I Love 1980 - 14

Gary Numan - We Are Glass

The advert in Smash Hits had already announced that neither We Are Glass or the B side, Numan's re-working of Erik Satie's Trois Gymnopedies, would be available on the 'forthcoming album' making this sixteen year old even more excited about what was to come from the alreay legendary Gazza.
The new single effectively brought in a brand new Numan style after the sparse synthetic sound of The Pleasure Principle just a few months hence. This time it was belting pumped-up drums, a thrashing guitar and a richer, more beefy synth line (with new stae-of-the art synths) that made it more rock than the previous material (even compared to Replicas) and yet still remaining fresh and exciting, effectively consolidating the 'synth-rock' sound which Numan had picked up from John Foxx's Ultravox and which would be re-copied by the new Ure-Vox and many others.
Lyrics are typically enigmatic although with the 'glass' idea I believe Gazza was already lamenting his fragility with respect to his public and in particular his critics, a letitmotif that would remain in the subsequent single I Die : You Die and the subsequent Telekon album.
Oh yes, and the new look - gone was the smart black suit with matching shirt and two-colour tie in favour of a futuristic shiny new Tomorrow People like space suit (soon to be replaced by the characteristic black boiler suit with red stripes - see video) with some kind of, er, tube in his hand. Numan may have been ridiculed by the press but he was just about the only one who could pull this kind of thing off, and the fans (like moi) loved it.
Going back to the single, it's chart progress was pretty typical making its entry into the Top 40 at no. 10, peaking at no. 5 a week later and then disappearing again within a month, ie. the fans rushed out to buy it (also in virtue of the non-album track idea), then the general record buying public let it slip by also due to the fact that it recieved little airplay (although I do remember the more mellow Trois Gymnopedies being played on Radio 2) and the video was banned by the BBC after being shown once on TOTP (I think). The only thing that irked me was the in-your-face use of his beloved guitar which meant he was already trying to shirk off the 'synth-artist' tag (cf the synth / keyboard heavy Cars video). It already seemed something to be 'ashamed' of.

• Get We Are Glass here
• See video here

Gary Numan - We Are Glass (live 2007)

Gary Numan , 1980. He was so fragile.