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" The idea of collaborating with anyone else was quite daunting. If Battles had any trepidation in asking me, I can assure you I had more after agreeing to do it. "

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" I sometimes wonder if I might be a bit of a disappointment to people, because they are expecting all these '80s hits and what they get is a dark industrial wall of noise. "

Gary Numan

People

Disappointment

Dark

" When I was 11 I became a massive fan of The Monkees. We had a so-called 'band' of kids on my street and we'd go along to people's houses and mime to Monkees records. "

Gary Numan

Fan

Along

" Strangely enough, when the Sugababes' 'Freak Like Me' went to number 1, which was built around my 'Are 'Friends' Electric' song, I had another song called 'Rip' go to number 1 in the Kerrang TV chart, so I was pulling new people in from very different areas of musical interest. That was quite an amazing week. "

" I would never take part in one of those Eighties nostalgia tours, although I've been asked many times, because it's like admitting you have nothing new to offer. As long as I can keep making music I'm happy with, and people want to come to my gigs to hear it, I'll carry on. "

" I am very old-fashioned about marriage. It is for life and I mean it. I always knew that when I met the right girl, the life I had before - being single, in a band, girls everywhere - would be over. "

" When I went to record my first album, which should have been a punk album, there was a synthesiser in the control room. I'd never seen one before but they let me have a go on it and I loved it to bits. "

Gary Numan

Control

" When I was a kid it was big news when someone flew around the world in a little aeroplane, but nobody cared when I did it. Then, to rub salt into my wounds, the customs people ripped my aeroplane to pieces, looking for stuff. "

" And I used to go the punk clubs such as a gay club in Poland Street that everyone would go to because it was the only place you could go to looking like that without getting beaten senseless. "

" Album sales have collapsed, with few artists making money from albums; touring is more lucrative. But I'm 53 now and won't be able to tour forever, so a logical step is to get into writing film scores. Trouble is, you need to be somewhere which has a big film industry - another reason why I'm thinking about living in California. "

" I collect fantasy swords, replicas from films, and have them displayed on the wall as you go up the stairs. "

Gary Numan

Wall

Fantasy

" I wouldn't say I'm vain - I'm just in a job where the way you look is important. Well, at least the facelift wasn't vanity, but the hair was. "

" I met Gemma, my wife, when she was 12. She had a schoolgirl crush on me and her dad had arranged for her to meet me. Later, she started coming to my concerts, but I only got to know her well after her mother died. I rang to see how she was, and that's how it started. "

" I became an air display pilot. I used to teach it. I was an examiner for a few years as well. It was great fun. I would still be doing it now if pretty much everyone I knew who was doing it hadn't died. In the first team I joined there were six people in it. By the time I stopped, there was only me and one other left - everyone else had died. "

" There does seem to be a kind of split. There are those people who are more entrenched in the early electronic years, and new people who have come to it because of people like Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson. "

" I was a loner as a child and happiest at home, launching toy rockets and aeroplanes. When I started causing trouble in my third year at grammar school, Mum was really surprised. My parents sent me to a child psychologist, who suggested I might have Asperger's syndrome. "

" The industrial thing came about mainly through giving up trying to write pop songs in the early '90s. I don't think I was ever very good at pop music and as soon as I stopped trying, and started to write more the things I loved, it became much heavier and more aggressive. "

" Before breaking into music, I had various jobs: forklift driver, driving a courier. But I was forced into working rather than doing it off my own bat because that was my dad's way: you got a job and paid your way. "

" In the mid-1980s to the early 1990s I was writing songs not because I particularly liked what I was doing, but because I was desperately trying to get back into the charts. I really didn't enjoy it. I didn't like the music I was making, I wasn't proud of it, like I have been before or since. "

" I have one brother, John, an airline pilot, who is seven years younger. He's adopted, though we're still blood related - he's my cousin. My parents couldn't have any more children after me, so when Dad's brother died, they adopted John, then just a baby. "

Gary Numan

Baby

Parents

" 'Are 'Friends' Electric?' was two songs: the verse part and the talking part. Two different songs I couldn't finish. One day I was playing the main verse part of 'Are 'Friends' Electric?' and after a few minutes I got frustrated, as normal, then started to play the other song, and realized they went together. "

" Ultravox were the blueprint for what I wanted to do, but I stumbled across them by accident. "

" There's no point in lying saying I am doing really, really well because I'm not; I'm cult level. "

" I'm not good at happy, lightweight kind of music. I'm not really good at pop music. 'Cars' is probably the only true pop song I ever wrote. I wish I could write more, but I'm not very good at it. "

" Song-writing is therapy for me. I'm a very moody person, very difficult to live with. There's a lot going on and a lot of contradictions. My life is always one step away from disaster. "

" I genuinely don't know how many albums I'm going to sell when the new album comes out, because I honestly don't know how many fans I've actually got at the moment. "

" It seems no matter what you say and how politically correctly and carefully you say it, you offend someone. Or at least I always do. "

" I think if you are creative then it's an unstoppable thing. It just keeps coming throughout your entire life. "

" I've spent a lot of time in the United States and I'm not under any illusions that it's a crime-free nirvana. I'm well aware it has plenty of problems, though they seem to be associated with particular areas. "

" I'm very intolerant and I get fed up with people easily. "

" I'm hopeless at small talk and have a problem making eye contact. "