Wednesday 29 January 2020

What God Intended



Album version

Earlier in this series I posted about how during the ‘Savage’ campaign Gary Numan tied his creative process with fan interaction via the PledgeMusic campaign but in truth this process had been continuing for a much longer time. I don’t only refer to Numan’s dedicated fanbase, but also to producer and darkwave artist Ade Fenton who over the last decade and a half has positioned himself as the most important collaborator in Gary Numan’s career. 

Numan’s early relationships with producers had largely not been positive ones whether it facing off with an engineer over the mix of early single ‘Bombers’ or the unceremonious dumping and erasure of Bill Nelson from the Warriors sessions although these were cases of a producer being added at the label’s wishes not the artist’s. Later collaborators such as The Wave Team, Nick Beggs and Sulpher were there at Numan’s behest and the experiences were amicable. 

In 2005 Gary Numan was out in the weeds with piecing together the ‘Jagged’ album after early sessions with producers Andy Gray and Sulpher were aborted due to time constraints. 
Via a mutual friend Numan and Fenton finished the album by the following March and Fenton’s production ability gave ‘Jagged’ a much cleaner and bigger sound. His knowledge of Numan’s past work also popped up with the return (or at least a fair replication) of the ‘vox humana’ preset featured prominently throughout the ‘Pleasure Principle’. 

Where ‘Jagged’ saw Fenton’s entrance fairly late in the game with Numan having largely finalised the bones of every track, 2011’s ‘Dead Son Rising’ was their first collaboration from the ground up with Fenton sharing co-writing credits for every track and a larger sonic palette was on display including the reintroduction of acoustic guitar and tom-toms. 
‘Splinter’ and ‘Savage’ saw the addition of complex string arrangements and an increased presence of arabic sonic cues and electronic drumming. During the ‘Savage’ promotional cycle, both artists remarked on the speed that they were able to finish the album (Numan: “It was a really, really good process, no problems whatsoever. Maybe that’s because this is the fourth album that we’ve done together. We have a less confrontational way of discussing whatever problems there might be now compared to the past.” Fenton “it really was a case of ‘this is what we are working on in the next six months.’”)

Although Fenton’s production fingerprints are all across ‘Savage’, only the eighth track ‘What God Intended’ is credited as songwriting co-composition on the album. 
Described by Numan as “one of the stranger songs”, ‘What God Intended’ ties with ‘Broken’ as the most unconventional track from the sessions. Rather than being built around an anthemic chorus with a soaring vocal, the lyric is three similarly structured verses with the choruses being largely instrumental aside from some ‘I, Assassin’-esque vocals. 
The track’s main feature is it’s “huge, slow moving groove” of a rhythm track. Coming straight after ‘Mercy’, ‘What God Intended’ sounds like it may have spun out of Fenton’s tinkering with the earlier song’s tar-slow beat. 
For me it’s the song it took me the longest to like. As track eight in a ten track album of five-minute songs some are bound to get lost in the shuffle. However listening to it again I have grown to appreciate it’s unusual structure and enjoy it more than I thought I did at the start of this project. 

‘What God Intended’ was released in August 2017 a few weeks ahead of ‘Savage’ and did not chart. It is notable for being one of two tracks from the standard edition yet to be played live.

Top: Helicopter supports firing operation on West Mims Fire. 2017. Photograph by Josh O’Connor. Picture is public domain.

“West Mims Wildfire at Okefenokee NWR. Photos taken during a strategic firing operation along GA 177 in The Pocket near Stephen C Foster SP.”

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Thursday 2 January 2020

The End Of Things



I Heard A Voice / Demo 1

Demo 2 (Ade Fenton initial version)

Album Version

Video Edit

Live 2017 (Glasgow and Bristol)

Live with the Skaparis Orchestra 2018

I’m back from the Christmas break now so we’re back to the ‘Savage’ posts. 
Most of us have made it to 2020, a new decade of the unknown. The year 2000 is as far from us as it is from 1980 now, so that’s a thing.

2019 for Gary Numan was fairly typical for his career in some ways and not in others. 
In terms of the present, this year gone by of course marked the fortieth anniversary of his early twin peaks ‘Replicas’ and ‘The Pleasure Principle’, which former label Beggar’s Banquet commemorated with some lavish reissues of the demo recordings and Peel Session tracks alongside the odd alternate mix. 
I owned most of these tracks already with the 2008-2009 reissues but it was nice to get the sessions in chronological order and I always enjoy an additional essay on the making of media I enjoy and while the stuff here isn’t hugely extensive it’s good to get some of Numan’s band member’s impressions of the time as well. I also thought the ‘deconstructed’ versions of each album’s covers were pretty cool so thanks to Lesley Bleakley for the reimagining. 



2019 also marked four decades of Gary Numan touring as a solo act. This was celebrated with the ‘Revolution Tour’ and featured some choice classic tracks alongside some unexpected deep cuts. Never one to lean to heavily on the past, Numan introduced a rough version of the title track from the upcoming ‘Intruder’ project expected later this year. 
2019 was also the anniversary for some lesser known parts of Numan’s discography. 1984’s uniquely textured ‘Berserker’ reached thirty-five this year, the 1989 collaboration with Bill Sharpe hit thirty and his 1994 career reboot ‘Sacrifice’ is now quarter of a century old. 

‘The End Of Things’ marks the slower and more introspective mid section of the ‘Savage’ album, after the triple hit of ‘Ghost Nation’, ‘Bed Of Thorns’ and lead single ‘My Name Is Ruin’. Both it and the ballad ‘And It All Began With You’ form the emotional heart of the ‘Savage’ project. 
Much of ‘Savage’s concept deals with humanity more so than Numan’s previous concept albums and the tracks feature a variety of diminished figures with the one lying at the heart of this track nearing ‘Bed Of Thorns’ in terms of autobiographical content.

The October 2016 version shown during the pledge campaign had a completed vocal melody played on piano and included a hip hop-esque drum track to show where the verses would gradually build up to an anthemic chorus although said chorus was sparser and likely less finished at this stage.
By January 2017 producer Ade Fenton had added the strings and choir sections, giving the song one of the more grandiose arrangements on the entire album. This version had a crowded percussion section that threatened to drown out Gary’s vocals and was thankfully pared back for the final version.
The final version begins with a low throbbing sound, and a synthetic heartbeat that soon gives way to a tolling bell-like melody that sounds like it’s struggling to keep itself together. Gary’s voice carries the first half of the verse, using a tender tone as if coaxing more instrumentation out of the dark. As it continues the string and chorus sections arrive like rays of light until the chorus kicks in with some tribal drums dominating the mix. 

There’s the odd rough line, “I see a darker shade of darkness” scans pretty poorly and is likely a holdover from the original guide vocal. Other examples of these can be seen throughout Numan’s discography; see this album’s ‘Bed Of Thorns’s “hiding in the dark / waiting for a dark light”.
These hook lines and phrases are potentially related to Gary Numan’s Asperger’s, one of the traits commonly associated with high-functioning autism is the tendency to repeat certain words or phrases for varying periods of time. It can kind of be like acquiring a catchphrase for a while before you manage to shake it off from your vocabulary until the next one comes along. I don’t intend to generalise, only offer a potential explanation for some of the lyrics used in Numan’s work by linking it to his own life and experiences.  



The lyric calls back to ‘Scanner’s themes of family and the future albeit in a much bleaker light, in the earlier song the narrator vowed to protect his new family even at the cost of his own life (“I would die for you / I would give the world to you”).
Conversely ‘The End Of Things’ suggests it was all for nought. Lines like “everything I work for / everything I fight for / is always just too far” already filled with dread become all the more despairing in the past tense. It’s a simple but effective linguistic technique Numan uses between the two choruses and hammers home the image of a lone figure trapped by forces beyond their control. Although there are mentions of some forgotten creatures in the void with him (“I hear a shadow move in the light”) nothing comes to intervene. By the end of the final verse he has comforted or perhaps deluded himself with the idea “If I belong here / And this is mercy / Then there's no place I'd rather be” but the reality of his situation can’t be masked so easily. “Everything I died for died just the same”, we leave the figure how we found him, rattling his chains and screaming into the void. 
Throughout the verses I am reminded of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds’ album ‘Skeleton Tree’ particularly the opener ‘Jesus Alone’ which has a similarly throbbing instrumentation for much of it’s duration and a similar subject matter of the loss of loved ones. 

But there’s another reading of ‘The End Of Things’, as Numan’s acceptance regarding his position in the canon of artists. 
Consider being a recording artist for over forty years and remaining primarily known for one track written in a few minutes at age twenty-one. 
Gary Numan occupies an unusual spot to the layperson, a relative outsider with primarily one hugely popular hit song that is largely unrepresentative of his overall sound. The successes of ‘Splinter’ and ‘Savage’ have done a fair bit to move Gary Numan from the shadow of ‘Cars’, but when most artists reach ‘band adulthood’ it is rare to have them release bigger chart hits that displace an audience’s recollection of their earlier work. 

The fact that Savage was successful doesn’t make me feel buoyant about what I do next, it’s just extra pressure. I have to raise the bar again. What if the next album only gets to No.5? If you’d asked me before 2017 how I’d feel about a No.5 album, I’d have jumped up and down and thought it was the best thing ever. Now, it’d feel like a step back after a No.2 album. If you’re a glass-half-empty person – which, yes, I am! – success only makes the next record harder.
Interview with Classic Pop Magazine, November 2019




‘The End Of Things’ was released as a promo single in slightly edited form and did not chart.  

Top: ’Army Prescribed Burn on Fort Ord’, 2017. Photo by Steven L. Shepard, Presidio of Monterey Public Affairs. 

‘PRESIDIO OF MONTEREY, California -- The U.S. Army conducted a prescribed burn of more than 400 acres in the northern portion of the Fort Ord National Monument, Oct. 5. The Army's prescribed burns on the former Fort Ord are being conducted as part of the munitions cleanup program. The burn season is limited to summer and fall from July to December of each year. Burns are conducted to both encourage recovery of endangered fire dependent plant species and to facilitate continued munitions clean-up.’ Picture is public domain. 
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