Gary Numan’s Fascination: Marriage

It’s hard to believe it’s been more than three decades since the release of Gary Numan‘s The Pleasure Principle, the electronic-pop masterpiece that spawned massive hit single “Cars,” one of the defining tracks of the new-wave era. (The song has since been covered and sampled numerous times and been used in countless commercials, movies, TV shows, video games, etc.) To celebrate the highly influential album making in into the Billboard top 20 in 1980 and the recent multi-disc, 30th-anniversary reissue, Numan just kicked off a three-week U.S. tour that features him playing The Pleasure Principle in its entirety, along with songs from his entire career as well as tracks from forthcoming album Splinter. Numan will also be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our Q&A with him.

Numan: Marriage seems to mean different things to different people. I know people who don’t seem to have meant any of the things they said when they got married. They can be really quite lecherous but think that’s OK because they don’t actually do anything about it. I think that sucks. To me, a marriage is a blending of two people into one life. I do not fight against my impulses for other women, because I simply don’t have them, so I have nothing to fight against. To me, being with someone so perfectly matched that I no longer had any desires for anyone else, was exactly the sort of sign I needed to know who was the right person to marry. Gemma stood out for so many reasons I couldn’t possibly list them all.

We have been together for more than 18 years, married for 13. I try to imagine how life would be without her and I can’t. But even thinking that way is more than enough incentive to forgive any little niggles that might have occurred. I married the best friend I have ever had and we have been through some truly horrible experiences together with hardly a ripple in our relationship. All relationships have their moments of trouble; it’s how you deal with that, how you trust and care for what the other person is feeling, that will get you through those moments, or not, as the case may be.

I still miss her when she goes to the shops, and I look out for her coming back. She is the first person I want to talk to about news, good or bad. She has made me a better person. She makes me laugh constantly and I genuinely worship the air that she breathes. She is everything I have ever dreamed of and as she grows older and changes, I love what she becomes even more. I feel no embarrassment for saying any of this. It’s the way it is.

Video after the jump.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKqRQeDUv4c