Voix
In this episode of Electric Friends, Tom goes deep on 'Voix' — the standout track from Gary Numan's 1988 album Metal Rhythm, and the song that survived the worst year of his career on its own terms.
In early 1988, Gary stood on a TV show promoting someone else's single alongside Bros and Sinéad O'Connor, and called it the lowest point he'd reached. Nine months later he released a song that says, more or less, I don't need your opinions, I don't need your rumours, I don't need to listen to strangers. It was never a single. It didn't make the tour. It didn't make the live album from that tour. And 31 years later he walked back on stage to play it as his encore.
We trace the whole story: Radio 1's refusal to play him, Steve Wright apologising on air for 'This Is Love', the fan protest outside Broadcasting House, the collapse of Numa Records, Radio Heart, the £200,000 tax bill and the lies that went with it, Miles Copeland's million-pound lifeline, and the man at IRS who picked 'New Anger' as the single and then denied he ever had.
Then we get into the record itself — Mike Smith's programming, the PPG Wave and the Roland D-50, Peter Haycock and Keith Beauvais as the only two guitarists to appear on the same track, Tessa Niles on backing vocals, and why this is one of the catchiest things Gary has ever written. Why is the title French when he sings it in English? What do the pronouns do across the three choruses? Why does the second "one" interlude curdle every image from the first? And what happens if you read a song about illegible people and untrustworthy voices through what Gary has since written about machines, people and his Asperger's?
Plus the two versions — the 1988 original and the heavier 'Voix 98' from the Dominion Day EP, sitting alongside 'Metal' and 'Down in the Park' — and the remarkable live history that takes the song from nowhere in 1988 to the first song of the encore on the 2019 tour.
Featuring excerpts from Gary's autobiography (R)evolution, read by the man himself, and a big batch of your comments and emails.
Mentioned in this episode:
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Transcript
Electric Friends, A Gary Newman podcast.
Speaker A:The songs and stories of a music icon.
Speaker A:I just don't understand.
Speaker B:My name is Ruan.
Speaker B:My name is Van John.
Speaker A: Early in: Speaker A:It wasn't his single, it was no More Lies, the second thing he'd recorded with Bill Sharp of Shack Attack, a collaboration he'd taken on largely because he needed the money.
Speaker A:It got to number 34, which wasn't quite what Bollydor had hoped for.
Speaker A:And once they couldn't get radio behind it, they quietly pulled back on the promotion and let it disappear.
Speaker A: , as it was possible to be in: Speaker A:Connor.
Speaker A:Here's how Gary describes standing there.
Speaker C:It was during the TV slot for no More Lies that I found myself on a show with Bross, very much the favourites of the moment and Sinead o'.
Speaker C:Connor.
Speaker C:That was probably the lowest point for me so far.
Speaker C:I felt horribly out of date and totally irrelevant.
Speaker C:It wasn't my music.
Speaker C:I was performing and I didn't want to be doing it.
Speaker C:I looked awful and I felt like a sad remnant from the past.
Speaker C:I had never been so miserable and I was utterly ashamed of myself.
Speaker C:I think that TV show, although it was far from the end of my decline, really brought home to me not just how far my career had fallen, but how absolutely devoid of new ideas I was.
Speaker C:I was hopelessly out of touch and I had no answers whatsoever.
Speaker A:Nine months later, he released an album containing a song that says, more or less, I don't need your opinions, I don't need your rumors, I don't need to listen to strangers.
Speaker A:The song is called Voice.
Speaker A:It was never a single, it didn't make the tour, it didn't make the live album from that tour.
Speaker A:And 31 years later, he walked back on stage at the Roundhouse to play it as his encore.
Speaker A:Hello, and welcome to Electric Friends, the podcast that goes deep on one Gary Newman song at a time.
Speaker A:I'm Tom, and last time we spent the episode with Radio Heart.
Speaker A: ch less discussed voice, from: Speaker A:And in the middle of it, this a song almost nobody noticed at the time, that he has now been playing on and off for over 30 years.
Speaker A:This is the story of the song he kept.
Speaker A: rther than the album, back to: Speaker A:In April of that year, he released this Is Love, the first single from Strange Charm.
Speaker B:This is Love,.
Speaker C:This is Pain Disguise,.
Speaker A:A dark ballad with a beautiful saxophone solo from Dick Morrissey.
Speaker A:It got to number 28, the best anything of his had done in a while.
Speaker A:And then somebody rang him and told him to turn the Radio 1, because Radio 1, who had spent years pretending he didn't exist, were actually playing it.
Speaker C:One day I got a call saying to turn on the radio.
Speaker C:Radio 1 were actually playing the song.
Speaker C:It was so unusual and I was so happy.
Speaker C:I turned on the radio and listened to the end.
Speaker C:I could hardly believe it.
Speaker C:Maybe now my radio problem was finally over and just in the nick of time I would finally start to claw my way back.
Speaker C:But then it all came crashing down.
Speaker C:After the song was over, Steve Wright, the dj, apologized to his listeners, saying the song was utterly depressing and that he had been forced to play it.
Speaker C:If Radio 1 hadn't already done enough to virtually ruin my career by ignoring me, they were now rubbishing my music to an audience of millions.
Speaker C:I wish they'd carried on ignoring me.
Speaker C:It was horribly embarrassing and extremely damaging.
Speaker C:It really did hit me hard.
Speaker C:One moment it felt as though we had turned an important corner, and the next things were far worse than ever.
Speaker C:What tiny fragment of corn confidence I'd hung onto vanished in that moment and I was more lost than I'd ever been.
Speaker A:So think about that image because we're coming back to it later.
Speaker A:A man sitting at home listening to a voice come out of a speaker and that voice destroying him.
Speaker A:And it got worse.
Speaker A:Radio pluggers were paid out of money they didn't have.
Speaker A:At one point, a plugger was told to not bother coming into the building if he was there.
Speaker A:About Gary Newman.
Speaker A:His dad went to meet a senior producer at Radio 1 to find out what the actual problem was, and was told that the trouble was all Gary's songs sounded like Our Friends Electric.
Speaker A:The meeting got cut short, so they reconvened a week later.
Speaker A:And the same producer said that if Gary wrote songs like Our Friends Electric again, they'd definitely play them when it was pointed out that this was the exact opposite of what he'd said seven days earlier.
Speaker A:He flatly denied ever saying it.
Speaker A:So remember that man in an office contradicting himself and then denying it to your face is something to happen again in this story with a different man in a different office?
Speaker A:The fans organized a protest outside Broadcasting House.
Speaker A:It sadly, made no difference.
Speaker A:If anything, Radio 1 dug their heels in further because they assumed Gary had arranged it.
Speaker A:But he writes about being enormously touched by it, and it changed how he thought about the fan artist relationship.
Speaker A:He'd always seen it as an even exchange, nobody owing anybody anything.
Speaker A:After that day, he says he felt like he owed them.
Speaker A: By: Speaker C:Numa Records was clearly not going to work out if we were going to have any chance of doing better with so many things against us.
Speaker C:It was becoming increasingly clear that I would need the muscle and the money of a major label, or at least a better funded label than Numa.
Speaker C:While we were starting to look around to see what interest there might be, I had an offer from a new label called GFM to sing a guest vocal on a song called Radioheart with a band of the same name.
Speaker C:It was a good offer and the money felt like a lifeline to a drowning man.
Speaker C:Unfortunately, it wasn't really my thing at all.
Speaker C:LIGHTWEIGHT POP music and it was my dad who eventually persuaded me to say yes.
Speaker C:He knew how vital that money was to us and it bought us valuable time.
Speaker A:That phrase a lifeline to a drowning man is one you'll hear again attached to something completely different.
Speaker A:He uses it twice in the book, about two different rescues, roughly 18 months apart.
Speaker A:Neither of them quite rescued him.
Speaker A:We covered Radioheart properly last time, so I won't retread it, but I want the conclusion he drew, because it's the most important sentence for understanding this album.
Speaker A:Three Radioheart singles, one genuine top 40 hit.
Speaker A:Radio Play at last.
Speaker A:And here's what he took from.
Speaker C:I didn't, however, feel it did anything for my situation.
Speaker C:It wasn't my song and it wasn't a style of music I would ever want to write myself.
Speaker C:I was just a paid singer.
Speaker C:If anything, it just showed that to get on the radio, I would effectively have to stop being me.
Speaker A: So by the end of: Speaker A:And then he Signed a major recording deal specifically designed to get him back on the radio.
Speaker A:This is Lorna Burridge.
Speaker A:This is Sharon Burridge.
Speaker B:And the reason that they're here tonight.
Speaker A:Is because their father taught this next guy to fly.
Speaker A:He's Captain Ralph Burridge.
Speaker A:At the moment, he's flying up the charts to number 16 with a song about driving.
Speaker A:This is Gary Newman and Cars.
Speaker C:I even agreed to go on Top of the Pops and perform it.
Speaker C:But a feeling of it doing more long term harm than good for a temporary flash of recognition sat hauntingly on my shoulders.
Speaker C:Beggars released a double album of old material called Exhibition and I decided to tour that album as I had no new material of my own ready.
Speaker C:It was not the best way forward.
Speaker C:A back catalogue chart single and then touring an album of back catalogue material.
Speaker C:It reeked of aimless despondency.
Speaker C:It was all rather sad.
Speaker A:So the money.
Speaker C:To make matters worse, I was presented with another tax bill for £200,000 and I had absolutely nothing to pay it with.
Speaker C:In fact, I was about £200,000 in debt.
Speaker C:So worse than nothing, we put the Wentworth House up for sale and were lucky enough to sell it just before the housing market crashed.
Speaker C:That paid the tax bill and a few other pressing debts.
Speaker C:But the overall problem of being broke remained.
Speaker C:We had to borrow more and more.
Speaker C:And I invented ever more lies to cover up my embarrassment and to try to convince people we were still doing well financially.
Speaker C:I was worried that if people knew, it would stand yet another powerful signal that my career was all but finished.
Speaker A:So that last part is genuinely painful to hear.
Speaker A:Not the debt.
Speaker A:Plenty of musicians have been broke.
Speaker A:It's the lying.
Speaker A:Performing solvency in public because the appearance of failure would cause the actual failure.
Speaker A:And then Miles Copeland walked in, former manager of the police, seriously wealthy, seriously connected.
Speaker C:Miles then made us an incredible offer for me to sign with him instead.
Speaker C:That was worth 1 million pound.
Speaker C:Over the following five years.
Speaker C:It was a dream come true.
Speaker C:A lifeline to a drowning man just as he was about to slip under the waves for the last time.
Speaker C:I thought that we were not only saved from career oblivion, but soon I'd be big news in the UK and the usa, if not the entire world.
Speaker C:My olds had two labels, Illegal and irs.
Speaker C:Although they weren't major labels, they were well funded and had knowledgeable teams running them.
Speaker C:They could certainly do a much better job than we had been doing.
Speaker C:I would be the most expensive artist they'd signed, a label priority and they promised me great things.
Speaker A:And there's that phrase again.
Speaker A:And here's the bit that tells you how badly he needed to believe it.
Speaker A:On the strength of that optimism, he bought a bigger house than he'd planned, with a worryingly large mortgage.
Speaker A:A place in Essex, on a hill, few acres, no neighbours in sight, where he could make as much noise as he liked.
Speaker A:And most of Metal Rhythm was already recorded before he'd signed.
Speaker A:He'd cut the bulk of it at Rock City, with the Wave team producing it himself this time, and he was going to call it Cold Metal Rhythm.
Speaker A:He finished it at a studio called Black Barn, and that's where Copeland came to hear it.
Speaker A:So when we talk about IRS meddling, and we will, the songs songs were pretty much done.
Speaker A:They could change the packaging, their title, the singles, the American track listing.
Speaker A:They couldn't change the record, which means voice is not necessarily a song about irs, as it predates them.
Speaker C:When the first single, New Anger, was chosen for the label, not Me, I remember a somewhat overweight senior figure at the label dancing around his office.
Speaker C:It was a little embarrassing, but I was impressed, impressed with his enthusiasm.
Speaker C:He was full of praise and talked about what a huge hit it was going to be.
Speaker C:It felt great to be listening to that kind of positivity at last, when it only reached number 46 in the chart, he was a very different man.
Speaker C:He said I'd chosen the wrong single even though I hadn't chosen it, and that he was never keen on that song at all.
Speaker C:He flatly denied to my father face that he had chosen New Anger.
Speaker C:It was pathetic and my heart sank.
Speaker C:This was the worst kind of record company bullshit and these were the people I thought were going to make a difference.
Speaker A:So there it is again, the man in the office who said one thing, then said the opposite, then denied the first two years apart.
Speaker A:Two different industries, but the same experience.
Speaker A:So then the title IRS decided the word cold had negative connotations.
Speaker A:So Cold Metal Rhythm became Metal Rhythm.
Speaker A:Gary calls it petty and inconsequential and says he made very little fuss because he was keen to be as agreeable as possible.
Speaker A:The album scraped into the top 50.
Speaker A:The next single, America, did much the same.
Speaker A:He played 18 UK dates, including three nights at the London Astoria on a schedule so brutal 11 shows one day off, then seven more, that he says he doesn't know how they survived it.
Speaker A:And it's still lost money.
Speaker A:Which brings us finally to the first track on side two.
Speaker A:Before we get into what it means, let's talk about what it actually is, because I think this is A genuinely great record.
Speaker A:There's a tendency to write off this whole stretch of Gary's career, the late 80s into the early 90s, as one grey, undifferentiated slab.
Speaker A:The wilderness years.
Speaker A:Skip from Berserker to Sacrifice and don't look down.
Speaker A:And I understand why some people do that, because commercially it was a horror story for Gary, and he's not exactly kind about it himself.
Speaker A:But I'd say it's lazy and it's wrong.
Speaker A:Every album in that run has something on it worth your time.
Speaker A: obody was pointing at them in: Speaker A:On metal rhythm, this is the one voice is the standout for me.
Speaker A:Here's who's on it.
Speaker A:Gary and Mike Smith on keyboards.
Speaker A:And the PPG wave is all over it, which is the machine he'd become so dependent on that he later admitted he didn't really understand how it worked.
Speaker A:Matt Jessup, who has a far better ear for this than I do, also picks up the Roland D50 on here, which makes sense.
Speaker A: came out in: Speaker A:Smith also handles the drum programming, Ian Herron on percussion, two guitarists, Peter Haycock and Keith Bouvet and Tessa Niles on backing vocals.
Speaker A:Joe F emailed in with a lovely detail about those two guitarists.
Speaker A:This is the only track on the entire album that uses both of them.
Speaker A:Keith Beauvais on chords, Peter Haycock on slides.
Speaker A:Nobody else on Metal Rhythm gets both, which tells you something about how much attention this song was getting in the studio.
Speaker A:Whatever happened to it afterwards?
Speaker A:And it opens cold synths with no warmth in them at all, over a drum loop that sounds programmed rather than played and isn't trying to hide it.
Speaker A:It's mechanical, almost industrial.
Speaker A: , not the Android delivery of: Speaker A:And then the backing vocals arrive, and for my money, this is one of the best uses of of female vocals on any Newman record.
Speaker A:They're not decoration.
Speaker A:They lift the chorus out of the Merc without softening it.
Speaker A:And the contrast between Tessa Niles on top and Garen Newman down in the Basement is most of what makes the hook work, Because it is a hook.
Speaker A:This is one of the catchiest things he has ever written, and comfortably the cat thing of this period.
Speaker A:There are twinkly synths in There.
Speaker A:There are jangly guitars.
Speaker A:It's an early stab at industrial electro with genuine pop bones underneath.
Speaker A:It.
Speaker A:Brings me to the thing that annoys me most about this song.
Speaker A:It should have been the single.
Speaker A:Listen to it and tell me you can't hear this as a hit or just a hit for Gary Newman.
Speaker A:A hit for anybody.
Speaker A:Simple Minds could have had a smash with this.
Speaker A:Depeche Mode could have had it.
Speaker A:Even Bowie could have had it.
Speaker A:It has that shape.
Speaker A:Our friend Steve Thorpe got in touch to point out the Voice open side two, and he's right, because it matters.
Speaker A:On a vinyl record, that's the second most valuable slot you've got.
Speaker A:It's the track that greets you when you turn the thing over.
Speaker A:So whatever the label thought, Gary himself put this song somewhere prominent.
Speaker A:Steve calls it laced with serious vitriol over a perfect production and arrangement and reckons it's Newman on top form.
Speaker A:Frank Makkari agrees it should have been the first and main single ahead of New Anger.
Speaker A:Paul Hudson on X went further.
Speaker A:He rates Voice and this is Emotion as the standouts and thinks releasing New Anger and America ahead of it was a strange decision, though not everybody's with us.
Speaker A:Colin Pearce makes the case for Respect as the single.
Speaker A:More commercial appeal.
Speaker A:And he loved it live, which is fair.
Speaker A:And Respect did last in the set, too.
Speaker A:The other thing you can hear in it, with hindsight, is where he was going.
Speaker A: This is: Speaker A:Cold electronics, the guitars used for weight rather than melody.
Speaker A:The low vocal.
Speaker A:We'd have one more genuine trough to get through first and we'll get to Machine and Soul another day.
Speaker A:But Voice is a signpost.
Speaker A:This is a man working out his future sound while simultaneously trying to survive the strangest pop landscape it ever had to operate in.
Speaker A:Which, incidentally, is exactly why it still works on stage now.
Speaker A:Most of metal rhythm would need rebuilding from the ground up to sit in a modern Newman set.
Speaker A:But Voice barely needs touching.
Speaker A:So voix is French for voice, spelt V O I X.
Speaker A:And it isn't only the title.
Speaker A:The word sits inside the chorus in the exact spot where the English word would go.
Speaker A:He's not giving the song a French name, he's writing the lyric in English and switching the language for precisely one word.
Speaker A:And here's a detail that makes this properly strange.
Speaker A:He sings it as Voice, not voix, which means the French exists only on paper.
Speaker A:It's on the lyric sheet in the printed word.
Speaker A:So anybody who heard Metal Rhythm on cassette, in the car or at shows.
Speaker A:Anybody who never sat down with a sleeve would have no idea it was there.
Speaker A:So think about what that might mean on this particular record.
Speaker A:An album where the label took a word off the title, where America changed the artwork, remixed the tracks and swapped songs in and out.
Speaker A:Where a man in an office picked the single and then lied about it.
Speaker A:In the middle of all that, Gary put one word into one lyric in a language nobody expected, in a form so quiet it survives every one of those interventions because it isn't in the audio to be interfered with.
Speaker A:I don't have him on record explaining why, so I'm not going to invent a reason.
Speaker A:But whatever it is, it's a writer refusing to let a line go slack.
Speaker A:However, Miguel Escalante got in touch.
Speaker A:He says he remembers Gary saying it's pronounced voice, not how it's spelled.
Speaker A:So the man himself has flagged the gap between the page and the record.
Speaker A:What I still haven't got is Y.
Speaker A:So if anyone's got him on tape explaining it, my inbox is open.
Speaker A:So the lyrics, three verses, three choruses, and two short interlude sections built out of the word one.
Speaker A:The first verse is a lot of dislikes, and it opens on a deliberately awkward I don't like young girls I don't like boys I like some bitch to scare me I like that noise.
Speaker B:I don't like young girls I don't like boys I like some bitch to scare me I like that noise.
Speaker A:He's rejecting the innocent and the conventional and asking for something that frightens him instead.
Speaker A:It's provocative, it's a bit adolescent, and it's very 88 Newman.
Speaker A:But note what it establishes.
Speaker A:He wants the thing that unsettles him.
Speaker A:Keep that, because this song is going to contradict itself repeatedly, and that's the point.
Speaker A:Then the first turns and gives us the thesis of the entire song.
Speaker A:I don't like secrets, I don't like God, I don't like people when they say I'm things I'm not I don't.
Speaker B:Like secrets I don't like God, I don't like people when they say all.
Speaker A:Things I'm not When they say I'm things I'm not.
Speaker A:If you take one line out of this episode, take that one, because who has been saying he's things he's not?
Speaker A:A radio producer who told his father that all his songs sound like Our Friend's electric, and then a week later said the opposite and denied it.
Speaker A:A DJ who told the nation his Record was depressing a press pac who'd spent nine years telling him he was cold, robotic, arrogant, finished.
Speaker A:That line isn't a general complaint about being misunderstood.
Speaker A:It's a very specific grievance from a man with a decade of receipts.
Speaker A:And I don't like God is a small thing here.
Speaker A:One line among many.
Speaker A:But file it away, because six years later he'll make an entire album that is essentially an argument with God.
Speaker A:And this is the first flash of it.
Speaker A:And then the chorus.
Speaker A:I don't need opinions and rumours I don't need a voice in the dark I don't need to listen to strangers I don't need to tear out my.
Speaker B:Heart I don't need opinions and rumours I don't need a voice and rumors.
Speaker A:Four refusals.
Speaker A:Opinions, rumors A voice in the dark and then the consequence Tearing out his heart.
Speaker A:Now here's the thing that made me sit up and it's the reason I think this lyric is smarter than it may look.
Speaker A:The verses contradict the chorus.
Speaker A:Verse one says he doesn't like secrets.
Speaker A:Verse two says he likes your lies the chorus says he doesn't need a voice in the dark verse 2 says he likes your whispers A whisper is a voice in the dark.
Speaker A:He's refusing the thing in the chorus and asking for it in the verse.
Speaker A:In the same song, about eight bars apart.
Speaker A:I like this motion I like this heat I like this breathing and I know I like this beat I like your whispers I like your screams I like your lies and I'm sure I'd like your dreams.
Speaker B:I like this heat I like this breathing and I know I like this I go isthmas I feel screams, I feel flies and I'm.
Speaker A:Sure I like your dreams that whole verse is an inventory of things he's just finished rejecting.
Speaker A:Whispers, screams, lies.
Speaker A:He can't leave it alone.
Speaker A:And that, for me, is the honesty of this song.
Speaker A:He isn't a man who has successfully stopped listening.
Speaker A:He's a man who cannot stop listening, announcing that he has stopped listening.
Speaker A:Which brings us to what was actually happening to him.
Speaker C:One of the things I'd always noticed is that no matter how much success you have, no matter how legendary you're considered to be, you are always inundated with advice from people who have never done it themselves.
Speaker C:Everyone seems to see themselves as an expert.
Speaker C:To know what you should be doing, what you did wrong, what you should write next, what clothes you should wear, and a thousand other things.
Speaker C:You should do this, do that.
Speaker C:Work with Tom, Dick and Harriet.
Speaker C:Make a Dance track, do something else.
Speaker C:Anything else.
Speaker C:I was always able to ignore them, totally confident that I knew what I was doing.
Speaker C:As my career began to struggle, maintaining that confidence had become harder.
Speaker C:But I still avoided advice like the plague.
Speaker C:After this Is Love, I was bewildered and lost all faith in my ability to make the right decisions.
Speaker C:So I started to listen to advice.
Speaker C:And that was arguably the biggest mistake I have ever made.
Speaker A:To play that against the chorus and it stops being a general statement about defiance.
Speaker A:It's specific opinions and rumors.
Speaker A:He is drowning in opinions from people who have never made a record listening to strangers.
Speaker A:He has just told us that he started listening to strangers and that was the worst decision he ever made.
Speaker A:A Voice in the dark and there's the radio again.
Speaker A:Voice out of a speaker in the dark telling millions of people that Gary Newman's music is depressing.
Speaker A:So I can't prove he had Steve Wright in mind, and I'm not going to claim I can.
Speaker A:But he's given us in his own words, appearing in which voices are the entire problem.
Speaker A:The dj, the producer contradicting himself, the endless free advice, and then a chorus that refuses those things point by point.
Speaker A:I don't think you have to squint and I'm clearly not alone.
Speaker A:Joe, who emailed in, calls it a complete disregard of any and all advice and reads it as Newman saying he's done listening to anyone but himself.
Speaker A:No more opinions, no more being told what he should and shouldn't be doing.
Speaker A:On Ex, Julie Bolton described it as a song with a tremendous amount of anger in it.
Speaker A:Newman stating from the off, it's got no use for opinions, for gods, for people who tell tales or stab you in the back.
Speaker A:They sum the whole thing up as you're not gonna knock me down.
Speaker A:So here's the structural move with the pronouns, and it's genuinely clever.
Speaker A:The chorus appears three times and it changes person every time.
Speaker A:First it's I don't need, then it's you don't need, then it's we don't need and tear out my heart becomes tear out our hearts.
Speaker A:He starts by talking to himself, then he turns and talks to somebody else.
Speaker A:Then he pulls them in alongside him.
Speaker A:So who's the you?
Speaker A:I'd argue it's us.
Speaker A:This is a man whose fans had literally organized a protest outside Broadcasting House on his behalf, and who wrote afterwards that he felt he owed them by the last chorus isn't his problem anymore.
Speaker A:It's ours.
Speaker A:You and me both being told what we are by people who don't know us both being asked to tear our hearts out over it.
Speaker A:That's a much warmer song than the first verse lets on.
Speaker A:And there are two short interludes built out of the word one.
Speaker A:And they mirror each other exactly.
Speaker A:Same shape, same rhythm, same landing word.
Speaker A:The first one.
Speaker A:One stranger, one heartbeat One love is forever One picture, one morning One tear lasts forever so that's quite tender.
Speaker A:A stranger, a heartbeat, love, a picture, a morning, a tear.
Speaker A:It's the most human 30 seconds on metal rhythm.
Speaker A:And then at the very end of the song, the same shape comes back and every single one of them has curdled.
Speaker B:Is forever.
Speaker B:One night,.
Speaker A:One reason, one secret, one lie Is forever, One nightmare, one rumor.
Speaker A:Your shame is forever.
Speaker A:To look at those substitutions, heartbeat becomes secret, Love becomes lie, Morning becomes nightmare, Picture becomes rumor.
Speaker A:And one tear lasts forever, Becomes your shame Is forever.
Speaker A:Same structure, but poisoned.
Speaker A:Now, the song opens its heart in the middle and closes it as a curse.
Speaker A:And that last word is the only place the song stops defending and starts attacking.
Speaker A:Not my shame, your shame.
Speaker A:He's pointing at somebody which connects to the one verse I'd skipped, sitting right between the two.
Speaker A:I'll show you pictures I'll make you cry I'll show you things you've done and then I'll ask you why.
Speaker A:That's not defiance, that's a prosecution.
Speaker A:He's going to show them evidence, make them cry with it, and then demand they explain themselves.
Speaker A:Remember what he said about why he made this record?
Speaker A:That one of the reasons for wanting back into the charts was revenge, to get back at everybody who put the knife in.
Speaker A:And so there it is, four lines, right in the middle of the song.
Speaker A:And it's the only moment in the whole thing where he's winning.
Speaker A:Then the last verse, which I think is the saddest thing.
Speaker A:I don't need heroes I don't need this name I don't need favors and I know I don't need fame.
Speaker A: inst where he actually was in: Speaker A:I don't need this name.
Speaker A: hing, a name he chose, and by: Speaker A:Pluggers were being told not to come to the building.
Speaker A:If that was the name of the record.
Speaker A:I Don't Need Favours.
Speaker A:He was alive entirely on favours, his father brokering deals, Bill Sharp's collaborations, Taken For Money, Miles Copeland's Million Pounds and I Don't Need Fame, written by a man who was borrowing money to keep up the appearance of success because if people found out he was broke, it would confirm the career was over.
Speaker A:Every line in that verse could be seen as the opposite of the truth.
Speaker A:Or it was what he was thinking deep down, if he never had to sacrifice Resurgence, that perhaps he could pack it all in.
Speaker A:Or maybe it was all just wishful thinking so he wasn't ignoring the voices.
Speaker A:He was doing more or less whatever they told him.
Speaker A:Radioheart because his dad pushed Sharpen Newman album because his dad pushed the album title, because he was keen to be as agreeable as possible.
Speaker A:Prince Covers because Copeland wanted a covers record.
Speaker A: trusting his own judgment in: Speaker A:That's what defiance sounds like when it's aspirational rather than earned.
Speaker A:And it's why this has teeth, that this is emotion and devious perhaps don't and there's a second layer, and I want to handle it carefully.
Speaker A: In the chapter about: Speaker A:He sat under his own airplane and cried, which surprised him, and then he writes about why he flies.
Speaker C:I love the honesty of machinery, of airplanes especially.
Speaker C:I have always felt far more comfortable with machines than with people.
Speaker C:If a machine lets you down, you can be sure it didn't do it on purpose, and it usually gives you some warning if you're listening carefully enough.
Speaker C:There is no malice or spiteful intent, and you can't always say that about people.
Speaker C:With a machine, you don't have to constantly try and figure out what's really meant.
Speaker C:There's no need for reading between the lines.
Speaker C:I just don't have the skills for dealing with the subtleties of people.
Speaker A:And in the same chapter, the material about his Asperger's not knowing what a teammate did for a living after two years because asking would be prying.
Speaker A:The system he devised for eye contact no less than two seconds, no more than five, because under two doesn't show interest, and over five is creepy.
Speaker A:Counting constantly while talking to people One.
Speaker C:Of the more memorable moments of recognition about my Asperger's came during a conversation I was having with my dad about my Harvard teammates.
Speaker C:He asked me what one of them did for a living, and I didn't know.
Speaker C:I'd been in the team over two years and he couldn't quite believe that I didn't know something that basic.
Speaker C:How can you not know?
Speaker C:He said.
Speaker C:I've never asked, I replied.
Speaker C:He looked at me a bit sideways and said, why not?
Speaker C:To me it was all very obvious.
Speaker C:Why not?
Speaker C:Well, if he'd wanted me to know what he did for a living, he would have told me and he didn't.
Speaker C:So if I'd asked, I'd be prying and that would be rude.
Speaker C:My dad just laughed.
Speaker C:That's not being rude, that's conversation.
Speaker C:He said.
Speaker C:You asking him questions shows you're interested and that's a good thing.
Speaker C:That was a very important lesson for me and I remembered it to this day.
Speaker C:When I meet people, I should ask what they do for a living.
Speaker C:Social interaction is really not my thing.
Speaker A:Going back to the song, a list of things he doesn't like, most of which are people doing people things, secrets, rumours, opinions being told, things he isn't strangers talking.
Speaker A:He wrote this in 87 or 88, decades before he'd had any of this language for himself.
Speaker A:So I'm not claiming he knew what he was writing about.
Speaker A:This is a lens we can bring to it now, knowing what he's since written.
Speaker A:Not a claim about intent, but if you read it that way, voice isn't only about the music industry.
Speaker A:The industry is just the loudest, most relentless version of a problem he had everywhere.
Speaker A:Other people are illegible and their voices in the dark are not to be trusted.
Speaker A:So if you go looking for voice, you can end up with two quite different records.
Speaker A:So let's sort those out.
Speaker A: So number one, the: Speaker A:Track one on side two, around five minutes.
Speaker A:This is the one most of you will know for the US and against his wishes, they retitled the album New Anger, changed the sleeve from Black to Blue, remixed several tracks and pulled two songs, Hunger and Young Heart, replacing them with recordings originally made for Berserker four years earlier.
Speaker A:Thankfully, Voice survived the cull.
Speaker A:Number two, voice 98.
Speaker A:And this is the one that perhaps matters most.
Speaker A: In: Speaker A:Three of them came out together on an EP for Dominion Day, released in the States by Cleopatra as a mini compilation promoting the Exile era.
Speaker A:Those three songs were Metal down in the park and Voice.
Speaker A:So stop and look at that.
Speaker A: and Down in the park are from: Speaker A:They're the songs he's played at practically every show he's ever done and chosen for the same treatment.
Speaker A: e them is an album track from: Speaker A:That's not a compilation filler decision.
Speaker A:That's him deciding which of his own songs deserved rebuilding.
Speaker A:So what did he actually do to it?
Speaker A:Well, less than you'd expect.
Speaker A:Structurally, the bones are the same song.
Speaker A:What's changed is everything around them.
Speaker A:The synths have been dragged forward a decade into his mid to late 90s palette.
Speaker A:This is exile and pure territory, and it sounds it.
Speaker A:The guitars are much harder where the original had the jangle sitting on top.
Speaker A:This has weight.
Speaker A:It's straightforwardly industrial in a way.
Speaker A: The: Speaker A:There's no Tessa Niles on this at all, which, given I've just spent five minutes telling you they're one of the best things about the original tells you something about what he was after.
Speaker A:He didn't want the lift, he wanted it heavier.
Speaker A:What you get instead is more Gary.
Speaker A:He's clearer in the mix further forward and angrier in the chorus, which is saying something because he wasn't exactly relaxed in the first one.
Speaker B:God, I don't like people when they say things I'm not I don't need opinions and rumors I don't need a voice in the dog I don't need to listen to strangers I don't need to tear out my one stranger one coming One moment forever.
Speaker A:And the last verse absolutely goes for it.
Speaker A:It's hectic in a way the original never is.
Speaker B:I'll make you cry.
Speaker A:I should declare an interest here, as this is the version I actually prefer.
Speaker A:I'm aware that's partly an accident of Biography, because it's the first version I heard, and so it's the one my ear treats as the real one.
Speaker A:I've come around to the original completely and I love it now.
Speaker A:But if you put both on and made me pick, I'm taking 98 and I'm not on my own.
Speaker A:Lee Bowman got in touch and says he rates the Meteor version that turned up on the Exposure compilation as good as the original, if not better.
Speaker A:Here in the UK, we didn't get it on the EP at all.
Speaker A: r On Old, put out by Eagle in: Speaker C:In September, EMI re released Meta Rhythm.
Speaker C:If you remember, when I was signed to irs, they were bought out by EMI and I was dumped, so EMI clearly didn't want me on their label.
Speaker C:But now they were releasing my IRS albums, I found that quite offensive on the one hand, yet strangely satisfying on the other.
Speaker C:Then Eagle released a best of album called New Dreams for Old, which was a peculiar mix of things, some recent, some old, some seemingly borrowed from emi.
Speaker C:To be fair, as I was slow coming up with a new album, they probably had little choice but to lash the theme together and do the best they could.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:So don't credit the compilation, credit the EP.
Speaker A:The compilation was a label filling a gap.
Speaker A:The EP was a choice.
Speaker A:Voice 98 turned up again on Exposure, which is where I first heard it.
Speaker A: His: Speaker A:The sleeve lists it as simply Voice with no indication that it's the re recording.
Speaker A:So here's where it gets genuinely remarkable.
Speaker A:1988 The album comes out.
Speaker A:Voice is not a single.
Speaker A:He tours it for 18 dates and voice isn't even in the set.
Speaker A:The live album from that tour, the Skin Mechanic, recorded at the Dominion in London, features four metal rhythm songs, Respect, Hunger, you, Anger and Young Heart.
Speaker A:No Voice at the point where the song is newest.
Speaker A:It's nowhere.
Speaker A:1993.
Speaker A:Five years on, he's reinvented himself, he's about to make sacrifice and he's on the Dream Corrosion T tour and voices in the set every night.
Speaker A: th of November: Speaker A:And look where they put it, opening the second disc immediately after Cars.
Speaker A:By this point he's dropped almost everything else from the era.
Speaker A:Devious is gone, this is Emotion is gone.
Speaker A:He keeps respect and he keeps this.
Speaker B:I like this heat I like this feeling and I know I like this I like your whispers I like your scream I like your lies and I'm sure I like your dreams.
Speaker A: In: Speaker A: -: Speaker A:It becomes a proper live favorite in the process.
Speaker A:A. Brannon wrote in about the audience participation screams, which, if you've never experienced it, is exactly what it sounds like.
Speaker A:And it's glorious.
Speaker A:Karen Bailey's favorite version isn't either of the studio ones at all.
Speaker A: a live recording on fragment: Speaker A: And then: Speaker A:40 Years since cars and the Pleasure Principle, A career spanning victory lap playing to bigger crowds than he'd seen in decades.
Speaker A:With a set built from metal.
Speaker A:Down in the Park, Our Friends Electric Me I disconnect from you My name is Ruin Night after night on that tour, Liverpool, Northampton, Cardiff.
Speaker A:Voice is the song he comes back on stage to.
Speaker A:First song of the encore, straight after Our Friends Electric.
Speaker A:It's in the Roundhouse Shows set Coventry at Manchester, at Glasgow, 31 years after it could have sunk without trace.
Speaker A:On a tour celebrating 40 years of his greatest songs.
Speaker A:The encore opens with an album track from the album not many people bought.
Speaker A:David Eaves wrote in, saying he loves both versions and wishes Gary still did the track live.
Speaker A:Me too.
Speaker A:And if it comes back around, I'd say the odds are decent.
Speaker A:I've been trying to work out why that all moves me as much as it does, and I think it's this.
Speaker A: Everything around voice in: Speaker A:The label picked the single.
Speaker A:The label cut a word off the title.
Speaker A:America rewrote the running order.
Speaker A:His manager wanted covers, his father wanted collaborations.
Speaker A: wanted him to sound like: Speaker A:He had, in his own words, stopped trusting his own judgment and started listening to advice.
Speaker A:The worst mistake he ever made.
Speaker A:Voice is the one thing from that year that nobody chose for him and nobody interfered with, nobody promoted it, nobody remixed it into the charts, nobody had an opinion about it at all, which left it entirely his 30 years later, later, when he could play absolutely anything he liked, turned out to be the one he still wanted.
Speaker A: voice is the only thing from: Speaker A:So your turn.
Speaker A:And there was a big response to this one on the album.
Speaker A:Zara DeLuca, Karen Lissi, Denise Ann, Kevin Lee, Richard Carter and Frank Makari all came in with love for both the song and the record.
Speaker A:Paul Allen calls it one of the best of that era.
Speaker A:Thomas John Taylor's answer to which tracks he rates was simply all of them.
Speaker A:Stephen Paul Davis says that after a couple of years of Gary dodging around this felt like a real return to form and he still finds Metal Rhythm better listen than Savage, which I suspect will start something in the comments and good.
Speaker A:Simon Rippon sent in the most detailed response and it's worth going through.
Speaker A:He listens to Metal Rhythm more than Isolate or Machine and Soul.
Speaker A:He hears the Operation IRS and American Influence coming in, and something more specific too.
Speaker A:He reckons there's a bit of pick at the White House coming through, and says Gary mentioned listening to them around this period We Need Protection, especially if that name means nothing to you.
Speaker A: as their debut single back in: Speaker A:Adrian Tudor calls Voice the standout and one of the best songs of the wilderness years, alongside My Breathing.
Speaker A:He bought the album, loved about half of it instant recently and came round to most of the rest over time.
Speaker A:Andy Brown says it's his favourite album of a period that others deem not that good and puts Voice in his top 10 Newman non singles and loves both versions and the other side of it because it wouldn't be honest to only read the ones that agree with me.
Speaker A:Mike Tipper loved Metal Rhythm at the time, but finds it very dated now and doesn't go back to it.
Speaker A:John Blackmore reckons he probably hadn't listened to it since it came out.
Speaker A:Paul Demon puts it well, great at the time, but times change and he's much happier with the direction Gary's taken over the last couple of decades.
Speaker A:So that's it for this episode of Electric Friends.
Speaker A:Thanks for joining me as ever.
Speaker A:I'll be back next time with another track from Gary Newman's history.
Speaker A:If you'd like to get in touch, please do newmanpodcastmail.com or find me on socials.
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Speaker A:All the episodes are on YouTube, including video versions of my past interview specials.
Speaker A:I'd also love to read out your own humanoid stories how how you became a fan, your favorite Newman memories, so please do send those over.
Speaker A:Head to newmanpodcast.com for more and if you haven't already, please subscribe, rate and review and spread the word to your fellow humanoids.
Speaker A:Merch is@electric friends.printify.me for now, speak.
Speaker A:Electric Friends, a Gary Newman podcast the songs and stories of a music fight.
Speaker C:It.
