The Past Is Not A Dirty Word

Mention the word nostalgia to certain artists and you'll be greeted with a retort full of hostility, as they insist that the past is the past, and that they're all about the here and now.

One such artist is Gary Numan, who for years has treated his early catalogue with at best indifference and more usually disdain, but who in the last couple of years has finally made a concession to his loyal fan base, of which I've been a part for almost thirty years, and toured two of his best loved early albums.

In the dying weeks of 2006 I saw him perform the whole of 1980's Telekon, complete with all of the b-sides, and with a recreation of the classic light show. Needless to say it went down superbly with long term fans, and so last night we found ourselves at the Indigo at the O2 arena to see him perform a similar show with 1979's Replicas album.

One of the main critiscisms levelled at nostalgia is that for anyone who openly admits a fondness for it, as I do, is accused of living in the past and not wanting to acknwoledge the present, and the future.

I have to disagree vociferously with this senitment, however, as for me the opportunity to both celebrate the music that I loved during my formative years, and still do, and to see many of the songs that I grew up with played live, some of them for the first time, is nothing short of fantastic.

As I stood in the crowd last night singing myself hoarse to the songs whose lyrics I know as well as I do my own name, I felt well and truly among friends (electric and otherwise), and for ninety minutes I was nine years old again, and recalling the feeling of discovering Replicas for the first time.

It's unlikely that Numan will play the vast majority of these songs ever again, which is a shame for many reasons, not least because most of them are genuinely excellent songs, but despite his admission that he has, after all, enjoyed revisiting past glories, he now wants to move firmly forward and effectively erase all but the last few years from his live repertoire.

The sad thing is that Numan, and he's by no means alone in this way of thinking - for years Paul Weller refused to play any Jam songs live, for example, and Morrissey for many years barely even acknowledged that he was ever in The Smiths - by making this decision is forgetting that although those of us who are long standing fans continue to embrace and more importantly buy his curreny output, it is because of these earlier songs that we are doing this in the first place.

The whole nostalgia thing is very much in vogue at the moment, with many bands touring complete old albums in an attempt to recapture the old fans who have since drifted away, and I count myself blessed that Numan has done the Telekon and Replicas tours, but it's a mistake to now refuse to play any of the old songs that made whichever band you care to name famous in the first place.

With music sales on the decline, the main revenue stream for any artist in years to come will be live shows, and so in my humble opinion this should be reflected in a balanced set that draws on all eras of the artist's career.

I'll happily continue to support my favourite bands' new material, but all I ask in return is that they don't forget their past. It is, after all, and as I've said before, where I come from - where we all come from - and has made me in to the person, and the fan, that I am today.

Cold Metal Rhythm

It's May, it's 1979 and I'm nine years old.

It's also Thursday which means that it's Top Of The Pops on the television, which in turn means that I'm glued to it, drawn like a moth to a flame.

On the screen a young man with blonde hair dressed in black in singing in a flat, monotone voice over a heavy, doom laden synthesiser, looking like a rabbit caught in headlights.

The man is 21 years old, from London and is the unwitting innovator of a new style of music that will be variously known as new wave, new romantic and electronica.

His name is Gary Numan and he's singing his number one hit single Are Friends Electric?, a tune that would provide the backing for another number one some 23 years later, almost to the week, but this time with vocals by three teenage girls who weren't even born at the time.

Are Friends Electric? became the first single that I ever bought with my own money, and the album that spawned it, Replicas, the first album I bought with my own funds.

29 years later I'm sitting here listening to the just released redux version, complete with an entire disc of previously unreleased demos from the Replicas sessions and I'm nine years old again, falling in love with this cold, electronic, unemotional masterpiece all over again.

So much has changed in the intervening years, people have come and gone, friends have been born and died, but still I love this album more than pretty much anything else that I've ever heard.

This album anchors me to me, is my constant in a life full of change, and is more important to me than I could ever put into words.

In two short weeks I'll be seeing Numan play the whole thing live, and it'll be akin to a religious experience for me, particularly when Down In The Park is aired, a bleak tale of synthetic friends, rape machines, ritualised death and crippling isolation that I have always found strangley cathartic.

And so I sit here, and I feel absolutely complete. I have good red wine, a packet of smooth cigars, and a deep sense of peace and tranquility as I write of my past, which defines my present and future. I am, in short, in a place that I can only describe as Heaven. If I were to die tonight, then it would be in a state of absolute calm and indescribable peace.

Such is the power of music. For a few short hours I am whole, I am complete, and I am happy.


"We are not lovers
We are not romantics
We are here to serve you
A different face but the words never change"

Down In The Park by Tubeway Army (1979)