DREAM CORROSION Released August 1994. ANDY MCCLUSKY – Musician and former member of OMD. TJ DAVIS – Singer. GARY NUMAN: I used a number of powerful new rhythms for some of the older songs, tracks like “I’m An Agent”, “Remind Me To Smile” and “Films.” The response from fans was tremendous. ANDY MCCLUSKY: We had a girl called Kim Hilton that worked for our management in Britain who used to go out with Kipper, Gary’s then guitarist. She said to Virgin that her ex boyfriend was touring with Gary Numan. So we just said “Wouldn’t it be funny if Gary supported us fourteen years after we supported him!” The question was asked and to our surprise he said “Yeah, I’ll do it.” It was quite surreal, because this time O.M.D. was the headline act and Gary was supporting us. I really enjoyed the tour; I made a point of trying to catch Gary’s set almost every night when I had the opportunity. I think it worked really well. I think that the audience that would’ve normally come to see us would also be interested to see Gary and don’t forget that Gary has always had a very loyal hardcore fan base with him that would always come to see him. So there would be a section of the audience that had come to see Gary Numan and then there would be our audience who would watch him because they obviously remembered him from the early ‘80’s. GARY NUMAN: I did have to red-do one chorus and verse on “Are “Friends” Electric?” because the engineer in the mobile allowed the tape to run out before starting the second machine. I had to edit in the music from other parts of the song and then re-sing those parts. TJ DAVIS: My first major tour as a backing vocalist for Gary Numan. Gary’s first question to me was “have you got anything in rubber?” I was very naive and came in for a lot of teasing and tricks being played on me. Luckily I had Gemma, Gary’s wife, to guide me along with the tour manager. I had lots of problems with stage wear too. I wore my red cat suit the wrong way round on the first show, fun for the audience I suppose. Then my PVC trousers melted on stage at the Marquee club, following that I slipped and split them up the back. It was a great tour, Gary’s fans are so committed and he was great fun to work with. CHARLES PIERRE: We also appeared with Gary live in ‘93 and what an experience that was. The Apollo has always been one of my favourite venues and the crowd were fabulous. I can recall learning the guitar part from Gary backstage 2 minutes before the gig. Needless to say my efforts on stage were atrocious! I think they even turned my amp down! I enjoyed the vibe though and joined in the general on-stage mayhem. THE RADIAL PAIR MINI ALBUM Released August 1994. GARY NUMAN: I wrote the music on this CD mini album especially for the Radial Pair video documentary that I did, the rights to the CD have now been signed over to Eagle Records. SACRIFICE Released October 1994 ROBB HORAN – Sirius Publishing. BERYL WEBB – Gary’s mother. CHARLES PIERRE –Musician. GARY NUMAN: To repair something you first have to recognise that it's broken. Even when you recognise that it's broken you have to have the skill to see what needs to be fixed and the skill to actually fix it. Gemma was the single most important reason for Sacrifice she is the only one that has ever been able to make me see what it was that makes me what I am creatively. She encouraged me to go back to working alone, to using my own skills, rediscovering my own style, with all its flaws, and to imagine once again. I had forgotten how to do so many things. I had even forgotten why I wrote songs. So, as a result I now consider the stuff from the mid-'80s to '94 to be misguided, I think I tried some things that I shouldn't have tried and stuck at it too long. Sacrifice was a much heavier change of direction from where I'd been before; it was an evolution of the previous two albums. From my perspective, it was very much like finding my feet again and going back to where I should have been. Sacrifice was my dissatisfaction with where I'd been. I'd been writing songs throughout the '80s and into the early '90s, because my career was in big trouble. In America, I only had the one hit, and even though in Britain I've had many more than that, it was still a gradually declining thing. I ended up writing songs simply to try to get back on the radio, to get that commercial success. It wasn't until 1992, when I did Machine And Soul, a particularly bad album and I began seeing Gemma, the woman that I'm now married to, that I began to realize how misguided and lost and crazy I'd become. I went back to writing songs for a hobby, I didn't even have a contract then, and that was pretty grim. I didn't know if I'd get a contract, and I wasn't even trying really. Without any of the commercial pressures, it just came out much heavier than anything I'd done before, much more guitar involvement, even though electronics were still a major part of it. I really loved it. It was much bigger sounding and much darker. It got a release about two years after I'd started writing it, and it actually did quite well compared to what I'd been doing before. That not only made me realize that I'd found my creative stride and direction again, but it also meant that I probably wasn't that far away from finding the sort of music that my fans had been waiting for as well.                  GARY NUMAN: Initially though I didn't know which direction to take. This lasted through the year or two in which I made the album. I was £600,000 in debt and it looked like we were finished. Every time I played live I lost money as well. I knew I either had to get out completely or change. So I took some time off and met Gemma, and she helped me get back to making music as a hobby again, not just to be famous or make money. Music had become a business and I was only writing with a view to getting played on the radio. So I went back to writing music for myself with no attempt to be commercial which, if you listen to Sacrifice - it's obviously never going to be played on the radio, it’s quite dark but I really enjoyed making it and I felt that I'd stumbled onto the right path again. The fans really responded and it’s become one of their favourite albums. CHARLES PIERRE: I remember having great fun with Gary in the studio trying out different sounds and drum loops and generally messing about with computer gear during the recording of the 5 or 6 tracks that were started for the Sacrifice record. During that time Gary had a nick name for us “The Raddish Boys” I think we're all completely mystified as to exactly what this meant though!! Off hand I can't remember the exact titles but I do recall the tracks we worked on were quite dark and energetic, always with a great hook line. I think some tracks were eventually re worked and did end up on Gary’s subsequent albums but I think others were left as “work in progress”, although my memory is a bit shady! GARY NUMAN: I abandoned all career aims and just went back to writing songs for the fun of it. The strange thing was as soon as I stopped worrying about career and radio plays and success, it was as though a huge weight lifted from my shoulders. A weight I never even realized was there. With that gone, the imagination and creativity came flooding back. I changed my way of working and went back to writing and recording in virtual isolation. With this came a return to the much darker style of music that I had started out with. More than that actually, the new stuff was darker than anything I'd done before. It was harder, more atmospheric. I put these songs on Sacrifice and realized that it had been a long time since I'd enjoyed being a song writer. It was like finding a long lost path again. Like going home. GARY NUMAN: Virtually every song that I've ever written has been written at least in part on piano and most songs that I've recorded have the piano on them somewhere or other. Sacrifice is full of piano for example, it's just not isolated in the mix but believe me, you would certainly notice if it wasn't there. On tour Ade Orange plays nothing but piano on all the Sacrifice and Exile songs, albeit with a few effects thrown on top. GARY NUMAN: For Sacrifice I wrote everything and played pretty much everything as well. 99.9% of it was all me. There's one guitar solo that isn't and one backing vocal which, I think, is three words. In the early days I wrote everything and just got the band to play their instruments within guide lines that I felt suited the song. Whenever I do get someone in to work on stuff I already have a very clear idea as to what I want from them. I hardly ever use band members in the studio. GARY NUMAN: I really enjoyed making it, and it was a very non-commercial album, but I had regained the way I used to feel. I felt like I was starting out again, in fact I was selling no records at the time, so I was kind of starting again. So I stumbled back across a road I should have been on my entire career. GARY NUMAN: I genuinely believed that with Sacrifice I had taken the key elements of those early albums and made them viable for now. It was dark with a dark image and it mixed synth’s and heavy guitars but it had much more content and awareness running through it. Sacrifice was a pivotal album in my career in many ways. GARY NUMAN: Sacrifice was the best album I'd done for a long time - perhaps the best ever. To write something like that after so many disappointments and setbacks was a great relief to me. A lot of time and care was spent on it. Sacrifice had elements of fear, love, innocence and menace in a constantly changing concoction and I believe it reflected parts of my life better than any other album I’ve made since Telekon. GARY NUMAN: A great many people have expressed the opinion since that they preferred things when I didn't have backing singers and have said that Sacrifice was all the better for not having them. However, I do like them, I think they can add a great deal to a song but I also think that things can be just as good without them. At the moment I prefer my sound without. GARY NUMAN: In America they gave it that Dawn title and different art work. The man who does the Dawn comics did special artwork for the album. Sirius is the publishing company; the comic publishing company put it out. It was kind of a new direction for them. The man who ran the company was a fan and he was excited about doing it that way. We didn't have a deal in America at that time, so we went for it. There are a lot of people who misunderstood what it was. They thought it was a completely different album. ROBB HORAN: I’m a massive Numan fan. I loved the Sacrifice record and when I heard Gary’s single “A Question Of Faith” I knew I had to bring Gary and Joey Linsner together, my only worry when I suggested Gary for the “Dawn” project was that he and Joey are completely in control of everything they do so in some ways they are two least likely people to work together. GARY NUMAN: Robb Horan suggested the idea to me. I was then sent copies of the Dawn comics and was tremendously impressed, not only by Joe Linsner's work, which I thought was stunning, but by the entire Sirius operation. I met Robb a few months later when he came over to the UK, and also came along to one of my shows, and again was very impressed. His enthusiasm and innovative thinking on this collaboration idea appealed to me no end. When I was sure that Robb and Sirius were capable of backing up that enthusiasm with a well run organization, the quality of which became obvious fairly quickly, I was glad to get involved. ROBB HORAN: Dawn art goes with Gary Numan music. That collaboration was the result of another one of Joe's [Joseph Michael Linsner] “how about if” wishes. He wanted a musical tie-in to “Dawn” and I wanted to see Numan reach some fresh listeners. But that's another story. Suffice to say that it worked. And I guess it worked well enough, because the folks behind the scenes at the Numan Group gave Sirius the opportunity to be a part of Gary's triumphant return to touring in the USA. GARY NUMAN: I wouldn't presume to think that what I do is on the same level of quality as Joe Linsner's work but I see many similarities in our imagery. Joe draws things that are remarkably similar to pictures that I have in my head when I'm writing. Seeing Joe's work for the first time was like seeing my songs come to life. I have never seen anything that so closely mirrors my own thoughts.                                “PRAY” Debut live performance: 1994 “The Sacrifice Tour.” GARY NUMAN: The album itself sort of evolved rather than began with a clear direction. The inspirational focus for Sacrifice became a desire to look at the darker thoughts that sometimes come to mind in a little more detail. The other side of God perhaps, should you choose to believe in such a thing, as in songs like “Pray”, “Desire” and “Magic.” GARY NUMAN: The song “Pray” was taken from ideas based on my book. Pray The Final Treachery of God. “DEADLINER” Debut live performance: 1994 “The Sacrifice Tour.” GARY NUMAN: “Deadliner” actually started life as a short 26 second ditty for a French perfume TV advert. I did three bits of music for this ad company, they liked one of them, the perfume company liked the second and both of them thought that the “Deadliner” music was too heavy, so I wrote some words for it, stretched it a bit and there you have it. GARY NUMAN: The lyrics were actually about an experience I had twice on the “Dream Corrosion Tour” and once shortly after it when I was back at home. Basically they were nightmares of a particularly vivid and realistic kind. I went into REM sleep within seconds of closing my eyes according to Gemma and straight away began to show signs of great distress only to wake up a bit of a mess a few minutes later. In the dreams a force of some kind, it felt like a person, hurt me quite badly and when I woke up I still felt pain in the same places. They were unlike any other dreams I've ever had and at the time I was convinced that something was waiting for me. Even though the scarier side of it is now long gone I still feel that. It was more than a dream; something was there somehow, waiting for me, and, more than that, it knew me. I like the song because it tells the story well in my opinion. “Deadliner” was one of the last things I wrote for it. GARY NUMAN: “Deadliner” was my original choice for the first single from the album and by far my favourite of all the tracks on the album. It is quite dark and menacing as is a lot of the new record.  It had no chance of being played on the radio but they wouldn't play me if I wrote “Babe,” God forbid, so I've given up on them at last and will now put out whatever I like. “A QUESTION OF FAITH” Debut live performance: 1994 “The Sacrifice Tour.” GARY NUMAN: “A Question Of Faith” was concerned with the danger and power of true devotion, where you become so obsessed by the influence of someone you start to do things that would otherwise be completely beyond you. “DESIRE” Debut live performance: 1994 “The Sacrifice Tour.” GARY NUMAN: I have actually stood outside looking at a particularly beautiful sunset and said to god ‘prove it, turn the sky green, just for a second, you can’t can you’ “SCAR” Debut live performance: 1994 VH1’s “In Bed With Me Dinner.” GARY NUMAN:  “Scar” was a message to fans and media alike although each will read it, hopefully, in an entirely different way. “LOVE AND NAPALM” Debut live performance: 1994 “The Sacrifice Tour.” “YOU WALK IN MY SOUL” Debut live performance: 1997 “The Exile Tour.” GARY NUMAN: “You Walk In My Soul' is not a sad song, it is not about being lonely, it describes my feelings for Gemma so it's theme is very positive and it sounds the way it does because that's what I wanted. It came out the way I intended. I had the song played at mine and Gemma’s wedding, on a harp. BERYL WEBB: I thought the harp version at Gary and Gemma’s wedding was very emotional. “MAGIC” Debut live performance: 1994 “The Sacrifice Tour.” GARY NUMAN: About my beliefs in anything but god, I would sooner believe in fairies and goblins. “BLEED” Debut live performance: 1994 “The Sacrifice Tour.” GARY NUMAN: About demonic possession and things that go bump in the night. “THE SEED OF A LIE” Debut live performance: 1996 “The Premier Hits Tour.” GARY NUMAN: It was about bitterness and feelings of revenge after someone you loved and trusted suddenly turns on you and leaves but realises it’s a mistake. The song was originally called “Badland.” GARY NUMAN: “The Seed Of A Lie” has quite a simple drum pattern but was still a big sound nonetheless. In fact the two ballads on the album (“Seed Of A Lie” and “You Walk In My Soul”) have the most enormous backbeats. “ABSOLUTION” Debut live performance: 1996 “The Premier Hits Tour.” GARY NUMAN: The first song I wrote for Exile was called “Absolution” and it looked at the dangers inherent in blind faith, in total love. The kind of love or devotion that turned a well balanced person into someone that would kill children if it made the object of their affections happy. That kind of set the tone I suppose. GARY NUMAN: The singing style was not intentional in that I deliberately chose a new direction for my voice. It's just the way the song was meant to be sung. It deals with blind obsession, religious fervour being just one example of blind obsession but not the one in the song. If you notice, the lyric becomes increasingly fanatic as the song progresses which I think sums up the real danger of an obsession. For what it's worth “Absolution” is my favourite Numan song of all time. I wrote it, recorded it and mixed it in about 7 or 8 hours as well so it was all very immediate and exciting. This version is also a little different and sparser than the version which later came out on the Exile album. “PLAY LIKE GOD” (B-SIDE) Never performed live. “WHISPER OF TRUTH” (B-SIDE) Debut live performance: 2000 April Shepherds Bush London. “METALBEAT” (DEMO) Never performed live. GARY NUMAN: I didn't like it very much at the time. It was one of those rare things for me where a song was actually taken to near completion and then just abandoned and forgotten. Normally I dump songs far sooner and so have nothing to forget. I think it would have made a good b-side. I get sick of things quite often or just don't feel that they are up to scratch and so I junk them before I lose too much time. That's why I have very few unused tracks on the shelf; I abandon things long before they are finished. Very rarely do I go back and look at them again. I probably have about 5 that I abandoned on the way to Sacrifice' and about the same for Exile. I find it far easier to write a brand new song than to go back and try to resurrect one that I wasn't that keen on in the first place. GARY NUMAN: Well, it wasn't finished in time for one thing. The main reason though is that I don't think it is a brilliant song. I don't think it fits in well with the songs on the Sacrifice album either, similar sound but lyrically not really part of the overall feel. I like “Metal Beat” but whenever an album is put together songs will be left out. In these days of CD's with the potential to have more songs per album than was possible with vinyl it still doesn't get away from the fact that the songs have to belong together if you want the album to have a consistent atmosphere. I try to make sure that each song on an album compliments the other songs around it. For example “Cars” has been a very successful song but it would have sounded stupid if I'd just written it and put it on Sacrifice. Lyrically and musically it just wouldn't have fitted in. The thing to remember is that an album is a chosen collection of work not just a vehicle to put out everything you've written over the past year or two. GARY NUMAN: There is another version of this song that I did with Charles and Francis of Native Soul along with a few other unfinished tracks.