10 May 2024 , 10:52
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Synth pop legend Gary Numan is about to head out on tour to perform classics including Cars and Are Friends Electric? – and along for the ride, as always, will be his wife Gemma.
But this tour will be different as the pair will spend two nights apart... having previously spent just five nights away from each other during their entire 32-year marriage. Such is their devotion to each other, Gary even admits when she goes on a supermarket trip, he waits to greet her at the door when Gemma returns.
"If she drives to the shops to get some groceries I miss her," he says. "It can be 30 minutes, but I still miss her, and I’ll be at the door looking for her coming back.
Gary is set to perfrorm some of his classics such as Cars and Are Friends Electric? (Getty Images)"I've got this app that tracks my family. I just watch it and I see when she's coming back and I make sure I'm at the gate when she arrives." Which explains why Gemma will be by Gary's side as he embarks on his tour to mark the 45th anniversary of his landmark 1979 albums, The Pleasure Principle and Replicas – and why the brief separation will be tough.
"I've never toured without her," he smiles. "However, our daughter Persia's graduation ceremony will take place while we're away. Gemma will fly back for it. It will feel like a limb is missing. And that's after 32 years. It’s a really lovely relationship. We do pretty much everything together."
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Gary says Gemma was the first person with whom he could truly connect, and she has helped him find a happiness and family life he never thought he would have. "When we first met my career looked to be pretty much over," the star candidly admits.
"I had no money, massive debts, my Asperger's was as ferocious as it's ever been – I was argumentative, I was difficult, I was really in a bad way.
"Her kindness and care were beautiful and lovely, she put up with the bizarre behaviour and mood changes." Gemma, 56, was a huge fan of Gary, 66, long before she met him. She even told her school careers teacher that she didn't need a job, she was going to marry the pop star.
By her late teens and early 20s, she was going to around 10 shows a tour. But it wasn't until she was 23 that they properly spoke. "She was never a groupie," Gary says. "She'd come to the shows and she was really pretty so I'd always notice her.
"Then on tour in 1991 she wasn't there. This was when my career was going really badly. Fans were disappearing in droves and I thought she'd probably lost interest.
Wife Gemma would follow Gary on his tours and watch him perform before they married (Andrew Milligan/REX/Shutterstock)
The couple now have three children together (Ken McKay/ITV/REX/Shutterstock)"Then right towards the end of the tour she turned up. She got an autograph and I had a conversation with her for the first time. All I said was, 'Why haven't you been to the shows, are you not liking the new stuff?' She said it was because her mum had cancer and it was terminal and she'd been at the hospital."
A few months later Gary heard Gemma's mum had died, and he invited her on a trip to a radio station. "It was a two-hour journey," he says. "I loved her personality and the things she talked about."
The couple went on to marry in 1997 and have daughters Raven, 20, Persia, 18, and Echo, 17. But Gary acknowledges his autism initially caused issues for the couple. He was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome – a type of autism – when he was 14.
"I perhaps don't have the emotional sensitivity that is needed in a relationship," he explains. "I can compartmentalise things in a quite brutal way. Gemma is warm and gifted in social interaction – the very thing I'm terrible at – so it was a case of meeting exactly the right person at the right moment.
"She was able to see that there was more to me than this quite aggressive, relatively unpleasant person." Today Gary is lauded as one of the founding fathers of synth pop music. He rose to fame in 1979 with Tubeway Army and the same year launched a successful solo career, but by the late 1980s the hits had dried up.
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"I became convinced I was a bad singer," he says. "But Gemma said, 'You don’t understand what people liked about your records in the first place.'" He took her advice to produce his next album, the 1994 critically acclaimed Sacrifice, and has not looked back, having sold more than 10million records.
Meanwhile, he is taking a keen interest in the singing career of his eldest daughter, Raven. The family live in Los Angeles, having moved there from Essex 12 years ago.
"I don't feel 66 and I love what I do, probably more than I've ever done," he muses. "[But] it might be that in five years' time I'm not really that concerned about my own music any more and I'm finding myself in a more management-type position looking after them. I feel content and I like the person I've become. I know I can be a bit quirky at times, but I almost like that now, rather than being embarrassed by it."
- For tickets for The Pleasure Principle/Replicas 45th Anniversary Tour visit garynuman.com