Interview: Gary Numan

Your previous album, 2017’s Savage: Songs From A Broken World, debuted at number two on the Official Albums Chart, which was your highest charting position in almost 40 years. Did you feel any commercial pressure making the follow-up?

No. Towards the end of the 1980s/early 1990s, my career was going very badly. I made that terrible mistake of starting to listen to advice – everyone’s got an opinion. It was awful. I realised that for quite a few years, and for several albums, which culminated in the worst album I’ve ever made, Machine + Soul, in 1992, I was trying to write things to get on the radio and keep an A&R man happy. I was doing cover versions because someone said I should.

It wasn’t what I wanted to do – I made several albums and I didn’t like the process or the finished results. When I started doing music, when I was a kid, and even through my early success, it was a hobby and I loved everything about it.

I realised that I had to make it a hobby again – I had to get my mind back to that way of thinking, so I made a decision and I’ve stuck to it religiously ever since, from 1994 onwards. The albums and every single song have to be made for me.

If I start thinking about radio play, or what the record company have suggested, then I’m doomed again. I made myself a promise – if I’m working on a song and I start thinking whether it would sound good on the radio or not, then I will erase that song and start again. I’ve done it three times – not often – but I certainly didn’t do it with Intruder. I’m so paranoid about getting back into that mindset of careers and strategies.

Did you enjoy being a pop star, or did you feel like an outsider?

I definitely felt like an outsider. I was uncomfortable with the whole fame thing in one respect, but I loved it in another. I was torn – it was nothing like I expected. I didn’t enjoy everyone knowing who I was, but, on the other hand, and I’m not blowing my own trumpet, I achieved something pretty remarkable. It was an amazing thing to do – the realisation of the achievement and my mark on history was an incredible and phenomenal thing. It’s always going to be there.

I’d made something of my life and I was only 20/21. I felt good about that, but as far as being famous and all the shit that comes with it, I didn’t really take to that too well.

Now I find I’m in a much better position in that I’m so experienced and I’ve been doing it for so long that I know how to live the life I want within it – to enjoy the good bits and avoid the bad bits. There’s a real sweet spot in the middle and that’s where I’ve been for quite some time. I’m loving it.

You’ve had a career in music for over 40 years. What have been the best and worst bits?

The very beginning of it, in 1979, was really enjoyable – although I found the fame thing a bit weird, overall it was an incredibly exciting and phenomenal experience – and the other good bits of my career have been everything from 1994 until today. That’s not to say there weren’t some difficulties, but it’s gone in the right direction and I’m proud all the music I’ve done since then.

Everything between that first bit and 1994 was less enjoyable – I don’t look back at it with any great deal of satisfaction.

You turned 63 this year. What would be your advice to a young Gary Numan who is just starting out in the music business?

Calm down, don’t get so wound up and don’t panic – everything’s going to work out.

Would you still buy as many cars and planes?

Oh yeah – more probably.

Intruder by Gary Numan is out now on BMG.

garynuman.com

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