Part 2: Android In La La Land (America + PledgeMusic)
“It’s a culture unashamedly geared to having a good time.” - Gary Numan (2013)
From The Beatles to Ed Sheeran, the test of any British artist is their ability to break America. Gary Numan broke America as early as 1980 when he took The Touring Principle on its international leg to largely sellout shows.
Heralded by adverts pushing ‘The Pleasure Principle’ as the future of rock and roll and bolstered by Saturday Night Live performances of ‘Cars’ and ‘Praying To The Aliens’, ’The Pleasure Principle’ charted at #16 on Billboard and #11 in Canada with lead single ‘Cars’ crashing into the upper echelons of the Hot 100, peaking at #9 in America and topping the Canadian charts.
‘The Pleasure Principle’s sales were scuppered in part by an overeager Numan’s desire to supply new product to the market. ‘Telekon’ was rushed into the market and soon killed the older album’s rise through the charts. An eleventh hour revision had also seen both top ten UK hits ‘We Are Glass’ and ‘I Die: You Die’ stricken from the record.
Thankfully American releases of ‘Telekon’ restored the latter single to the album but sales stalled. Numan saw the omissions as a value for money move, which they were. Unfortunately this move also reduced ‘Telekon’s scope of influence upon release. Compounding the issue was his decision to release the five minute dirge ‘This Wreckage’ into the charts over the more identifiable singles ‘Remind Me To Smile’ and ‘I’m An Agent’.
‘Telekon’ stalled at #64, the first step in cementing Gary Numan’s cult status outside of his native England.
Gary Numan’s 1981 ‘retirement’ from touring was another blow to establishing his long-term presence outside of his fanbase and this was felt even more so in foreign markets. Gary’s round the world flight in 1981, while a personal achievement, was ultimately a distraction from the music.
Aside from a small U.S. club tour in 1982 to promote ‘I, Assassin’, Gary Numan international stage presence was already drawing to a close.
In April 1982 Gary Numan was one of many UK musicians who chose to become a tax exile abroad upon the introduction of new legislation, choosing to return to America.
Numan soon struck up a lucrative ad campaign for 7-Up, providing three potential musical jingles. Sadly the deal fell through when Gary failed to show up to the meeting after being caught in an plane crash although other accounts allege that representatives felt mislead upon hearing Gary’s latest fretless bass-dominated work after being promised ‘machine rock’.
As Numan’s fortunes plummeted so too did Atco’s international release campaign, which ended after ‘I, Assassin’s disappointing sales.
Over the next decade only Numan’s IRS albums (1988’s ‘Metal Rhythm’ and 1991’s ‘Outland’) would see American releases, the former was butchered into ‘New Anger’ (shuffled track order and remixed old songs swapped in) and the latter’s release so limited that Gary would later recall in his autobiography: “I did an interview with an American journalist, who was also a big fan, and she didn’t even know it was out. If a fan in the media didn’t know it was out, what chance did the rest of the population have?”
Despite his limited endurance in America, people were listening. Trent Reznor remarked that he listened to ‘Telekon’ daily when composing Nine Inch Nails’ debut ‘Pretty Hate Machine’, while Courtney Love’s group Hole played ‘Cars’ during their 1995 world tour.
Elsewhere, Foo Fighters and Marilyn Manson recorded versions of ‘Down In The Park’ as B-sides. 1997’s ‘Random’ compilation offered further covers from Saint Etienne, Gravity Kills, The Magnetic Fields and Pop Will Eat Itself.
By 1998, Numan’s financial situation had improved to the point that he could tour abroad again, bringing the Exile Tour to twenty-four dates in 1998 and maintaining an international presence ever since.
Gary’s residency in the UK drew to a close in 2013 after the lengthy process of applying for a family green card. This was necessary to ensure his children would be registered as American citizens, as Gary emphasised, “I wanted them to be able to choose from as wide a range of things as possible and to have no obstacles in their way. So that was an important thing for me - something five years ago I wasn't thinking about at all.”
The house was sold and although Gary had long since retired from his aviation career, his airline business Numanair had continued to operate as a separate entity.
Founded in 1981 in the wake of his round the world flight and much-publicised ‘retirement’, Numanair took precedence as Gary’s main interest as his music career declined throughout the 1980s. Now in 2013, with Gary’s position in the electronic music canon ensured and his sales steady his twin careers switched positions and Numanair was grounded.
As a self-employed musician, Gary had to assemble a portfolio of press cuttings and references from across the music industry to prove he was ‘an alien of extraordinary ability’.
“I’ve been doing this for 35 years and I’ve done a lot of stuff. So to just sift through it and find all the things that were – first that actually say something nice … a lot of it doesn’t!”
References from Depeche Mode’s Alan Wilder and recent Oscar-winner Trent Reznor strengthened the portfolio and ever since 2013 Gary Numan has been a resident of Los Angeles.
‘Savage’ was Gary’s first album recorded entirely in the United States, and the first backed by a Pledge Music campaign.
Few individuals could credibly claim to have killed off an entire industry, but Sean Parker is certainly one of them. At the turn of the millennium, he and Shawn Fanning started the online file-sharing service Napster where users could upload and download MP3 tracks of their favourite artists, free of charge (aside from the odd virus). Napster’s ascent was a gutshot to the music industry; why pay for music when one could easily put it on the internet for nothing? Their answer came over a decade too late.
Decades later streaming services provide this same service with a cut for the labels naturally, at a monthly fee. On the physical side of releases, albums are issued and reissued in ever-expanding box sets. Vinyl and audiophile releases are the latest short-term strategy employed to buoy an industry with long-term issues.
Jeff Rougvie put it best, that “the vinyl “boom” - if you can call it that – is over. In the big picture, it was a tiny blip. Vinyl sales never got close to overtaking CDs.” Despite the appeal of superior sound quality, of artists issuing new releases on vinyl and in some cases sequencing albums specifically for the format vinyl still had all of the drawbacks of being unwieldy, lack of portability and price. People don’t want to pay twenty-plus pounds for an album when they can subscribe to Spotify for about half that.
“There are fewer retailers carrying physical product, so that whole side is contracting,” and as this side continues to contract so too will working the back catalogue become increasingly exploitative and desperate.
‘Savage’ was released on vinyl and cassette alongside CD, go figure.
Interviewed in 2018, Gary expressed intrigue at the shifting balance of power in the industry; “Everything is being rewritten, the way labels work, the need for labels at all is in question, the way managers’ commission, the industry standard of 20% for management will hopefully be a thing of the past soon.” As a self-employed artist, Gary had ironically managed to avoid a good deal of this impact over the last decade or so, with only the odd archival release coming out from former labels since he went independent again in 2004.
PledgeMusic was founded in 2009 in the vein of Patreon and Kickstarter for artists to actively engage their fanbases in the making of their new albums. Fans could pre-order new material from their favourite artists and be treated to updates in the form of studio videos or pledger-exclusive bonus tracks and merchandise. In return, artists would benefit from the pre-orders adding to day-one sales and allow for a higher day one chart placement. In 2014, PledgeMusic reported that 90% of artists surpassed 140% of their initial pledge goals.
If that sounds too good to be true, it is.
This part of the article is barer than it might have been last year. Pledge Music was dissolved earlier this year after issues in paying subscribing artists and getting albums out on time, leaving several artists such as John Zorn effectively in limbo.
This part came out much longer than I thought it would so I reckoned it’d be best to get it done separately from the album proper. Some more info on PledgeMusic will be on some of the song entries but this is the bare bones of the lot.
Part 3 will be talking about the album and music proper.
Part 3 will be talking about the album and music proper.
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