Released March 1991. MIKE SMITH – Programmer. NICK BEGGS – Musician and former member of Kajagoogoo and Ellis, Beggs and Howard. STEVE MALINS – Gary Numan PR and biographer.
GARY NUMAN: I thought that after Metal Rhythm, which was, up until then, generally considered to be my best album that I’d ever done, I really had to do something special to beat that. The first year of making Outland was spent putting the new studio together, it didn’t take a year to actually wire it up and put all the gear in I don’t mean, but you put it in, you wire it up, then start to work on a song. And the working on that song is more to do with learning how the equipment works than the making of the song. So the song itself comes together very slowly, you’re experimenting with equipment, you’re finding out how this effect works and that effect works, how to work the desk, how to work the computers, you know the whole mass of things that are in a studio. The first year at least was spent trying to get that together. At one point I was reading 17 equipment manuals, just to make an album!
MIKE SMITH: Gary has a way of arranging things that can be quite bizarre; he introduced me to these strange, semi-Arabian modal things which I think he learnt from listening to the viola playing of Chris Payne, who used to be in his band. He’d also listen to all sorts of stuff for ideas, not necessarily because he was a big fan of the music. Jam and Lewis were always very important to us. Prince was a big one and we’d play Diana Ross records, James Brown and Peter Gabriel. Gary’s always open to a production idea even if it was a song he hated. NICK BEGGS: In the early 90’s Gary offered me a tour but around the same time I was supposed to be joining Cliff Richard’s band. Also that same week Kim Wilde called up and asked me to go to Japan with her band. I'd already committed to Cliff’s project and didn't want to let him down but after a few days in the studio it was clear it wasn't going to pan out. (Even though I did eventually tour with Cliff) Cliff said to me he needed some one to play “Living Doll” like they meant it. I guess I couldn't do that. So I called Gary and said, “I'm not too proud to beg. I've just lost a Cliff tour is the bass chair still free?” Gary was very sweet and apologised, saying he had decided to program the bass parts as I couldn't do it and that he would do the tour without a bass player. I learnt something very important from this experience, that is “Never turn anything down ...ever!”
MIKE SMITH: Gary still owned a few Moog’s and he’d drag them out from the garage but he also sampled a lot of his old equipment, the Oberheim, OBXa, Mini Moog, Prophet 5, Odyssey and Poly Moog. The PPG’s analogue filters allowed them to play around with some heavy, subsonic bass at deafening volumes, everything was turned up to 11!
NICK BEGGS: When Gary was writing for the Outland album he invited me over to do some writing and bass sessions with him. That was the first actual time we did anything and it was great fun. I can't remember the actual writing process or the inspiration behind the songs apart from we both really loved the film Outland. It was as if there was this common ground regarding this movie. Each time I played something Gary liked he would shout, "Yeah! I'm ‘avin that!" I remember Gary dressing for the occasion every day we worked together. He always looked like he was about to go on stage even at 11am. He really lived the part. I respected that. After all I had a hair style that didn't ever sleep. He really lived the Gary Numan persona. I also remember him taking me to see his World War Two Japanese Zero fighter bomber. I sat in the cock pit and that was just about the coolest thing imaginable. Gary and I talked a lot. I was going through some very turbulent religious ideas at the time and for a down to earth guy like Gary it must have been a bit hard to swallow some times. I always respected him for not telling me to F**k off. Gary comes from a stable family background where the mum and dad stayed together. There always seemed to be something solid about him. Even though he always wore make up and leather. I suppose the difference back then between Gary and I was that Gary was into "sex, drugs and rock n roll," and I was a religiously tortured, painfully earnest kid with the world on his shoulders.
MIKE SMITH: We also sampled skips being hit with bits of metal and the sound of chains being rattled or basketballs bouncing across the floor. One of our favourites was a chair leg which was a chrome Wurlitzer piano chair being struck with a metal object. Out of nowhere the PPG turned it into this effect which sounded like a thousand graves opening. We also had our own Light Sabre sound. We’d heard that someone had gone out and hit the wires on electric pylons for the original sound on Star Wars so we tried it on taut cables and it worked! I still use a PPG because it does things that other machines can’t do. Its one of those weird, organic machines that will sometimes produce an absolutely fantastic, very original sound and no-one’s quite sure how.
GARY NUMAN: I.R.S. Records did want a dance orientated album from me, hence them forcing the “Rockers Uptown” w**kers in my direction, and I was deep into my lost direction period, although I hadn't realised it then. GARY NUMAN: The percussion and backing vocals was exactly what I was looking for at the time and so I don't think any of the previous mixes would show a significantly different album. Most of the re-mixes were for petty, pointless little changes, although as I say, at the end of the day it was improved albeit by a tortuous route. I have to say that, at the end of the day, this album would appear to be destined to remain a least favourite for many fans. Strangely enough, although I don't like Machine And Soul very much I actually like Outland quite a lot. My wife Gemma was never that keen on it though so I'm used to the idea now and no longer get upset about it. It would seem that I was just going in the wrong direction for my own fan base.
GARY NUMAN: Outland was remixed three times, making a total of 4 mixes altogether. To be honest although the overall sound of the album, in my opinion, was actually improved by the changes, my gripe at the time was that we could have gone straight from mix 1 to mix 4 if the people at I.R.S. had only made up their minds and not messed about. I do not in any way blame I.R.S. for the sound of the album or for it not being a fan favourite, that was by own doing.
MIKE SMITH: Gary’s right we actually recorded it three times and I think the second one was probably the best. For me it still sounded fresh at this point but by the end we were both sick of it. Although the basic tracks didn’t change much, for several months we’d change parts around, add different sounds-at one point there were Mexican trumpets blasting away on there, god knows why! Over two years of solid work and I was completely burnt out by the experience.
MIKE SMITH: One of the reasons for all this fiddling about was that Gary’s label boss Miles Copeland couldn’t make up his mind about what he wanted. Miles was into rock guitars and I do remember some guitar was added when we would’ve preferred to leave it raw and electronic. There was a lot of soul searching during the making of that record and Miles constantly confusing things. We weren’t able to find common ground between the three of us. It was stressful right to the end because we spent two years building up these incredibly dense textures with shit loads going on and that’s a nightmare to mix.
“INTERVAL 1, 2 AND 3” Debut live performance: 1991 “The Outland Tour.”
GARY NUMAN: I got into using bits of films to add excitement to some of the songs in an attempt to produce them in a slightly different way, a less musical way. They were all taken from films that I particularly liked although the main reason I used those particular samples is because they had the right kind of atmosphere for the desired effect in the track.
“SOUL PROTECTION” Debut live performance: 1991 “The Outland Tour.”
GARY NUMAN: Don’t really know what to say about “Soul Protection” and Janet Jackson. I can't in all honesty say we both derived it from the same source. I think Iwas just listening too hard to how Jam and Lewis put her stuff together in a rather sad and desperate attempt to “fit in” with what IRS and others around me at the time seemed to be wanting from me; most things at IRS were done without my involvement actually.
NASH THE SLASH: Gary’s a great guy, I love his stuff. The thing with Gary is he never stopped. It’s not as if he stopped for 15 years and then came out doing a retro type show. But through the 80’s he did change his style. At one point he almost sounded like Janet Jackson, it was this sort of funk sounding stuff.
STEVE MALINS: “Soul Protection” is the story of a man who deliberately infects his lovers with AIDS as a revenge for his own contamination.
“CONFESSION” Debut live performance: 1991 “The Outland Tour.”
“DREAM KILLER” Debut live performance: 1993 “The Dream Corrosion Tour.
STEVE MALINS: “Dream Killer” is steeped in self pity.
“DARK SUNDAY” Debut live performance: 1991 “The Outland Tour.” “OUTLAND” Debut live performance: 1991 “The Outland Tour.”
STEVE MALINS: Outland is full of references to drugs and a black market gone wrong, the title track itself focuses in on a drug deal.
“HEART” Never performed live.
GARY NUMAN: In the “Heart” song those words “time heals” were being sung from a third parties
point of view and were mean to signify how much clichéd crap people pour on you when they can’t think of anything useful to say.
“FROM RUSSIA INFECTED” Debut live performance: 1991 “The Outland Tour.”
STEVE MALINS: A chillingly accurate prediction of Russia’s fate in the 90’s depicting fraudulent politicians, child pornography and a general loss of faith in humanity, on this track Gary speculates about the destructive effects of suddenly exposing Soviet society to the western way of life.
“DEVOTION”
Never performed live.
“WHISPER” Never performed live.
STEVE MALINS: A nostalgic song about a former relationship.
“SHAME” (B-SIDE) Debut live performance: “The Dream Corrosion Tour.”
GARY NUMAN: Nick Beggs was good, he came in with several little lines that he’d worked out which were really infectious and one of them was the main riff to “Shame” and I just built the song around it. NICK BEGGS: Prior to working with Gary I'd done Kajapotato (Kajagoogoo- early ‘80’s pop group) and Ellis Beggs and Howard along with quite a lot of session work and touring. My first actual involvement with Gary was back in 1983 when his bass player Joe Hubbard invited me to meet Gary and discuss the possibilities of guesting live with him on “The Warriors Tour.” Unfortunately that didn't transpire due to some other commitments I had at the time. But I really liked Gary and hoped we would get chance to work together later on. I had always loved his stuff before I turned pro back in ‘82. I've always liked his music and respected him for that. So getting to meet and work with him was an honour. Gary was always rational and measured and I liked that about him.
NICK BEGGS: There was another tune I worked on with him but I can't remember its title. I would like to write and tour with him again when the time is right. Especially now he's rocking’ things up more.
“ICEHOUSE” (B-SIDE) Never performed live.
“TREAD CAREFUL” (B-SIDE) Never performed live.
GARY NUMAN: These two were probably written early on in the Outland sessions. There was often a cross over period.
GARY NUMAN: I once had to listen to these three monkeys, with not a single record between them, telling me where I had been going wrong for my entire career. These three then went work in my studio, giving out loud praise to each other about how good the changes were that they were making to the sound of a particular song, until I was forced to explain to them that they hadn’t actually turned the bloody desk on in the first place and that nothing had changed at all. They were completely brain dead. These people with the dead ears were who Miles had put in charge of my musical “recovery.” Shite, shite and shite! The “My World Storm” remix, and any other remixes done while at I.R.S. for that matter was nothing to do with me, I didn’t even know some of them were being done let alone approve of them, a most unpleasant period. If someone came along with a blindingly good re-mix of one of my songs I would be happy about it but that still doesn't mean that I would want to be involved with it. Possibly but not definitely. Having people re-mix stuff can be incredibly expensive and my experience of it, whenever it's been forced upon me, has always been bad.
