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| The Interview questions and answers are usually taken from a variety of sources, some from questions sent to NuWorld, some from e-mail interviews Gary has given recently. |
| 1? | Following the success of Hope Bleeds how do you see DVD opening more opportunities for you in the future? Can we look forward to more official live DVD's as well as the Fragment releases, and what about your video back catalogue? |
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Hope Bleeds has been successful from a creative point of view but it's still a long way short of being a
financial success so we have to proceed with some caution. It cost a lot of money to make for a small organisation such as mine and we need to sell most of
our initial pressing just to break even. As I understand that is just about to happen but as it's now on general release and some of the outlets appear to
be doing amazingly competitive deals on it, deals that we will struggle to equal, breaking even may be the best we can hope for. However, those worries
aside, my DVD output will increase significantly from now on.
It's taken me a long time to get started with DVD because it's taken me a long time to learn what I like and don't like about it. Sometimes people do things with technology simply because they can, not always because they should. Some of the things people have put out on DVD have been an annoying waste of time, energy and probably a great deal of money. That aside, I'm now moving forward, cautiously, and beginning to put plans together for the next two years of DVD work. Technology changes so quickly that what seems state of the art today can look very dated in a very short space of time so it's important to think carefully about what you're doing and try to avoid those mistakes. As the two year period unfolds I'm sure new things will be coming along that may encourage us to adjust our plans and incorporate new ideas. That will be an ongoing need, to adjust to changing technologies and the opportunities that come with them.
We obviously would like to get as much of our video back catalogue onto DVD as soon as possible but simply transferring it as it is would be unnacceptable. New features need to be added that improve the package and not just so that you can write 'with extra features' on the sleeve. They have to contribute something meaningful. Our thinking at the moment is for the Wembley video to be our first back catalogue DVD release, later this year. Before that the first two Fragment DVD's are just days away from going out and I'm extremely pleased with the way they have turned out. Touring will play a big part in this years album promotional effort and so Tour Diary DVD's to go with the live shows themselves can all be worked in, perhaps even a behind the scenes look at recording the new album as I've already filmed a lot of that. Special gigs where we concentrate on one album and film it, talk about it in depth and so on. For example a filmed gig where we only play songs from the Telekon album and associated singles and b-sides for a special DVD could be fun, or Replicas, or whatever. Perhaps a video diary that follows 'a year in the life' format might be interesting. We intend to keep the Fragment series ongoing for the forseeable future and we have made some changes in how we work with Dash to greatly speed up the time between filming shows and releasing the DVD's. It needs to be weeks rather than months so we are still learning and improving how we do things. In my opinion it should be much better for me and for fans from now on as I'm changing from an artist who releases very little video work to one that releases a great deal of it. |
| 2? | How do you react to people who say you mime on stage? |
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Usually with a slightly resigned expression. I really have gone over this so many times before and I have no secrets
about it whatsover. So, once again. These days albums are recorded on systems that can have a vast amount of available tracks. My own system for example can have 128 which is a
far cry from the 16 tracks that the Tubeway Army album was recorded on. This capability, plus many other technological advances, has obviously made the modern album sound very
much better, sonically at least, than those of old. This modern 'standard' of recording excellence across the industry is now widely expected by fans of most, if not all, kinds
of music. How unrealsitic then to expect those albums, that may have hundreds of different parts per song, to be recreated on stage by, in my case these days, six people. Without
samplers and sequencers playing some of those parts, the albums would sound weaker and less like the songs you've come to hear. So it is with the backing vocals. I'm assuming of
course that it's the backing vocals that the 'He's miming' moans are referring to. I can't believe that anyone seriously thinks I'm miming to the main vocal, what with my appalling
record for singing the wrong lyrics so painfully obvious for all to see and hear at most Numan gigs. It would be a bizarre ploy to mime to the main vocal and then sing the wrong
lyrics wouldn't it, and occasionally the wrong notes? So, it must be the backing vocals.
Let's look at the song Rip as an example of what's going on. When I recorded Rip the chorus vocal was tracked six times and each track had two pitch effects to fatten the sound, one slightly up, one slightly down. This gives a total of eighteen voices singing the chorus. I think you'll agree it sounds rather full and powerful on the album. Imagine how crap that would sound live then with just little me battling against the might of that song in the chorus. So, live, I run some of those recorded tracks through the sampler to make the chorus sound as full as it does on the record. I still sing along, witnessed by, at times, some unfortunately inaccurate notes from yours truly. Mostly though it all works very well. I see nothing wrong with that whatsoever. It's simply using available technology to recreate on stage what was recorded in the studio. I'm still singing live so I'm not miming, I'm just also using the technology to add to what I'm doing and making the whole thing sound better and more like the album. Guitarists have been using effects pedals since dinosaurs roamed the earth. To me it's all the same thing. It's using technology to create an overall sound. I make my noises and a machine makes some others and you end up with a complete package. No-one objects, I assume, to my use of reverb and delays when I'm singing. Everyone does it but it's still using machinery to augment what's coming out of my mouth. For me it's all the same thing. The most obvious sign is that I back away from the mic slightly during those songs with big chorus samples so that my live voice merges into the sampled voices. This is so that it sounds the same as it does on the album. Hardly a clever tactic if I was trying to pretend it was all coming out of my own mouth is it? Just have a look at Hope Bleeds now and you'll see what I mean. You can tell from the ugly veins popping out of my neck though that I'm clearly still giving it everything I've got.
The same applies to some of the sounds. As you can see, if you've been to any of the gigs, most of the band are very busy most of the time during a show. However, it would need a band the size of two football teams to actually play every single sound recorded on the album. So, as a compromise, and to make sure that people at the gigs hear the songs and parts they were expecting to hear, all the key parts are played by the band. All guitar, bass, keyboard melody lines etc etc are played for real. Other things, such as little growl noises in the background, plinks and plonks that sound good but are not essential, are put into the sampler and triggered by one of the band or are triggered by the sequencer running on the lap top. On some songs we also have stuff running from a DAT player. Some songs are completely live and have no sequencer or sampler parts at all. I think at the last gigs in September seven or eight songs of the eighteen we played were like that. Pure, My Jesus, Rip and I Can't Breathe all have chorus vocal samples being triggered. My Breathing has the female part sampled as I don't have a girl in the band at the moment. To me all this is obvious on stage and I'm surpised that some people seem to think that I've tried to hide the fact. We even have the DAT player facing forward for all to see at most gigs in the main rack and the lap top is usually put on top of the keyboard rack in plain view. Both keyboard set ups have Akai S5000 samplers in them, again in plain view, and Ade even talks about the Akai in his behind the scenes interview on the London Fragment DVD, which you will possibly see very soon, so no-one is hiding anything, nor have we ever hidden anything. To me it's just the way modern gigs are put together and, as far as I'm concerned, it's all completely acceptable. I can well remember Orchestral Manoeuvres, back in '79 when they supported my first tour, having their tape recorder on stage inbetween them. They even used to introduce it to the audience so using technology to augment the live band line up and the live sound is nothing new. I doubt I've been to a live gig in the last few years that hasn't had some degree of augmentation going on. It's the way things are, the way things need to be. I'm more than happy to acknowledge my use of tech to create the live sound that we currently enjoy. I have no qualms whatsoever about augmenting my voice with any number of FX units, be they reverbs, delays, pitch shifters or samplers. As long as I'm there, singing for real, which I am, I see no problem with it. I see no problem with Steve running his guitar through a complex FX set up, or Rob or any of them. Even Richies drum sound is massively processed. gates, compressors, reverbs, delays and yes, even triggered samples on some songs. Welcome to the modern world. Apart from all that techno babble, I actually like singing and, luckily, I can do it reasonably well. It's why I sing for a living strangely enough. |
| 3? | Do you still envisage the new album building on the sound of Pure or do you now feel that, given the time that has passed, you have moved on musically speaking and see the album having a different feel altogether? |
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My intention is still to build on the sound of Pure. Not to repeat any of it but to use it as
a starting point and move forward. I've said before that I want the new album to be heavier, darker and more anthemic than Pure but not a radical departure musically.
However, as a lot of time has gone by since Pure was released, far longer than I'd intended, and as the new stuff is developing, it is beginning to feel like a bigger
move than I'd planned, in a good way. Having said that though I will be amazed if, when it's finished, it doesn't sound like the follow up to Pure I've always said
it would be. But you will notice I think that the extra time taken to make it has moved it further along than a quicker album might have done and, musically and creatively
speaking, that's a good thing. However, that extra time from a 'career only just recovering' point of view is close to a disaster. If I was more mercenary and money
orientated I would have rushed out a follow up within a year or two of Pure as that was the smart thing to do, to capitalise on my new found cred and chart success.
But I'm not. I made some bad albums in the middle years and I don't want to do that again. These days I just want to make the best albums I can and that, unfortunately,
has a time scale that rarely coincides with the best career moves.
If I could achieve a better balance in the future things would be healthier for me career wise and I really must try to do that. Five years to make an album is too long by anyone's standards. With this album I have been heavily distracted by a number of things, Raven (which has been fantastic to be honest), Artful (which has been truly horrible) and others and I've allowed that to get in the way time and time again of work. It must not happen again. If I could achieve an output of a new album every two years, with other projects in between, I think that would be more acceptable to the fans and better for my career. |
| 4? | Consistently, your use of the English language, and ideas represented by the lyrics in your songs, have been, in my opinion, some of the most evocative written. What is the background of your writing style and is there a writer who has influenced you? |
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I'm not sure I have a 'style' of writing lyrics. If I do it's something that is very natural and therefore is
something I will probably always be unaware of. I am aware that very few of my lyrics rhyme. For some reason it doesn't seem necessary and I don't know if that's
due to the way I phrase things or not. I always sing the vocal lines first, before writing a single word, by just singing noises that sound like words. That ensures
that the flow of the vocal is as it should be for the song. The right amount of syllables, the right notes. Even the right sound for some notes that might be difficult
to sing because some sounds are better for certain things than others. For example, with my voice, any word that ends with an 'or' sound is more powerful than something
that ends with an 'e' sound. 'For' instead of 'me' for example. Being aware of what phonetic sounds suit my voice in different circumstances guides me in my choice
of words for certain parts of a song. A huge anthemic chorus would only have certain words available to me for the final word of each line, other words would sound
too weak. That's not so much a style as simply knowing your own strengths and weaknesses. I never have the problem of trying to make a vocal melody fit a pre written
lyric, which can give some awkward results, like when you have a word with one syllable and you have four notes to stretch it over. Some people do that all the time and
don't seem to care. I think it sucks.
I've never liked the famous cut-up technique. To me lyrics should mean something to the person that writes them, no matter how obscure they might seem to the listener. Cut-up lyrics, randomly put together and created by chance as they are, are not for me. I like lyrics that seem to be a kind of window into the soul of the person that writes them, even if that window is sometimes dirty and difficult to see through. When it comes to writing lyrics I'm not really aware of having been influenced by anyone. I just love words. Writing lyrics is my favourite part of songwriting. |
| 5? | From your beginnings in synthpop to todays more industrial side of things do you feel you had to reinvent yourself at all? And, if so, why? And was it a gradual thing or was there a specific moment when it all came about? |
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I've had to reinvent myself several times I think. Some of them being more substantial than others. My
beginnings were actually as a punk, not synthpop (which is something I still don't feel I was ever truly a part of), and so my move from punk into electronic music
and the whole man in black image thing was a serious reinvention. I think it's very necessary at times. It helps to destroy any pre conceptions people may have about
you, musically speaking for the most part, but it can also help with people's opinions about you as a person.
Pre conceptions are very dangerous for an artist as they can stop people listening to your new stuff as they tend to pre judge your music based on what they already know about it. Reinventing yourself encourages people to think again and to not assume they know what you're going to do next. It encourages them to check out each new album as they can never be completely sure what it will sound like. From a personal point of view it's important for me because it keeps me interested, both in what I'm writing and in the business in general. It encourages me to look for new things to write about and new ways to write it. I find my periodic need to move on, or sideways, very exciting. |
| 6? | How do you react to fans who are angry about the time it's taking you to make the new Jagged Halo album? Some of them have been quite spiteful and unpleasent about you in the chat rooms. Do you think, as they seem to, that you owe us a new album sooner than this? It has been four and a half years after all since Pure. |
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I don't think I owe anybody an album at any time, sooner or later. In fact, there are times when I'm not
entirely sure I do want to make any more. And then there are times when I can't imagine doing anything else other than make albums until the day I die.
Depends what mood I'm in. I have some sympathy for those people who are disappointed, and perhaps a little bit frustrated, by how long it's taking. But, I
have no sympathy whatsoever for anyone who thinks I 'owe' them an album. I don't work for them. I'm not employed by them. If I put out an album and they
don't like it they won't buy it. They have a choice. I also have a choice not to write another song for as long as I live. I don't understand these people
at all. I don't understand why something as enjoyable as liking my music, and wanting to listen to a new album, becomes a reason to get vicious and slag
me off because it's taking me a long while to make it. It's not as if I have a small back catalogue for them to listen to while they're waiting. My back
catalogue is vast, one of the largest collections of music in the business, so they have plenty of Numan music to check out while they're waiting. Not
forgetting that over the last year or so I've put out several collaboration tracks, including Hybrid, Crazier and Ancients, plus the new instrumental
Exposure, the three new songs on this web site and many other things such as the Plump DJ's and Junkie XL. So, it's not as if there has been a long cold
vacuum of no output from me. I've not exactly gone off and been a hermit while I worked on the new stuff. The Hope Bleeds DVD has been out for several
months plus the associated live albums, the two Fragment DVD's and live albums are also due out any day, several other live
albums have been released since Pure, thanks to Eagle, Artful have trotted out Exposure and especially Hybrid which was full of new versions of stuff,
many of them resung by me. They also put out Mutate and, not that I liked it, Resonator. I'm constantly slotting in our two or three weekender gigs
every few months so no-one is being starved of Numan events. I do realise that much of the output has been less desirable perhaps than an album of
brand new songs but it's very much better than nothing at all. We've even had two chart singles and two new videos since Pure.
As far as I'm concerned though, regardless of any of that, anyone that gets nasty because I'm taking my time making the new album can piss off. I do this because I want to, because, most of the time, I love making albums, not because I feel any kind of debt to anyone. I'm quite sure that people don't feel any pressure to buy the next album, especially if they don't like it. Equally, I don't feel any pressure to make another one because a few people bought the last one. If I want the new album to be the best thing I can possibly make, then it will take as long as I think it needs to achieve that. If in the meantime I become a Dad and I have a few other things to take my time up as well as sitting in a studio all day, then maybe I'll do that as well. If I decide that I'm finally sick to death of people getting 'nasty' over nothing then I might just decide to call it a day. The choice of course, is mine. It's worth remembering that I'm also a fan of other people. Let's take Nine Inch Nails for example. I love them but it's no secret that Trent Reznor, the man behind all that is Nine Inch Nails, is not the quickest when it comes to putting out albums. He makes me look positively speedy. But I don't get angry and slag him off. I sit and listen to the fantastic albums he's already made and continue to wait patiently for the next one. If Trent decides not to make another album I won't get angry or bitter or go on to chat rooms and rubbish the very ground he walks on. I'll be grateful for the amazing amount of stunning music that he has released already, music that has made me very happy for many years, and wish him well for the future. Anything else is just weird bollocks. It's not like I'm the only person in the World that makes music. If people like what I do SO much that they can't find any other music to entertain them, and they get angry and offensive towards me when I don't work as quickly as they would like, they should perhaps bear in mind that it's exactly that constant bitching and nastiness that makes me not want to go into the studio. It's that kind of thing that makes me question, regularly these days I'm sad to say, whether I really want to do this for much longer.
You see, I love making albums, I enjoy less actually releasing them. When you release them the press get into you and the fans that don't like them come at you with all the hatred and bitterness of a spurned lover. It feels like being lowered slowly into a shark tank with a nosebleed. You just wait for things to start taking chunks out of you without any compassion or sympathy. It's as though everything you've ever done before, every song you've ever written that these people have loved and admired you for, suddenly counts for nothing. The last umpteen years of music is written off in a fiery torrent of abuse, electronically delivered of course and probably without a name or address attached, because they don't like the new songs. So, although some fans have undeniably stayed with me through some rather dubious releases, and for that I love them dearly and I am, genuinely, eternally grateful, the truth is that the vast majority, and I really do mean a good 99% of what I had in 1979, left. And left with a snarl and a poke in the eye for yours truly quite often. I learned a long, long time ago that we are, I am, only as good as each new album to many people. And that's how it should be. But, because of that, the need to make them as good as they can be increases with each new one, not decreases. The pressure to deliver gets worse each year, not less. The constant worry and sleepless nights get deeper and more frequent. And then, eventually, for the first time in your life, you wonder if it's all worth it. Making music. Something that has been, outside of family, the most important thing in the world for every single day of your life so far. You can't believe the question even popped into your head it seems so bizarre. But it did. And over the next few years it pops back again. And again. And then it becomes a regular visitor to those sleepless nights. It's then that you realise that making music isn't so much a career choice, or a desire for fame and fortune, it's a need. A deeply felt and only half understood need. So I need to write songs, to make music. But I don't necessarily need to release them. To me it could be that I'd be as happy doing this as a hobby, for Gemma's ears only, as I am playing 'Rock Star' snakes and ladders. One tiny slip and we all fall down. All I know is, the more I hear about 'nasty this' and 'offensive that' and 'Numan is a wanker for taking so long', the more I think 'Fuck it', turn off the gear and take Raven out for a walk. And if those constant worries about music and fans ever make me less of a father or husband than I could and should be, I will stop, without a moments hesitation. |
| 7? | It seems that some people consider you to be highly motivated by money. How do you react to that? |
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How much are you going to pay me to answer? I earn money primarily by playing live and selling records.
At gigs we sell a few T-Shirts along with the tickets and the web site store ticks over in a modest way but not enough for anyone to live on. So, more or less, it's
tickets and albums that keep me going. The previous question made it painfully clear that it's been a while since my last new album so that doesn't strike
me as being overly money orientated. And, before anyone starts jumping up and down and pointing gleefully at the list of other things that have been
released, I should tell you all this. I remain unrecouped at Eagle, which means I earn not a single penny from them until they have sold many tens of
thousand of albums more than they have so far. Which is unlikely to happen in this lifetime. My grand total earnings so far for everything released by
Artful is a shade under £5,000. Not because they didn't sell rather well, because they did I'm glad to say, but because much of it was licenced from
Eagle and so falls into the unrecouped category, and due to the rather unique way Artful
have of deciding who gets what, but that situation is best left alone until the dust has settled. However, as you can see, money is not the thing that
drives me forwards when it comes to releasing albums.
So what about gigs? I played, I think, four gigs last year. Not exactly sending my bank manager into spasms of glee with my income from that either then. This year I hope to play some when the album is released but nothing is planned or on sale as yet so no money is coming in from that direction. Not forgetting of course that the UK is the only place on Planet Earth where I make ANY money at all from playing live. Everywhere else, Europe, America, anywhere, costs me more to get to and pay the crew and band than I earn from people coming through the door, but we live in hope of that situation changing of course and so continue to do it from time to time. Money is fantastic and I would like to have vast amounts but wanting it and being driven by it are two very different things. I'm relying entirely on my Premium Bonds winning me a million.
By the way, if anyone thinks I've conveniently 'forgotten' that I have an aeroplane, and share a boat, I haven't. I have a few lovely playthings like that. I have at times throughout my career had honking amounts of money and bought some cool things, some of which I've even managed to hang on to. But having money still doesn't mean that you are driven by the desire for it. I made millions from the Are Friends Electric-Cars period but that money came from albums that I made without the slightest inkling that I was going to earn any money from them. It all came as a lovely surprise. So. I made a lot of money at the time but I hadn't been driven by any desire for it. What drove me then, and does today, albeit far more slowly I hear you mumble, is a desire to make the best music that I can. If that also makes me wealthy then yippeedoo for me. But, like before, that will come as a very pleasent surprise. I just hope it comes soon. |
| 8? | What are your thoughts on explicit language used in song lyrics? Some of the bands you have expressed an interest in recently have used extremely strong language within their lyrics. Would you ever consider using strong language to that degree in your own songs? |
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I swear very badly most of the time in daily life which is,
without wanting to sound overly prudish, something I'm quite ashamed of and very embarrassed by. It's the only thing
I've not been able to train myself out of and trying to stop remains my one constant New Years resolution. Every year,
'I will stop swearing', and every year I fail dismally. It makes me sound stupid and, although a good expletive at just
the right moment can have a fanatastic effect in delivering an emotion, by and large it's unneccessary. And, as in my
case, if it's over used it just sounds pathetic.
So. I write far better than I speak and I am able, I believe, to get across all the emotion I feel through my lyrics without any need for swearing or strong language. Having said that, I have no problem with doing so in the future if I thought a lyric needed it and I certainly have no problem when other people do it on their albums, or when they're on stage, be it music, comedy, whatever. Doesn't bother me in the slightest. |
| 9? | Some people say that your live DVD's are not really live at all as you replace and repair every mistake to make them sound perfect. What do you say? |
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Maybe it's just me and my desire for perfection but I can hear far too many
glaringly obvious mistakes on Hope Bleeds so I would definitely not agree that I replace and repair everything. But I do fix
those mistakes that I consider are too horrible to be heard. Please understand that I'm not talking about playing mistakes or vocal
mistakes alone but many other kinds of problems that can occur during a live recording. Hope Bleeds had a clicking microphone
throughout most of the gig on one of the drums. This constant clicking added nothing to the vibe of the night, it wasn't one of
the 'mistakes' that make the audience laugh and make each night a unique experience, it was just bloody annoying. It took me days
to go through the gig and repair those clicks. Surely anyone with only half a good ear can hear the various bum notes that I hit
throughout the gig? Although, I was releaved to discover during the mixing, the gig wasn't anywhere near as bad as it felt while
we were playing it, it isn't one of our tightest performances. Hasn't ANYBODY noticed that the drums and the band drift out of time
in the latter stages of A Prayer For The Unborn and then slowly slide back into the groove again? Or how about the unintentionally
bizarre arrangement of Complex when the band come in about 24 bars too late? If I sing a truly dreadful bum note I must confess that
I'm sorely tempted to repair it, if possible. Sadly it's not always possible and sometimes, strange as it may seem, I don't sing
any truly dreadful bum notes. I will always repair anything horrendous, if possible, unless it really did make for an enjoyable, memorable night.
I never repair minor errors and I certainly never repair lyrical mistakes. If you think about it it would be very easy to repair
such things. All you need to do is make sure that the film edit is looking at someone else when you hear the correct lyrics so no-one
notices that the lip sync is wrong. But obviously I haven't done that as all the lyrical mistakes made on the night are intact.
The buzzing and crunching of leads being plugged in, microphones being pushed into stand clips, sticks being dropped, keybards powering down and on again for reasons best known to themselves but making loud thumping noises in the process. All these things are judgement calls. Some of them, in my opinion, are part of the atmosphere of the gig, some of them are just irritating and I try to repair them. You can hear guitars playing the wrong chords on at least three songs, mostly my mistakes I have to say, a rare bass mistake from Rob and so on it goes. All of these things are not difficult to make out so for that reason alone I think I can argue against the opinion that the DVD's are fake in any way. And, apart from all that, there are about 2,000 witnesses at each gig who will surely know if anything is radically altered from the gig they remember when they buy the DVD. How do I fix that little problem? |
| 10? | We're told that Gemma logs on to some of the chat forums regularly and is okay with many of the comments from her previous boyfriends. How do you feel about it? |
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Well, firstly I should perhaps explain that Gemma has the worst case of techno fear
I've ever encountered. Not only does she not know how to do anything as basic as even turning on any of my computers, she has no idea
how to drag and drop or how to go on-line. She has absolutely no computer skills whatsoever. It is one of the very, very few things that
we argue about if truth be told. Her complete unwillingness to move into the computer age is something that I find somewhat annoying.
Having said that we have, within the last week, made some progress. Our deal is that if I buy Gemma her very own Mini Mac, one that has
no connection to any of my machines so she can stop being frightened of ruining any of my work, she will let me teach her the basics of
using a basic computer. I think her change of heart has more to do with the growing advantages of internet shopping than anything else, which is a bit of
a worry, but I'm willing to take the risk.
So, it seems a little unlikely that she would have been checking out Chat Rooms and approving or disapproving of what was being said on them. Any claims made by previous boyfriends, those that may really have gone out with her and those that can only dream and pretend, are all completely unknown to the both of us. I hate chat rooms and avoid them like the plague, Gemma wouldn't even know how to turn the Mac on let alone go roaming around the internet. All of that stuff is something that we have no interest in. Let people make their claims, good or bad, we don't care. Let men, and perhaps women, live out their memories or fantasies for others to share. It doesn't touch us at all. But anyone that claims that Gemma, or I, are aware of them and their claims and so try to give them a feeling of 'official' sanction, are lying to you. We don't even know what people are saying, let alone approve or disapprove of it. |
| 11? | How is being a dad impacting on your career? Is it changing the way you approach your music and the way in which you work? Do you still find it easy to write and explore dark and heavy themes when there must be so much happineess around at the moment? |
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It really doesn't seem to be a problem. I am very happy these days, but then since being with Gemma
I've been, pretty much, happy 24 hours a day. I had a few ups and downs when I was making Pure with the loss of the baby and other things
but, generally, I love being alive. Writing dark songs doesn't require a dark mood. Sometimes it helps but it definitely isn't an essential
requirement. I have memory after all. I've lived through some very unpleasent things and I can remember. I can turn on the television at any
time and check out all manner of evil goings on should I feel the need to stir my darker creative urges. In many ways, having a child makes
you think too often about the dangers she will have to face as her life unfolds. I do worry a lot about how I can protect her from what might
be heading her way in the future. This is all fuel for the creative fire I suppose although it will not emerge as an album of songs devoted
to worrying about being a parent. I can imagine, I can remember, I can look around, I can find what I need to write the stuff I like to write
in a thousand different places. Being a father hasn't changed in the slightest the direction of my music. In the studio I slide into a different
world, a world which, for the most part, can have as little or as much to do with the real one as I choose.
My approach to writing music is much the same as it has been for the last ten years or so although Raven has made some differences. I try to make sure that even if I work all day I'm with her for breakfast and for bath time and bed time in the evening. Even when I'm very busy I make sure I'm with her for those key moments and I don't work at weekends unless I really, really have to. I didn't work much at all for the first year of her life because I didn't want to miss a single thing and that has obviously had an effect on the album schedule. But, from a creative point of view, having Raven hasn't had any impact at all. |
| 12? | How do you feel having Mortal Records will help your career at this stage? Do you see yourself offering more varied material, or is it the control that you will have that appeals? How will it differ from Numa Records? |
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The first and most obvious difference between Mortal and Numa is that I will be the only artist on
Mortal. It exists solely to release Gary Numan product. The second difference is that Numa was virtually broke, financially, when it started and so
could do very little to promote the things that it released. It made poor quality videos, did little or no advertising and, generally, survived from
day to day which is a very difficult environment in which to work.
With Mortal we are a little better off financially although, obviously, still very much a small concern compared to the majors and even to most other independants. However, we are not broke and so we will be able to promote our releases a little better. Only having one artist means that all time and budget interests are devoted to that one artist instead of being spread across several. The control we have over what is released, and when, is significantly improved and the fact that we retain the ownership rights to everything we do from now on is a major advantage when it comes to re-using those tracks in the future on other projects, such as live albums and DVD's, not to mention adverts and cover versions by other artists.
However, the biggest advantage, in my opinion, is that we no longer have to suffer at the hands of record labels, some are more guilty than others of course, who engage in highly creative accounting and business practices to rob you of the small amount of money you were expecting for several years of hard work. I'm sick to death of seeing a modest sum hinted at, become a small sum promised and then evolve into a nil sum actually delivered by the time every tiny little 'expense' is taken away, rightly or wrongly. It's a bizarre truth that when you are signed to a record company you pay the recording costs but don't own the recordings. They even deduct money from you for packaging expenses. They even take money from you to allow for a certain percentage of albums being returned by the retail chains. When they do 'special' releases, that usually involves the artist having to accept a zero royalty or one that is very much reduced. Remixes, although decided upon by the label, are usually paid for by the artist whether he wants that remix or not. After a while you begin to wonder what the point of being signed to a record label actually is. Unless you're selling millions of albums you certainly aren't in it for the money, not as an artist anyway. And at the end of it all, when you've had enough and extricate yourself from the mess that is being signed to a label, you realise the full horror of what it means to not own any of your own music. You release a live album and then have to pay a previous label, or labels, even more money so that they will 'allow' you to re-record your own songs at a gig. Some of these 'over-rides' can make releasing such an album, or DVD for that matter, virtually pointless. And then they expect you to pat them on the back because, apparently, even though they didn't advertise anything and even though you paid for your own TV appearances and touring and even though it was you as an artist that flogged around the country for weeks if not months at a time doing what you could to compensate for the fact your label was too tight to spend any money on promotion, and even though you wrote and recorded all the music and paid for your own promo video, which they sold and made money out of, none of which came your way of course, you should be GRATEFUL to them that your profile is, arguably at best, a pygmy gnats cock higher than it was before. Unbelievable. How do I feel having Mortal Records will help my career? If I was still signed to another label I doubt I would even bother to finish and release the new album. I couldn't afford to. Mortal will give me the financial and creative security to know that making an album will no longer be a pointless exercise. It will be promoted properly, although not extravagently, and I will be paid for every copy sold. Won't that be a new experience. If some record labels continue to find ways not to pay you what you've earned then you're effectively making music for a hobby. Mortal will allow me to continue making music as a profession, not as a hobby. To put it simply it guarantees the future of my career. |
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