Gary Numan

from Beggars: February 2008 and Gary Numan celebrates his 30th year in music and turns 50. To celebrate this, the pioneering electronic album Replicas will be re-issued as Gary Numan & Tubeway Army - Replicas Redux on February 25, 2008. This is a week before Numan performs the original LP plus B-sides on a 15 date UK tour in March 2008. The album includes the breakthrough single 'Are 'Friends' Electric?', which gave Numan his first simultaneous Number 1 single and album when Replicas joined it at the top of the charts a few weeks later. 'Are 'Friends' Electric?' originally charted as a picture disc and Beggars Banquet are promising a very limited edition picture disc of the track plus 'Down In The Park' as the flipside as recognition that both songs have remained influential for three decades. The new Replicas re-issue also features for the first time a complete earlier version of the Replicas album recorded in late 1978 and January 1979, along with the original B-sides and further out-takes, adding up to 27 tracks across the two CDs.

Different generations have identified with Replicas' atmospheric music, images of technology out of control and a ripped-up London of the near future. The imagination of one young man in Cleveland, Ohio, namely Brian Warner, was fired by the 'apocalyptic' imagery of 'Down In The Park' and as Marilyn Manson he later recorded the track with producer Trent Reznor (also a fan) from Nine Inch Nails. Nirvana's Kurt Cobain namechecked the guitar-led 'It Must Have Been Years' as an influence in his journal and The Foo Fighters covered 'Down In The Park' for the X-Files soundtrack, Songs In The Key Of X. In the late '90s Damon Albarn recorded the more obscure Replicas 'outtake' 'We Have A Technical' and of course Sugababes scored a UK Number 1 in 2002 by sampling 'Are 'Friends' Electric?' for their single 'Freak Like Me'. Other acts who have covered tracks on the album include DJ Hell, Smashing Pumpkins, Beck and Moloko.