A look inside the new documentary on Gary Numan

Gary Numan is the subject of Steve Read and Rob Alexander's new documentary Gary Numan: Android in La La Land. Read tells us how he got under the electronic music pioneer's skin

“Is Numan Human?” one tabloid asks following new wave “godfather of electric music” Gary Numan’s explosive debut and sophomore no.1 singles Are ‘Friends’ Electric? and Cars in the summer of 1979. The question’s childish humour and its deceptive simplicity belie what is really at stake when the press asked this – Neman’s legitimacy as an artist and ultimately as a socially acceptable human being.

Numan’s Kraftwerk-like stylings – an obsession with machines, his android affectations and flair for technological spectacle – made him an uneasy fit with stripped down, ‘authentic’ punk rock sensibilities that were en vogue at the time, his larger than life hyperreal pop seen as an insult and a distraction to the ‘real’ politics of punk. It’s an unfortunate critical dismissal of Numan’s work and paranoid android persona, which were born as much out of his Asperger’s and as a mask for his stage fright and social anxiety as they were artistic concerns.

It’s a question that directors Steve Read and Rob Alexander’s candid documentary Gary Numan: Android in La La Land successfully reframes and answers with a resounding “yes.” 21st century Numan cuts a vastly different figure from his flashy days of yore. He is essentially a husband and dad, casually Goth with kohl-ringed eyes and dyed black hair, who also happens to walk on stage and move thousands with his musical genius, with huge, ecstatic festival crowds exuberantly singing his songs back to him.

Steve Read just happened to be another face in the crowd. “I went to see him play at the Hop Farm Festival in Kent,” recalls the director. “I hadn’t thought of Gary Numan in years. Before this film, I wouldn’t say I was a fan. I knew his music but I only really knew his old stuff, like a lot of people. I saw him and I was blown away by his set. I thought it was really brilliant and he played some of the older stuff but it had a much heavier sound to it – guitars and more industrial.”

Gary Numan: Android in La La Land

What really got Read excited, however, was Numan’s performance. “He was jumping all over the place and I loved it. The scenes we shot at the festival, he’s playing Are ‘Friends’ Electric?” in the film and it’s pretty much what I was seeing – similar festival crowd rather than the staunch Numanoids fans. That’s when I first connected with him, when I heard him play Are ‘Friends’ Electric? That’s why we used it in the film. You can see the energy and how exciting it is and the kids going mental for it.”

After the gig, Read bumped into the performer backstage and they got chatting. “I realised very quickly Gary was this interesting and engaging person – Gemma [Gary’s wife] was there and those two together were brilliant – just really, really funny and they had a lot of chemistry. I just blurted out ‘Gary, I want to make a film about you!’”

Luckily, after Numan’s initial response of bafflement (“Really? Why? What about?”) and Read’s honest answer (“I don’t really know, I just want to!”), Numan agreed.

The resulting film is neither a nostalgic biography, nor an archival affair (“we didn’t have the budget,” notes Read) but, through happenstance, an intensely personal documentary chronicling a crucial chapter in Numan’s life: the lead up to (spoiler) Gary Numan’s first critical and commercial success in 25 years with album Splinter. Essentially Android follows the Numan family through their personal and financial gamble on a move to Los Angeles. Uprooting their three young daughters and many pets in the process, they hope that it will be good for Numan’s career and the family’s happiness.

In its observational moments of quotidian family life, albeit in a castle with a rock star dad, it resembles a funnier, less obnoxious version of The Osbournes. What makes the film unique is Gary and Gemma’s refreshing openness when reflecting on their stories of personal struggles – poor mental health, miscarriages, family arguments and financial instability. Issues that will likely resonate with many viewers, fans or not.

“When Gary talks about things like anxiety and depression, I’ve experienced them myself so I knew someone of Gary’s stature talking about [mental health] is really a great thing,” says Read, “especially as a lot of people, particularly men, find it difficult to talk about. I’m very proud we managed to get that on camera. There was stuff he was beginning to write about on the album [Splinter] that he hadn’t really processed. These [interview] sessions we were having were a bit like therapy sessions. I think it was the first time he was talking about this stuff to someone and getting it off his chest. It’s so raw and honest. It’s kind of nerve tingling to watch and I think that’s why the film is having such an effect on people.”

Numan also opened up about a recent, painful schism between himself and his parents, who were once so integral to his career – his dad was his manager, his mum made his costumes and talked him out of running away from his first Top of the Pops appearance. “I had no idea he’d start talking about that, I didn’t even know it had happened,” says Read. “The experience as a viewer watching Android is a bit like our experience as filmmakers. We were finding out things, we were going on this journey and the narrative was developing as we went. The story’s evolving around you and you get sucked into it. The film starts off as a fairly conventional music doc – hopefully it’s much more engaging and deeper. It’s more a life story than anything else. It’s part music doc, part road trip, part therapy session, part love story.”

The love story at Android’s core is between Gary and super fan Gemma, as unlikely as it is funny and romantic. “Gemma’s helped Gary a huge amount to come out of his shell and she’s been pivotal to not only resurrecting his career but his life,” explains Read. “He’s much more comfortable around people than he was back then.” Read refers to the few clips of interviews included in the film of Numan at the height of his career, one interviewer in particular treating him like an eccentric freakish figure of fun. A “stark contrast” as Read describes it compared to the frank and verbose discussions in Android. “One word answers back then. Gary’s obviously been through a hell of a lot. Asperger’s has informed the way he was in the early days. I think it’s a big part of why his music was as it was and his lyric writing and so on.

“Now, he’s more comfortable. I think that’s partly down to him wanting to get this story out. For me, in documentary making, I think it’s about trust and access and the more trust you get the more access. He obviously trusted us very much very early on. We connected very quickly and that’s why he’s comfortable with me. I could ask anything I wanted to and we were allowed to film anywhere, so I’d often just roam around finding him in the kitchen talking to Gem or reading stories to his kids. It was a good opportunity for Gary to tell his story.”