Gary Numan: Android in La La Land

Part career resumé, album promo and reality TV audition, Steve Read and Rob Alexander's profile of a pioneering British synthpop star skirts a 30-year gap in Gary Numan's life to reflect on fame, family and the determination required to make music and perform live while suffering from Asperger's syndrome. The flashback to what Numan calls the "Machine" era of Tubeway Army and his album The Pleasure Principle is wonderfully nostalgic and he is laudably open about the problems he faced dealing with creativity and celebrity. But, even though a good deal more could be said about the wilderness years and a feud with manager/father Tony Webb, the decision to focus on the recording of the comeback Splinter album while Numan is relocating from the UK to Los Angeles is fully justified by the delightful insights into his relationship with superfan wife Gemma and the refreshingly unfazed interjections of their young daughters Raven, Echo and Persia. Full of fine musical moments and sparky domestic banter, this unveiling of the unexpectedly sweet side of a famously inert pop icon should intrigue more than devoted Numanoids.