Gary Numan

Gary Anthony James Webb (born 8 March 1958), known professionally as Gary Numan, is an English musician.

He entered the music industry as frontman of the new wave band Tubeway Army.

Gary Anthony James Webb was born on 8 March 1958 in Hammersmith, London.

His father was a British Airways bus driver based at Heathrow Airport.

He was the only child until he was seven when his family adopted his cousin (father's nephew) John, who would also become a musician and play in Numan's backing band.

He was educated at Town Farm Junior School in Stanwell; Ashford County Grammar School; and Slough Grammar School, followed by Brooklands Technical College in Weybridge, Surrey.

He joined the Air Training Corps as a teenager and then briefly held various jobs including forklift truck driver, air conditioning ventilator fitter, and accounts clerk.

When Numan was 15, his father bought him a Gibson Les Paul, which became his most treasured possession.

He briefly played in various bands and looked through advertisements in Melody Maker for bands to join.

He claims to have unsuccessfully auditioned as guitarist for the then-unknown band the Jam before joining Mean Street and the Lasers, where he met Paul Gardiner.

The latter band would soon become Tubeway Army, with his uncle Jess Lidyard on drums and Gardiner on bass.

The band quickly signed a recording contract with Beggars Banquet Records.

His initial pseudonym was Valerian, probably in reference to the hero in French science fiction comic series Valérian and Laureline.

He later picked the surname Numan from an advertisement in the Yellow Pages for a plumber whose surname was Neumann.

While his commercial popularity peaked in the late 1970s and early 1980s with hits including "Are 'Friends' Electric?" and "Cars" (both of which reached number one on the UK Singles Chart), Numan maintains a cult following.

He has sold over 10 million records.

Numan faced intense hostility from some critics and fellow musicians in his early career, but has since come to be regarded as a pioneer of electronic music.

He developed a signature sound consisting of heavy synthesiser hooks fed through guitar effects pedals, and is also known for his distinctive voice and androgynous "android" persona.

Numan came to prominence in the 1970s as lead vocalist, songwriter, and record producer for Tubeway Army.

After adopting a punk rock-style they signed a recording contract with Beggars Banquet Records and released their debut single "That's Too Bad" in February 1978.

It was followed by the recording of an album's worth of demo tapes in March 1978 (released in 1984 as The Plan), and a second single, "Bombers", which like the first single did not chart.

Tubeway Army's self-titled, new wave-oriented debut studio album, released in November 1978, sold out its limited run and introduced Numan's fascination with dystopian science fiction and synthesisers.

During the recording of the album Numan found a Moog synthesizer left behind in the studio and the transition towards an electronic sound began.

After releasing two studio albums with the band, he released his debut solo studio album The Pleasure Principle in 1979, topping the UK Albums Chart.

The two singles were released again as a gatefold doublepack in 1979, and in 1983 a re-release of "That's Too Bad" reached No. 97 on the UK Singles Chart.

Though the band's third single, the dark-themed and slow-paced "Down in the Park" (1979), never appeared on the charts, it became one of Numan's most enduring and oft-covered songs.

Following exposure in a television advertisement for Lee Cooper jeans with the jingle "Don't Be a Dummy", Tubeway Army released the single "Are 'Friends' Electric?" in May 1979.

After a modest start at the lower reaches of the UK Singles Chart at No. 71, it steadily climbed to No. 1 at the end of June and remained on that position for four consecutive weeks.

In July its parent studio album Replicas also reached No. 1 on the albums chart.

At this point Numan was recording his next studio album with a new backing band.

At the peak of success, Numan opted to premiere four new songs in a John Peel session in June 1979 rather than promoting the current album and the Tubeway Army group name was dropped.

In September "Cars" also reached No. 1 in the UK.

"Cars" and the 1979 studio album The Pleasure Principle were both released under Numan's own stage name.

The album reached No. 1 in the UK, and a sell-out tour (The Touring Principle) followed; the concert video it spawned is often cited as the first full-length commercial music video release.

The Pleasure Principle was a rock album with no guitars; instead, Numan used synthesisers connected to effects units to achieve a distorted, phased, metallic tone.

A second single from the album, "Complex", made it to No. 6 on the UK Singles Chart.

It was featured with other contemporary hits on the soundtrack for the American drama film Times Square (1980), and a live version of the song can be seen in the British concert film Urgh! A Music War (1982).

The single also found success in North American charts where "Cars" spent 2 weeks at No. 1 on the Canadian RPM charts, and reached No. 9 in the US in 1980.

In 1980, Numan topped the UK album charts for a third time with Telekon, and the singles "We Are Glass" and "I Die: You Die", released prior to the album, reaching No. 5 and No. 6 on the UK charts.

In 2017, he received an Ivor Novello Award, the Inspiration Award, from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers, and Authors.