1979 Gary Numan: Cars

Just a few short months after 'Are 'Friends' Electric?', Numan ditched the 'Tubeway Army' moniker and went it alone. A risky enterprise on paper, but the Army always were a one man band and the only real change is the name on the cover (the backing band remained the same) - his first solo single, 'Cars', is basically 'Are 'Friends' Electric?' with go faster stripes and shinier hub caps.

I don't really want to labour the Kraftwerk Kraftwerk Kraftwerk, blah blah blah angle, but how can you have the audacity to release an electronic music track called 'Car's without at least namechecking 'Autobahn'? The answer is you can't, or at least I can't, especially as it also makes a cracking point of reference to the previous single. Because whereas 'Autobahn' was a free running song of the open road, Numan uses his own vehicle as a comfort blanket with its mechanical frame shielding him from the real world ("Here in my car I feel safest of all, I can lock all my doors") until it almost becomes an object of fetish plucked from JG Ballard's 'Crash'.

Now, instead of looking at outside through his safe window, Numan is now content to view life through a windscreen, hoping "Will you visit me please, if I open my door"? - you have to come to Gary, he's not coming out to you because "nothing seems right" out there. Alienation, isolation, paranoia - see, I told you Numan was a one trick pony, but after a quick electronic gurgle to clear the throat, 'Cars' races off with sufficient force and melody to stand it apart from 'Are 'Friends' Electric?', though without that song's spoken word passages of heartbreak, this particular car may as well be driven by a robot. Which was kind of the point anyway.

I was a big Gary Numan fan in 1979. I bought this and ' The Pleasure Principle' album and I played them to death, but it also marks the precise point where I lost interest in him. In just two singles, Numan had played every card he held and with 1980's 'Telkon' even the twelve year old me knew the sound of a busted flush when he heard it. But it was fun while it lasted.