Gary Numan On Anxiety, Autism And Alan Partridge

Gary Anthony James Webb, aka Gary Numan, takes us on a journey from his “Cars” stardom, through career crisis to bouncing back again

- James Mottram

WHEN GARY NUMAN’S autobiography, Praying to the Aliens, came out in 1997, it read like an act of desperation. The so-called godfather of electropop had burst onto the music scene in the late 1970s with songs like “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?” and “Cars.” There were sell-out gigs at Wembley Arena, number one albums, recognition in the US—everything a boy from Hammersmith could dream of.

Then, over the next 15 years, came the slow unravelling: the creative slump, self-doubt, audience indifference, debts—you name it.

“That book was written just as I bottomed out,” he says by way of explaining why—23 years on—he’s releasing (R)evolution: The Autobiography. It’s not a case of rewriting early history, he says.

“I didn’t want to have a book out there that was all about how it was good at first and then it all went horribly wrong.”

Numan’s “slow, steady climb back” is the heart of (R)evolution. If there are no second acts in American lives, to quote F Scott Fitzgerald, that’s clearly not the case for ex-pat Brits who move out there. It’s truly touching in places. When his 2015 album Savage (Songs from a Broken World) charted at number two in the UK, he “cried like a baby” when the news broke. “Nearly 40 years of longing, and hoping, and battling and setbacks,” he writes, “all came out at once.”