THE PLAN has been remastered from the original analog studio tapes to ensure the CD is the best possible sonic transfer.The package includes the original artwork (but has a new front sleeve), a generous smattering of photos and the lyrics.

The official release date is 16 November in the USA but it can be purchased on pre-release through Alma road mail order (see link on screen) from August
"G lam was the first real pop thing that happened in the '70s," wrote NME journalist Charles Shaar Murray, "and it brought a great cast with it - a cast of geniuses and madmen, poseurs and philosophers, winners and losers, clowns and warriors, stars and fools." A 13-year-old west London boy, Gary Webb (alias Gary Numan) was initially entranced by T.Rex's Marc Bolan, then graduated to the emaciated, alien charm and pop genius of David Bowie. Charles Shaar Murray summarised the importance of Bowie's glam-messiah Ziggy Stardust as "giving the impetus for kids to dye their hair fantasy colours like blue, green, scarlet and purple; to wear clothes based on Flash Gordon comics and '30s movies; to be exactly what they wanted to be and screw reality."

It's not a coincidence that Gary Numan wrote his first song Warriors Of Marnz in 1971, the year T.Rex scored hits with Hot Love, Get It On and Jeepster.
"I'd play it on the guitar, my mates would play the back of my acoustic guitars to make bongos and we'd sit in my room thinking we were undiscovered talent," recalls Numan.

Science fiction and fantasy were an essential part of the gaudy fabric of glam rock, from Bowie's Martian invaders to the American rocker Jobriath who in 1973 extravagantly claimed he'd booked places on board the first Pan Am flight to the moon. The lavish dreamer also boasted that his debut stage set would feature him "dressed as King Kong being projected upwards on a mini Empire State Building. This will turn into a giant spurting penis and I will have transformed into Marlene Dietrich." Oddly, none of this happened and he ended up dying in obscurity of an Aids-related disease in July 1983.
Nevertheless, these tall stories and extra-terrestrial glamour provided a fascinating escape and distraction for Numan, who'd been a big sci-fi fan since he was a kid:
"My mum used to get TV21 for me. It was more adult than Dennis The Menace: spaceships, aeroplanes, more machine-based and futuristic."
Later, as an adolescent, he lost himself in books by William Burroughs (Naked Lunch & Dead Fingers Talk), JG Ballard (The Atrocity Exhibition), Robert A. Heinlein (Stranger In A Strange Land), George Orwell (1984) and Aldous Huxley (Brave New World). Films were also important in framing the ideas in Numan's songs, especially A Clockwork Orange, Fahrenheit 451, Logan's Run and George Lucas' pre-Star Wars movie, THX 1138.

After glam died in the early '70s, Numan spent the next few years writing songs, bunking off school, playing in various dead end groups, hanging out in gay clubs and getting beaten up in Soho for looking "weird" in his white jeans, black DM's, orange hair and Mick Ronson T-shirt. In 1977 Numan started a punk band with a few mates, keen to jump on board the only worthwhile British musical movement since glam. They only did a few gigs, changing their name every time - Riot, Heroin, Stiletto and finally Mean Street - but it was a turning point for Numan who became singer, songwriter and lead guitarist. After a while the others grew jealous of the attention he was receiving and kicked him out of the group, prompting their ex-frontman to write the song Mean Street about his experience.
In summer 1977 Numan answered an advert in the back of the Melody Maker for another punky outfit The Lasers who were looking for a lead guitarist. Although Numan intended to stay in the background, after a few rehearsals they were performing his songs and he'd changed their name to Tubeway Army. According to his autobiography Praying To The Aliens, "The name Tubeway Army came from a spate of violent incidents that I'd read about several years before in the newspapers, where gangs were running on to underground trains and then, when the train stopped, they'd get off, beat up anyone who happened to be standing on the station and jump back on the tube as it pulled out."

Not only is it a fantastic title for a group, the idea of the subway providing an alternative lifestyle and habitat for freaks, junkies, queers and prostitutes crops up in several of his songs. These characters include the Crazies and U.D.'s (Undesirables) who live under the city in Replicas (1979) and the "station boys" of Listen To The Sirens. In the '90s it's arguable that the only true underground culture is lived by the "mole people" who started occupying New York's abandoned tracks and platforms in the 1980's (including, legend has it, in a deserted station built in 1870, featuring a grand piano, chandeliers and mirrored walls). Rob Ryan's recent novel Underdogs, creates a whole world of bizarre individuals who live in Seattle's subway system, such as a six-foot-four "hybrid-she male" and another with "skin like parchment, a
complexion better suited to some carpet-dwelling blind bug than a human." These are the kind of misfits, abandoned people and underground gangs that Numan brings to life on his early albums The Plan, Tubeway Army and Replicas.

Meanwhile, Numan broke up the original Tubeway Army line-up, taking with him the band's name and bassist Paul Gardiner. His uncle Jess Lidyard took over for a while on drums and the trio recorded a demo featuring That's Too Bad, Oh! Didn't I Say and Out of Sight at Spaceward Studios, Cambridge on 16 October 1977. Fledgling punk label Beggars Banquet signed Tubeway Army after hearing this demo, which is included on The Plan.

That's Too Bad was remixed at Manor Studios in Oxfordshire by Mick Glossop and released as Tubeway Army's debut single on 10 February 1978 (the sleeve features new drummer Bob Simmonds). Despite the speedy, amphetamine-rush of the rough-edged recording, it's punk in styling, not content. The lyrics instantly introduce some of Numan's favourite themes: passive bi-sexuality ("Please mister do be careful / I'm so fragile"), Orwellian science fiction ("I look up and the camera eye is searching my room / The TV screen is calling me but for what or whom") and social paranoia ("I talk a lot, a sign of fear / I thought you should know").

Punk didn't mean anywhere near as much to Numan as glam rock. He was a fan of the Sex Pistols whom he saw at the Notre Dame Hall, London in late 1976 but he argues in his autobiography, "musically I didn't associate them with many of the other punk bands. Their music wasn't really fast, like it was supposed to be if you were a punk. They were an aggressive rock band and I was into the way they looked."
Tubeway Army weren't really a punk band either. They used to play some up-tempo, thrashy songs such as Boys, Blue Eyes and You Don't Know Me with Numan's vocals sneering in a nasally London accent. However, alongside these "punkier" songs were the catchy guitar pop of Kill St Joy, the slightly odd sounding My Shadow In Vain and a cover of Velvet Underground's White Light/White Heat. Even in their most garagey form they were too arty, sci-fi and measured for a purist definition of punk. They didn't even move around much on stage, preferring to remain static behind a wall of Les Paul-generated noise rather than jump in the air, or, god forbid, pogo. The live recording, Living Ornaments ‘78, included as a bonus on the Tubeway Army CD re-issue, captures the flavour of the band at this time.

By now the young singer was calling himself Gary Valeriun (note: this is the name credited on the sleeve of That's Too Bad but at other times he's spelt it Valerian), as an attempt to sound "spacey". Valerian actually means flowering herb, although the sci-fi enthusiast was probably also aware of a futuristic, space-time agent created in a French comic book by Jean-Claude Mezieres and Jean Giraud, who both acted as designers for the '90s movie The Fifth Element. The 27th Century Valerian has been having adventures since 1968 but Numan dropped the designation almost immediately.

The band recorded their second single Bombers at a "proper" studio, The Music Centre, Wembley, on 15 April 1978 with the producer Kenny Denton. By now the line-up had changed again to include a new drummer Barry Benn and a second guitarist Sean Burke, who was there to flesh out the live sound. Numan loved experimenting with the studio equipment and the resulting sound was much cleaner and richer than the demo-ey approach of their debut. Beggars Banquet were initially disappointed that this fast-maturing band had already shed all pretence of being punks but Melody Maker were encouraging in their critique of the single: "Interesting, if flawed. The song is hardly great but the treatment shows they're beginning to scour the studio for possibilities. The progression is well-paced and atmospheric, bolstered by some good old siren effects and undercut by some strident rhythm chops. A nifty blueprint." However when Sounds reviewed Bombers in August 1978 the writer still thought it sounded like a demo!: "Would you believe a Billy Idol lookalike already? A peculiarly '78 style of thin, nasal vocals, whose chic-ness derives from the snottiness level you can convey per syllable. More use of repetition, unintentional this time. The drummer makes a valiant effort to sound like a drum machine. Sounds like a rough demo, half mixed, of a potentially good single."
Meanwhile, a slightly earlier session on 7, 8 & 9 March 1978 (during which Numan turned 20), had already dropped some strong hints of style-changes to come. It's this frantic, creative burst by Numan, Gardiner (bass) and Lidyard (drums) that forms the basis for The Plan, including the original version of Bombers which features the line, "all the junkies pulling needles from their arms." Beggars objected to this when Tubeway Army came to recording the single because they felt the word "junkies" would prevent it from receiving any airplay. Numan capitulated and changed the line to, "all the nurses pulling needles from their arms". Lyrically, Bombers echoes Bowie's Five Years, as Numan observes and recounts scene-by-scene descriptions of individual freaks and panicked crowds: "I see an old man knocked to the ground / And beaten up by the vicar's wife / No one stops to help they're far too busy trying to save their own lives." The track concludes with the apocalyptic image of a deserted metropolis: "In silent bars, in silent rooms, in silent cars / You hide where you can." This doomsday scenario was a favourite of Numan's in his early career, with M.E. from 1979's The Pleasure Principle outlining the thoughts of the last living being on earth, which just happens to be a machine. On The Plan, Numan sings the acoustic Crime Of Passion (a lo-fi relative of Jacques Brel's Amsterdam as covered by David Bowie) in a detached, zombie-like voice, relaying pictures from the end of the world of rusting streetcars, yellow newspapers and "dead hotel bellboys dreaming of old men they've had." Numan's threatening, slightly damaged persona hardly seems to be offering much of a future to "the only girl in the world", in a scene lifted straight out of George Romero's 1969 movie Night Of The Living Dead.

That’s too bad - single version
Oh! didn’t I say
Out of sight
Bombers - original version
My shadow In vain - original version
This machine - original version
Thoughts no.2
Something’s in the house - original version
Check it
The monday troop
This is my life
Mean street
Ice
Crime of passion
The life machine - original version
Critics
Do your best - original version
Basic J.
That’s too bad - original version
Bombers - single version
Blue eyes
O. D. receiver
Fadeout 1930
Don’t be a dummy
This song's acoustic twin The Monday Troop crawls through city backstreets which have a ghostly, vaudeville atmosphere ("Final bow in a disused music hall / Of laughter and mime"), occasionally glancing back to see who's there ("My shadow's never far behind / And I must find another role to play"). This debuts a favourite Numan theme, of a man being hunted down by someone or something. On The Plan it appears to be a twisted, powerful alter-ego, stalking the underground and derelict streets like the subconscious monster of the classic sci-fi film, Forbidden Planet. My Shadow In Vain is an obvious example but also Critics breaks into this imagery with the lines, "I see your face in mirrors shadowing mine / I see your dirty finger marks are on my wall".

Given that Numan wrote most of these songs when he was 16 or 17, it's no surprise that the central subject matter is identity - or loss of it. On much of The Plan adolescent fears are turned into spectral characters who seem to be in constant danger of disappearing altogether, perhaps as the result of outside forces, as in Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man where the penalty for murder is total destruction of personality. This is most strikingly portrayed on one of the LP's best tracks Check It. Alongside The Machine (Steel And You) it's effectively Numan's first electronic pop song although he'd yet to discover the analogue power of the Mini-Moog and was using the instrument as a simple melodic addition. The song presents a man who is fading in and out of focus, to the point where he literally doesn't have a grip on reality because he can't even see himself in the mirror. It's a powerful image of someone's personality fragmenting and breaking down, and the full existentialist horror is brilliantly summed up: "I get the feeling I am no-one / Something hasn't quite / Stopped me from being someone."
There are also a lot of songs with lyrics about I.D. changes as if it's possible to reinvent yourself on a daily basis. Numan developed this idea after reading about a psychological condition, the Disembodied Self, where people would consciously adopt different personalities. On the song, Oh! Didn't I Say, the protagonist decides, "well, I'm growing tired of this place / I think it's time to change my face", on The Monday Troop he, "must find another role to play / Visit mask-maker" and during Critics, he slips into a nostalgia for previous personas: "Old faces in my wardrobe / So many I've not seen / Memories to look back on, people I've been."

Despite these intriguing lyrical ideas both Numan and Beggars Banquet felt that he'd outgrown the songs on The Plan almost as soon as he'd recorded them and the proposed LP remained in the can. For all their power-pop catchiness, cuts such as Ice, Critics and This Is My Life were musically one-dimensional and the songwriter also felt that he could do better versions of other tracks. Tubeway Army would re-record five songs for their first full debut LP - My Shadow In Vain, Something's In The House, The Life Machine, Do Your Best (re-titled Friends) and The Machine (Steel And You).
These are some of Numan's best compositions, especially The Life Machine (which runs for less than two minutes on the original version) where he vividly describes a soul disconnected from its damaged, brain-dead body, barely kept alive by doctors and the wishes of his family. On The Machine (Steel And You) he inverts this idea, so that the only function of the central character is to look after a machine, an idea which Numan explores further on Engineers from The Pleasure Principle. This servitude begs the question, if the human is performing endlessly repetitive tasks for its mechanical master, who is more machine-like? One of Kraftwerk's motivations for utilising android imagery was explained along similar lines by Florian Schneider in the late '70s: "The image of the robot is very important to us, it's very stimulating to people's imaginations. We always found that many people are robots without knowing it. In Paris, the people go in the Metro, they move, they go to their offices, 8 o'clock in the morning - it's like remote control."

Meanwhile, Something's In The House and My Shadow In Vain are both Tubeway Army zeniths, while Do Your Best / Friends would later be covered by Pop Will Eat Itself on the Random album. One of The Plan's highlights, which he's yet to revisit, is Basic J, a full-on, adrenaline-fuelled guitar thrash about an ex-girlfriend called Jo who was also the gender-swapped inspiration for Jo The Waiter off the Tubeway Army LP.

The 15 songs recorded in March 1978 remained in Beggars Banquet's vault for six-and-a-half years, finally emerging as The Plan in autumn 1984. Not only were the tracks sequenced in the running order that Numan originally intended but the album took on a life of its own by leaping into the UK charts at Number 29. On this occasion, the media weren't as savage as he'd predicted on the song Critics ("I feel you waiting for me / Waiting to dig my grave"). Sounds shrugged and concluded, "not bad. . . Gazza sounds like an in-tune Billy Idol, but the same scratchy fuzz guitar permeates the entire album", while Melody Maker were more spirited: "There is more real Numan here than silicone slap. He offers a little of himself before the shell of total imagery is slammed shut around him. Numan was almost believable, holding the balance between self and contrivance."

This release also includes Fadeout 1930 which is a summer '78 recording of his punk song, Out Of Sight and the 30 second Don’t Be A Dummy, which Gary sang in a Lee Cooper advert after the release of the Tubeway Army album.

- Steve Malins

Steve Malins is the co-author of Gary Numan's autobiography, "Praying To The Aliens". link back to GARY NUMAN page