Gary Numan / Southampton University SU, Southampton
Same old story with Gary Numan
Words Huw Nesbitt
On entering the packed auditorium, I am greeted by a wall of silence emanating from the crowd of fat, male drones, their eyes transfixed on the empty stage. Arriving late, my requests to join their number are met with cold affront. Dejected, I am resigned to watching proceedings from behind a pillar, where I discover Gary Numan’s aged doppelganger claiming to be The Wandering Jew, drunkenly wrestling with security. “I have lived too fucking long to put up with this!” the Numanoid decries, his protest falling upon deaf ears as the man himself hobbles on stage. Nothing can distract the crowd from their Numan worship, not even Gary Numan himself.
Gary looks old - his androgynous face has developed cracks and jowls. His uniform black shirt and hair, the same ones that made him a charismatic figure in pop, have become frail devices, used to conceal his girth and greying locks. Youth has betrayed him, but no matter; the music is still played with clinical, if utterly soulless, perfection.
Joined on stay stage by a cast of psychobillies, Numan runs through his seminal Replicas album with unflinching aplomb. In between blasts of sci-fi rock that was once lauded as the sound of the future, the crowd chant his name like football fans. To the Cult of Numan, Gary can do wrong, and although this performance is faultless in its execution, the absence of any authenticity behind each note is inescapable.
As the evening draws to an end and droves of middle-aged automatons filter out into the night, I am struck by two images. The first is a scene from Alan Partridge, in which Alan, believing himself to be alone, plays air bass along to Numan’s ‘Music for Chameleons’. The second is that of the cover of Replicas, where Gary’s reflection contemplates its originatory figure, who appears to be staring in the opposite direction. If only Gary, and fans like Alan, were a little more self aware instead of foolishly chasing some heyday long since passed, perhaps his music would be made open to a new era of appreciation. Not tonight.
