ゲイリー・ニューマン (Gary Numan)

Gary Numan
Gary Numan (born Gary Anthony James Webb on March 8, 1958, in Hammersmith, West London) is an English singer, composer, musician and electropop pioneer. He is widely remembered for his chart-topping 1979 hit "Cars". Numan's signature style combines gloomy themes of depersonalization and alienation accompanied by energetic synthesizer work.

After education at Slough Grammar School, Numan rose to prominence at the tail end of the 1970s, initially recording under the band name Tubeway Army. After recording an album's worth of punk-influenced demo tapes (released in 1984 as The Plan), he was signed by Beggars Banquet Records in 1978 and quickly released two singles, "That's Too Bad" and "Bombers", neither of which charted. A self-titled, New Wave-oriented debut album later that same year sold out its limited run and introduced Numan's fascination with dystopian science fiction and, more importantly, synthesizers. Tubeway Army's third single, the cinematic "Down in the Park" (1979) also failed to chart but it would prove to be one of Numan's most enduring and oft-covered songs; a live version of it can also be seen in the movie Urgh! A Music War. After 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. The single took seven weeks before it finally reached #1 at the end of June; the parent album Replicas simultaneously climbing to #1 in the album charts.

A few months later he repeated the feat with "Cars", which became a Top 10 hit in America in 1980 as well, and the 1979 album The Pleasure Principle, both released under Numan's own (assumed) name, which he had plucked from an advert in the "Yellow Pages". Topping both single and album charts simultaneously was noteworthy enough; doing so twice in the space of six months was astonishing. 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 fed through guitar effects pedals to achieve a phased, metallic tone. Self-produced in a fortnight for very little money, The Pleasure Principle sounded like nothing else, and remains one of Numan's most highly-regarded efforts today. A second single from the album, "Complex", made it to #6 in the UK charts.

Numan was pop music's first synthesizer star. He wore costumes and make-up and openly proclaimed his influences: David Bowie, Marc Bolan and contemporary electronic acts such as John Foxx's Ultravox. On stage his persona came across as aloof, alien and androgynous; in interviews, however, his disarmingly open manner caught many by surprise. Numan's great popularity and unabashed admiration of wealth alienated critics and even some fellow musicians; Yes recorded a sardonic song about him, "White Car," for their 1980 album Drama, a reaction to his habit of tearing around London in the white Chevrolet Corvette given to him by Beggars Banquet. His one-time idol, David Bowie, refused to appear with Numan on an episode of The Kenny Everett Video Show on which both were scheduled to perform. Numan bewildered the music press. He was a driven, creative, troubled 21-year-old loner who still lived with his parents. He was not punk. He was not quite New Romantic either, and retrospectives of the period tended to ignore him and his influence. Yet, during this period, Numan generated an army of fans calling themselves Numanoids, enough of whom would remain loyal to carry him through the latter half of the 1980s, when his fortunes began to fall precipitously (even before this time, and throughout his commercial peak, Numan was constantly vilified and ridiculed by the UK music press)...
(Wikipedia: Gary Numan)