79 and 80 Released simultaneously in April 1981.

STEVE WEBBON – Beggars Banquet Records.
AFRIKA BAMBAATAA – Musician.
JESS LIDYARD – Gary’s uncle and original Tubeway Army drummer.
PETER HAYNES – Former Lurkers drummer.
LEO SAYER – Singer.


GARY NUMAN: I thought the whole thing was packaged really well. With these two live albums I wanted to give the fans two single live albums at an affordable price. Living Ornaments ‘79 and ‘80 were not released on the understanding that it was to be a collector’s item but simply as being the only live albums that I was likely to ever release which was truthfully how I felt about things at the time. If that would subsequently have made it into a collectors item then so be it but that was not part of our thinking when we chose to put them out. It was more intended as the summing up of the story so far, as it was then of course. It's my understanding that Living Ornaments ‘79 and ‘80, especially the box set, is still very much a collector’s item. They are good documentaries of the story so far, you can hear the improvement in the 1980 album, I love the version of “Every Day I Die” that’s on it.


STEVE WEBBON: The double CD of Living Ornaments ‘79 was originally released in 1997 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the start of the first Numan tour, however back in 1993 it looked as if all the tapes were lost, so a double CD was prepared: CD1 was the '79 Hammersmith show reconstructed from all the various sources (The Living Ornaments vinyl / B-sides / mono videotape) -it was OK but a bit erratic on the sound matches and missing a couple of numbers. CD 2 was the Living Ornaments '80 album. However, just before release, the original tapes for the ’79 show were located, so I pulled the release. Unfortunately, I'd spent so much time on the Numan catalogue by then that I didn't get a chance to return to the project until the fall of ‘96. I then discovered that the master mix of the '79 show was mono and done for the videotape! So the final solution was to return to the original multitrack masters and get the whole show remastered by Tim Summerhayes, the original engineer. Tim remixed the entire 21 song show and Beggars Banquet released it as a ltd edition double CD set.

JESS LIDYARD: I didn’t completely disappear once I left Gary, I did returned to join Gary Numan's backing band at the end of 1979 to play at a sold out Wembley Arena for the 'Year of the Child concert which was simultaneously filmed and broadcast worldwide on BBC1 and Radio One. I also appeared on The Kenny Everett TV Show a year later.

PETER HAYNES: I remember that Gary was very much aware of these causes that were out to save the whales and save the planet and so forth. I remember Gary didn’t invite any of the media to the show that was to be set aside for the save the whales foundation in ‘79, I thought that this was very funny because at the time they were giving him such a hard time and he knew that most of them were just a bunch of two faced arseholes and as far as Gary was concerned if they wanted to come them they’d have to pay. Gary knew that if he invited the press down then they would turn up and be all friendly then go away and completely slag him off in the papers.

AFRIKA BAMBAATAA: Back in the late 70’s when I was a DJ I used play things like “Cars”, “Metal” and especially the live version of “Bombers” from the 1979 British tour with the drum machine intro on it and the weird violin melody. That really used to spook people.



STEVE WEBBON: Living Ornaments '81 was basically the same as the soundtrack to the Micromusic video (but in stereo). I wanted to add “Conversation” which was performed on an earlier night so I sent the tape off to be mixed and guess what, the track wasn't there. Some problem with marking up the boxes I was told. However, I did find a mono monitor mix of the track - this means the vocals are way too high and the sonic balance is wrong – and rather than put it in the correct place in the show I added it as a bonus track on the first CD. So Living Ornaments '81 is again a double CD. For the foreseeable future these two releases will only be available from Beggars Banquet by mail order and can be ordered off the web site.


STEVE WEBBON: Just to clarify the situation with Living Ornaments '80. Beggars do have the tapes to the recording that was issued in the 1990 Asylum box set. However, the original full concert tapes are the ones that are missing. As you know with the '79 show we located the multi-tracks and remixed the full show and that's ideally what Beggars wants to do with Living Ornaments '80. There probably has to be a cut-off date to try and locate the '80 tapes. Beggars will reassess the situation and probably re-master the tapes that we have, to reissue an edited version of the '80 show (as in the original LO box set). Sod's law is that if we do that the full concert tapes will suddenly re-appear. I live in hope that the tapes to Living Ornaments '80 will one day re-appear, but if not then I'll just have to release the show as the original album on a low price single CD (see The Search For LO’80 section on this site for more up to date details on this release).

 


GARY NUMAN: I've only done covers in the past when I was forced to apart from “Trois Gymnopedies” and “On Broadway” in the very early years. “On Broadway” was a song I’d always liked. The duet version that I did with Leo Sayer in 1984 was simply something done for the fun of it and recorded only for his TV show. He came down to the studio to do the “On Broadway” song; it wasn’t done as a single.

LEO SAYER: I had a series “The Leo Sayer Show” on BBC2 TV in 1984. A running feature during the series was of music stars and their private passions. I knew Gary was mad on planes, particularly old wartime ones, so we featured him flying me in a Dakota DC3 from Duxford Airdrome’s collection. It was great and we had a lot of fun doing the spot for this. The return part was that the guest would do a duet with me to be performed live back at the Shepherd’s Bush Theatre, now The Empire. Gary had his own take on this and we spent a great couple of days putting down “On Broadway” in his Studio on the Shepperton Studios lot. I had to argue with the BBC about us doing this, ‘cos they liked me to use an arranger and live musicians, but we won the fight. I’d originally met Gary on the Shepperton lot, as I stored all my road gear there. When we first talked about the TV project we chose this song and set straight to work, just two creative guys and no egos. Everybody left us alone to work and I think we were both surprised to find how alike we were.

GARY NUMAN: Leo’s great actually, I liked working with Leo Sayer. I’d met him once or twice before, ever so easy to work with, he’s very down to earth, no airs and graces, which is good for me, I like that. He gave me a good slot on a very popular TV programme.