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Gary Numan (born Gary Anthony James Webb on March 8, 1958) is an English singer, composer, and musician.
He is considered to be one of the pioneers of electronic music and is widely known for his chart-topping 1979 hits "Are 'Friends' Electric?" and "Cars". Numan's signature style combines gloomy themes of depersonalisation and alienation accompanied by energetic synthesizer work. Numan is also a licensed aviator.
Born in Hammersmith, West London, Gary Webb's father was an airline driver based at Heathrow Airport. Webb was educated at Town Farm Junior School Stanwell, Ashford County Grammar School, Middlesex, Slough Grammar School and Brooklands Technical College. He had an early ambition to be an airline pilot, but did not gain any academic qualifications, however he did go on the join the Air Training Corps as a teenager. He then briefly did various jobs including fork lift truck driver, air conditioning ventilator fitter and clerk in an accounts department. A guitar was purchased for him at an early age and he began writing songs when he was about 15 years old. He played in various bands, including Mean Street and The Lasers, before forming Tubeway Army with his uncle, Jess Lidyard, and Paul Gardiner. His initial pseudonym was "Valerian", probably in reference to the hero in French science fiction comic series Valérian and Laureline.
Later he picked the name "Numan" from an advert in the "Yellow Pages".
In late 2006, Numan announced on his website that recording would begin on his new album in January 2007, with Ade Fenton again co-producing, as he did with Jagged. Numan stated "think of Jagged and Pure, but faster, with bigger choruses, more energy, and more aggression" to describe the album's intended sound. Nothing new had been said about the album until August, when he mentioned on his website that he had found enough demos from the Exile, Pure, and Jagged sessions in his studio to flesh out into another album. Numan stated that this in itself will not be "the new album", just a release for interested fans, confirming that his new studio album hasn't been scrapped for other interests.
In November 2007, Numan confirmed via his website that the album, with the working title of Splinter, will be worked on throughout 2008, after finishing an alternate version of Jagged (to be called Jagged Edge) and the CD of unreleased songs from his previous three albums (working title Resurrection). He wrote that Jagged Edge will not likely see release until after the Replicas tour, after which the unreleased songs will be completed and released, with Splinter to be released in early 2009.
Numan married a member of his own fan club, Gemma O'Neill. In 2003, after a series of miscarriages and IVF attempts, the couple had their first child, Raven. In 2005 they had a second daughter, Persia. In March 2007 the couple had their third child, Echo. He published his autobiography, Praying to the Aliens, in 1997 (updated edition 1998), in collaboration with Steve Malins (Malins also wrote the liner notes for most of the CD reissues of Numan's albums in the late 1990s, as well as executive producing the Hybrid album in 2003). Numan has recently moved to East Sussex from Essex.
Gary Numan's music is mainly classified as electronic, experimental, and synth rock. It spans across various genres of them, most notably synthpop, dark wave, new wave, industrial rock, and post-punk, in addition to gothic rock and punk rock.
Numan has even experimented in more unrelated genres such as funk, jazz, dance and standard pop.
Gary Numan discography:
1978 Tubeway Army (also known as the Blue Album)
1979 Replicas
1979 The Pleasure Principle (Numan's first album under his own name
1980 Telekon
1981 Dance
1982 I, Assassin
1983 Warriors
1984 Berserker (first album on self-owned Numa label
1985 The Fury
1986 Strange Charm
1988 Metal Rhythm (released in a re-sequenced edition in the US as New Anger)
1989 Automatic (collaboration with Bill Sharpe as Sharpe + Numan)
1991 Outland
1992 Machine + Soul
1994 The Radial Pair (soundtrack for video of the same name)
1994 Sacrifice
1995 Human (Gary Numan and Michael R. Smith, instrumental album)
1997 Dawn (US reissue of Sacrifice; same track listing)
1997 Exile
2000 Pure
2006 Jagged