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INTRODUCTION Not that it’s important or something that everyone needs to know but I thought I would introduce myself first of all and give you the reason why I have decided to do something like this. My name is Gary Choppen (Gary Cee) and I have been a fan of Gary Numan since 1979. I was born in East London on 8th March 1968. Yes, I share my birthday with the man himself but I didn’t know this until around 1980 when a school friend handed me a copy of Look-In magazine in a lesson one day which featured a ‘Fact File’ on Gary Numan and to be honest I thought it was pretty cool but I got my fair share of hassle for it (just like many others did back then I’m sure). Again, like the majority of fans I got in to the whole Numan thing after seeing Gary Numan and Tubeway Army perform ‘Are ‘friends’ electric?’ on the TV show Top of the Pops. It would be so cool to say that I had actually heard the likes of ‘That’s too bad’ and ‘Bombers’ and had been checking out the likes of John Peel on Radio One but truth be told, I hadn’t. I didn’t know they even existed at the time and I’d be lying if I said any different. Like most of the fans I expect, I would re-visit Numan’s past later down the line. Top of the Pops was a show that we as a family watched almost religiously and when Numan appeared on it, it would be something that would totally change my life. I was 11 years old at the time and I remember sitting there and just staring at the TV screen, taking it all in as the predictable comments from the rest of the family started to come out of their mouths. Those comments were not very complimentary at the time. I didn’t listen to them, I knew what I liked and I liked what I was seeing. It was totally different to anything I had seen or heard before. Saying that though – I had actually heard ‘Are ‘friends’ electric?’ on the radio a couple of times before seeing the performance on the TV. I used to listen to the radio quite a lot back then as I loved music from an early age. My parents had a record player in the house and I’d listen to their records a lot of the time (the likes of The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, Bee Gees & Boney M were often played). I think I was bought an Alba radio / cassette recorder for my 10th birthday and I loved it. I used to tape as much music from the radio as I could. After hearing ‘Are ‘friends’ electric?’ for the first time I knew I had to record it and I distinctly remember sitting there all day on one occasion just waiting to hear it again so I could record it. It was a while before I actually found out the name and artist because I never actually caught what the DJ said. I’m sure a lot of fans can relate to a lot of the stuff I have said already and also possibly the fact that what I was listening to at the time before Numan came along was totally different and that’s why it was so good, so refreshing. It felt like it was something I could relate to but I’ve never actually got why? Again, it would be cool to say that I had been listening to punk or early Ultravox, Human League and Kraftwerk but no, I wasn’t. As I said, it was stuff from the 60s and cheesy 70s. I remember a lot of Disco type stuff being played in the house too. That moment in 1979 whilst watching Top of the Pops would be a pivotal moment for me and many others around the UK and we probably didn’t expect what would be in store for us all for the next 30+ years. It sounds strange but I firmly believe that it was that moment that changed my life and many other’s lives too. That may sound a bit over the top but ask any fan who experienced the same and they’ll probably say exactly the same. I’d guess there were people who thought the same when they first saw the likes of The Beatles, Elvis, Nirvana etc… I very much doubt the same can be said for the likes of Rihanna and One Direction but who knows? Each to their own and all that eh! I don’t knock anyone for liking the music that they like because they may have the same feelings about the artists they follow as I did back then and still do to some extent. So, we all know how the story goes – ‘Are ‘friends’ electric?’ went to number 1. It topped the UK singles chart in June 1979. Did you know that when the Top 100 singles of 1979 was published it was Number 4? (Cars was Number 17). You only have to look at what else was in the charts back then to see that it stood out like a sore thumb because it was so different. People obviously loved it for that reason and Beggars Banquet, the record label produced a limited run of picture discs of the single which no doubt helped it climb the charts to the top position. It knocked Anita Ward’s ‘Ring my bell’ (a disco type track) off the top and stayed there for a few weeks before being replaced by ‘I don’t like Mondays’ by The Boomtown Rats. Having something like ‘Are ‘friends’ electric?’ as the top selling single in the UK at the time was a statement that things were about to change. Gary Numan was to be a superstar and it wouldn’t be long before the UK would see 1000’s of Numan clones around it’s streets. I’d never seen anything like it myself. Ok, I had been to the Kings Road in Chelsea a few times as a kid because we had family living near there who we’d visit every now and then so I’d seen the punks by the telephone boxes and I remember being mesmorised by them but looking back, the punks had a number of different bands they’d listen to. Numanoids (as we were called back then) had Numan and that was it and they (we’d) copy him as best we could. I can’t actually put my finger on it as to why that appearance on Top of the Pops got to me so much. It wasn’t just the music. It was the whole presentation. Numan was dark, alien-like and static. I didn’t think of it much at the time because I just really liked what I saw but he looked really cool. Hindsight tells us that he really thought about the whole image and how he wanted to come across. He says he didn’t smile because he had dodgy teeth and was also nervous but to me, and no doubt many others, he came across as someone really cool, someone I wanted to be and someone I could relate to. Some said it was “just a fad”, a “one hit wonder”, “it won’t last” and another comment I heard a number of times from people older than me was “he’s copying Bowie”…….At the time I didn’t know much about Bowie at all so I ignored the comments. Bowie might have been around in ‘their time’ but this was ‘our time’ now and we had Gary Numan. 1979 was Numan’s year. He went on to have another UK Number 1 single with the follow up ‘Cars’ which proved he wasn’t a “one hit wonder” (Noel Edmonds and the panel on ‘Jukebox Jury’ in 1979 said it would be a hit too) and he also had 2 UK Number 1 albums in the shape of ‘Replicas’ and ‘The Pleasure Principle’. Things were going big time for the 21 year old who appeared to come out of nowhere. Again, hindsight tells us that it wasn’t as easy as that. As I have said already, I think the majority of fans all walked the same path back then. The ‘Top of the Pops’ moment was probably where it all began for most of us. I’d guess that again, the majority of fans all purchased ‘Replicas’ as their first album and then looked in to Numan’s past offerings in the shape of the Tubeway Army album and singles. My Nan actually bought me the ‘Replicas’ album from a market stall in Basingstoke town centre. It would be the place where I would purchase various Numan badges and patches and they’d all sit proudly on my black Harrington jacket. I was very aware at the time that there were lots of people around that liked Gary Numan too so I wasn’t on my own but I was also more aware of the fact that there were plenty of people around who saw it all as shit and they’d take pleasure in telling me so too. Yes, plenty of fans have said over the years that they received abuse for liking Gary Numan and I am no different. I had my fair share of it at school too from the people that just didn’t ‘get it’.

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