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This never before published manuscript was originally completed in the spring of 2005 then shelved indefinitely. 7 years later, thanks to the advent of Kindle direct, the full unedited, unchanged and unaltered work can finally be made available. Aside from a title change from “Electric Pioneer 2 Secret’s Revealed” to “Tracks – Song By Song Album By Album” the manuscript remains as it was all those years ago.
The material included within these pages has been culled exclusively from archive press interviews conducted with Gary Numan and a vast army of associates from across the years. Due to the limitations of the source material available at the time it has not been possible to gain insight into every single song recorded by Gary Numan although these omissions are few.
2005 ORIGINAL INTRO
Back in the early spring of 2002, when I first began to compile the original manuscript for the proposed Electric Pioneer book, it was never my intention then to end up with a two volume set. My initial idea was to write a book that would serve as a detailed guide for fans of Gary Numan music, wherever in the world they were, a book that would hopefully give the reader, fan or not, not only an concise overview but more importantly an idea of the sheer size and scale of the Gary Numan phenomenon. Gary Numan’s own 1997 released autobiography Praying To The Aliens, as good as it was, was in reality only part of the Numan story. With the Electric Pioneer project I wanted to flesh out in the minds of fans and non fans alike Numan’s recorded output, be it audio or video, and encourage them to look afresh at Gary’s extraordinary career and maybe discover things that had never been noticed before. My original vision for this book was of something that could be pulled out at any time whilst listening to Numan’s music and have, in essence, a fellow fan right there with them. However, things did not go according to my rather grand plan as I soon discovered that I had inadvertently wrote too much, far too much to stand a realistic chance of seeing Electric Pioneer in print. So, after considering my options, I decided to simply split the book into two separate works and push the collector’s element of the manuscript out into the public domain first and worry about the oral history section, essentially the second half of the manuscript, later.
The aim of this book, Electric Pioneer 2 - Secrets Revealed, essentially all the discarded chapters from the original Electric Pioneer manuscript, is to give Gary as well as others the opportunity to explain, finally, and in some detail, the inspiration and the background behind all of his amazing songs and albums. Almost every song from every album is discussed with Gary and the members of his band both then and now as well as record company employees, producers, engineers and close friends opening themselves up for the first time to share their intimate thoughts and feelings about a canon of work that is in my opinion one of the finest in rock. For the last 26 years Gary Numan has steered his extraordinary career through 70’s punk, New Wave, New Romantics, 80’s pop, Heavy Metal, Stock Aiken and Waterman, Acid house, Grunge, Alt rock, Britpop, Rap and Nu Metal and survived it all by steadfastly sticking to his guns, a decision that has seen him often making a stand sometimes against the very tide of fashion and of musical trends. This is one of the main reasons why the Numan legend and indeed his extraordinary music has endured all these years and will, I believe, continue to do so, for many, many years to
come.
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