BBC Radio Sessions by Gary Numan<\/a><\/p>\nThe Queen\u2019s Park Arena is a fantastic place for a gig; my favourite gig of last year took place there. Aside from possibly worrying about the weather, do you approach outdoor gigs differently?<\/p>\n
I really like outdoor gigs. There\u2019s a very different feel to them. As far as preparation\u2019s concerned, there isn\u2019t much different you have to do. You walk out on a stage. It just doesn\u2019t happen to have walls around it. Often when you do festivals I try to have that moment where the sun is going down, the lights are coming on and becoming more effective, so the show has a dynamic of its own just due to the time of day.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve a house not too far from Glasgow, actually. I\u2019ve had it about four years now, so I spend a lot of time up there. I\u2019m very, very familiar with the vagaries of the weather. But I love it, man. It\u2019s probably my favourite place to be in the world at the moment. It\u2019s got a river that runs through the land, it overlooks some mountains, and it\u2019s just an incredibly peaceful place.<\/p>\n
You\u2019re on record as saying your 1979 Glasgow gig at the Apollo played a big part in launching your career. That venue\u2019s long gone now \u2013 what are your memories of that space, and those times in general?<\/p>\n
The building itself was unique in the sense that it was the only place I\u2019ve ever been where, when you started, people at the front stood up and walked backwards, because the stage was so high they couldn\u2019t actually see much from the front six, seven, ten rows or more. So it was a weird experience, seeing what you think are your hardcore fans running away from the stage.<\/p>\n
It was the first concert I ever did after I became successful .The first gig where people were screaming and girls were fainting, first time the bus was chased up the street and there was police outside to protect us. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to imagine that people are that bothered about you; one minute you\u2019re living at home with your mum and dad, writing your silly little songs on an out-of-tune piano, and next thing you know you\u2019ve got people screaming and chasing you up the street hundreds of miles away.<\/p>\n
But it was just such a fantastic venue to start at, and the crowd was just the best you could ever have dreamed of. It got me off to an amazing beginning, and I\u2019ve started many tours since then in Scotland. Many like this one, I guess. So it has\u2026 I feel particularly attached to it, that\u2019s the truth of it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And in a bizarre coincidence, I do that Ancestry DNA thing, and on my last update I\u2019d become 32% Scottish, which I had no idea about at all. My mum\u2019s dead now, so I can\u2019t ask her about it, but I asked my dad and he\u2019s got no idea where it\u2019s coming from \u2013 he\u2019s hardcore London. So we suspect it\u2019s somewhere in my mum\u2019s background. I\u2019ve suddenly become a third Scottish. I almost feel guilty, like an interloper. But that\u2019s what it said.<\/p>\n
In your first Apollo gig, you had OMD support you. Later in this tour, in Halifax and London, Ladytron support you \u2013 both cutting edge, highly revered electronic acts. Do you think acts like that help new fans keep finding you?<\/p>\n
I think it helps, yeah. I\u2019ve had some amazing support bands over the years. Simple Minds supported me on my first European tour in Germany, and I\u2019m doing a festival with them in November and supporting them in Australia in March. OMD did a whole tour with me. The Killers supported me twice before they made it really big.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve always tried to look after support bands as much as possible. I\u2019ve never charged anyone, never had bands buy onto a tour the way some do. A support gig is a really difficult gig, you\u2019re playing to somebody else\u2019s crowd who aren\u2019t always the most receptive, and it\u2019s expensive to be out there. I think it\u2019s the least we can do in the privileged position we\u2019re at. <\/p>\n
This tour it\u2019s Divine Shade: French, quite heavy industrial music, and it\u2019s very difficult to make headway with that sort of music in France. I just admire their determination. They\u2019re doggedly sticking at what they love, and I think that\u2019s admirable.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s the makeup of the Gary Numan audience these days?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s difficult to know for sure. I\u2019d say 75% of the people that come to meet and greets are the ones that were there from the beginning, so they\u2019re older. But when I look out at gigs there\u2019s a lot more younger people, and I\u2019m sure a lot of that following comes from other bands. I\u2019ve been covered by Foo Fighters, Marilyn Manson, Nine Inch Nails, God knows. I used to keep a list of it, but it got to over 100 artists and I stopped counting.<\/p>\n
The stage I\u2019m at now is probably the strongest I\u2019ve had since the very beginning. Not as strong as the very beginning, but certainly the closest I\u2019ve been to it for a long time. The albums now get well into the chart: the last two have been number two, I think. I appreciate I\u2019m not at that number-one-fan-hysteria level I used to be, but I\u2019m certainly in a much better place than I was, so I\u2019m grateful for that.<\/p>\n
You\u2019ve got one of the best pieces of merchandise going: the Gary Numan car air freshener.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a retro one, but we\u2019ve done new ones for whatever the current album is too, so it\u2019s not all about looking back. I did turn something down recently, though. <\/p>\n
One of the big newspapers in Britain wanted to recreate a famous old photo or album cover: dress up the same way, same makeup, close to the same setting. I just thought that was a terrible idea. I<\/p>\n
\u2018m 68 years old. There\u2019s no way I can put this face onto a 1979 or 1980 album cover and look anything other than an old wrinkly shit bag beside it. I don\u2019t even think the fans would want to see that, and I\u2019m sure as fuck don\u2019t want to see it. It\u2019s very rare that I turn things down, but that\u2019s the first time I\u2019ve ever said no to something because of the way I look.<\/p>\n
Last year you played your first Glastonbury and your 1,000th gig, It felt like a reset to go and do more new things. What drives Gary Numan in 2026?<\/p>\n
Just the desire to come up with something new that I\u2019ve not done before, to be better than I\u2019ve ever been. The two biggest things I\u2019ve ever had were in 1979, but I\u2019ve certainly not tried to recreate those with every new album. With the new one I\u2019d like to write better songs than I did on the last one. I don\u2019t know that I will, but that\u2019s the aim when I start.<\/p>\n
Because that\u2019s the aim, I actually find making the albums really, really stressful. I struggle with a lack of confidence really badly, and it\u2019s getting worse as I\u2019m getting older. It becomes harder not to repeat yourself when you\u2019ve made twenty-odd albums, hundreds and hundreds of songs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When I\u2019m making a new record I feel a huge amount of pressure, and if I have a week where I\u2019m not happy with what I\u2019ve come up with, that\u2019s a nightmare for me. I can get into a real downward spiral of self-doubt, and everything you write seems not good enough.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve had two attempts to start this new one already, and both have sort of faded away; a little bit because I\u2019m looking for an excuse not to keep going, because I find it so stressful. <\/p>\n
But I have to. When I get back from this tour I\u2019ve got to start in earnest, because I\u2019ve only got two and a half songs underway at the minute. I know it\u2019s going to be shit to begin with, and I know I\u2019m going to have to deal with it. But it\u2019ll be what it will be.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been close to 15 years you\u2019ve been living in America now. How do you think today\u2019s Gary compares with the Gary you\u2019d have been if you\u2019d stayed in the UK?<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think living in the UK would have made any difference to me, to be fair. I lived there for 55 years, you\u2019re pretty ingrained in your personality by then. Listen to my accent \u2013 there\u2019s not a hint of American in it. <\/p>\n
I think having kids has changed me more than that. I\u2019m calmer now, more patient, a lot less quick to anger than I used to be. I think I\u2019ve grown into a reasonably nice, decent sort of person, considering the life I\u2019ve had. I don\u2019t fuck about with my wife, I don\u2019t beat my kids, I\u2019m a really nice dad, and my whole life revolves around them.<\/p>\n
Anything you\u2019d like to add as we head into the tour?<\/p>\n
As soon as the tour\u2019s finished, I\u2019m going back to Scotland to decompress from the tour side of things \u2013 it\u2019s pretty intensive, lots of gigs back to back. I\u2019m really looking forward to it, actually. I think we do (London) Crystal Palace on the 6th of August and that\u2019s where it ends, so one way or another I\u2019ll be on my way up there the next day. <\/p>\n
I think I\u2019m going to rent a car this time, because when I\u2019m up there I want to explore it even more. There\u2019s plenty of places I\u2019ve read about that I\u2019d like to visit that I haven\u2019t been able to yet.<\/p>\n
Tickets: Gary Numan opens his UK and European tour at Queen\u2019s Park Arena, Glasgow, on 17th July<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ahead of a UK and European tour that opens at Glasgow\u2019s Queen\u2019s Park Arena on 17th July, Gary…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287283,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-287282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}