Year: 1978
Label: Beggars Banquet
Format: CD, LP
Tracks: 10
Time: 38 min.
Genre: electronic
Style: Punk Synth-Pop
"the pleasure principle"
Year: 1979
Country: UK
City: London
Label: Beggars Banquet
Format: CD, LP
Tracks: 10
Time: 40 min.
Genre: electronic
Style: Punk Synth-Pop
Gary Numan goes solo and pre-empts the sound of the next decade with a No.1 record that remains a compelling document of its time and continues to inspire great pop music today – The Pleasure Principle… By Felix Rowe. It’s an enduring image: a young, besuited man behind a desk, fixated on the throbbing red glow of a translucent pyramid object. His face, while almost expressionless, nonetheless carries a degree of reticence and suspicion at the mysterious, futuristic form before him. But clearly he’s curious, too, enthralled by its untapped potential. Like a portal into another dimension, the future has literally manifested itself before his eyes, and it’s his for the taking. This is, of course, the iconic imagery that adorns the front cover of Gary Numan’s debut solo record, The Pleasure Principle. Over 40 years later, we now know just how prescient it turned out to be. Numan seized that metaphorical prism with both hands and used it to help shape the future of pop.
The Pleasure Principle is the centrepiece of three UK No.1 studio albums in succession – his extremely successful ‘Machine’ phase, that spawned two chart-topping singles and continues to resonate today. Its influence has spread far and wide, extending beyond pure pop into hip-hop, dance, reggae and even industrial metal. Pick any of the countless ‘Best of 80s Pop’ compilations at random, and there’s a good chance that it features either Cars or its predecessor Are ‘Friends’ Electric? After all, both are so completely representative of the 80s – in sound and aesthetic – despite actually belonging to the previous decade.
Although by no means the only pioneer of UK synth-pop, or indeed even the first, Numan was certainly positioned on the cutting edge, operating at the advance guard of electro-pop. When he first arrived on the Old Grey Whistle Test and Top Of The Pops, he did so fully formed – like an android beamed down from space, sent on a mission to teach us earthlings how to groove. In fact, the reality was not quite so clear cut. Numan’s early man-machine persona owes as much to accident as it does to design. Like many synth-pop heroes, Numan’s musical journey began on six strings, delivering scrappy three-chord punk. Tubeway Army’s debut single That’s Too Bad has more in common with Buzzcocks than Kraftwerk. The band were signed off the back of the punk explosion a good year or so before they even discovered synths.
While that record documents their first dabblings in the dark arts of electronics, it essentially remained a more conventional band effort. Equally, the androgenous, robotic cyborg look – somewhere between the crisp, clinical and ordered Kraftwerk and Bowie’s Thin White Duke – was, at least partially, another happy accident. Numan has since admitted its genesis was a matter of pragmatism, when the BBC’s make-up department slapped on a load of white foundation and eyeliner to hide his acne shortly before a Top Of The Pops appearance. Likewise, his cold, detached performances that became key to the android persona he attributed to stage fright and incompetence.
Props to Numan for candidly shattering the mystique behind his own mythology. Still, however he arrived at it, he certainly nurtured the image to great effect. Although now billed as a solo artist, the personnel on The Pleasure Principle remains essentially the same as on the previous Tubeway Army album. Recorded swiftly, the LP was released in September 1979, less than six months after the band’s last effort, Replicas, with the core line-up retained. In fact, Numan had wanted to ditch the name as early as the first Tubeway record, distancing himself from the punk scene the band grew out of.
Gary had long been the face and creative driving force of the band, not just writing the songs, but also producing their records. The latter is a considerable and under-recognised feat for an unproven kid, still barely out of his teens. It was only off the success of Replicas that his label, Beggars Banquet, consented to the new identity.
The Pleasure Principle picks up directly where Replicas left off, indulging Numan’s obsession with the dystopian stories of sci-fi futurist writers like JG Ballard and Philip K. Dick. He’d already explored these themes right off the bat with Tubeway Army, back when he was known as Valerian, though by now the music was keeping pace with the futurist stylings. Replicas was heavily inspired by Dick’s book, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, the same source material for the Ridley Scott classic, Blade Runner (incidentally Numan’s favourite film). With The Pleasure Principle, the album’s title and cover were direct references to the painting of the same name by Belgian surrealist artist, René Magritte.
Even song titles play into the notably sparse and clinical imagery – single words thrown out like a typological list of theoretical concepts or constructs of modernity: Cars, Films, Tracks, and so on. While the record is frequently hailed for its sonic invention, in reality it uses a very limited palette of sounds, derived from a standardised core ‘band’ set-up. Throughout, you’ll witness the same identifiable synth sound (innovatively pushed through guitar pedals), crunchy live drums courtesy of Cedric Sharpley and bass from Paul Gardiner, then a few otherworldly textures on top.
Despite the progressive choice of instruments, it’s still essentially conforming to convention: a band playing together live in a room, rather an electronic producer, painstakingly programming beats and samples in an automated studio environment. The looseness and – dare we say – punk mentality is still discernibly present. A notable hangover, of course, is Numan’s vocal itself. Possessed of a limited range, he’s not a naturally gifted singer. Nonetheless, he uses what he’s got to great effect, firing out his words in his childlike twang like the Artful Dodger lost in the wrong century. Equally potent, is the inclusion of violin or viola, courtesy of Chris Payne and Ultravox’s Billy Currie, that provide a counterpoint to the synthesized sounds, and an otherworldly character when overlaid.
As with the best synth-pop, it’s that tussle between the machines and more organic elements that create its unique character. The era was captured in a performance at Hammersmith Apollo in the month of release (September 1979) – later issued as the live album, Living Ornaments ‘79, and (with a slightly different tracklisting) The Touring Principle. It largely draws on tracks from The Pleasure Principle, bolstered with a smattering from the first two Tubeway records, which again emphasise his punkier beginnings (*continue reading this review by Felix Rowe ).
