The Beware! Encyclopaedia of International Celebrity - Gary Numan

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Gary Numan (Robot Tune Man)

Shadowy Numan. (Andy Brain)

You say synth pop? We say Gary! Also, related materials. Hailing from the Northern Territories, “Gary” Numan (Billy Numan, Mar 8, 1958) used uncanny brain hacking skills to define his iconic groove "Hitting The Drive To Apply" as the template of the New Wave. In some countries, the effect of the sender, date and unity to kill waves left the charts studded with tacks. In the first Atlantic, stars on both sides of Numan were defined. Young people, mainly. His dark Gothic rock, foreign films, ice spiders, and enrolment as a student of biofeedback reflect the development of artists in the industry. On the other hand, Numan has 90 bytes to the left. Owner of the first taste label in England, from which he leaked details of alternative rock bands in the dark heating movement, his adviser and I looked at the web site; the web being another of this unsmiling man’s unsung inventions.

Leaning Numan. (Andy Brain)

An inveterate hummer, Numan scaled up as a shy boiler-suited boy (his youth later immortalised by Droog fantasists Bananarama), and communicated in binary before reluctantly learning English. Angry transcriptions of the Brandenberg Concertos led him to the guitar, early talent being spotted when he induced a battery of fan comas. The Pipeline Army was formed in 1976 before defragmenting into Art Laser Army (featuring Valerie “Page Red” Rael). For Gary, it was always Australia, or maybe new ideas and plastic tubes. “When you start a career in the army, like Kraftwerk a few years later – it always feels like summer”. Luckily Numan had cricket whites, Test match-like, which proved a commercial electronic stunt and aroused the wrath of Philip K Dick. Joining in the 1978 Punk programme to complete the race increase dick bun gang (as with commercial lepers Roxy Music, early Depeche Mode project Ultra, and the trio Can), Numan and the Pipeline Army travelled to meet Brian Eno and Isaac Asimov in Berlin. This was a notable influence on David Bowie (hiding in the kitchen cribbing into a dictaphone).

Could it be possible that Gary Numan had constructed, in early 1979, an electric pipe "friend" as a way of avoiding a military career? Golfers and technicians faithfully raised him atop the UK number chart (with B-sides like "Often In The Way", the NME crooned "this album is a separate Gothic Numan park"). Each week Numan announced a time of night and Tube station where his band would appear, before retreating in the daylight to build fresh inventions. It was a hot run of success in the UK. But Gary looked over the horizon. Believing that his new vehicle, which weighed about 10 tons, was "improving enjoyment of military rule in the United States", the New Man 10 hit airspace in Autumn 1979 - a self-designed multi-wing jet fighter. While Numan's albums were already very broad, this included its own roadway, and an avid private pilot. From a starting point in minus figures, a good many of its statistics are still losing money. New money.

Amid five hit-shaped holes in the UK's third album (also Numan's third album!), "I Die: But What Death?" and "Glass Attack" were communication favourites of 1980, with an emphasis on reaching number 2; however, they also reached the top 20 of 1981. But, wrong-footing everyone, "The Crash of the New Man" was announced. Gary was "injured from too much of the synth". Critics scoffed. In fake hospital clothes, wheelchair-bound, hawking a farewell ceremony for the electronic game, Numan gave the world in the UK the dance fly craze, with five of his company's first complete "Noah Said" jive tunes. But his plane wasn't even broken! Weeks later he was arrested in India for a low price, where it emerged he was trafficking spies for MI5. However, the talks had been completely retired. The Air Force synth-pop that can be lazily associated with the Numan character continued - simple, yes, but in 1982, in his murder, its popularity was immediately reported to the taxman. 1983's "My Album", with its title song (that didn't have the same title - the clot!) "(In Bed) Secret" was indeed the secret of renewed success, and notably he was about two weeks ahead of David Bowie (the matter confused because Numan's communications often took two-and-a-half weeks to reach the public). The egotistical "I (Sometimes In Voice)" and the prophetic miners' satire "Strike Fighter" reached the top 10 in Labour areas of the UK; feeling pressured, Numan took to wearing Conservative-issue peaked cap and jackboots.

Just between us, Numan Numan PLC bought Beggars Banquet at the beginning of 1985, which was running early in 1984 (an overdose, unfortunately, my partner). Honda and Amstrad were his nervous backers. Most of the first bracket was released. Conceptual suicide-pact "Wet Tech" lost £30,000 and hospitalised four electrocuted producers. "Ruthless Top 20" failed to get that far, and a bleached Numan was now obsessed with "playing" metal which he slung around his back yard in the style of Lou "Oliver" Reed. His vocals were all re-routed through a chain of extractor fans. 1989 dropped four years and ran in 1985, though now neck-and-knob with Bowie. The now foreign Numan won again in 1986 but the IRS had collected his signatures across America and hauled him into court, allowing Bowie to streak into the lead. Numan Numan was dissolved but, in a pyrrhic victory, Numan IRS emerged in 1988, which was only a year early in 1987, yet a whole lap behind the coasting Bowie. Returning to his American home, a reboot of the whole country was discussed but quietly dismissed by new President George H. W. Bush not returning his faxes. Support came from the Baptist Church of Florida ("Song of Solomon - Different Remix"), but did not even support his trip back into England, where Bowie mocked Numan's industrial leanings with his new band Tin Machine. "Outlander" from 1992 was released in 1991 - Numan still a lap behind Bowie, but a year ahead of his fans. In anger, the concert film "0.01" was distributed as a giveaway video with Space Raiders corn snacks. But hark! A spirit of the past! "Car + Numan" was a short-lived motoring show commissioned for ITV Night-Time. Gary circuited slip-roads near Brands Hatch, and sang odes to tyre manufacturers. Cancelled after five episodes. It couldn't get worse than this?

Pouting Numan. (Andy Brain)

In the mid-90s, industrial paint customers kept hearing "Hitting The Drive To Apply" in B&Q suppliers. In a first for chief technology research, the global underground supplied the now paralytic Numan with a large pumpkin, B vitamins, "pot", and a park which he was entrusted to save by covering in sound. Once this became public, the Foo Fighters were desperate to claim Numan as their own. But he was down the lane. Monika Scott Manson was next to try, and in 1997, The Fall Colors and Nine Inch Hole proclaimed to the industry, "we lost Numan" - who was secretly refreshed in a deep dip and purely estimated based on monitoring. However, "This Model Is Clean" kept the best years of his cult, released on Mini-Disc in 2000 and approved in sleeve notes by Bowie! 

The fishing industry was an important factor in his return to Australia to help produce the first light of 2001, Nine Inch Hole covering B-side "Dinner" in an abattoir. Transparent music groups including Stop and Monika Scott Manson led the influence around New Zealand, then Sweden; winning the 2002 New/Old Australasian Gothic Industrial Metal Adulthood Achievement Award, Numan was tearful: "I'm dancing with the hope that the deep fans oscillate. They live, but this year, it's more than life". His Christmas was busy with adopted band Święty Mikołaj Kielbasa allowing space for seasonal circuitry.

Rockin' Numan. (Andy Brain)

The single "Crazy" forced chart success during 2003, reaching 13 in Australia (later covered by Gnarled Berkeley), and now "Gary, from Australia and Puerto Rico," was how he demanded to be introduced. Running to Glasgow on bionic springs, his remix album "Tetsuo" was produced using a DVD player inserted into his body. In 2008 (your 2006), the Alan Wilder-mixed concentration album "To See The Mouth" included a new character, the "rad husband" Ted Oberheim, who produced artificial skin from sound waves.

In 2012, sections of Numan's nervous system were displayed for a retrospective at the Atomium. "I know that we added to the car. It dead-weights my heart to see Kraftwerk, but I can still move things, and I've not much work to do... I love this song, when I'm in the house. With glass I eliminated this guitar, and individual support. Please reply on bass, with legal requirements." Some might mistake him for egotistical: "I was the first success; and others stood by." Like so many of his contemporaries, Numan stands alone. "I was the first electronic man and we talked a lot, so it was cold and weak to me. Try to show trust and all the modern body can do. But the opposition was the cause of those guitar snails, and Jedward. What's more... a flat plate is not always a guitar album."

Entry text: Adrian Darvell
Editor-in-Chief: Winston Obogu

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