What Is Gary Numan's Net Worth?
Gary Numan is an English singer, composer, musician, and author who has a net worth of $7 million. Known as a synth-rock pioneer, Gary Numan began to gain notice after forming the band Tubeway Army in the '70s. The band released a self-titled album in 1978, followed by the 1979 album "Replicas," which was certified Gold and reached #1 in the U.K. Their 1979 single "Are 'Friends' Electric?" topped the UK Singles Chart and reached the top 10 in Ireland, New Zealand, and the Netherlands.
Numan has released numerous solo albums, including "The Pleasure Principle" (1979), "Telekon" (1980), "I, Assassin" (1982), "The Fury" (1985), "Machine + Soul" (1992), "Jagged" (2006), and "Intruder" (2021). His 1979 song "Cars" was a top 10 hit in five countries and was certified Gold in the U.K. and Canada. Gary is also known for singles such as "Complex," "We Are Glass," "I Die: You Die," and "She's Got Claws." Numan has published the books "Praying to the Aliens" (1997) and "(R)evolution: The Autobiography" (2020).
Early Life
Gary Numan was born Gary Anthony James Webb on March 8, 1958, in Hammersmith, London, England. Numan's father worked as a bus driver for British Airways. When Gary was 7 years old, his family adopted his paternal cousin John, who grew up to become a musician and played in Numan's backing band. Gary attended Town Farm Junior School, Ashford County Grammar School, and Slough Grammar School, then he enrolled at Brooklands Technical College. As a teenager, Numan was a member of the Air Training Corps and took jobs as a forklift truck driver and accounts clerk. After 15-year-old Gary was gifted a Gibson Les Paul by his father, Numan played in several bands before he joined Mean Street and the Lasers. He met bassist Paul Gardiner in the Lasers, which later became known as Tubeway Army. The band also featured Gary's uncle, drummer Jess Lidyard, and they signed with Beggars Banquet Records in 1978. Gary initially went by the stage name Valerian, but he began using the last name Numan after seeing a Yellow Pages ad for a plumber with the surname Neumann.
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Career
After signing a record deal, Tubeway Army released a self-titled album in November 1978, and it reached #14 on the UK Albums Chart. Their follow-up, 1979's "Replicas," reached #1 on the UK Albums Chart and #8 on the New Zealand Albums charts, and it was certified Gold in the U.K. and Australia. The band had a #1 single in the U.K. with 1979's "Are 'Friends' Electric?," which also reached #3 in Ireland, #8 in New Zealand, and #9 in the Netherlands and went Gold in the U.K. After the release of "Replicas," Numan dropped the Tubeway Army name and began releasing music under his own name. His 1979 album "The Pleasure Principle" featured the singles "Cars" and "Complex," which were both top 10 hits in the U.K. and Ireland. "Cars" was certified Gold in the U.K. and Canada, and "Complex" was certified Silver in the U.K. "The Pleasure Principle" reached #1 in the U.K. and was certified Gold in the U.K. and Australia. Gary's next album, 1980's "Telekon," also topped the UK Albums Chart and went Gold in the U.K. The singles "We Are Glass" and "I Die: You Die" reached #5 and #6 on the UK Singles Chart, respectively.
By the end of the '80s, Numan had released eight more studio albums, including "Dance" (1981), "I, Assassin" (1982), "Warriors" (1983), "Strange Charm" (1986), and "Metal Rhythm" (1988). "Dance" and "I, Assassin" reached the top 10 on the UK Albums Chart, and in 1989, he teamed up with keyboardist Bill Sharpe for the album "Automatic." He had two more top 10 singles in the U.K. with "She's Got Claws" from "Dance" and "We Take Mystery (To Bed)" from "I, Assassin." In the '90s, Gary released the albums "Outland" (1991), "Machine + Soul" (1992), "Sacrifice" (1994), and "Exile" (1997), and his 1996 compilation album "The Premier Hits" reached #21 in the U.K. and was certified Silver there. In 2000, he released the album "Pure," and the single "Rip" reached #29 on the UK Singles Chart in 2002. Next, Numan released the albums "Jagged" (2006), "Dead Son Rising" (2011), "Splinter (Songs from a Broken Mind)" (2013), "Savage (Songs from a Broken World)" (2017), and "Intruder" (2021). "Savage (Songs from a Broken World)" and "Intruder" both peaked at #2 on the UK Albums Chart and reached the top 3 in Scotland. Besides his work as a musician, Gary also founded a Blackbushe-based charter flight company called Numanair in the early '80s and was an aerobatic flying instructor and air display pilot evaluator.
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Personal Life
Gary married Gemma O'Neill on August 28, 1997, and they have welcomed daughters Raven, Persia, and Echo together. Gemma was a member of the Gary Numan fan club, which Gary's mother ran, and after O'Neill stopped going to concerts due to her mother's illness and subsequent death, Numan called to see how she was coping. He offered to take her out for the day, and the two became friends and eventually began a romantic relationship. Their daughter Persia sang on Gary's 2017 song "My Name Is Ruin" at the age of 11, and she appeared in the music video.
Numan has said that he's an atheist, and during a 2010 interview with the "Fortean Times," he stated, "I believe in pretty much everything apart from God. I believe aliens are real, demons, possession, poltergeists, all of that. I believe in ghosts but I do not believe in Heaven; to me, a ghost is just one of nature's tragic mistakes. They shouldn't be there, but they are. It does indicate some kind of life after death, but that has nothing to do with a Heaven. If you believe in one God creating everything then I don't understand why the idea of many Gods is so laughable. None of the God ideas make any sense to me but one God is perhaps the most ridiculous of all."
As a teenager, Gary would "smash things up, scream and shout, get in people's faces and break stuff," which led to him being prescribed anxiolytics and antidepressants at the age of 15. Numan has said that he has Asperger's syndrome, and in a 2001 interview, he revealed, "Polite conversation has never been one of my strong points. Just recently I actually found out that I'd got a mild form of Asperger's syndrome which basically means I have trouble interacting with people. For years, I couldn't understand why people thought I was arrogant, but now it all makes more sense."
Awards and Nominations
In 2016, Numan received the Moog Innovation Award. In 2017 the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers, and Authors honored him with the Ivor Novello Inspiration Award, and he won the T3 Tech Legends Award.
Los Angeles Castle
In 2012 Gary and his wife paid $1.6 million for a 20-room, 7,000 square foot "castle" in Northridge, California. The home, which was built in 1992, is described as a "magnificent architectural guarded estate," thanks to its castle-like features inside and out/
