As Gary Numan strode out onto the stage last night, for the Shepherd's Bush leg of his Dead Son Rising tour, his black boots a-shining, his arms a-waving, his proto-emo knees a-bending, well, you couldn't say the crowd went insane, exactly - but they were very pleased to see him.
For a man whose career was said to be all but over a quarter-century ago, Numan has done a hell of a job ignoring the bad news. His albums of recent years (four since the millennium) have created a new surge of critical esteem, and he is now openly lauded and acclaimed (and covered) by a generation of new musicians.
If you're reading this then I'm going to assume you might already be a Gary Numan fan [I won't say that word...], and that you appreciate his music is not at all easy to describe (so cut me some slack). For everyone else, here's a stab. Though Numan earned his place pioneering rock music without guitars, big on the ambient - in an earth-calling, inter-planetary kind of way - generally created by looping synth material through guitar pedals, latterly he's cast off his most avant garde mannerisms. Which is not to say that the new stuff lacks epic scope: just that there are now some guitars. Even a real drummer.
What Numan's playlist didn't sound, to my great surprise, was dated
The music is all over the place, in the good, post-modern, endlessly referential sense. Some of it sounds like a truck being choked into obedience on a cold morning. Some a sort of glam, pre-techno hedonism that ought to soundtrack a lost Martin Amis novel (or one of the ones that sadly wasn't). Some of it should have been in Lost Boys. And some of it is post-Apocalypse stuff for speeding across deserts in trucks (The Fast and the Fall-out? Where's Jerry Bruckheimer when you need him?). You wouldn't recommend it to epileptics, true believers or those cheerful fat Americans you get in so many places these days; but it's glowering, contemporary, cool and slick - with occasional bursts of heavy-duty theremin.
Perhaps the best way to explain Numan is to work backwards. If you invert the rock family tree, and give the branches a good shake, you'd be surprised how many Numanoids fall out [there, I've said it]. On last's night's hearing alone, I'd tag Rage Against The Machine, Beck, Queens of the Stone Age, System of a Down, Depeche Mode, of course, and Placebo (the last with a particularly obvious borrowing of Numan's vocal tone). Circumstantial, I grant you, but still... What Numan's playlist didn't sound, to my great surprise, was dated. Honestly, if I'd gone in there blind, I wouldn't have blinked. So to speak.
The Numanoids themselves, the die-hards, you can spot 'em at 500 yards. Which is to say, from Shepherd's Bush tube. If you looked at them you'd guess they were people who never warmed to Britpop, but find FatBoy Slim too chirpy and the Chemical Brothers a little soulless (also, it occurs to me now, not a bad way of figuring out Numan's music). Fashion-wise, there was a certain denial about the course of the last 20 years.
Outside, for sure, it looked like a Twilight convention hosted by the Stasi. Inside, though, the gig was pretty eclectic: soulful, greying, hi-viz, Nu-romantic.. (the fans/the music). There were as many bald heads as pink bleach-jobs - and as many wigs, I'd wager. Most of the folks in the first-floor balcony seats (I had the choice) were wearing jackets; most of them were not leather. There were one or two "biker" couples, but their leathers suggested they'd decided to skip the rain in the badlands of West London and brave the Hammersmith & City line instead. The lady to the immediate left had more tattoos (on display) than me, but spent the warm-up act showing family photos to her companion. And I'd swear I saw Lembit Öpik (where, exactly, does one go after a Cheeky Girl? And don't say Romania).
For devotees, though, it must be said, they have the shortest, shittest chant in the book. "Nooo-m'unn! Nooo-m'unn!" - complete with one-armed finger-point. It was like being in the terraces at Milwall. You'd think they might at least branch out into "Numanoid, Numaoid, Numanooooooiid!" (or "Numan, Numan, Numan - oid! oid! oid!"). But no. There were times when it almost seemed - heaven forfend - they might be taking the piss. Oh, and they can't clap along any better than any other tribe in Fandom.
Actual Messianic imagery was not in short supply
But the gig. What with the ethereally unfussy vox and the cosmonautical hand-gestures, Numan controlled the Empire like Darth Vader... if Darth Vader had looked like Mike Myers... playing Jesus... with a soundtrack by Hans Zimmer and Rob Zombie... in a 3D space simulator. The lead guitarist - if such a designation has meaning in Numania - was sporting a Flock of Seagulls road-kill transplant on his forehead. And it seemed like, at any moment, there might be a guest appearance by Derek Zoolander ("Numan. He's so hot right now!"). I missed the Eighties, and have no regrets. But this was like the Eighties, only with class.
The screen at the back did its digital thing, from static footage of days of green and black [we're talking Olivetti here, not conscience-rich chocolate] to hi-res knock-offs of Caravaggio (now with added "vag"). There was a current-affairs montage, complete with Abu Hamza and those Westboro Baptist mentals who picket soldiers' funerals. Actual Messianic imagery was not in short supply.
Somehow, though, the gig didn't quite come off. The music was urgent and loud, Numan was talkative and personable, the fans were keen, the lights were enough to stun an elephant, and the bigger numbers, like "Sacrifice", did get a few hands waving. But the rock attitude and stadium theatrics seemed belied by the little-theatre-that-could; the applause generous but not ecstatic; something lacking in the atmosphere. Mass hysteria, perhaps.
It was, nonetheless, Gary Numan on fine form, and a bona fide cool gig. Cool, at least, until he brought his daughters on stage and had the audience sing them "Happy Birthday".
- Gary Numan's Dead Son Rising tour continues until 11 December
Listen to 'Dead Son Rising'