Gary Numan picks his favourite David Bowie album
Apart from perhaps Kraftwerk, the British synth-wave icon Gary Numan was influenced most by the chameleonic performer David Bowie. As a man of many faces, musical tastes and stylistic overhauls, Bowie influenced an entire generation of musicians, from the gothic introspection of Joy Division and Bauhaus to the vibrant pop of The Human League and Pulp. To Numan, Bowie was both a musical and stylistic role model.
Using Kraftwerk’s droid-like presence and Bowie’s otherworldly, androgynous visage, Numan set out as the frontman of the new wave band Tubeway Army in 1977. Following two albums with the band, finding success with ‘Are ‘Friends’ Electric?’, Numan launched a highly successful solo career, catapulted by the 1979 debut album The Pleasure Principle.
Numan’s associative sound brought Bowie’s experimental, synth-infused sound of the recent Berlin Trilogy to more radio-friendly pastures. Sadly, although Numan hoped to befriend Bowie following his rise to prominence, he endured an upsetting first interaction with the Starman.
The night in question occurred in 1980. “In the ’80s, I did the Kenny Everett show, and Bowie was on, too,” Numan recalled in a 2019 feature with Uncut. “I was a massive fan, I had seen him countless times; I had an embarrassing array of bootlegs. The chance to even be remotely near him was an honour.”
Sadly, Bowie was not a fan of Numan, ostensibly finding his music to be derivative or plainly distasteful. “He asked for me to be thrown out of the studio and then taken off the programme, which was very disappointing,” Numan revealed. “But as the years have gone by, I understood far more the way he saw things then. He was still a young man, with ups and downs in his own career, and I think he saw people like me as little upstarts. But later, he said some nice things about me, so that made the whole thing better!”
Numan returned to the story in more detail in a 2021 conversation with NME. “It bothered me at the time because I was a massive fan, and he’d been such a big part of my life for so many years, so I was pretty disappointed – and the fact I got taken off the show afterwards. But I later came to realise we all go through periods when we’re more fragile or paranoid and not sure how we fit into all of this.”
Asked whether he felt it could have been jealousy that led to Bowie’s actions, Numan added: “I think there was an element of that. I never got to meet him afterwards and ask, but my feeling was at that moment, I was the current big thing in weird make-up, and I don’t think that period was the best for him. I know many people that met him, and he was lovely, and I wish I’d met that version.”
Despite his unfortunate association with Bowie, Numan’s loyalty as a fan never faltered. Speaking to The Quietus in 2012, he picked out 1973’s Aladdin Sane as his favourite Bowie album. “For me, with Aladdin Sane, you’ve got ‘Cracked Actor’, ‘Panic in Detroit’, all those songs which are just amazing and Bowie was absolutely on it. I was a huge Bowie fan up until around Heroes – that had ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and I fucking love that.”
“I’d have been 15 when Aladdin Sane came out, and I was right in there,” Numan continued. “I was actually late getting into Bowie because I was a huge T-Rex fan, and I remember at the time when I was at school there seemed to be a bit of friction between David Bowie and Marc Bolan and because I was a T-Rex fan a lot of people would say, ‘Oh, what a wanker!’ It wasn’t until Bowie stopped the Ziggy Stardust thing that I then bought everything and realised my mistake.”
Listen to ‘Cracked Actor’ from David Bowie’s glam-era classic, Aladdin Sane, below.
