bluedot 2018 | Interview: Gary Numan

[Music] I'm Gary Numan and we're at blue dot first of all inaudible Bank yes yeah I do only because of the the law of probability you it seems it seems ridiculous to me that you know that you can have billions of stars in this galaxy and in billions of galaxies and then not be something more than us I think it's just the arrogance of man or any that would be nice which i think is not only likely but you know certainly surely I wouldn't say anything to him I'll keep quiet as I remember reading the thing that Stephen Hawking wrote once about that and and it was talking about how health far man has advanced in the tiny amount of time that we've been in the universe which is tiny compared how long's being around and the chances of another alien alien I love alienation alienation being even if they were a hundred years apart you know which is which is absolutely it could be a million years apart and you'll still be closer to nothing in terms of how long that's actually being but if it was that the chances of their technology or even their understanding being remotely suitable for us to communicate with just it's near only possible so if you think about what not over you know that not that much more than hundred years ago we were barely flying I know you now look you're going to Mars and doing all these things I didn't think of that and another hundred years you need time you think of a thousand years you know you'll be lucky to find another alien civilization that was even remotely as close as that so they're just going to be either way behind us or so far ahead of us that it I'd rather not not meet them [Music] to create perfect planet yeah get rid of us that's that's easy it would do great with us my wife says the best thing you can do for Earth is kill everybody it seems a bit harsh when you've got kids you know but that's what she says and unto bunnies she's right you know again I died that I saw something recently that talked about what the earth is doing at the moment or beginning to do at the moment is its own way of getting rid of the problem which is us you know it will become unlivable for us but it will survive you know it would just adjust but it would get rid of us and so it's fixed itself you know and it might even just didn't drift back to where it wants to be but I found out interesting that the earth as a as a living thing is treating us as a virus and it's beginning to do what it needs to do to get rid of us you know and fairly deserved to be honest you know we're just absolutely ruining things I stumbled into electronic music absolutely by chance I didn't like it much really the only things I had heard I'd like to add to hide craft work and I thought that was a riot no enough static oh I'm buying album by thought that was and I did buy out my she bought one on my court like that but didn't maybe want to do it you know your man just bought the record that was okay Bowie did that low album the the b-side of lower thing I'll comment but miss quite almost classical electronic music I like that we didn't make one to do it no so although I'd heard things that I'd like none of it had been inspiring enough to make me want to go out and find out about it myself and so I was actually going into a studio to make my debut album in a banquet to be army which is a punk band there were three piece guitar bass drums punk man and and that's when I found it synthesized it we I'd gone in to say hello to the man that was running at the studio I'm on their mates run loading the bagheera at the car there was a thing called a mini Moog synthesizer industry in the control room and they let me have a go of it but I never seen one before so I had no idea you set them up or what he could do but you know I started to press in things and it was just it was amazing you had the room shook that it was this low growling roaring kind of view it was nothing like I'd ever heard before and it was that that swung me around he said the time the moments a set of the gear I'd already changed everything now we're not doing anywhere now we're going to be doing this and so I went back to the record company with this pseudo electro Punk record which there's not what they wanted at all so we had a massive argument about that and I was all full of synthesizers and everything not realizing that I was probably one the last people to find them people like Orchestral Manoeuvres and humanely all those people they don't they've been doing it for ages I just didn't know they had they didn't know of them so I thought I just come in here which is really ignorant but I did yes I go back to our company so now there's this new thing it's gonna be great it's really exciting it is really sounds that you can make that nothing else can make and I was really enthused by all and eventually won the argument and put the album out and then realize that all these other people have been doing it for ages and Andy McCluskey from IMD called me johnny-come-lately which is true I was I was one of the last people to find it but the first one had become so quite successful with it so I always felt slightly guilty about that to be honest but so I've never seen myself as a flag waving champion for it I mean I'm slightly embarrassed by that because of the reputation I've got has been electronic I used it the same way as a carpenter uses a saw you know I don't I don't care about it you know it makes good noises and if it makes good noises and I keep on using it beside other things me half the noises or my records don't come from a synthesizer they come from walking around kicking things and dragging things and recording everything that makes a noise you know so it's all about sound synthesizers are just a relic relatively modest part of it to be honest I write everything on piano you know the electronic stuff comes later um my last album which for a moment was number one in the bill would electronic chart go excluded because they said it wasn't electronic enough well I look back on it and and we we went through the tracks to find out which one of them were organic how many of them were organic and how many of them were electronic or artificial in some way be a process for us or whatever and it was something like 82 percent of it was non-organic so yeah highly qualified it's been electronic but they have their own methods I'm sure but the thing is I'm not I'm not a champion of it yeah I I do love it but I don't study I don't know who's around I don't know I don't really know much about it too but I recognize that I I have a place in this history but I'd never felt a responsibility to want to further it or push it whatever I've been really selfish about it I use it because it suits me and what I want to do and the music that I want to make but outside of that I couldn't care less - and what it does oh yeah it is I do the same things everyone else there's nothing special about me with I write songs everyone write songs you know we all write songs in our own little way we'll attach the production and instrumentation to them in their own way but we're all doing the same thing yeah there's nothing different about me due to any of the others really you just hope that what you do will keep people happy for now and they won't throw glasses at you this pre make sure well if I can go away from this so that I'm somebody friend of Barton my head then I've had a good day really but I don't yeah I hate people I don't hate people that's too strong a word but it always be always bothers me a little bit with people to adjust if I hell you need they are you know why they're driven to something else no we're not we're all we're all trying to do the same thing you know and we all love doing what we're doing and that should be enough you know I've had a brilliant life doing this but I'm not better than anyone else you know I've been lucky in their times been unlucky in others I'm just grateful that I'm still here still doing it and that's more than enough for me I'm proud to be amongst people that are here I'm proud to still be invited to do things like this that this sort of level and that's called the Mima that's great

Channel: bluedot festival

Views: 17,879

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Keywords: Gary Numan, Interview, bluedot, bluedot 2018, bluedot festival, Jodrell Bank

Id: ecjXOcOi1Z4

Length: 9min 18sec (558 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 30 2018