Top 25 Gary Numan Quotes

If you‘ve been massive and it’s all slid away, you tend to get written off. It’s quite difficult to overcome that, which is why I’ve got this problem with nostalgia.

I collect fantasy swords, replicas from films, and have them displayed on the wall as you go up the stairs.

I much prefer touring to anything else. Studio work is great, and can be hugely satisfying, but live work has the excitement and the lifestyle that I love.

I genuinely don’t know how many albums I’m going to sell when the new album comes out, because I honestly don’t know how many fans I’ve actually got at the moment.

I’m hopeless at small talk and have a problem making eye contact.

I’m very into science-fantasy, that kind of swordfights and magic and technology thing.

The industrial thing came about mainly through giving up trying to write pop songs in the early ’90s. I don’t think I was ever very good at pop music and as soon as I stopped trying, and started to write more the things I loved, it became much heavier and more aggressive.

I sometimes wonder if I might be a bit of a disappointment to people, because they are expecting all these ’80s hits and what they get is a dark industrial wall of noise.

I honestly don’t know what criteria makes someone right-wing or left-wing anymore. The boundaries of those definitions seem to be in a state of flux. I’m not socialist, I know that.

I’ve got Asperger’s syndrome and I’m not a very good people person, so I’ve always been more comfortable around machinery. Not in a weird way – I don’t want to marry my car or anything stupid like that!

I would never take part in one of those Eighties nostalgia tours, although I’ve been asked many times, because it’s like admitting you have nothing new to offer. As long as I can keep making music I’m happy with, and people want to come to my gigs to hear it, I’ll carry on.

Song-writing is therapy for me. I’m a very moody person, very difficult to live with. There’s a lot going on and a lot of contradictions. My life is always one step away from disaster.

I met Gemma, my wife, when she was 12. She had a schoolgirl crush on me and her dad had arranged for her to meet me. Later, she started coming to my concerts, but I only got to know her well after her mother died. I rang to see how she was, and that’s how it started.

I have one brother, John, an airline pilot, who is seven years younger. He’s adopted, though we’re still blood related – he’s my cousin. My parents couldn’t have any more children after me, so when Dad’s brother died, they adopted John, then just a baby.

Before breaking into music, I had various jobs: forklift driver, driving a courier. But I was forced into working rather than doing it off my own bat because that was my dad’s way: you got a job and paid your way.

‘Are ‘Friends’ Electric?’ was two songs: the verse part and the talking part. Two different songs I couldn’t finish. One day I was playing the main verse part of ‘Are ‘Friends’ Electric?’ and after a few minutes I got frustrated, as normal, then started to play the other song, and realized they went together.

Fame came quickly. I was only 19 when I secured my initial recording contract and my first two hit records – ‘Are ‘Friends’ Electric?’ and ‘Cars’ – were number ones.

Strangely enough, when the Sugababes’ ‘Freak Like Me’ went to number 1, which was built around my ‘Are ‘Friends’ Electric’ song, I had another song called ‘Rip’ go to number 1 in the Kerrang TV chart, so I was pulling new people in from very different areas of musical interest. That was quite an amazing week.

I’d been a Bowie fan before punk and used to get no end of trouble. I was always getting knocked about and having to run up the street, getting chased by people. It was horrible.

I want to start my own airplane business. I’m going to buy two Dakotas, paint them up in war colours and do, er, nostalgia trips to Arnhem – you know, where the old paratroopers used to go – and charge them about 20 quid a time.

I’ve spent a lot of time in the United States and I’m not under any illusions that it’s a crime-free nirvana. I’m well aware it has plenty of problems, though they seem to be associated with particular areas.

I’d see an old person on the street and start crying. I couldn’t understand how people could cope, knowing they only had so long left. It would be like dominoes and then the last one fell and I’m a little heap on the floor. Doctors put me on anti-depressants for a couple of years.

Being a display pilot is probably the thing I’ve been most proud of in my life. Don’t really fly anymore now though. I have three small children and as most of my friends were killed in different accidents, I realised that it was probably just a matter of time before I went that way.

There’s no point in lying saying I am doing really, really well because I’m not; I’m cult level.

If I thought that any of this was pre ordained, then it takes away any kind of incentive to struggle, or to put up with things, to reach for those impossible dreams, all those dramatic things.