I’m working on a new autobiography with ghost writer James Hogg. The book has no title at the moment but is scheduled for publication in September with the Little, Brown Book Group. James spent a few days with us here in Los Angeles recently to gather content for the book. This will not be an updated version of the ‘Praying To The Aliens’ autobiography, this will be a completely new look at my life and bring the story completely up to date.
My Patreon membership project, called Ghost Nation, has now been running for about six months. Thank you so much to everyone that’s signed up for that and for your patience as I stumbled along for a while, especially in the first few months. I’m pleased with how it’s going now although, as I suspected, it’s a lot of extra work, which makes things a little difficult at times.
For those of you that don’t know what it offers you can find out more by visiting Ghost Nation here.
On Friday March 27th, at 4pm UK time, you can listen to a Gary Numan Special on Artefaktor radio on the Johnny Normal ‘The Synthetic Special Show’ by using this address: https://artefaktorradio.com
Two hours of Numan music, back to back, is promised.
I wanted to clear up any confusion that might exist regarding the various projects and information outlets I have running at the moment, beyond this website. Projects that are intended to engage with, inform or otherwise be of interest to fans.
Social Media (Twitter, Instagram and Facebook)
These three options are all free and, generally, keep you up to date with everything I’m doing both musically and personally. For most people I would imagine visiting any of these three would be enough. Most, but not all, of the things I post are replicated across all three platforms. They require only a modest amount of work from me to keep up to date.
YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/user/GaryNumanOfficial/)
I do have an official YouTube channel but I’ve shown zero interest in it for a very long time. That is about to change and I’m in the process of bringing myself up to speed on how it works and how it can be improved.
Making Music (https://garynumanmm.tmstor.es)
Making Music allows people the opportunity to follow progress on the new Intruder album with video, audio and text updates. It is devoted exclusively to the Intruder album and nothing else. You will not see Making Music updates on any of the social media platforms or Ghost Nation, nor will you see things seen on social media or Ghost Nation appear on Making Music.
You can watch and listen as new songs progress from the first simple idea, through the rough demo stage, including ideas that are perhaps abandoned along the way, on to the early production versions, all the way to the finished song. The lyrics are written out in text updates and eventually the artwork ideas, and more, all become part of showing you what goes into making an album. The updates are not regular because progress on the album is not regular, but, they will follow the making of the album from start to finish, albeit with gaps when I’m busy doing something else.
To take part in Making Music you have two options. The most popular by far is simply to sign up and pre-order the album and/or buy one of the many items also available. These include old studio and musical equipment used on previous albums, signed lyric sheets, a chance to sit in on the Mastering session or come along to the launch cruise, and many more. By buying an item or pre-ordering the album you automatically gain access to every update made for the entire project, new or old. If you’d rather not buy something or pre-order the album you only have to pay a small one time fee to gain the same access to the updates. You can, if you wish, opt to pre-order later if you like what you hear, or buy one of the items if still available. Making Music requires a fair amount of extra work for me, beyond just making the album, to create the updates.
Ghost Nation (https://www.patreon.com/garynuman)
Ghost Nation seems to be the one that causes the most ripples. I’m not going to get into any of that, I’ll simply say what it offers and you can decide for yourselves if it’s of interest or not.
Ghost Nation is a Patreon project and people can buy into it at four different levels, or tiers. Each tier is priced according to what’s offered at each tier level, because as the levels go up so the work required by me to fulfill them increases dramatically, plus they offer far more beyond what I do (Store discounts, free tickets and so on). Essentially though Ghost Nation offers you an intimate, behind the scenes look at my life, both musically and personally. Through regular video diary updates (or text updates at the entry-level tier) plus a monthly video Q&A you can watch my life as it unfolds.
The Making Music Campaign, very much like the Pledge Music campaign with Savage, gives fans the opportunity to follow progress on the Intruder album. It was, without doubt, a little patchy to begin with (my apologies for that) but is much more active now and will become even more so over the next few months as work on the album becomes increasingly intense. You can hear new songs as they progress from first notes of an idea to finished demo’s, and then listen as Ade Fenton begins to work his production magic. Lyrics are posted as each new song is completed and there are video explanations about the process, the problems, the parts that go to make the finished song and so on. You can also buy lyric sheets, set lists and a range of other items, including used equipment from previous tours and albums. Most importantly you can pre-order the album and in so doing contribute enormously to that first week chart position in September. It was very much down to Pledge subscribers that Savage achieved its Number 2 position in the UK chart last time out and it would be amazing to see something similar happen with Intruder.
If you’d like to become a part of the Making Music campaign for Intruder you can use this link.
The new Intruder album is well underway. I have to confess it’s taken me far too long to become fully engaged but I’m there now, slightly panicking, and things are beginning to move forward at a more exciting and meaningful pace. Song titles so far are:
Intruder, The End Of Dragons, I Am Screaming, Betrayed, Saints And Liars, The Gift.
I have many more songs than these few but these are the six that I’m happy with and have been sent to Ade Fenton for production. Having said that I had a wobbly moment last week and decided that they were all shit so it’s still a rather tortuous process.
The release plan is still to have it ready in time for a September release. Of course, the Coronavirus may have a significant impact on those plans. Already people at the label have become infected and, I believe, everyone there is now working from home. This will undoubtedly have a negative effect on all the bands planning to release this year so we will need to wait and see how things unfold. For now though Ade and I are working towards having the album ready to meet the deadline for that September release.