When Julien Temple and Marc Almond both tore into Gary Numan: “Devoid of any heart, soul, emotion, wit, or style”
No one fell so swiftly from such pop heights as Gary Numan.
For about 18 months or so across 1979-80, the android synthesist cut some genuinely gripping slices of dystopian pop. All chilly post-punk slathered in layers of Moog keyboards, numbers like ‘Are ‘Friends’ Electric?’ with Tubeway Army and the later ‘Cars’ thrust Numan as synthpop’s first star, both shooting to the top of the UK charts.
But, once Telekon was behind him and the so-called ‘Machine-Trilogy’ of albums, Numan waded through the rest of the 1980s, suffering one artistic crisis after another and fumbling to the absolute nadir of 1992’s Machine + Soul stodgy horror. It would take a chance encounter with Nine Inch Nails for Numan to find his next creative calling, lathering his machine pop with oodles of darkwave industrial and winning a new fanbase for the 1990s. He’s never looked back.
He was hard to take seriously. Once the Replicant act had worn thin, a change of wardrobe to a raincoat and fedora for the noir Dance and I, Assassin, triggered a spectacular floundering from then on. Unfortunately, Marc Almond and Julien Temple were on call to poke fun at Numan’s next synthy mishap.
It was 1983’s 8 Days A Week that the two were roped in to offer their thoughts on Numan’s new number. Presented by Robin Denselow and bringing in Annabel Lamb to join the critique, the three guests went through numbers by Siouxsie and the Banshees and the Staying Alive movie to offer their takes and opinions, saving much of their energy on Numan’s single ‘Warriors’.
Almond doesn’t hide his displeasure once the clip is over, almost hiding his red face at the embarrassment, before taking a cheap shot at his dyed blond hair and fake tan, “If his aim was to make an utterly sort of disposable alternative to an ashtray devoid of any heart, soul, emotion, wit, style, or anything, then he’s made a very successful record, but one thing he has got plenty of is humour, but I think it’s very one-sided, my side.”
It’s just all a bit silly on Warriors and its title track. Supposedly an illustration of a lonely warrior fighting for survival, Numan decides to realise such themes via a daft Mad Max 2 post-apocalyptic clobber and ponderously tedious dirge of preening funk, oblivious to how boring it is for anyone outside his little action hero universe. Such inaccessibility to Warriors wasn’t lost on Almond. “He seems to be in his own little world, totally obsessive, and in his own world, nothing else outside exists…”
Conceptual worlds are something Numan’s always spun since day one, dreaming up pulpy sci-fi ideas to unleash his lyrical visions, but while it may have worked early on, Warriors’ dearth of ideas proved alienating, with its cumbersome narrative and ludicrous image. Lamb offers a more conciliatory opinion, agreeing that the look was stupid but praising some of the musicianship from sax player Dick Morrissey, before Temple offers his two cents without pulling any punches.
“I couldn’t get beyond laughing at the cover,” Temple says frankly, then heaping the accusation that dogged Numan around his 1979 heyday, “Was he ever an originator? He was a David Bowie clone.”
Numan never deserved that; all his generation were indebted to Ziggy Stardust’s exotic glam and the Cracked Actor’s later Berlin experiments, and there isn’t any character anyone can honestly say Numan’s android shtick resembles. Numan’s fame didn’t stop Bowie from having a jab either, directly referencing the Tubeway Army frontman on 1980’s ‘Teenage Wildlife’: “A broken-nosed mogul are you / One of the new wave boys / Same old thing in brand new drag”.
No hard feelings between Almond and Numan, at least, the former Soft Cell singer is set to support the synthpop veteran this year at his Crystal Palace headliner show.
