Gary Numan: Android in La La Land

This programme contains strong language

PEOPLE CHEER

DRUMMING

PEOPLE CHATTER

PEOPLE CHEER

CHEERING

# You don't hear me

# You don't see me

# You don't even know I'm alive

# So why do you call me? #

We're bloody late now, innit?

Well, I tried.

You need to look in a mirror before you start doing an interview.

Well, I am looking in a mirror, I think I look great in there.

-Did you check yourself before you got on the bus?

-Yeah, did I? Of course I did.

You didn't, did you?

-I check meself out all the time.

-You didn't, did you?

-No.

-Why do you not do that?

-I don't.

-Do you know who you are?

-HE LAUGHS

-RADIO:

-'..Gary Numan, he's got a sold-out show

'at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery -

'which I'll be headed to - then he's off to the east coast

'playing in Brooklyn, which I hear has also been sold out.'

'I used to get so frightened... I could... I couldn't...

'You couldn't have a conversation a day or two before.

'Couldn't talk at all, yeah, just absolutely terrified of it.

'I used to be sick.'

'My dad said to me one day,

' "If you can't find a way of dealing with your fear of it,

' "your stage fright," then he said,

' "It's just the most stupidish thing to try to succeed in." '

Go!

'So, I started to come up with images and...things to hide behind.'

CHEERING

'By being over there and by being able to tap into the American scene

'much more than I have done by being based here,

'then it should open up all kinds of opportunities that are not

'really there or haven't been there for me and...

'because I've not had that local knowledge or experience'

of what opportunities there are there

and how to make the most of them, how to grab them.

-Yeah...

-SHE YELLS

-'I've got three little girls...'

-Give her to me, grumpy head!

'It just made me think differently...'

Why am I grumpy? Why am I grumpy today?

'..where would we all be happier as a family?

'One day I just woke up and just thought,

' "I think we should do it." '

-INTERVIEWER:

-'Girls, why don't you tell us your names?'

-I'm Raven!

-I'm Persia.

Where's Echo?

-RAVEN:

-Dad, what's your favourite colour?

-Black.

-Black lipstick, black nail varnish, black make-up.

-He does wear it on stage, you know.

-'What's that?'

-GIRLS:

-Make-up!

Do I look better or do I still look just as old?

You look old when you don't have make-up on, you look nice when...

You look young when you have make-up on.

LAUGHING: Oh, really?

-I was dyeing... Dyeing my hair yesterday...

-Oh!

..to get rid of the grey bits, and she said to me,

"Why are you doing it?"

And I said, "Well..." Don't do that.

"It'll make me look a bit younger."

And she said, "It doesn't, you know?"

She said, "You just look just as old but without grey hair."

MUSIC: Are "Friends" Electric? by Gary Numan & Tubeway Army

It's very, very different to what it used to be...

I'm not the little androidy figure that I used to be.

I don't do that any more cos, you know, it's three decades ago.

# Whoa, whoa

# Whoa-oh-whoa-oh-whoa-oh... #

If you had to sit down and write

the best 30 electronic songs ever...

MUSIC: Cars by Gary Numan

..I'm pretty damn sure that Cars and Are "Friends" Electric?

would be pretty high on the list.

They are classics.

Especially in a form where there aren't that many still.

It was in the air in that electronic music was exciting and new,

but Gary's success took everyone completely by surprise.

# Here in my car I feel safest of all

# I can lock all my doors

# And it's the only way to live in cars... #

Everything turned totally on its head with Cars.

It was a dramatic sea change and Gary came into that

as something very different.

The first album he made for us,

although it was a guitar record, was a...

was a very different-sounding record to any other punk record

that was being made at the time.

He discovered synthesisers and everything changed from there.

Well, I first got a record deal in '78.

There was a mini Moog in the control room - a synthesiser -

which I had never seen a real one before.

Then I pressed the key and luckily,

it had this most amazing bottom-end growl, roar sound.

HEAVY SYNTHESISER TONES PLAY

And I was just blown away by it, just the most amazing thing.

So powerful and, I mean, the room shook, you know,

really, really powerful.

He wanted to go into the studio kind of almost immediately

having hardly toured and promoted the first record.

Obviously we wanted more promotion for the first record and we were

a bit nervous about not having the money to put him

in the studio again...

But nonetheless we did, cos he was a very powerful character

and what he wanted he usually got.

I've often wondered, you know,

because the people that had it before me left it on that sound.

It could have been left on any number of other sounds, which...

Cos it was quite capable of making a huge amount

of really shit ones as well...

"Doo!" and all that sort of horrible stuff. "Eek!"

So it could have been, you know,

that I press a key and it went "Eek!"

and I thought, "They're rubbish!" You know?

And I wouldn't have thought... But again, just gone into the studio,

carried on making my punk album and thought no more about it.

But it didn't, it made this amazing sound.

And I just converted that from a guitar doing it to the synth,

twiddling around as I went to try to make it do different things,

not knowing how they worked at all,

but just twiddling until it did something that sounded better.

So all very, very amateurish and experimental,

and I went back to the record company with this sort of

pseudo-electro punk album, and then we started arguing

cos it wasn't what they wanted, it wasn't what they had sent me in for,

or it wasn't what they signed me for in the first place.

About a week later he discovered a Polymoog, and armed with those two

new discoveries, he made the album that became Replicas.

Well, I was...

I was...passionate about it, you know,

I honestly believed that I'd found something that nobody else had.

I was wrong.

I was absolutely terrified that another electronic album's

going to come out before mine,

I wanted to be the first to have a purely electronic album...

-And...

-'Were you listening to other stuff, though? Cos...'

-Which I was never going to...

Yeah, the stupid thing is, I was never going to be the first.

Kraftwerk had already done it, Barry had already done it. Lots of other people had done it.

Which I think is probably why it wound up the other people a bit.

Because they had been doing it for some time, you know?

And then I come along at the very last minute and stumble across it.

That sort of music was going to be massive.

And I wanted to be at the front end of it.

And in the blink of an eye I'm the first synth-rock rock star.

Gary's initial importance was that he was the guy who really

broke synthesisers into pop music.

It was still a kind of left-field thing, really.

The impact that he had on every level creatively and commercially

completely changed the course of electronic music.

The impact was dramatic.

You know, at one point,

the first three albums were all in the top 20 at the same time.

And he walked on stage and 3,000 people went completely insane.

Gary's now got this enormous success and there's been no build-up to it

and he's very young, he's only 21.

You know, it's massive sort of things to deal with

and in that atmosphere...

..he is kind of seen to the outside world quite remote

and it did leave him very isolated.

The house used to frighten me.

Around about ten o'clock at night I used to just start to feel

a bit funny, you know? There's a room upstairs that I made into, like,

a one-room bedsit and I used to go up there when it got late.

I used to feel safe in that one.

Gary managed to live in one room, the middle of the five bedrooms...

He painted the whole thing black, including the ceiling...

-And that's where he...

-White carpet.

That's where he spent most of his time, you know...

He just lived in one room.

I used to cook meself chips every day and I used to go to sleep

watching... You know that Monty Python film, Holy Grail?

I used to watch that every night to go to sleep with...

..after me chips, so it stunk of...fat and...disgusting, really.

-I remember there being a dinghy in his front room...

-Yeah!

..which sat in there for quite a long time. Um... But...

-'Why did he have a dinghy in his front room?'

-I can't quite remember.

And I'm not sure why I inflated it in the front room.

Might have been raining or something, but I wanted to see what

it looked like and put the engine on, to just see what it looked like. So I did that.

And then it actually made quite a comfy sofa

cos you could sort of lay in it.

So, it just...

I never let it down, I never used it,

it just stayed in the front room for...a couple of years, I think.

That's in his house.

GEMMA LAUGHS

Sneaking into his house!

I paid a girl £50 to take me to his house, so I must have run in,

had some photos and run out again.

I can't believe he even asked me out!

SHE LAUGHS

So, yeah, so '86 I first started taking pictures of Gary

or whatever...

Or of all the Numan conventions.

That's what a lot of these are as well.

SHE LAUGHS

But here's a little bit of Mr Numan I've just saw...

Yeah, see, I'd get my friend to take pictures when we were

just standing nearby, so I could just be near him.

SHE LAUGHS

That's the first time I had a photo with him ever.

And that's it.

Oh, my God, that is hideous, put it away!

Oh, this would be 1983.

I was...15.

I shaved off the sides of my hair and had the black ponytail.

I love that I've got all this stuff, I mean, I collected bootlegs,

picture discs, everything,

but I've lost all the fan side of it as it is.

I can't push anyone out of the way any more and get to the front row.

I don't have any of that any more.

But I've gained him as a husband, so I can't be that upset about it!

-Gem? Gemma, where are those fat socks?

-Two minutes.

-Spot covering!

-Essential!

-Mole... Mole coverage.

-Essential.

-Under-eye-baggage coverage. Can't fix wrinkles.

-That's-That's...

That's not a talk through your make-up,

that's a talk through what's wrong with my face!

LAUGHTER

'Well, I've travelled around the world many times,

'met hundreds of thousands of people.'

'She has the most amazing personality

'of anyone I've ever met.'

Where do you keep them?

She's...everything that I'm not, which is a lot of things. She is.

I'm... I'm...

I'm an anorak, nerd kind of bloke, you know?

And I'm obsessive about certain things,

I get really boring and really into stuff and I'm really antisocial.

I think that's the Asperger's thing, but...

So, she is my...

She's my buffer between me and the rest of the world.

Did we get Cokes in?

Did we get any Cokes in earlier? I don't want one, but did we get any?

Yeah. There's a whole KitKat in his poo there.

MUSIC ECHOES FROM TENT

So he just did his thing, shook 'em all together, he went,

"Right, I'll process your approval, then."

-And that was it. "Is that...?"

-Not a trumpet in sight!

No! "Is that...? Does that mean I can live in America?"

-And he went, "Yes, ma'am, it does." And I said...

-Notice she says "I"!

-Yeah, I...

-'Oh, yeah!'

-I

-live in America. There's no "we"!

-It's the same as "we"!

-No, it's not, though, is it? It's not, it's not.

-Yeah, there's "I" in team, my team.

-I say "we".

-Anyhow, um, we're in.

-We're in, it's all good, I was really excited...

-You cried.

..I started crying... He was like Rain Man, old Dustin!

I was emotionally challenged.

-D'you know why?

-He's useless! I was crying...

-Because for the last two years, I have done everything.

-Fuck off!

LAUGHTER

Without me, he wouldn't even be in America, so...

I felt a massive sense of relief that it had all gone well...

-Silly bollocks there, who has done nothing...

-Fuck off!

-Nothing...

I've done shitloads, everyone knows you're lying who will watch this...

Well, they...might.

-LAUGHTER

-They will by the end of it!

GARY LAUGHS

-GEMMA:

-When I was, I think I was 14 and I did the careers talk -

"What are you going to do when you leave school, what job?"

"I don't need one, I'm going to marry Gary Numan."

-And I was sent out!

-SHE LAUGHS

I didn't think I was going to need a job.

I was going to marry Gary Numan and that was it.

CROWD SINGS

MUSIC: Are "Friends" Electric? by Gary Numan & Tubeway Army

# Now the light fades out

# And I wonder what I'm doing in a room like this

# There's a knock on the door... #

HE YELLS

# And just for a second I thought I remembered you

-CROWD:

-# Oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh

# Oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh... #

I'm still, obviously,

a shadow in terms of success as to what it was in '79/'80.

I lost that. Lost all that.

# So now I'm alone... #

I've learned to really enjoy it now.

That's a fundamental difference - I love being in a band,

I love touring, I love being on stage.

If I could keep it going for another 100 years, then I would. I love it.

And I would love to have number one records again...

whether that's likely or not.

# Whoa, whoa

# Whoa-oh-whoa-oh-whoa-oh

# Whoa, whoa

# Whoa-oh-whoa-oh-whoa-oh

# Whoa, whoa

# Whoa-oh-whoa-oh-whoa-oh

# Whoa, whoa. #

A natural evolution for me

would be to get into film music at some point.

So Los Angeles in particular

would be a better place for us to live.

I actually lived in Los Angeles in the early '80s at some point

and I loved it.

I came back, career started to get into trouble...

I thought I would sort meself out and then move out

and, uh, that never worked out,

it actually got worse and worse and worse for the next ten years.

The rest of the world just... went away.

Gemma's always wanted to do it, so there's been like a gentle pressure.

In fact, when we met,

she actually was in the process of moving to America as an au pair.

She had to make a choice,

either stay with me and see if that worked out - and this is,

I mean, we had only just met, really - or go off and do her

sort of big American dream thing.

And she took a gamble and stayed with me.

And then... bottomed out really badly.

The only thing that kept me going was that I had some equipment

at home, I made albums at home...

..in a little 12-track portastudio.

I made three albums on that.

Put them out meself cos I couldn't get a record deal.

You sort of wake up and you realise that it's all been...

..lost somehow.

-COMPERE:

-Let's hear it for the one, the only, Mr Gary Numan!

RAUCOUS CHEERING

The album that I'm working on that we're trying to get finished

at the moment, the working title is called Splinter.

It's been six years. Slow process, innit?

Raven wrote her first song this morning.

-'What's it about, then?'

-I don't know yet.

It's just music at the minute, isn't it?

PERSIA STRIKES HIGH HAT

SHE SINGS

'I'm being forced to pack up today...

'But it's a bit too soon really,

'I've still got loads of stuff going on.'

'Selling this house, buying the American house...

'My studio's going to be in the container.'

Right, come here, then.

'It's been much more fraught than I thought it was going to be.

'Like, it takes two years of tortoise-like progress,

'then all of a sudden, chaos.'

Mum, I'm coming!

I'm over Daddy's shoulders.

All I'm excited about is the swimming pool, that's it.

The swimming pool, she loves the swimming pool.

I'm excited about all of it because the castle's got secret passageways

and it's got a pool and a tennis court.

That's all shit stuff.

I've always thought of synthesisers being like screwdrivers.

You know, they're the tools of the trade. My guitar is different.

I've got a guitar that my mum and dad bought me

when I was...quite young and it's been with me through everything.

You know, the first gig I ever did when I was a kid.

I still use it now - it's on every record I've ever made.

It's covered in scratches, it's been broken in half three times,

I think, maybe four, and rebuilt.

It's the only possession I've got

that I would be genuinely sad, you know, if I lost it

or if it got stolen or something. I really love it.

But the whole fame thing...

You imagine you're kind of standing on a train station

and this express train comes flying through

and you put your hand out and you grab it and it whisks you away

at sort of lightning speed and everything is a blur,

then at some point you lose your grip and you fall off.

The train disappears and then you find yourself in the middle

of nowhere, a bit beaten up and totally lost.

At one point I was somewhere in the Far East, decided to stop off

in the Philippines for a few days on the way back,

just to have a break from it all because it had just been

relentlessly mental everywhere, and as I got off the plane,

all these people came up and were throwing garlands round me head...

Turned out I had a gold single in the Philippines.

Didn't even know I had a record out in the Philippines.

It felt as if there wasn't a corner in the world

that you could go to to get away from it.

# I believe in the cruelty of life

# I believe in all of the hopeless and lost

# I see you

# Oh-oh... #

No, everyone loves it, everyone really loves the house

and it looks great and, as I say, it's really big.

And it's really interesting, you know,

it's not just got a lot of space, you know,

there's these secret staircases and little trapdoors...

So, it's just amazing, absolutely amazing.

-Which one was it?

-SHE LAUGHS

I love it, do you love it?

-KIDS LAUGH

-No, you are!

I just... I like everything in the house.

When I was in the swimming pool, as soon as I got to the deep end,

I start going up and up and it's sort of like I'm flying.

'Tell me what you want to be, then, when you grow up?'

I want to be a famous horse rider because I love horses.

I want to be an actress and work with Angelina Jolie.

I want to be both,

I just want to be a famous horse rider and I want to work at...

..LA Ink.

I'm the queen of the world!

-'Girls, what does Daddy do for a job?'

-He works.

All he does is sings and works, he doesn't go out to work,

he doesn't go to buildings, that's all he does. He works at home.

-And then he goes to buildings.

-'What does he do, though, Raven?'

Um... Move out the way.

Um, he-he sings... He... Um...

He, um...

He-He, um...

'Is Daddy a rock star?'

-Yeah.

-He is.

ECHO YAWNS

This is going to be the studio building.

I need to have another room built within the room that's there now.

And the second end is going to be an office.

So I'll set up a temporary thing in the house somewhere...

Don't need much equipment for writing, to be honest.

And write some more songs,

get enough ready and we'll finish it off in this room here.

The thing that I used to notice at the other place,

because it wasn't particularly brilliantly soundproofed,

I was aware that people walking past the house could hear.

And even Gemma, if I knew Gemma was coming home or if the kids

were playing outside, I'd feel really nervous... Not...

Embarrassed about singing really loud knowing that

they could hear what I was doing.

I've never got over that, never.

I have to be honest,

I do find this place a bit creepy when it gets dark.

Yeah, now he won't go and see Paranormal Activity, Smiley...

I'm not going to see any horror films at all until I've been here for about...

He won't go and see them now. I've got no friends here, I'll have to go by myself.

There's all suits of armour and stuff, you know,

and there's swords of hands holding, which is a bit creepy.

-Are you never going to see them again? Cos of this house?

-Why...?

That's you, innit? Hot or cold. There is nothing in between.

Because I'm not going to see a few films this week

because I'm a bit scared of the house, I'm never going again.

'Gemma, be honest, though,

'would you stay in this house on your own for a weekend...'

-Yes. Yeah.

-'..with the lights off?'

-Yeah, she wouldn't care.

-Yeah.

She likes being scared, apparently.

I don't want a real serial killer to come here, though.

-Not a real one!

-Aw...

Is that inviting them?

SHE LAUGHS

-You...

-What if a burglar comes in with a gun?

A bit more bloody likely than the serial killer -

-hurt just as much probably!

-No, that's more instant.

Serial killers talk to you and they take trophies...

They don't all talk to you, they just kill lots of people.

No, the good ones, the really interesting ones...

You can't say good ones!

No such thing as a "good" serial killer, is there?

-Not good as in good-hearted, but...

-Fucking hell! Good-hearted?!

-What are you talking about?!

-I don't...

'My whole life changed from the moment she came along.

'She's brilliant, man. She's so funny.

'And we bounce off each other all the time.'

Do you...? Who do you like?

Blondie or Marilyn Monroe?

-Mummy...

-# Happy... #

-Mummy, tell me.

-That time or dead?

This is Gary's new studio.

Just sent me a photograph of it last night in America, very, very nice.

Very grey. A bit like his personality!

It's very, very good and I'm very envious.

I've changed the way my day works since Gary and Gemma moved

to America. I've had to.

Gary will write the song completely in the studio.

Usually it will be, you know, some drum loops and some sounds

which he feels are right for the track.

Um, he'll record a guide vocal or an actual vocal...

give me all of the parts, then I'll kind of develop his ideas.

We want him to write 16, 17 songs and we have 16, 17 tracks

to choose from and we come up with the strongest album

that we possibly can.

So my job is to develop those ideas.

This is a new track, Gary sent me the parts for it last night.

HAUNTING ARABIAN MUSIC PLAYS

He came up with this idea and he sent me

a reference track of beautiful Arabic.

It's a constantly evolving thing. I mean, this is...version 11.

"SPLINTER" CONTINUES TO PLAY

You leave a seven-year gap between writing albums,

you have to come back with something really strong.

It's got to be a good album.

And it has to be done quickly. This year.

I think he's done incredibly well to...get to where he is now.

'What if he doesn't finish it?'

He will finish it.

He will finish it.

'I still think of making albums is they just seem like huge mountains

'to climb, all that emotional fucking shit that comes with it.

'Not sleeping and the worrying and getting short-tempered

'and getting completely possessed by it and...'

'..preoccupied by it and, you know, quite difficult to live with.

'You know all that is coming and it's not something you jump into

'with a big-eyed smile on your face and go, "Yay! Here we go!

' "This is going to be great!" Cos it isn't. It's horrible.'

'And I find it more and more difficult...'

Nah...

'And that's probably a good reason why it's taken me

'such a long time to actually do it.'

Sometimes...

..ten minutes and it's all done.

You know, sometimes four or five hours.

It really depends.

But so much of it is doing it wrong. Getting it wrong.

You try something, it doesn't work. You try something, doesn't work.

Dozens and dozens and dozens and then you'll find something

that works.

HE TRIES OUT A MELODY

That's quite pretty.

Then I do a vocal for it without words,

just singing noises and sounds that come to mind.

When I sing the gobbledygook bit before I start doing lyrics,

the music gives you the sense of the lyric, if you like.

Intro, extended intro, verse first with the lyric.

Chorus with the lyric. Little link part. Verse.

Instrumental verse, that one didn't end well, verse with lyric.

So that's the way I sort of have a picture of what the arrangement is

and where the lyrics need to be...

And then I...

It looks like Morse code a little bit,

but I write down where the actual syllables need to be...

HE SINGS MELODY

And then you just start to put it together.

I find words that will fit with this and...piece it together.

And I get a certain amount of feel from the gobbledygook.

When I sing the gobbledygook bit before I start doing lyrics,

there is almost every time certain lines or words that will...

..come up again and again and again and when you sing it,

so they feel natural.

Um, see, it might even be that bit, so that would be...

"So are we over?"

Then you move words around and shorten it and...

A bit like tweeting, in a way, where you find a way

of making what you want to say in words that are acceptable

fit this flow...

And it's like a jigsaw puzzle with...

..words and sounds and it's...

I love it, I find it really interesting.

Probably my favourite part of the whole process, actually,

the lyrical side of it.

And even when it's a bit of a struggle, it's really interesting.

Sometimes with music when you're struggling,

it can get really frustrating.

I start to panic a little bit that I'm not going to find a way...

..around the problem.

You know, a way of developing it the way I want to and I sometimes feel

quite limited and frustrated with the fact that I can't play better...

# Ooh, it comes

# Ooh, it comes

# Ooh, my last day... #

Little shits.

'What are you doing?'

I'm cleaning cat piss off the curtains.

'How much of a fan were you of Gary's then?'

Massive.

I went to nearly every gig and waited for ages to get in

the front row...since I was little.

I went for his face, I only fancied his face and his music.

I stole an album off my brother cos I fancied the man

that was on the back in my ten-year-old way...

Yeah, I think I liked the make-up.

Oh, my God, they've done it on the back as well.

SHE MAKES RETCHING TONE

Little shits.

If I wasn't in a band, I would never have had a girlfriend in my whole life

cos I can't, I've got no chat with women at all, none.

CHEERING

We did a tour, she hadn't been on that tour and she was always

on all the tours, so I noticed she hadn't been there.

Yeah, cos I think she's lovely looking,

I'd always notice if she was there.

And she'd always be right down the front.

It wasn't until my mum died that I had a proper conversation with him.

24.

He rang me up... Got my number from the fan club.

I didn't believe he'd be ever ringing me, I thought it was

someone winding me up and I thought someone was being really horrible.

My mum had just died and someone's ringing up pretending to be

Gary Numan and...eventually...I just started asking him questions

about himself.

Oh! And then I thought, "Oh, actually, it does sound like him."

I remember the first time we ever went out together,

I was giving her all my best stories.

She'd heard them all, read them all. I had nothing to say.

He'd only ever seen me made up at gigs, so I wanted to go there

and meet him with no make-up on in jeans and T-shirt...

Because I thought I'd rather on this first date

he saw me as I am and just not ring me ever again because I was ugly.

'I was riddled with all kinds of issues

'which have slowly got better over the years

'thanks to her patience and perseverance.'

When I went to his house and I saw he had a pair of...moccasins...

"That is my man!"

I saw the moccasins and I thought, "Fuck sake! He wears moccasins!"

CHEERING

We got through all the pop star bit and then started to...

I mean, almost straightaway, really,

started to just be two normal people just trying to get on.

My early fantasies I'd had about Gary, I fantasised that

he would save me from my council estate in a helicopter,

dressed in his I, Assassin outfit

and I'd be running from Daleks,

and he'd be my hero. That was it.

-KID LAUGHS Ready?

-Yes.

KID LAUGHS

We got married in '97 and Raven came along not till 2003.

We started trying for kiddies, though, as soon as we got married.

And it wasn't happening, and then started on IVF.

Some sad things happened on the way to getting Raven.

The first attempt worked.

We got pregnant, it was really brilliant news,

and then it came to the 11-week scan and there was something

really wrong with her - big, thick membrane up the back of her neck -

and then they told us she was 100% Turner syndrome,

which meant she would be stillborn.

We had a couple of miscarriages,

an ectopic pregnancy and then three that just didn't work at all.

And then Raven. Raven was the seventh attempt.

She was twins and we... At 14 or 15 weeks I lost her twin.

Raven survived.

We were told we couldn't really have any more and then I had

two happy accidents.

Persia and Echo.

It was after Echo that I had the severest postnatal depression but I

got postnatal depression when I was pregnant with Persia and it

didn't go away until two years after Echo.

We've had a lot of horrible things happen to us.

There's no wonder it suddenly caught up with us one day.

When I was younger I used to have a job in a warehouse.

Every week somebody would be given the job of going out at lunchtime

to get the fish and chips or whatever it was for dinner,

and they stopped sending me cos I would take hours cos I didn't

want to talk in front of people. It was just a weird hang-up.

That was when I was sort of 17, 18, so I've always had it.

I just get really nervous and flustered.

I'm all right doing it if she's there. I'm all right, you know.

But if she goes to the toilet or something like that...

I'm panicking.

Now that I drink a little bit,

that's really made such a huge difference.

I don't like the taste of it all, it's horrible.

I just start to feel better - just like medicine.

He's hard work to get to go anywhere.

Those early years, people were really horrible and said bad things

about his mum and all that sort of stuff. He feels self-conscious,

he's always worried that people will start singing Cars

and then take the piss.

But I think it's passed.

NO AUDIO

I had lots of trouble at school.

I knew I had difficulties in certain areas that other people

didn't seem to have.

The school sent me to a psychiatrist,

so that pretty much singled me out, just being

a bit different to the others, but not in a good way or in a cool way.

Behaviour, mainly. Really terrible behaviour.

I can flare up.

If somebody says something that's not right - and I don't mean

this in an integrity or sort of forthright opinions, I don't

mean it like that - it's actually in a very kind of autistic way.

Somebody says something that's not right,

I will pick them up on it.

It comes across in a child as being a bit bolshie and a bit arrogant.

Never meant it like it.

Then they sent me to a local child psychologist and it was there

that they first started to talk about Asperger's.

They put me on two drugs,

valium and nardil.

And they calm you,

keep you flat, cos I was extremely up and down at school.

He's very much a loner at times.

He could amuse himself completely on his own.

Gary didn't seem to need lots of people around him.

He was very quiet.

Always a bit shy but argumentative when he was at home with us -

he gets that from his dad.

My dad was my manager, so that he would be there,

and he doesn't step foot outside the door without my mum being there,

so they come as a team.

For me, it gave me a little bit of security and comfort and

someone to talk to and trust in the middle of everything

going mental around you, so for me it was nice to have them there.

I often felt they helped me keep my feet on the ground as well.

Tony had got involved in 1980

as the full-time manager.

I mean, it's brilliant because,

you know, it's obviously someone that you implicitly trust.

Tony would drive him around, you know,

bought Gary the guitar and PA system and so on.

It was very much Tony's dedication and the fact that he would get

his wallet out and support his son, you know,

that made any of it possible in the first place.

HE LAUGHS

When he very first started, he just needed to someone to go with him.

I used to go out and roadie for him, you know, and supply him the van

and get him to all the different places he used to play.

He used to play little pubs and clubs around London and that was it,

I was involved from there.

What do you think of Gary's music?

Well, I've just grown to like it, I suppose.

I'm not really that musical

but I've really grown to like it,

I really do enjoy it.

-What do you think about the lyrics that he writes?

-Erm...

Well, I don't understand 'em half the time, to be quite honest,

you know, I don't know where he gets it from.

We could see so many people dressed in black, as Gary did.

I said to Tony, "Must be somebody really big on there cos

"there's loads and loads of people."

And I didn't realise it was our Gary,

they were all dressing like him.

He was nervous, I mean,

to me, he seemed the most likely person of all to do what he does.

And I can remember particularly one - I think it was

Top Of The Pops - it was coming up to the time when Gary was due

for his bit to be filmed and he was about to do a runner

out the back of the studio.

I wonder if that's too much.

-Two big ones of them.

-If you're wondering...

And there was, like, little steps and he come down, he said,

"I can't do this, Mum. I can't do it." I said, "Of course you can."

He said, "I don't think I can." I said, "Yes, you can."

Enjoying it?

And that very sort of level-headed, practical,

firm-but-fair kind of approach did Gary an awful lot of good,

certainly when the success happened.

On the one hand, I was very sort of...protected.

On the other hand, I remained very child-like and unworldly.

Gary was cool for about five minutes.

There was a little moment but the thing is that

no journalist could actually hold up their hand and say that they

got the kudos for discovering Gary,

and so that isolated him from the British media.

On top of it, you know, Gary very much wanted to bring

a kind of showbiz approach to it as well.

I guess because he was so stylised, what was seen, I suppose,

as an artificial persona in an era where everything was meant to be

organic and real and back to basics.

That violated the kind of punk stance that

a lot of journalists still had.

So journalists hated him for that,

the way he moved on stage, the whole robot thing,

just obviously very easy to ridicule.

Never had a problem with people not liking anything that I'd done.

The only thing that I didn't understand was the hostility

that came with it. In the press people talk about you

as if you'd done something really bad,

you know, this horrible person.

One newspaper said that my mum and dad should have been doctored

for giving birth to me. That's a big strong, isn't it?

What have I done?

I've written a song that millions of fucking people like - oh!

What the fuck is all that about?

# This is what you are... #

You know what they used to say to me?

"Well, it's tongue-in-cheek, it's not really meant."

Well, why do they print it, then?

Just hurtful and nasty.

For years and years and years he had really bad press.

He got masses of it, you know,

I'm surprised that he carried on,

to be honest, his press was so bad.

When you read something that's really horrible, you know,

you'd rather not but I think the way you deal with it is what matters.

I'm lucky and I've got that sort of brain, it all just...flies by me.

That's where I'm going and you can say what you like,

I'm still going that way.

I must have had more bad press in the first ten years than anyone else

in the history of the music business.

If I'd been the sort of person that was bothered by that sort of stuff

then I'd have fallen by the wayside a long time ago.

The press didn't have any effect on me but other things did.

Mid-'80s time, decisions I'd been making had been really stupid.

You kind of lose faith in yourself.

His focus once he became successful seemed to be on making lots

and lots of records and doing bigger and bigger shows, and also,

at the same time, he got his pilot licence.

He had this sort of focus that he had to keep doing the next thing -

fly around the world.

The lighting, I mean, we had to take a massive lighting rig out.

We used to go out with three or four 40-foot trucks every time we toured,

so our costs were enormous.

And it was really sort of down to Gary,

that's the side of Gary that I could never control.

He would come up with figures and my response would always be,

"How much?!"

What's coming in one end is great, you know, the more the merrier,

but as long as you control what's going out the other end.

My dad would say to me, "If you do this,

"you're going to lose all that money. You need to scale it down."

And I'd half-heartedly do it. Not enough so that we didn't lose money.

And then next time it'd be even worse so I'd scale it back

a little bit more, you know, but not enough.

And we just carried on losing money year after year until it got so bad

that we just couldn't borrow any more.

You know, my dad...found himself in this horrible position

of trying to keep us surviving from one day to the next.

And I caused that.

Yeah, he told me that was coming, years before.

That's all my fault.

-INTERVIEWER:

-How bad did it get?

Well, they tried to repossess my house at one point.

That kind of shakes you up a little bit. Just over 600 grand in debt

when it's at its worst. Couldn't sell tickets,

album sales had fallen down to just a few thousand. Nightmare.

My mum and dad would go out nightly around different credit card

machines, trying to get money out of them. They had a stack of them.

The career was really plummeting downhill badly and there comes that

fateful day when you listen to advice for the first time.

And that's the kiss of death because once you do that

you stop following your own path.

You become lost.

I keep hearing rumours about you

-and your career and the fact you're retiring.

-Yeah, that's right.

I mean, he used to talk back then a lot about

he had better relationships with machines.

-How are you filling your days nowadays?

-I'm flying.

-Flying?

-Bit of a dangerous hobby.

-No, it's all right.

The interest is actually being able to control the machinery

and be able to make them do what you want them to do.

You know, obviously with the Asperger's you can see how

people get drawn to machinery or to things that are more solid

than a pop career.

Pulling upside down and you can feel it twitching and trying to get away,

close to the ground and survive, year after year.

It's a challenge.

Gary just lately is on a fantastic creative splurge.

Compared to the sort of pattern from the last few years, you know,

they've been coming quicker than I can produce them, at the moment.

I'm still about two behind. We just want Gary to continue.

We're not trying to get into the charts,

we are trying to reach out to a wider audience.

For example, Dave Grohl has been playing Down In The Park

with Foo Fighters for many years. He's obviously a big fan of Gary's.

He's getting into fanbases like that.

Nine Inch Nails, you know, I don't even know the last time,

or even if they'd ever had any chart success in the UK.

But 17,000 people will go and see them at the O2 Arena.

Obviously a massive connection there between Gary and Trent.

Back in that time when I was trying to figure out what Nine Inch Nails

was going to be about, there was someone that was vitally important

to me that was a huge inspiration.

And it is with great pleasure and honour

I present to you Gary Numan!

Really, the Gary reinvention really starts with the musicians,

people like Smashing Pumpkins,

and Tricky was dying to talk about Gary in interviews.

Beck as well. There was something starting to happen.

The artists who picked up synthesisers or got into

synthesisers were starting to become successful themselves.

When he went on stage with Nine Inch Nails at the O2, that was a moment.

HE EXHALES

You know, 17,000 people start singing Metal, they're going mental.

It was just... Jesus.

# We're in the building where they make us grow

# And I'm frightened by the liquid engineers

# Like you... #

That Nine Inch Nails thing,

I thought that would give him massive confidence.

I knew he'd be scared doing it but I was frightened at the same time that

if Trent said no, would I ever tell him...

about that note to Trent Reznor?

It's a weird old thinking, but I knew Gary loved them, he loved Gary,

I knew he was doing Metal live and I thought, "Oh, my God,

"that would make him feel great

"if that happened, if maybe he sang."

Trent wrote back and said, "Yeah, I really would love that."

And I went and told Gary that and that made him feel really good,

and he went on that trip and that gave him loads of confidence

and he came back from the trip, the Nine Inch Nails trip,

and he'd been asked to do the last shows with them, and his confidence

was there and I thought,

"Oh, yes, that's going to be enough to go back in the studio."

And then...you know,

he had a big fallout with his mum and dad,

which hit him really, really hard. So...

It went high, high, high, straight down again and then - wallop.

It was horrendous. Panic attacks and went on the antidepressants.

And I was depressed at the same time

so it was really fucking awful.

My mum was pretty much out of it, it became me and my dad.

And we were just at each other...

really badly. Really badly.

Um...

And it seemed to escalate into all kinds of other things,

into our history and...

Couldn't believe...

how quickly we went from being this loving...

..thing, family, into just...shit.

Utter shit.

If we hadn't fallen out, then I would never have left.

Too big a tie.

Yeah, but we did.

And with that tie cut...

Yeah, why not?

-Is that broken, Dad?

-Yeah, it's broken.

Don't know what I'm doing.

I don't even know if I'm supposed to take this bit on the end off.

-What you doing?

-I'm building a small nuclear device.

When have you been handy?

SHE CHUCKLES

-Unbelievable!

-When did you learn how to do that?

Have you got an A To Z on how to put me down?

Are you soldering?

To be so close to the finishing post and for it to be sounding so good,

and we're both really happy with it as well.

Me and Gary haven't fallen yet, which is a miracle in itself,

considering the dramas with the hard drive.

I can't see, that's the trouble.

-Even with my glasses on, I can't see.

-Do you want me to do it?

-Yeah!

-Can you do it?

-Yeah, I used to solder at BT.

-No way! Go on, then.

It's the fate of the whole album in Gemma's hands right now.

What is this? Oh, don't give me any responsibility.

What is this I'm doing?

-This is all the actual sounds we're going to be recording.

-No, it's not.

It is. That's what it is.

-You're joking. Please, tell me you're joking.

-No.

-I don't think...

-Wait till it cools down.

Actually cools down. Put it in the fridge.

No, no, don't glue the points, glue the main...main area.

# Every time I scream

# For someone to blame

# A shadow falls on me

# Whispers my name Whispers my name

# When will it end?

# When will it end? #

Fixed.

-You what?

-I fixed it. BT quality control. I fixed it.

Fixed the plug-in.

Left to my own devices, with my own eyes, I fixed it.

80 gig of the 85 gig you brought over is backups that you're never

-going to listen to again.

-Bollocks. I use them all the time.

# Every time I breathe

# Locked in this room

# A shadow falls on me... #

You happy with all the first section or anything you want to change?

No, no...

# Lay by your side

# A shadow falls on me. #

Cover that end section.

MUSIC RESUMES

I don't have an easy time.

At the beginning of this album it was pretty fraught at times.

Some of it I really loved and some of it I really didn't, and so

it took us a while to understand exactly what I was looking for.

I envy people that have that supreme confidence about what they're

doing and they just assume that everything they do is brilliant

because they did it. I've never had that.

I'm not trying to sort of tap into whatever that...you know,

magic moment was...

Well, I don't want to do songs that sound like Cars again,

I don't want to do any of that.

I sit in there listening to sounds and then get really excited

about something that I've not heard before,

y'know, just, "Listen to that, that's great."

That's where the excitement is. That's what you got into it for.

You got into music because you were...

You wanted to do something...

You wanted to make music that you hadn't heard before.

You wanted to find ways of doing it that you hadn't come across before.

And, you know, that's kind of the excitement of it, really.

And...

You want to be proud of it,

you want to be proud of what you're doing and you want to be...

You don't want to make an album that sounds like the one before

and the one before that. You don't want to do that.

# This isn't easy

# But it's what I believe ECHO: What I... What I...

# Something is broken and twisted and pushes away

ECHO: # Away...away...

# I'd like to mend every hurt, it can never be

# Be there to catch every fall, it can never be

# Be there to love everything you will ever be

# Sleep now, I wish you sweet dreams I will never see... #

Depression came just after I turned 50.

And I thought I handled it really well, doesn't make any difference,

I'm just the same person now as I was before.

And then it wasn't the same at all.

I didn't know how to deal with it.

I didn't even know what was wrong about it.

I started having anxiety attacks to do with dying.

I would see an old person in the street and I would think about,

"How can you be, say, 70 or 71, whatever it is,

"knowing that you've only got a few years left at best,

"how do you cope with that?"

Started to get really paranoid about getting illnesses and...

Pathetic, really. Really ashamed of myself.

He'd known for ages that he could be depressed and up and down and

up and down, but this panic attack thing was new and I just held him,

made him feel...

You feel helpless, really,

but I held him and talked to him about the tablets I'd been on,

cos there's such a stigma about going on antidepressants.

I didn't want to go on them, cos I just didn't,

"I didn't want to go on them, people get addicted,"

you know, there's such a stigma about going on them and also

about men being able to talk about...having problems.

I would lay in bed and I would think about my children.

And I would think,

"When I die, they're still going to be quite young.

"I'm not going to see 'em."

And I started to cry and get really upset about it and then it

was like dominos - one thought happened, the next thought

would come along, you couldn't stop it, like du-du-du-du-du,

and away you go and within minutes of that thought I'm absolutely

in pieces all over the floor.

You know, go and find Gemma

and get all hugged up and that and calm down.

Realised that's not right.

So that started to happen all the time, so I went to the doctor

and said, "Bit embarrassed about this but this is what's going on."

They said, "Look, any kind of anxiety attack is because

"there's an underlying depression." So they put me on antidepressants.

They don't make you feel happy

but they make you able to cope,

so I was now able to look at an old person and not start crying

and making a fool of myself.

The way it worked with me is they just stop you giving a fuck...

..about anything.

Didn't give a fuck. Didn't give a fuck.

And it was then that they...

did their intervention thing on me and took me out

and they're giving it loads about...

you know, the way you are,

"You need to focus on your music and do this," and I'm in La La Land.

They said, "What you thinking about?"

I said, "I'm thinking about kittens.

"I was just thinking about getting a kitten."

I'm kind of going, "Yeah,

"that's all well and good but you've got to write a bloody fucking song."

I knew if those things weren't happening there's no life for us,

there's no house, there's no...anything.

They said, "You gotta come off 'em.

"Your career is falling apart around you, you haven't written a new song

"in three years and all you're thinking about is kittens

"when we're having this conversation."

Don't care.

# Here in my car I feel safest of all

# I can lock all my doors It's the only way to live

# In cars... #

It was heavy. End of 2009, all of '10 and a bit of '11 was shit.

Heavy, heavy shit.

Depressions crossed over.

And we weren't really seeing who we were any more.

We can't fix anything cos the kids are there.

If you're fighting, they hear it.

If you go and try and sort it out, they'll interrupt.

It felt like stupid things we were fighting over.

I didn't want it any more.

I wanted him and I wanted him back but it wasn't that one.

I didn't want Gary Gump,

I didn't want that one, I wanted...

Gary Webb back and it was... he was gone.

MUSIC BLARES

I made it by just doing what I loved,

something that was very... unlikely to be successful.

And yet it did it.

But, you know,

I started to write songs cos I thought they might get on the radio.

"I'll write a ballad cos ballads are doing quite well at the minute."

Trying to write songs to achieve something.

That's what killed me before.

I had huge debts. Couldn't get a record deal.

Pretty much thought it was over. The career was all but dead and buried,

so there was no obvious way out of it.

And this is where Gemma was important cos she encouraged me

to just go back and do it for a hobby again,

sing everything rather than getting backing vocalists in,

play everything yourself.

Found that I really loved it again and I started to write much heavier

than it had ever been, write from the heart again.

And ever since I've jealously guarded this attitude that I had

when I started and I'll never let it go again.

What do you think the fans are going to think of Splinter?

I don't know, to be honest. Difficult to say.

I've got my own self-doubt issues at the minute. Thank you.

Don't go on about that again.

I'm not going on about it, I'm just saying.

I think it's completely normal.

You know, you've been working on something for a long time,

and you're just about...

Like, tomorrow when we master it, that's it,

there is no more chances to fix anything or change anything.

And this one, because it's been such a long time between this

and the last one, I think it's all the worse cos there's just that...

You feel that sense of expectation about it that if you spent

seven years doing something, it needs to be really, really good.

There's a lot of very anxious fans out there, I think...

can't wait to hear it.

No pressure, then.

There you go. Now I feel terrible again.

# And all that I was

# And all that I wanted

# And all that I couldn't be

# Has gone and turns to stone

# And I am not here

# And I am not real

# But I am still calling out your name to guide you home

# You are

# Still breathing

# So

# You are

# Where I can never be... #

It'll sink in a bit more a bit later, I think.

That's him excited.

No, I... The thing is, I'm now worrying about what comes next.

That's that bit done and then we gotta get the artwork sorted out.

And then they start reviewing it.

Yeah.

And they'll try to make you feel like an utter...

prat.

I don't know how or why but it just seemed to...thaw, somehow.

Gemma made this lovely gesture and...

..offered to make up.

Which I didn't expect at all, I didn't see that coming.

Didn't tell me she was going to do it.

And my mum and dad seemed to welcome it in a way that...

made me realise they see what I see.

She's a really kind, lovely person, you know, most brilliant...

And mum.

Gemma fixed so many things.

# You don't see me

# You don't even know I'm alive

# So why do you call me?

# We were dust

# In a world of grim obsession

# We wouldn't taunt from mouth

# Like an isolation... #

Stupid time to have a holiday, actually.

I just thought in-between finishing the album and all the main work

for it, I thought this would be a really good time just to have

a little getaway from it all with the kiddies,

but there's been so much going on to do with it, which is a shame.

The main thing has been the photographs, the albums.

We've got a bit of a deadline issue, need to get these things done.

I've had issues in the past but...

you know, nothing like this,

when I've been on the end of a really shit internet connection

getting more and more grumpy...

Girls are running around, Wilbur's dribbling...

Yeah.

But, you know, the other issue is Gemma organises

a fairly relentless schedule for your relaxing holiday.

With military precision!

# We all pray

# For the end

# For the god to take us... #

Echo?

Echo!

Get your arm in!

# One by one... #

Look at his flip-flops.

# And the fear

# Was all around us

# The machines screamed from

# Moon to sun... #

I said, "Look, we have to leave by four,

"or else we're going to be getting to the next place in the dark."

I think we left Solvang about six, you know.

-Doesn't care.

-It's a road trip of fun.

It hasn't been, but it's supposed to be fun.

-Yeah, all of us!

-But you've even moaned about the driving.

-You knew it was a driving holiday.

-These detours you've added to it.

The one to San Francisco was 251 miles, it ended up being 410.

That was a bit out of the way, that one.

Was a bit out of the way, wunnit(?)

-That one was, yeah.

-Not quite what I'd imagined, that.

-So moany.

-And we still did two hours in the dark.

-It's a road trip.

Never normally look forward to going home after a holiday.

Do you? Oh, yeah, you do, don't you?

# Wipe away all of your tears, it can never be

# Wake you to see a sunrise I will never see... #

Oh, oh, oh, oh...

# Ohh-ohh, it comes

# Ohh-ohh, it comes

# Ohh, my last day. #

CHILDREN CHATTER

We both see sides of each other that we never saw before children,

and so we're trying to deal with your own issues with it,

your own stresses and strains and worries, and you're trying to

allow the way you are now different with each other because of that,

because you're both going through it and dealing with it

in your own ways, and you both have good days and bad days.

And you're at each other, and often you're out of sync.

You have a little think - "Yeah, I'm getting out of this."

I was going to run away from it.

But I wrote it all down. What would it mean if she wasn't there?

And that was brilliant. Just brings you right back, right back.

There's no way in the world that's going to happen.

-What you'd do without me?

-Yeah.

-Is that your favourite song, Gemma?

Actually, without it being about that, yeah, it is.

But that, Splinter, Lost.

But writing that,

writing that stopped me from doing something really stupid.

Overwhelmed by it all, don't know what to do. Don't know what to do.

Can't stand it.

Not getting on, everything's a pressure,

worrying about money as always.

Just horrible. Horrible.

The song Lost, one of the few songs I think I've ever written where

it genuinely made a difference to what I was going to do with my life.

And when I heard it, heard the lyrics, I knew it was about us.

Or... Well, actually me, that one.

But I didn't know he'd gone and done it as therapy.

I... No, I didn't, he doesn't tell me anything like that.

I guess and I know, cos I say,

"What's that song about?", and he briefly tells me.

And it's enough. I go, "OK."

And I hear it and think, "OK, now I know."

# Are we so broken

# That you can walk away?

# When you think back to when we first met, are you sad?

# And when you think back to all we've been through

# Does it make you cry?

# And when you think back to all the love shared, do you feel anything?

# And when you think back, well

# Did you ever think we'd come...to...this?

# And yet here we are

# And I'm lost

# If we're over

# Then you're far away

# If we're over

# Then I'm lost. #

He gets frightened. He's really worried about tonight.

I think he just gets really nervous.

Also, he's 55, and this has taken so long to get to where it is

and everything,

the things he's been writing about and all the stuff

we've been through, and he's been through,

in the last seven years are all there in it.

So, no, it's not any old album.

This is an important thing to be doing.

We've done it before once, where we went into their studio.

This is a much bigger thing, it's being filmed,

there's a small audience, music supervisors, people to do

with films, people that are critical,

in a way, to my future in general.

After Are "Friends" Electric? went to number one and Replicas

came out, and then Pleasure Principle and Telekon,

these were big, planned albums. This feels similar to that.

This is how it should be done,

and it hasn't been done like that for 25 years.

It feels very exciting, but there's another part of me that thinks,

"If it doesn't work now, with all of these things in place,

"I'm done for."

# Is that why you've called me? #

There are so many good things happening.

The album's really good,

we seem to have really come up with something quite special,

we've got really good distribution in place all around the world...

It really does feel as if all the pieces that CAN be in place ARE,

but now we just need to see how that relates to the public.

CHEERING

And this is where we're at with it, it's all just about to happen,

and that's really frightening. Really frightening.

For every kind of moment of excitement, you've got

a bigger moment of terror in case

it all goes horribly wrong or if it doesn't work.

It's such a big thing and it's so important.

So important for my career, my life, my family, for everything.

You can't help but be frightened it's not going to work out,

because so much of it is perfectly in place.

APPLAUSE

Have you been keeping track on the chart position of your new album?

-I don't get sucked into that.

-No? All right.

In the past, there's been midweek positions

that have been really exciting and really optimistic,

and then it just slowly falls out.

OK, interesting. Well, fingers crossed, eh?

Well worth the wait.

-Oakland on the 3rd.

-Santa Ana.

-Santa Ana on the 4th.

The reviews of the album have been great, consistently brilliant.

Even caught him reading them last night!

It's been so long, such a long, long career, so up and down.

SO up and down.

And it's been so near finished so many times, to have an album now...

To have an album now that might actually get into the charts

is just fantastic.

Fantastic.

"This could be your lucky day."