344 Hello Gary Numan* - Are "Friends" Electric ?

( * released  as  Tubeway  Army  but  see  below )

Chart  entered : 19th  May  1979

Chart  peak : 1

Number  of  hits : 36  ( Paul  Gardiner's  1981  single  "Stormtrooper  In  Drag"  is,  for  most  intents  and  purposes,  also  a  Numan  hit )

Here  we  have  another  artist  who  polarises  opinion. Few  artists  have  inspired  such  devotion  from  their  fanbase  or  taken  so  much  critical   flack  ( though  not  in  recent  years ). Although  I  can't  claim  to  love  all  his  work  this  is  definitely  one  of  my  all  time  favourite  singles  and  the  fact  it  was  at  number  one  for  four  weeks  just  underlines  what  a  special  year  1979  was.

Gary  Webb  was  born  in  London  in  1958 . His  father  bought  him  a  guitar  and  as  punk  blossomed  he  looked  to  music  to  escape  a  variety  of  dead  end  jobs. He  was  briefly  in  a  punk  band  called  Mean  Streets  and  then  The  Lasers  where  he  met  bass  player  Paul  Gardiner.  They  quit  the  band  to  form  a  new  one,  Tubeway Army  in  1977.

The  other  member  was  drummer  Bob  Simmonds  ( now  a  prison  chaplain ) . They  recorded  a  15  track  demo  ( later  released , to  Gary's  displeasure , as  The  Plan )  to  hawk  round  record  companies  while  gigging  incessantly  on  the  punk  circuit.  After  much  hustling by  Paul,  the  new  Beggar's  Banquet  label  signed  them  up  and  in  February  1978  released  their  first  single  "That's  Too  Bad" .  When  they  came  to  record  it  Gary  dropped  Simmonds  in  favour  of his  uncle  Jess  Lidyard  and  they  gave  themselves  pseudonyms . Gary  was  "Valerian", Gardiner  was  "Scarlett"  and  Lidyard  "Rael" ( though  the  photo  of  "Rael" on  the  back  cover  is  Simmonds ).  Gary  produced  the  next  single  himself. He  gave  up  his  day  job  in  a  warehouse  on  the  day  of  its  release.

"That's  Too  Bad"  was  taken  for  punk  at  the  time  but  has  more  in  common  with  Joy  Division  than  The  Damned.  The  song  is  driven  by  a  highly  melodic  bassline  from  Gardiner   and  coloured  by  Gary's  heavily  treated  guitars. His  instantly  recognisable  reedy  voice  mews    lyrics  already  concerned  with  personal  alienation  and  intrusive  technology. The  future  starts  here.

With  Lidyard  uninterested  in  joining  the  band  on  stage,  Gary  recruited  a  new  drummer  Barry  Benn  and  an  extra  guitarist  Sean  Burke  and  this  line  up  played  on  the  next  single  "Bombers"  in  June  1978. Beggar's  Banquet  insisted  on  an  outside  producer  Kenny  Denton  and  Gary  was  happy  enough  to  agree. "Bombers"  is  even  bleaker, an  unremittingly  grim  recounting  of  the  panic  on  the  ground   during  an  air  raid  as  visualised  by  the  man  in  the  cockpit. This  again  has  the  bass  carrying  the  melody  with  the  guitars  following  the  staccato  vocals  and  Floyd-esque  sound  effects  of  dive  bombers, sirens  and  machine  gun  fire .  The  song  would  stay  in  Gary's  set  but  the  live  version  on  the  B-side  of  his  third  ht  "Complex"  ,where  the  song  is  slowed  to  an  electro-drone,  is  dire.

By  this  point  Gary, later  to  be  diagnosed  with  Aspergers  Syndrome, had  had  enough  of  being  spat  on  at  concerts  and  withdrew  from  the  punk  circuit. Benn  and  Burke  were  no  longer  required; they  would  later  try  to  cash  in  on  their  brief  association  with  Gary  by  naming  their  new  band  Tubeway  Patrol  but  only  released  one  single.  This  meant  that,  for  the  eponymous  debut  LP,   the  band  reverted  to  Gary, now  calling  himself  Numan  ( after a  plumber  in  the  telephone  directory ! ), Gardiner  and  Lidyard.

"Tubeway  Army " , released  in  November  1978  with  the  first  5.000  copie  on  blue  vinyl, was  famously  the  album  where  Gary  discovered  a  Minimoog  in  the  studio  and  used  it  to  embellish  or  reconstruct  some  of  the  songs. Even  where  the  synthesiser  isn't  used  much  the  songs  sound  fairly  robotic  with  stiff-wristed  rhythms ,  monotone  vocals  and  little  in  the  way  of  melody. The  lyrics  are  uniformly  downbeat  and  influenced  by  Burroughs, Ballard  and  Philip  K  Dick.  Listened  to  as  a  whole  its's  heavy  going.  It  didn't  chart  and  no  singles  were  taken  from  it. However  it  did  appeal  to  an  unnamed  advertising  executive  who  hired  him  to  sing  a  short  jingle  for  an  advert  for  Lee  Cooper  jeans. The  ad  made  a  big  impact  in  1979   but  Gary  wasn't  interested  in  fleshing  it  out  as  a  song  for  single  release  so  it  was  left  to  former  Atomic  Rooster  vocalist  John  Du  Cann  to  score  a  minor  hit  with  it  as  "Don't  Be  A  Dummy".

In  January  1979  Tubeway  Army  showcased  three  new  songs  in  a  session  for  John  Peel  though  he  was  beginning  to  lose  interest  in  them. He  released  one  of  them  two  months  later  as  his  next  single , "Down  In  The  Park".  With  this  single  he  located  the missing  ingredient  for  commercial  success, melodic  Moog  lines  to  offset  the  steely  vocals  and  metallic  grind  of  the  music. Unfortunately  lines  about  death  and  rape   as  part  of  the  Dick-inspired  dystopian  fantasy  world  that  he  was  imagining  for  the  next  album  meant  curtains  for  daytime  radio  play.

As  his  next  single  was  about  to  be  released , Gary  received  an  invitation  to go  on  the  Old  Grey  Whistle  Test . With  Lidyard  still  reluctant  to  perform  and  the  layered  synthesiser  music  requiring  two  keyboard  players  he  recruited  four  more  musicians  including  one  of  his  musical  heroes  Billy  Currie  of  Ultravox ! to  perform  on  TV  although  as  far  as  recording  the  next  album  went,  Tubeway  Army  remained  just  him  , Gardiner  and  Lidyard. For  the  record  "Are  'Friends'  Electric ? "   entered  the  chart  the  week  before  the  OGWT  appearance  but  undoubtedly  received  a  sales  boost  from  it.

Here's  the  Popular  thread tubeway army- pretty  good and  a  rare  example  of  being  completely  in  accord  with  Mr  Carlin. I  would  just  add  a  little  anecdote  that  I  had  noted  one  of  my  class  mates  ( who  sadly  committed  suicide  in  his  twenties  )  bringing  in  the  "Tubeway  Army"  LP. When  this  got  to  number  one  I  said  to  him  " You'll  be  chuffed  about  that  !"  to  which  he  replied "No  because  it  means  pricks like  you  have  heard of  them  now"  before  moving  on  to  Joy Division,  my  first  experience  of  that  sort  of  musical  snobbery.