Having a bleeping good time

Gary Numan's dark days are behind him, and the electronic pioneer is again making the music he loves. Photo / Supplied

It's the night after Gary Numan's 53rd birthday and one of the pioneers of British electronic music is in a buoyant mood. The missus (and head of his fan club) is out with friends; their three daughters - aged 7, 5 and 4 - are tucked up in bed, and Numan is up late in Essex, reminiscing about the good old days. Life could be worse, and for Numan, from time to time it has been.

Nostalgia doesn't sit easily with Numan, born Gary Anthony James Webb. Despite a prodigious career that includes 19 studio albums, numerous tours and at least a couple of number one singles, he says he'd rather "have a worm sandwich" than flagrantly capitalise on his former glories.

This makes the pale one's decision to tour his landmark 1979 album The Pleasure Principle in its entirety, alongside newer material and early hits like Are Friends Electric?, a contrary and problematic impulse. Despite having a chip on his shoulder about revisiting his past - Numan has said he is "anti-retro" - this is the third time in the past decade he has based a show on one of his groundbreaking albums from the early days of New Wave.

With so many bands touring pivotal albums from their past, it's clear that nostalgia pays dividends, though after chatting with Numan for an hour it's obvious he's paying his dues to his fans, not his bank account.

"The 30th anniversary of Pleasure Principle was at the end of 2009 and I thought I could do something to mark it and celebrate it or I could ignore it. Normally I would have ignored it," he says.

"There's a constant friction between me and the older fans who would like to hear more of the older stuff. And I think I've been too hardnosed about it and I feel bad about it. It occurred to me it probably seemed like I was sticking two fingers up at my own fans and I don't mean it that way.

"It's just that I've got this thing about not living off past glories. So I said to the fans on the website, if once in a while I was to do an old album, for example, would that be enough to keep the older fans happy? Would you kind of get off my back?" he laughs.

Some of Numan's fans are rather auspicious, too. Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor invited Numan on stage several times in 2009, extolling the virtues of The Pleasure Principle and playing Cars and Metal from the album.

Acts like Fear Factory, Afrika Bambaataa and Marilyn Manson have covered his songs. And he's been heavily sampled by Basement Jaxx, Armand Van Helden and Sugababes, whose number one hit Freak Like Me made generous use of Are Friends Electric? He has a lot to be pleased about.

"We've ended up doing quite a few Pleasure Principle shows, though I only planned to do one to start with," says Numan. "It's been a lot more fun than I thought it would and I've actually grown to quite like the album.

"It still isn't gonna be something that's at the top of my list of things I wanna do as my career, though. Once the New Zealand and Australia shows are finished, that's me and nostalgia done for quite some time. It's been fun, I'm glad I've done it, I'm proud of the album, but again I'm just interested in what I'm doing tomorrow."

Ah, yes, New Zealand. As local fans rub their hands at the prospect of Numan's May 21 show in Auckland, the man who once called himself Valerian during his early post-punk phase has distinctly mixed memories of his last visit in 1980. "A bit sad really," is how he characterises the experience, though it still makes him chuckle.

"I can't remember what city I was in but within an hour of arriving in New Zealand I was being chased out of a nightclub by skinheads," he laughs. "It was a bad introduction to New Zealand. But everyone was really cool, though there was a bit of protesting from people who were anti electronic music.

"I remember at one of the gigs somebody pulled the fire alarm and shut the power off. I had a roadie who could do the most amazing balancing of things on his head. He came out on stage and balanced things on his nose for about 10 minutes while they got the power back on. And I was following him around the stage with a torch, lighting him up. It was bizarre but quite good fun."

Numan readily admits his career "bottomed out" in the late-80s. The excesses of pop music led to some unfortunate image changes and increasingly irrelevant records and shows. He hit an all-time low with 1992 album Machine And Soul - "a complete pile of poo" is how he describes it.

"Creatively I was in trouble," he sighs. "I had financial worries and career-wise I was one step away from being dead and buried. I couldn't give away concert tickets; I wasn't selling any albums; I didn't have a record deal. In a strange way I thought I was finished. All those commercial aspirations were gone."

In a back-to-basics approach Numan returned to the studio to make music for the pleasure of it, rather than second-guess what the market wanted or expected. The fruit of his reinvention was 1994's Sacrifice, the beginning of a darkly gothic, industrial rock sound he also plans to showcase in Auckland.

"Strangely enough, all the pressures I'd been putting on myself to keep my career alive just disappeared and I started to write a different kind of music," he recalls. "It was much heavier, darker, more electronic than it had been for quite some time. And I found I really enjoyed it again.

"The funny thing was that as soon as I stopped trying to write things to be successful and just started writing songs for the love of it again, the career actually started to pick up. It was as if I'd found the reasons I'd wanted to do it as a kid again. I've been in there ever since."

So what does a musical visionary into his fifth decade do to celebrate turning 53? For those expecting a tale of debauchery involving call girls, cocaine and caviar, prepare to be disappointed. Numan happily admits he's a little long in the tooth for that sort of malarkey.

"One of my girls did pancake racing at school so I spent the morning watching her do that, then my wife decided to have her hair dyed so I spent the next four hours in the hairdressers, watching her hair go ever more red," he laughs.

"Then we went to the cinema to watch the Anthony Hopkins film The Rite. It was the last film showing and we were the only two people in the cinema, watching this Exorcist-type horror film, which I'm not good with at the best of times. I was worried about being on our own and the film just made it worse. Definitely creepy."

Any hanky-panky in the back row?

"If I wasn't in my 50s that might be true," he chortles. "That's all behind me now, Barney."

Gary Numan's one-off show plays the ASB Theatre, Aotea Centre, Auckland, on Saturday, May 21.

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