Page "Tubeway Army" Paragraph 18

Soon afterwards, the Tubeway Army album was released on blue vinyl, at which point Webb adopted the name " Gary Numan ".

Allegedly, Numan actually took his new pseudonym from a local Yellow Pages where a plumber called " Arthur Neumann " was listed, the singer abandoning the German spelling, to become Numan.

Whilst still largely guitar / bass / drums-based, the album saw his first tentative use of the Minimoog synthesizer, which he had come across by accident in the recording studio during the album sessions.

Lyrically the record touched on dystopian and sci-fi themes similar to those employed by authors such as Philip K. Dick, of whom Numan was a fan ( the opening lines of the song " Listen to the Sirens " are a direct lift from the title of Dick's book Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said ).

Whilst the album's modest initial pressing ( which included a large batch of warped editions ) sold out, it did not enter the album charts at that time, and no singles were lifted from it.

By this time Tubeway Army had decided to abandon live shows – Numan was unhappy with pub-venue gigs on the often violent London punk scene ( the only known recording of a Tubeway Army concert – a London show from February 1978 – was released as a bootleg album in the early 1980s.

It was later officially included under the title Living Ornaments ' 78 as bonus tracks on the 1998 CD re-release of the Tubeway Army album ).