Review: Gary Numan at Bristol 02 Academy - 70s star lets music do the talking and keeps fans waiting for hits

When it comes to live shows, Gary Numan has always been an artist who lives in the present, rather than the past. 

There were spells over the past few years when he rarely played songs from a back catalogue spanning five decades, preferring to perform newer material.

But for his ageing fans, many of them older than their 66-year-old hero, it was his two albums of 1979 that remain the most important and treasured. 

Before the show started, fans in vintage Numan tour t-shirts standing next to me at the front were sharing memories of early Numan gigs - a few had, like me, seen the 1979 Colston Hall and 1980 Hippodrome shows. Others had been to Gloucester Leisure Centre in 1983 and Wembley in 1981 - a gig that marked Numan’s first short-lived ‘retirement’ from music.

Replicas (released with his band Tubeway Army) and the solo album The Pleasure Principle were two of the most iconic albums of the late 1970s and made Numan a household name. They also influenced a generation of musicians and confirmed Numan as a synth pop pioneer.

This latest tour marks the 45th anniversary of this pair of classic records and it’s no surprise that most dates, including Bristol 02 Academy, sold out as soon as tickets were released.

With no support act, Numan and his four-piece band played straight through for one hour and 45 minutes, performing every track from those two 1979 albums in no particular order other than leaving the biggest hits to last.

His band looked like they had just stepped out of The Matrix film set. Guitarist Steve Harris and bass player Tim Slade sported shaven heads, black lipstick and long medieval black monk robes. They also had black scar-like lines drawn down the centre of their foreheads.

Despite being of pensionable age, Numan looks pretty much the same as he did 40 years ago.

Slim, clad in black and with raven black hair and thick black eyeliner that would be the envy of Claudia Winkleman, he seems to have been preserved from 1979.

The fans squeezed into every corner of the venue knew every word to all 22 songs performed, from opener Replicas to We Are So Fragile.

In between those two crowd favourites, we got rare airings of songs like Praying to the Aliens, Me! I Disconnect From You, Engineers and You Are in My Vision.

We were also treated to the short but atmospheric single Complex, Metal and Down in The Park (that one got the biggest cheer of the evening). The most striking thing about these 45-year-old songs is that many still sound futuristic and performed by aliens after all this time.

Numan didn’t say a word to the audience for the duration of the 105-minute set, but then he rarely speaks to his fans despite breaking into smiles and grins that show he’s clearly enjoying himself in his own way.

He returned for an encore of his biggest two hits - Cars and Are ‘Friends’ Electric? - and I can’t be the only person who got goosebumps and a tingling sensation on the back of the neck.

As I walked across the city centre afterwards, I could still hear fans shouting ‘Numan, Numan’ into the night.