Gary Numan
Synth-rock pioneer By Jim AllenNew Wave’s first synthesizer hero.
Gary Numan started out as the frontman for the punk band Tubeway Army, but when he began fiddling with a synth left over from a previous band's session at the recording studio, his destiny started taking shape. His second album Replicas, billed as Gary Numan and Tubeway Army, found him delivering a Bowie-influenced synth-rock sound (as opposed to synth-pop: it's important to note that Numan always employed a human rhythm section) on songs full of dystopian, technophilic sci-fi imagery inspired by the likes of J.G. Ballard. The new approach was an instant success, earning Numan U.K. stardom, which expanded to the U.S. with third album The Pleasure Principle's massive hit, "Cars." Nobody before Numan had made it into the mainstream by putting synths up front in a New Wave context, and though the hits soon stopped coming (especially in the States, where he's most often thought of as a one-hit wonder), the young Moogmeister became a huge influence on everything from electro-pop and the New Romantics to industrial rock and, eventually, techno.
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