www.beatmag.net/march06/rapid-fire.htm RAPID FIRE - GARY NUMAN Beatmag's new questionnaire, where our readers (and contributors) fire offbeat questions at the great and the good, opens with one of the early innovators of electronic music, Gary Numan. Ever since coming across a synthesizer in the studio when recording the second Tubeway Army album 'Replicas' in 1979, Numan has cut his own wilful swathe through pop music. Achieving huge success throughout the '80s with his uniquely icy robot-pop, he was also famed for his aeroplane antics and constant image-makeovers - from Mad Max to sci-fi Bowie. Numan created a globe-storming classic in 'Cars' but managed to get up the noses of contemporary tastemakers at the same time and his career waned. The 1990s saw a gradual rehabilitation by the techno-rock communities and following post-millennial hits by The Sugarbabes and Basement Jaxx that sampled his songs, it seemed everyone was ready for a comeback. His fan base had remained loyal and with his 2000 album, 'Pure', all gritty industrial goth-rock, Numan delivered and showed he still had teeth. These days Numan's work is feted by everyone from Beck to Nine Inch Nails to The Bravery and his new album 'Jagged', produced with techno DJ/producer Ade Fenton, is a fresh-sounding work of shadowy atmospherics. Beatmag caught up with Gary Numan at his brand new home in rural East Sussex, at present overrun with builders and carpet-fitters. Long-gone is his abrasive manner of the '80s, to be replaced by a chatty persona that appears both down-to-earth and wryly amused by life... What do you think of Lemmy and Motorhead? (Katherine Williams, USA) GN: "They're OK. I've never been to a Motorhead gig or bought an album but they're one of these bands that have become almost like an institution and everyone's grown to love them. Lemmy's a larger than life character. I was on the same table as him at the Kerrang Awards a few years ago. He was chatting away to my wife rather enthusiastically, as I remember..." How did you come across Ade Fenton? (Beatmag Editorial) Gary Numan: "Ade was a fan of mine many years ago so I've known him for a long time. I actually thought he was a bit of a wanker when he was younger so I didn't have much to do with him. As he got older I became friends with someone who was his friend. He's a techno DJ and I'm not really into techno. More recently he started to work on stuff that was more my cup of tea. Every once in a while he'd visit and bring songs and I listened to the way he was working. I've always thought of myself as technically quite proficient but very, very quickly he went way past where I was and carried on going. I've watched him grow into someone who's an extremely clever and competent programmer." What precisely did you mean by claiming you were vapour? (Duncan B, UK) GN: "(Laughs) Fuck knows, I've absolutely no idea. That song ['Remember I Was Vapour'] was in 1980 and I probably meant something then but what it was I've no idea." What was the last live act you saw? (Jerry Zbigniew, Poland) GN: "I went to see The Prodigy because Rod, my mate, is the guitar player in it now. I used to live a stones throw from Liam and Keith in Essex so I'd bump into them once in a while round town. I love The Prodigy, I think they're fantastic." What can we expect from the forthcoming UK tour [dates at end of interview]? (Beatmag Editorial) GN: "We're completely reworking the older stuff so it's in keeping with the new album, transplanting a graft of the older stuff onto the new sounds and styles. Ade's been on it for quite some time, doing new versions of older songs. I like to refresh and reinvigorate so that even songs we played live last time will be in new versions. We've been doing the same version of 'Down In The Park' for five or six years so it's time for a revamp." Do you stay out of politics these days? (Peter Norris, UK) GN: "I tried to stay out of it before. Yeah, I'm not a political animal, I'm really not. Every time anybody mentions it I put my foot in it and upset somebody. I try and avoid it like the plague." ...with some ginger friends backstage Have you ever grown a beard and, if so, what percentage was ginger? (Spencer, UK) GN: "Cheeky cunt! I haven't got any ginger in me, not that I'm anti-ginger, obviously, 'cos that wouldn't be very correct. Gem [Numan's wife] says I've got a tinge on my legs but I think she's just trying to wind me up. I've never had a beard - I don't like 'em - it makes me itch. Horrible things. If I did grow one nowadays the main colour would probably be grey." Do you think your career would have turned out differently if you hadn't come across those synths in the studio back in 1979? (Beatmag Editorial) GN: "Yeah, without question. It's very debatable whether I'd have had any longterm music career at all. It was no great masterplan of mine, no plan whatsoever. I really did go into the studio to record a punk album and there was a synthesizer in the corner and it just changed everything. It was an absolute piece of luck. If that hadn't happened we wouldn't have written 'Are Friends Electric?', 'Cars', things like that. I'm 80% sure things would have been very different and I'd probably never have had any success at all." Did you watch any sci-fi on TV last night? (Kerry Malenkova, Canada) GN: "I didn't watch anything because I was working but we use Sky Plus so we can record and watch in our own time. Last night we recorded 'Battlestar Galactica' and 'Prison Break'. I'm not a very big sci-fi fan, to be honest, and haven't been for twenty years or more. I do like 'Battlestar Galactica', though. My favourite ever sci-fi series was 'Firefly' but they only did one series and it got cancelled. It's brilliant; that new film 'Serenity' comes from it. One of my biggest albums ['Replicas] was loosely based on sci-fi but that was about 27 years ago. People associating me with sci-fi has gone on longer than I expected. Assumptions become accepted as fact, like people think I'm miserable... well, if they think of me at all (laughs)." Have you ever had stalkers or fans that have gone too far? (Darryl Barnes, USA) GN: "Not in more recent times. When it first started you had to be a bit careful. Sometimes their enthusiasm was a bit over the top. I remember I was at an airshow once and they put me in a jeep to parade me up and down. A load of fans broke through the barrier and they were reaching into the car. One person got me by the ear and tore it. I had to have three or four stitches in the back of my ear. It's not been like that for years now, though." Do you like Marmite? (Sally Green, UK) GN: "Yeah, I love Marmite." Have you ever ridden a horse? (Anna Wood, UK) GN: "Twice; once in Australia and once in New Zealand. It fucking bit me. I don't like 'em. I've actually got two in a field here. We've got a few acres where we've moved now and my wife's donated one of our fields to a local horse'n'pony rescue woman so I'm sitting here looking at two bloody horses in me field. Great - buy a house, been here a week and she's given away two acres to someone we've never met before." I once saw you flying a plane at an airshow when I was a small boy. It was decorated with the design of the rising sun. Do you have any other planes, and if so, are they dedicated to any other countries? (Tim Wild, UK) GN: "The reason was I needed to be able to work the aeroplane to be able to pay for it. If you do airshows you get paid for them. There were lots and lots of American aeroplanes, all World War II, that had fought in the Pacific, but there was no enemy so I painted mine up as the enemy and all of a sudden I started to get loads and loads of work. I had a smoke system fitted to it. These big American fighters would shoot me down and I'd turn my smoke machine on and disappear behind the crowd. I had an expensive World War II aeroplane and needed quite a lot of money for it. It wasn't because I was pro-Japanese. I don't do airshows anymore." What is your favourite possession? (Solly Hart, USA) GN: "My boat, a Puget Sound 34, a 34 foot twin engine trawler-yacht. It's not actually a yacht, it's a motorboat but they call them that. It has a cabin at the front, cabins inside, two toilets, showers, looks really old-fashioned, built in 1979, I think. It's not one of those rakish pointy things that are very common now and it's very slow - it does about six knots. It slowly plods and the world goes slowly by." Numan through the years - not big on smiling What has being perceived as cool then not cool then cool again taught you? (Beatmag Editorial) GN: "It's fucking confusing. Strange really because whether you're cool or not depends very much what people write about you. If someone writes that you're cool then you become it and if enough people say you're not, you're not. It's something that's created for you, your level of coolness. I've never been able to do anything with my career that would make it be one thing or the other. At the moment I'm cool again because people are saying I've been an influence but, if you think about it, they're exactly the same songs that made me uncool in the first place. I'm enjoying it but it wouldn't surprise me if, in a year or five, I'm uncool again because someone else has come along and said I'm an idiot." What does the future hold for you? ('Numana', UK) GN: "A couple more hits would be nice. Doing this for a living used to be about wanting to be famous but, as I've got older, my need for that has disappeared. Now it's just about wanting to get up in the morning and enjoy the day. The freedom to live life the way you want to is worth a fortune. I get up in the morning and if I don't want to go to work I don't have to. I can think, 'Fuck it, I'll stay in bed or go for a drive'. Most people have to get up, go to work in the rush hour, work for longer than they want doing something they don't want to, then spend the evening with their mates, sleep, and start all over again. I'm just lucky I don't have that. The whole fame thing is just the icing on the cake. These days I have to work really hard just to stand still, just to keep this thing going but I love it, I really love it and I don't want to do anything else." Gary Numan Tour Dates April 19 Birmingham Academy April 20 Nottingham Rock City April 21 Wolverhampton Wulfren Hall April 22 Preston 53 Degrees University April 23 Liverpool Academy April 24 Leeds University April 25 Newcastle Academy April 26 Glasgow QMU April 28 Sheffield Leadmill April 29 Manchester Academy April 30 Oxford Brookes University June London (TBA) Gary Numan's new album 'Jagged' is out March 13th on Mortal/Cooking Vinyl www.beatmag.net/march06/rapid-fire.htm