{"id":13999,"date":"2018-02-01T05:30:19","date_gmt":"2018-02-01T10:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=13999"},"modified":"2018-03-26T09:03:00","modified_gmt":"2018-03-26T13:03:00","slug":"gary-numan-adventures-in-dystopia-part-three","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2018\/02\/01\/gary-numan-adventures-in-dystopia-part-three\/","title":{"rendered":"Gary Numan: Adventures in Dystopia, Part Three"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part Two<\/a>…<\/i><\/p>\n

[Numan continues his his response to Bill Kopp’s question about soundtrack projects]<\/p>\n

What I\u2019m trying to do as I get older is to try to make my life more enjoyable, and less stressful, and to be able to do more and more what I want to do, rather than what I have to do or am made to do. And so I just thought, \u201cYou know what? I don\u2019t think this film thing is for me at all, actually,\u201d I don\u2019t want to be directed. I don\u2019t want to be told what I have to write or to change things that I think are perfectly suitable, and I certainly don\u2019t want to be in the middle of an argument where one producer is arguing with another producer, and I’m kind of the person that everyone\u2019s blaming. I think I would struggle a little bit, and I think I would find it a pressure and a worry. And that\u2019s the very thing I\u2019m trying to get away from. You know, I want my life to get easier, not harder.<\/p>\n

The other thing is, I really love making albums. And I love touring. I\u2019m very aware that I\u2019m getting older; the end of my career is probably a lot closer than the beginning. So, I think that my feelings about getting into film music were almost like a knee-jerk reaction of, \u201cI need to find something else that I can move into, because this is going to end fairly soon.\u201d<\/p>\n

But I\u2019ve thought about it a lot \u2013 really, really deeply \u2013 since coming here, and I just don\u2019t think that [soundtrack work] is the right thing for me. I want to do as much as I can to keep the career that I have going for as long as possible. I don\u2019t want to stop touring; I want to keep on doing that \u2013 so long as I am able \u2013 for many, many years yet. And I don\u2019t want to stop making my own albums. I don\u2019t want this transition from what I\u2019m doing into film music. I just decided it\u2019s not for me.<\/p>\n

Your two most recent albums have similar titles, both with a subtitle. Is there a connection between them?<\/b><\/p>\n

There isn\u2019t any at all, apart from the way that I\u2019ve learned titling. I wish there was! I wish I had a really clever answer there: \u201cOh, this is the connection.\u201d But no, there really isn\u2019t one. The subtitle [\u201cSongs from a Broken World\u201d] was just a glib answer to a vague question that someone in my family posed.<\/p>\n

So they’re not parts One and Two of a trilogy?<\/b><\/p>\n

[Laughs] no, no, no. But who knows? Who knows what’s coming next?<\/p>\n

Do you get a sense that at your live shows that there\u2019s a subset of people who show up expecting two hours of variations on \u201cCars\u201d? <\/b><\/p>\n

I think most people know what they\u2019re in for now. You know, I\u2019ve been doing this for a long time, and it\u2019s been very, very clear for a very long time that I\u2019m not a nostalgia act.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Gary Numan live onstage at Mountain Oasis Festival, Asheville NC, October 2013. Photo \u00a9Audrey Hermon Kopp<\/p><\/div>\n

Every once in awhile I will go out and play one of the old albums; I\u2019m very true to it. That\u2019s something that I realized over the years is a fairly important thing to do. There are a number of people that support me now that prefer that early period. And I won’t say, \u201cNo, I\u2019m not having anything to do with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The way I\u2019ve ended up approaching this is that on this tour, about one-third of the set will come from the early years. You know, songs like \u201cCars,\u201d obviously. And the rest of it I\u2019m very much focusing on the new album or more recent stuff.<\/p>\n

So, the thrust of it is very much where I am now, with as small a nod back as I can get away with to what came before. I do understand that for some people that\u2019s a bit disappointing, but I think for the majority it\u2019s great, and I think it works really well. That\u2019s why I\u2019m still around.<\/p>\n

I used to get a great deal of problems whenever I toured. People would be complaining, \u201cOh, you don\u2019t do the old stuff. You didn\u2019t do this song, you didn\u2019t do that song.\u201d And I would be, \u201cWell, here\u2019s where I am now; here\u2019s what I want to be doing now.\u201d But I think there\u2019s a degree of arrogance if you totally ignore what the people who support you want. Savage<\/i> is much better than anything I\u2019ve done over 35 years. So, clearly there are new people coming here. You have to try to find a way of structuring what you do to satisfy everybody without compromising what you actually want to do yourself, of course.<\/p>\n

Both albums have earned you your best critical notices \u2013 and biggest sales \u2013 in years. Do you think that popular taste has just come around to line up with what you\u2019re doing?<\/b><\/p>\n

It might be that; I\u2019m not sure. With Savage<\/i>, I think that my songwriting has definitely improved \u2026 not that there was anything wrong with it before that. But the melodies and the choruses that I\u2019m coming up with now are just a bit stronger than they were before. I think Ade Fenton, who\u2019s producing the records, has risen his game to a new level. So, I think both of us are at a very, very high point in our careers at the moment, and luckily, we\u2019re working together at a time when we\u2019re both probably doing the best work that we\u2019ve done. That definitely helps.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m probably writing the best songs now, or as good as anything I\u2019ve ever written before. And that\u2019s a pretty good position to be in when you\u2019ve made 20 or 21 albums, or whatever it is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part Two… [Numan continues his his response to Bill Kopp’s question about soundtrack projects] What I\u2019m trying to do as I get older is to try to make […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14006,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,41,49,62],"tags":[884],"class_list":["post-13999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-electronica","category-interview","category-new-release","category-rawk","tag-gary-numan","cat-26-id","cat-41-id","cat-49-id","cat-62-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13999"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14300,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13999\/revisions\/14300"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}