Gary Numan Opens Up About Year of Tragedy

said goodbye, gave his brother a hug and watched him walk away. ‘That was the last time I saw him,’ says the singer, who was devastated when John died from a heart attack in the street, out of sight, just a few moments later last November. 

‘I’ve never felt so bad about anything. I’m more emotional about this than at any time in my life before, by a million times over. I had to go on stage the same day I found out. I was all over the place.’

The singer’s career was going extremely well when tragedy struck, and not just on the back of his huge 1979 hits Are ‘Friends’ Electric? and Cars. He’d been out of fashion for a while after his late-Seventies/early-Eighties heyday but made a dramatic comeback with the encouragement of his wife Gemma.

A new generation embraced Gary’s intense, doom-laden songs, now souped up with massive modern electronic beats and heavy guitars, and he made a triumphant first appearance at last year at the age of 67.

Gary will be out on the road again this summer, but his new album has been delayed by the trauma of losing his brother, as well as having to care for his wife as she recovers from serious medical struggles, all of which he is talking about for the first time today.

‘John and I spent the day together before my Leeds show, it was lovely,’ he recalls. ‘My brother had a heart condition, but he said the medicines were working, he’d adapted his lifestyle and diet, and looked great.’

After the show they talked about their happy childhood together, growing up in the western outskirts of London as the sons of a bus driver.

‘My brother was adopted,’ says Gary, who lives in LA now, but still sounds like a Londoner. ‘I got him when I was seven. I remember standing in the front garden when my mum and dad drove in with him for the first time, seeing this baby with a shock of white curly hair. We’ve always been very close as a family.’

John, 60, was a professional pilot but had also played sax and keyboards in Gary’s band. The brothers left the Leeds venue just after midnight. Gary had a tour bus with a bed waiting to take him to the next stop on the tour. His brother had his car parked around the corner.

‘I got in the bus and started to make a bit of toast to go to bed with. He got around the corner and collapsed. I didn’t know anything about it. We were aware of an ambulance going past, but thought nothing of it. That was for my brother.’

How did he find out? ‘Dad started ringing me at seven in the morning.’ Gary was still on the bus, now parked at the O2 Academy in Birmingham. ‘Everyone else was asleep so I didn’t answer. Dad rang again and again, so I picked up and he told me John had died.’

His first thought was to cancel the show. ‘Dad said, “Just keep the tour going. It’s what John would have wanted.” It’s the last thing you want to do, but Dad had spoken to Becky, John’s wife, and she had said John would feel bad if the tour stopped because of him. I’m sure it’s true.’

So a grief-stricken Gary went on stage that night, but broke down in front of the audience. ‘We got to an instrumental bit and I just started screaming, proper screaming. That was weird because I’m not emotional. I didn’t even do that when my mum died, and I love my mum to bits.’

Beryl died from cancer in 2016. Gary was with her, and a couple of hours later, in the front room of the family home, he had an unforgettable experience. ‘I felt this lovely tingling in my feet that went up through my body and out of my head. A wash of loveliness that lasted for five seconds. I was left with contentment, like everything was all right with the world. I thought then – and still do now – that was my mum making sure I was OK. I said: “Bye.”’

There are tears in his eyes now. ‘I get upset. I apologise for that.’ There’s no need. ‘I didn’t get that lovely feeling with John. I was waiting for it but whatever happened to John, he wasn’t able to do it like she did. That was unsettling.’

But there was some comfort in a message Gary received about a week later. ‘I got an email from a lady who told me it was her son who’d found John. He was a student, heading back to his digs with his friends. They called the ambulance and tried to resuscitate him,’ says Gary.

‘That made me feel a little bit better, because what had really upset me was the thought of John lying in the rain on his own. They were talking to him and helping him. Whether he knew that or not, I don’t know, but somebody was with him.’

The tears are a surprise from a man who’s said he rarely expresses emotion. His early image was robotic and he’s been described by critics as cold, distant, even alien. So it’s a surprise to find him so down-to-earth, even warm, despite his grief.

Gary is autistic, which he says gave him the drive to make it in the first place, then come back from career oblivion. ‘Being autistic has given me a suit of armour to wear, from an emotional point of view,’ he says. ‘I would not want to be without it. I wouldn’t be here.’ What does he mean? ‘Not here at all, that is one possibility; or certainly not still in the business.’

How does it work? ‘If there’s a setback, it bothers me for a day. Then I’m able to wrap up the emotion, put it to one side and carry on. It’s like having a snow plough for emotions on the front of my face, pushing problems aside. It can make me seem cold and unfeeling at times, but it’s self-protection.’

There’s been a lot of snow to plough through lately, even before John died. ‘I started writing the new album in December 2024 and got two songs done, then my wife started going through problems, bad ones. Her dad died, there was the menopause and some mental health things going on. Then she had a mini-stroke and they found the reason for that was a hole in the heart.

Gemma’s heart would sometimes run at 240 beats a minute, he says, trying to emulate it with his fingers. ‘Four beats a second. I can’t even tap that fast.’ She also had damage to nerve fibres in her brain. ‘That was to do with the amount of migraines she was getting, caused by degenerative discs in the neck.’

Gemma needed looking after between operations, which was a turnaround for a woman he’s called his ‘buffer between me and the world’.

Gemma was a well-known face at his gigs. He also knew her father, so invited her along to a radio interview as a distraction after her mother died. They started dating and this determined woman, ten years his junior, helped shake Gary out of an emotional and financial slump. They married in 1997.