By Joanna Orland
How can I not admit that I was bricking it at the prospect of interviewing Gary Numan — the LEGEND himself. I kept putting it off, saying that I didn’t mind waiting until the end of the journalist queue for my turn, trying to go over all of the research I had done about him over the past few days in preparation for our chat. After all, I didn’t want to seem clueless about his epic past, even though I was only aware of a fraction of it, before my date with Google.
The music speaks for itself. His most famous hit “Cars” is recognized all over the world, nearly 30 years after its release. He’s been sampled numerous times by everyone from the Sugababes to Basement Jaxx to who knows who else. He’s influenced top artists such as Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, Beck, Dave Grohl, and countless others. He’s also frequently fondly mentioned by Noel Fielding’s Vince Noir on The Mighty Boosh. He’s used to this affectionate fan behaviour as his loyal fanbase call themselves “Numanoids”.
He’s rather modest about the whole LEGEND status and Numanoid following. He is genuinely flattered by all of the attention he gets and cites Noel and fellow admirer Trent Reznor as mutual influences — he’s a fan of them as much as they’re fans of his! LEGEND!!!
“The thing that’s lovely about it is that I am genuinely a fan, and I saw the first ever… I actually saw Noel do standup about two years before I even knew about The Boosh. So, I was actually a fan of him before I even knew who he was. Then The Boosh came along and I started to get mentioned on it, and I just thought HOW COOL IS THAT,” says Gary about The Mighty Boosh attention. Is he the nicest rock star ever or what!?
Anyway, we discussed what he thought of artists that cite him as an influence, but copy his sounds rather than his early pop-modernist attitude. He again is just grateful for the attention and adoration, and does not take his success for granted whatsoever. Especially when Trent Reznor told him that he was the reason that he ever got into keyboards in the first place, Gary was just flattered as he was a huge Nine Inch Nails fan!
I didn’t get a chance to get onto the topic of his aviation skills (the man has a pilot’s license! LEGEND!), but I did get to geek it up a bit and ask him how the evolution of technology has affected his music writing process. Gary believes one must learn discipline, otherwise it would take 10 years to make an album, playing with all the toys now readily available. In some ways, he envies guitar bands as he feels it must be “easier” for them to just nail their sounds.
I didn’t have time to ask our usual “One Word to Sum You Up” question, so I am taking the liberty of deciding that it’s “LEGEND”.