a life of its own. Wearing his NINE INCH NAILS influences proudly on his sleeve, the industrial beats and blistering chorus of ‘The Fall’ combined for the beginning of a creative recovery.
Available on the GARY NUMAN album ‘Dead Son Rising’ via Mortal Records
GARY NUMAN My Last Day (2013)
The ‘Splinter’ album took a long time to realise but when it was finally released, it won Numan some of the best reviews of his career. While there was still a heavy rock element, two of the album’s slower numbers ‘Lost’ and ‘My Last Day’ proved to be album highlights. Beautifully dramatic, ‘My Last Day’ pictured blood red skies with the vox humana synths providing a most chilling musical mantra to soundtrack the apocalypse before a chilling close with some lonely casading piano.
JOHN FOXX & THE MATHS featuring GARY NUMAN Talk (2016)
‘Talk’ has been used by John Foxx to explore different approaches from a singular idea with other kindred spirits. Retitled ‘Talk (Are You Listening To Me?)’, Numan’s take naturally screamed alienation and fully exploited his haunting classic synth overtures. “John Foxx has been a hero of mine for my entire adult life” said Numan, “It was a real honour to finally have the chance to contribute to one of his tracks… it was every bit as creative, unusual, demanding, and rewarding, as I always expected it to be”.
JEAN-MICHEL JARRE & GARY NUMAN Here For You (2016)
For his ambitious ‘Electronica’ project, Jean-Michel Jarre sought out collaborators and worked with them in person as opposed to remotely online. The unlikely friendship that developed between Jarre and Numan resulted in ‘Here For You’. Possibly the darkest thing that the French maestro had ever recorded, he described it as “Oscar Wilde Techno”. Significant in its absence of the crunching guitars that characterise much of Numan’s later work, the track wonderfully combined the best of both artists.
In collaboration with Mexican electro rockers TITÁN, the resultant ‘Dark Rain’ was a brilliant slice of electronically assisted Gothic disco. Propelled by a superb syncopated bassline and thunderous drums while layered with classic vox humana lines, interestingly the guitars only appeared about two thirds of the way through before a magnificent burst of foreboding synth into the final chorus! Numan himself was in great form, “waking like wings upon your shoulder”.
Available on the TITÁN album ‘Dama’ via ATP Recordings
GARY NUMAN And It All Began With You (2017)
With a lot less goth metal guitar and much more prominent use of synths, ‘Savage’ successfully outstripped ‘Splinter’. And it was the haunting ‘And It All Began With You’ that stopped all in its tracks, with an exposed and soulful vocal. Borrowing Chris Isaak’s ‘Wicked Game’ for its chorus, the subtle orchestrations and a gentle shuffling beat coupled to a steadily discordant electric piano riff to close, it beautifully brought out the best in classic Numan while maintaining forward momentum.
When Gary Numan broke through in 1979 as the world’s first ever synthesizer pop star, it was not only musically that he made an impressive impact.
The unsmiling, pale faced ‘Machman’ cast a striking visual figure.
In the age of post-punk paranoia, he unwittingly represented the fears of an alienated youth facing minimal prospects and unemployment under the spectre of ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’ while the government gave out booklets on how to ‘Protect & Survive!
Now a newly released DVD entitled ‘Machine Music: The Best of Gary Numan’ captures the one-time Mr Webb throughout his career from his early innovative promo videos right up to the present day, plus the added bonus of TV appearances and live highlights which have helped shaped the myth and occasional ridicule of Gary Numan.
Numan’s first promo ‘Cars’ is still truly iconic. Having phased out the band moniker TUBEWAY ARMY, he was out on his own but the video featured close-ups of the Polymoog and his 1979 backing band RRussell Bell, Billy Currie, Paul Gardiner, Chris Payne and Cedric Sharpley.
All dressed in uniform black suits but subtly wearing their own unique colour of tie, the significantly importance of this video was it conjured a communal tribal mentality… the message was “do you want to be in my gang?”
In fact, many people did as ‘Cars’ went to No1 and his magnificent ‘Touring Principle’ became the hottest ticket in town. The accompanying video of that show beat BLONDIE’s ‘Eat To The Beat’ into the shops as the first album length video costing around £40 in 1980!
The ‘Complex’ promo featured the band again but this time, sans Currie who was now back with ULTRAVOX but this video hasn’t aged as well, all Dr Who fuzzy effects and Thames TV lighting. These early productions were directed by the pioneering husband and wife team of Derek and Kate Burbidge.
Considering how today’s technology allows pop promos to be made on an iPhone, they did very well with the equipment available which at the time was prohibitively expensive. But this was a forward thinking period where you learnt as you went along. So everything got back on track with ‘We Are Glass’ featuring another iconic image, this time the ‘Telekon’ jump suit. Numan felt the wrath of the all important Children’s TV shows though due to producers considering his smashing up of television sets with a silver truncheon just too violent for the kiddies!
‘I Die: You Die’ featured Numan’s beloved Corvette Stingray but after that, the promos became a bit more ham as poor Gary tried to be James Cagney. The Julien Temple directed ‘She’s Got Claws’ from 1981 is a case in point, while the gangster storyline of ‘Music For Chameleons’ is unintentionally comedic.
The rare ‘Love Needs No Disguise video’ with his now solo band going under the name of DRAMATIS gets away with this St Valentine’s Day Massacre look by being a live performance piece but by this time, Numan was starting to struggle musically. His hobby of flying inevitably started creeping in his videos such as ‘Warriors’ and ‘I Can’t Stop’ (absent from this collection) as he lost interest in his music.
Photo by Ed Fielding
This coincided with a downturn in his financial fortunes so there simply wasn’t the budget for promo videos anymore, hence a huge gap in the time frame of this compendium. But with critical reappraisal in the 21st Century and the huge advances in technology, promo videos such as ‘Dominion Day’ and ‘Rip’ have been forthcoming with ‘The Fall’ in particular being a fine filmic representation of the music with equal measures of unsettlement and paranoid gothic metal atmosphere.
‘The Fall’ brings the Numan visual story up-to-date, but the best thing about ‘Machine Music’ is the collection of treasures to be found on the second DVD of rare and live TV appearances from around the world.
That memorable performance of Are ‘Friends’ Electric? with the young Numan swathed in white light on Top Of The Pops is all present and correct, while there is also the influential ‘Saturday Night Live’ appearance (featuring then new band member Denis Haines “bricking it”) which sold electronic music to America …everyone from Trent Reznor to Afrika Bambaataa was watching that night and thus industrial rock and electro hip-hop genres were effectively born.
Of course, the music of Gary Numan was often best experienced live so the 1980 ‘Teletour’ has been captured on this set with ‘This Wreckage’ and ‘Remind Me To Smile’, while the even bigger Wembley show as captured on ‘Micromusic’ is represented by ‘Down In The Park’, complete with sinister robot car!
The special ITV clip of ‘Metal’ is the prize of ‘Machine Music’. A brilliant promo video in its own right with Numan’s sneering dystopia appropriately set in an electricity sub-station, ‘Metal’ is indeed the great Numan track that really should have been a single.
The version of ‘I Die: You Die’ from The Kenny Everett video show in 1980 is the one David Bowie controversially had removed from the original 1979 Christmas edition, so threatened The Dame felt about the rising young upstart from Wraysbury. It was shameful diva-ish behaviour which Bowie has since nominally retracted by saying “Gary Numan has written some of the finest things in British pop” in Q Magazine some years later.
‘Machine Music’ is a wonderful visual document which to his credit, Numan has allowed to be an almost warts and all visual assessment of his career. The Top Of The Pops specials of ‘We Take Mystery’ and ‘White Boys & Heroes’ filmed in New York and Los Angeles respectively are a bit cringey to watch now, while Numan’s own views about ‘The Man Who Lost It All In Monte Carlo’ red bow tie look in ‘Your Fascination’ and ‘Call Out The Dogs’ are well documented.
But this is what Numanoids love about their hero and why they’ve stuck with him through all his highs and lows. Now, if only more artists were able to be as frank and honest…
‘Machine Music: The Best of Gary Numan’ DVD set is released as a limited edition of 3000 and will be available during his forthcoming UK concert tour. Any remaining copies will be on sale via the Official Gary Numan online shop at Townsend Records.
DVD Tracklisting:
Disc 1 – PROMO VIDEOS
1 Cars
2 Complex
3 We Are Glass
4 I Die: You Die
5 This Wreckage
6 She’s Got Claws
7 Love Needs No Disguise (with DRAMATIS)
8 Music For Chameleons
9 We Take Mystery
10 Warriors
11 Berserker
12 Your Fascination
13 Call Out The Dogs
14 Dominion Day
15 Cars (with FEAR FACTORY)
16 Rip
17 Crazier (with RICO)
18 In A Dark Place
19 Healing (with ADE FENTON)
20 The Fall
21 My Machines (with BATTLES)
Disc 2 – TV, LIVE AND RARITIES
1 Down In The Park (Micromusic)
2 Are ‘Friends’ Electric (Top Of The Pops, 1979)
3 Cars (Saturday Night Live, 1980)
4 Praying To The Aliens (Saturday Night Live, 1980)
5 Metal (ITV, 1979)
6 I Die: You Die (Kenny Everett, 1980)
7 Remind Me To Smile (Live Teletour 1980)
8 We Take Mystery (Top Of The Pops promo film, 1982)
9 White Boys And Heroes (Top Of The Pops promo film, 1982)
GARY NUMAN plays his first ever singles tour featuring everything from the punk debut ‘That’s Too Bad’ to his first electronic release ‘Down In The Park’ and the hits including ‘Are ‘Friends’ Electric?’, ‘Cars’, ‘Complex’, ‘We Are Glass’, ‘I Die: You Die’, ‘This Wreckage’ and ‘Berserker’ plus later Top 30 successes ‘Rip’ and ‘Crazier’.
The ‘Machine Music’ Tour includes:
Leicester O2 Academy (22nd May), Glasgow O2 ABC (23rd May), Newcastle O2 Academy (24th May), Sheffield O2 Academy (25th May), Dublin Button Factory (26th May) Bournemouth O2 Academy (28th May), Bristol O2 Academy (29th May), Cambridge Junction (30th May), Birmingham HMV Institute (31st May), London HMV Forum (2nd June), Cardiff Coal Exchange (2nd June), Brighton Dome (3rd June)
For more details on the DVD and tour, please visit the official website at www.numan.co.uk
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Russell Bell joined Chris Payne, Cedric Sharpley, Paul Gardiner and Billy Currie’ for Numan’s ‘The Touring Principle’ in 1979.
On ‘Haunted By You’, Bell springs a another vocal surprise in a duet with the fabulous feminine allure of Charlie Jones, while the man himself offers a deeper vocal resonance away from the strained larynx heard on the work of DRAMATIS. The straightforward rhythmic backbone is perfect for the song’s cinematic surroundings.
, an ambitious concept album with neo-classical stylings about “a social and political armageddon”, an all too possible prospect in the current work climate, with the twist of being sung in Latin, Esperanto AND English!
via Beggars Banquet
via Beggars Banquet
via Beggars Banquet
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via Beggars Banquet
via Eagle Records
via The Record Label
via Cherry Pop
via Eagle Records
via Food Records
via Artful Records
via Tommy Boy Records
via Mortal Records
via Mortal Records / Cooking Vinyl
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via Columbia / Sony Music
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