Mental Machine

“I’ve got three children so I’ve been up for about two hours already!” laughs Gary Numan when I comment on the early hour of my appointed call – 9.30am.

The synth-pop godfather is currently preparing for the 30th anniversary tour of his seminal electronic album The Pleasure Principle, which spawned such hits as ‘Cars’ and ‘Metal’. As well as influencing an entire generation of musicians it has been covered and sampled extensively.
“My favourite cover of all time is the Nine Inch Nails version of ‘Metal’,” he reveals. “Marilyn Manson did a good ‘Down In The Park’ and Fear Factory did a straight cover of ‘Cars’, which was really great. In fact I changed my own version after hearing theirs and made it much heavier than it had been. There have been so many it’s really hard to pick – the NIN one is definitely my favourite.”
Gary and Trent Reznor have known each other for many years and Numan recently guested on some of the final NIN shows.
“My wife, who is a massive fan, wrote to Trent without me knowing and it grew out of that really,” he explains. “I got invited to their show at the O2 arena in London. We did ‘Metal’ and ‘Cars’ and that went really well. Then I was asked to do the last four shows in Los Angeles. It was fantastic, we were doing three or four of my songs each night.
“I’m such a big NIN fan,” he continues. “Standing at the front singing with them as your band, it doesn’t get much better than that. But it would hit you once in a while that these are their last shows ever, it was quite sad but lovely to be a part of it.”
Recent news of a budding Numan-Reznor collaboration has the synth/industrial community frothing with anticipation.
“I would imagine it will be next year some time as Trent’s getting married now and is busy with that I would think!” he laughs. “As he says, we’ll do it ‘when the dust settles’.”
Numan confirms the project is very much in its infancy. No creative direction has been decided on but “the intention is there”.
Meanwhile, he has been busy working simultaneously on two records, Splinter, the follow-up to 2006’s lauded Jagged, and Dead Son Rising, an album of alternative versions of tracks from the last three long-players. Some of the new material will feature on the upcoming tour.
“The Pleasure Principle only comes to 50 minutes so the show is effectively going to be in two halves,” he reveals. “There will be a full performance of the album and then a section which is a mix of other early titles and new work. I’m actually trying to get two or three new songs which have never been played before ready too.”
Apart from musical endeavours he has also made time for TV appearances on The Mighty Boosh and the Formula One-esque reality show The Race.
“I love The Mighty Boosh,” he declares. “The first time I saw it I recognised Noel Fielding because I had actually seen him do stand-up before. I thought it was brilliant and became a fan immediately. Then I was invited to do a podcast with Noel and it just grew from there, he invited me on the show. I know them all quite well now.”
The Race allowed Numan to indulge his love of cars and saw him clinch the winning position, fending off stiff competition from such practised motor sports enthusiasts as AC/DC’s Brian Johnston.
“I loved the experience,” he enthuses. “I’m not particularly into reality TV though. I’ve been asked to do nearly everything, the jungle one, Big Brother, dancing, horse jumping... anything you can think of! They just ask everybody so I’m not particularly flattered by the invitations. I think I only got to do The Race because JayKay couldn’t do it!”