In this episode of Electric Friends, Tom goes deep on 'Voix' — the standout track from Gary Numan's 1988 album Metal Rhythm, and the song that survived the worst year of his career on its own terms.
In early 1988, Gary stood on a TV show promoting someone else's single alongside Bros and Sinéad O'Connor, and called it the lowest point he'd reached. Nine months later he released a song that says, more or less, I don't need your opinions, I don't need your rumours, I don't need to listen to strangers. It was never a single. It didn't make the tour. It didn't make the live album from that tour. And 31 years later he walked back on stage to play it as his encore.
We trace the whole story: Radio 1's refusal to play him, Steve Wright apologising on air for 'This Is Love', the fan protest outside Broadcasting House, the collapse of Numa Records, Radio Heart, the £200,000 tax bill and the lies that went with it, Miles Copeland's million-pound lifeline, and the man at IRS who picked 'New Anger' as the single and then denied he ever had.
Then we get into the record itself — Mike Smith's programming, the PPG Wave and the Roland D-50, Peter Haycock and Keith Beauvais as the only two guitarists to appear on the same track, Tessa Niles on backing vocals, and why this is one of the catchiest things Gary has ever written. Why is the title French when he sings it in English? What do the pronouns do across the three choruses? Why does the second "one" interlude curdle every image from the first? And what happens if you read a song about illegible people and untrustworthy voices through what Gary has since written about machines, people and his Asperger's?
Plus the two versions — the 1988 original and the heavier 'Voix 98' from the Dominion Day EP, sitting alongside 'Metal' and 'Down in the Park' — and the remarkable live history that takes the song from nowhere in 1988 to the first song of the encore on the 2019 tour.
Featuring excerpts from Gary's autobiography (R)evolution, read by the man himself, and a big batch of your comments and emails.
Mentioned in this episode:
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