Tubeway Army (Gary Numan)

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Tubeway Army (Gary Numan) · Tubeway Army was the British band of singer and musician Gary Numan, born Gary Webb in 1958. The group's first record appeared in 1978 and was not a success at first. After that Numan worked more and more with synthesizers, and it paid off. In 1979 both the single Are “Friends” Electric? and the second album, Replicas, reached number 1 in England.

Music and breakthrough

Shortly afterwards Numan decided to continue under his own name. Later in 1979 the single Cars was released, and that, too, and the album The Pleasure Principle reached number 1. In 1980 a third album, Telekon, followed at number one. He had hits until the middle of the 1980s, after which his popularity declined. He kept making records and performing, however, and in the 2010s appreciation grew again: Savage (Songs from a Broken World) from 2017 reached number two.

Influence

With Tubeway Army and his first solo records, Numan became one of the pioneers of British electronic pop music. His music sounded cool and mechanical, with heavy synthesizer sounds and a distant, almost robotic vocal style, and lyrics about alienation and machines. In this way he brought the synthesizer to the top of the British charts in 1979.

Listening

• 
  Are “Friends” Electric? · Tubeway Army (Gary Numan), 1979
  Apple Music ↗

In School of Rock

The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.

• Mixtape 7: The 1980s^NL Reader

See also

• New wave