Numan rose to prominence at the tail end of the 1970s, initially recording under the band name Tubeway Army. After recording an album's worth of punky demos, he was signed by Beggars Banquet Records in 1978 and quickly released two singles, neither of which charted. A self-titled, New Wave oriented debut album later that same year sold out its limited run and introduced Numan's fascination with dystopian science fiction and, more importantly, synthesisers. Almost from nowhere, Tubeway Army reached number one in 1979 with the powerful single "Are 'Friends' Electric?", the parent album Replicas simultaneously climbing to number one in the album charts.A few months later he repeated the feat with "Cars", which became a top ten hit in America as well, and the 1979 album The Pleasure Principle, both released under Numan's own (assumed) name, which he had plucked from an advert in the "Yellow Pages". Topping both single and album charts simultaneously was noteworthy enough; doing so twice in the space of six months was astonishing. A sell-out tour followed. The Pleasure Principle was a rock album with no guitars; instead, Numan used synthesisers fed through guitar effects pedals to achieve a phased, heavy metal tone. Self-produced in a fortnight for very little money, The Pleasure Principle sounded like nothing else, and remains one of Numan's most highly regarded efforts today.Even Numan considers his 1992 Machine + Soul, a misguided attempt at a purely commercial release recorded solely to pay off debts, a career low point. The music was uninspired and the album sold only a few thousand copies. By 1994, Numan decided to stop attempting to crack the pop market and concentrate instead on exploring more personal interests, including his vocal atheism. His future wife Gemma encouraged him to strip away the influences of the previous years. Numan re-evaluated his career and went in a harsher, more industrial direction with his songwriting on the album Sacrifice; for the first time, he played almost all the instruments himself. The move was well-received, as Numan's harder and darker sound emerged just as Numan-influenced bands like Nine Inch Nails and Nirvana were enjoying their first rush of fame. Numan's next two albums Exile (1997) and Pure (2000) restored Numan's critical reputation; Numan even toured the U.S. in support of Exile, his first stateside concerts since the early 1980s.After years of ridicule in the press, Numan found himself an artist respected by his peers, with such musicians as Dave Grohl (of Foo Fighters), Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails) and Marilyn Manson proclaiming his work an influence and recording cover versions of old Numan hits. The band Basement Jaxx had a huge hit in 2002 with "Where's Your Head At?", which relied on a sample of Numan's "M.E." - from The Pleasure Principle - for its hook. The band Fear Factory produced a cover of "Cars" featuring a guest appearance by Numan. Nine Inch Nails covered the song "Metal" on their album Things Falling Apart. "Cars" remains Numan's most enduring song; it was a hit again in 1987 and 1996, in the latter case thanks to an appearance in an advert for Carling. In 2000 DJ Armand Van Helden sampled "Cars" and mixed it up in his single "Koochy" which conquered the dancefloors. In 2002, UK pop trio Sugababes scored a No.1 with "Freak Like Me" - a mash-up of Adina Howard's "Freak Like Me" and "Are Friends Electric" from Numan's Tubeway Army.In 2003, Numan enjoyed fleeting chart success once again with the Gary Numan vs Rico single "Crazier", reaching No.13 in the U.K. chart. Rico, who is an up and coming artist from Glasgow, also worked on the remix album Hybrid which featured reworkings of older songs in a more contemporary industrial style. In 2004 Numan took control of his own business affairs again, launching the label Mortal Records and releasing a series of live DVDs as a precursor to his highly anticipated new studio album, Jagged(2006)