Electronic musician Gary Numan has announced a 45th anniversary tour for his second solo album ‘Telekon’.
The British musician will perform the entire ‘Telekon’ album alongside a selection of hits and rare tracks during his UK tour this November. These shows will follow closely after Numan’s U.S. tour in September and October, where he’ll be both headlining and supporting The Psychedelic Furs.
With his distinctive sound characterised by powerful synthesisers, guitar effects pedals and sci-fi influences, Gary Numan is regarded as a pioneer of electronic music, best known for the hit singles ‘Are ‘Friends’ Electric?’ and ‘Cars’. Released in 1980, ‘Telekon’ was Numan’s second solo album after his departure from new wave band Tubeway Army, and went straight to number 1 on the UK albums chart.
Despite releasing 22 studio albums and 29 live albums over his decades-long career, ‘Telekon’ explores Numan’s desire to retire from touring and his withdrawal from the industry. In a 2015 interview with Record Collector, Numan discussed his mindset at the time, and the meaning behind some of the tracks on the record, saying: “When it came to the singles from ‘Telekon’, the first one was ‘We Are Glass’, which is about how fragile the whole fame thing is, how easily it can be destroyed, shattered and taken away from you. You’re easily broken and all that shit. The second single was ‘I Die: You Die’, which was my reaction to the press, which may have seemed childish, but that’s what I felt. Then the one after that was ‘This Wreckage’, which says it all really. So with ‘Telekon’, in my own way I was saying very loudly that this is not what I expected and I don’t like it. I’m off! There’s a song on there called ‘Please Push No More’. I wrote that knowing that I was going to pack it in.”
He adds: “A few years later, I’d become hugely famous and I just wanted to go back to writing songs and being a musician, not a famous person. So that was the reason for getting out of it, or so I thought, with the Wembley shows and the whole thing about retiring.”
The news of Gary Numan’s tour quickly followed an announcement about his new live album, ‘A Perfect Circle (Live at OVO Arena Wembley)’ which will be released on 25 July.
In the lead-up to the tour, Gary Numan will perform two intimate shows in Brighton on 24 and 25 June, followed by his debut appearance at Glastonbury on 28 June.
The dates for the November tour are as follows:
‘TELEKON’ 45th ANNIVERSARY UK TOUR:
11th – Glasgow, O2 Academy
12th – Newcastle, O2 City Hall
14th – Leeds, O2 Academy
15th – Birmingham, O2 Academy
16th – Bristol, Beacon
18th – Cardiff, University Great Hall
19th – Bournemouth, O2 Academy
21st – London, Eventim Apollo
22nd – Brighton, Brighton Centre
23rd – Southend, Cliffs Pavilion
25th – Nottingham, Rock City
26th – Cambridge, Corn Exchange
27th – Norwich, UEA
29th – Manchester, O2 Apollo
30th – Liverpool, O2 Academy
Tickets go on sale on 20 June. You can access pre-sale tickets from 18 June here.
