Zitat des Tages von Gary Numan:
It seems no matter what you say and how politically correctly and carefully you say it, you offend someone. Or at least I always do.
I'm not good at happy, lightweight kind of music. I'm not really good at pop music. 'Cars' is probably the only true pop song I ever wrote. I wish I could write more, but I'm not very good at it.
The idea of collaborating with anyone else was quite daunting. If Battles had any trepidation in asking me, I can assure you I had more after agreeing to do it.
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.
I got involved in music because I love everything about it, but now I'm in it you see the other side and it isn't much fun. Not as glamorous and enjoyable as you imagine.
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.
I'm very intolerant and I get fed up with people easily.
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'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 think any song should sound good just played on a solitary instrument with the vocal. If you have those basics you have all you need. The production then just polishes that idea into the finished thing.
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.
When I went to record my first album, which should have been a punk album, there was a synthesiser in the control room. I'd never seen one before but they let me have a go on it and I loved it to bits.
When you decide to do this kind of music then you just accept the facts.
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.
And I used to go the punk clubs such as a gay club in Poland Street that everyone would go to because it was the only place you could go to looking like that without getting beaten senseless.
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 always say it took me 10 minutes to write 'Cars,' but if I am honest it could have been even less than that - and it has been a really successful song over the years. It is still massively used, in advertising, in films, and people do cover versions of it a lot.
I have a condition called Aspergers Syndrome, which is like a mild form of autism It means I don't interact properly in certain social situations.
I have always been far more interested in sound than technique, and how sounds work together, how they can be layered. I think electronic music, in its infancy anyway, allowed us to create music in a way that hadn't really been possible before. It created a new kind of musician.
Ultravox were the blueprint for what I wanted to do, but I stumbled across them by accident.
I was always a bit different. I had a very happy childhood, but I could never hang on to mates.
I'm very into science-fantasy, that kind of swordfights and magic and technology thing.
There does seem to be a kind of split. There are those people who are more entrenched in the early electronic years, and new people who have come to it because of people like Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson.
I think if you are creative then it's an unstoppable thing. It just keeps coming throughout your entire life.
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.
Album sales have collapsed, with few artists making money from albums; touring is more lucrative. But I'm 53 now and won't be able to tour forever, so a logical step is to get into writing film scores. Trouble is, you need to be somewhere which has a big film industry - another reason why I'm thinking about living in California.
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.
Maybe I over-do the 'not-80s' thing. It should be a part of my life that I've got some sort of pride in, but I've got this huge chip on my shoulder about '80s nostalgia - and it annoys fans sometimes.
My dad was a baggage handler at Heathrow and careful with money. He worked hard and had three jobs when I was young. I wish I'd inherited his care for money. Sadly, I've grown up to be rather scatty when it comes to finances.
