Gary Numan announces The Pleasure Principle Tour 2010

Music News | Jun 24th, 2010

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“Here in my Car”…To celebrate the recent re-issue and 30th anniversary of his classic album The Pleasure Principle, Gary Numan has announced he will come to North America this fall on tour. It seems like more and more 80s bands and singers are announcing tours. All I want to know is when is the Men Without Hats tour coming to the States!?

On The Pleasure Principle 2010 Tour, the modern music icon will perform in its entirety the album that climbed into the Top 20 on the U.S. charts 30 years ago propelled by his unforgettable Top 10 single “Cars.” The shows will feature material spanning across NUMAN’s career, including tracks from his forthcoming album Splinter which he’s currently working on in the U.K.

NUMAN last toured America in 2006 in support of his Jagged album and was set to appear at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival this past April, but had to cancel due to the volcanic eruptions in Iceland blocking air traffic. For his 2010 fall tour starting in mid-October, fans will be able to catch him in 15 markets including Orlando, Atlanta, Washington D.C., Boston, Toronto, Detroit, Chicago, Denver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Emilie Autumn will join NUMAN as the support act in Philadelphia and New York City, with others to be announced for the other cities.

The Pleasure Principle made GARY NUMAN a huge international solo star upon its release in 1979. Given the soft rock and disco-dominated music scene in America at the end of the decade, the disc pioneered electronic pop music on a new, worldwide scale built around icy synthesizers without guitars or conventional song structures (“Cars” doesn’t even have a chorus). The disc’s impact was crystallized in the U.S. when NUMAN performed “Cars” and “Praying To The Aliens” an audience of 40 million people on Saturday Night Live. The music from The Pleasure Principle gave birth to new musical movements in the States over the next decade, including hip-hop, industrial and techno.

As NME recently noted, “every hip-hop production titan ever–notably Dr. Dre–has nicked the opening beats from the track ‘Films.’ The likes of Timbaland and The Neptunes’ minimal pop–featuring exquisitely produced drums and simplistic synthlines–are currently heralded as futuristic genius in the 21st century; The Pleasure Principle shows that Gary Numan was doing the same thing 30 years previously. His influence on hip-hop, while rarely recognized, is enormous. His influence on electronic music in general is unparalleled.”

When GZA of the Wu-Tang Clan covered “Films” from The Pleasure Principle last year, he was actually taking hip-hop back to its roots as the track features one of the original break beats, also included as part of the hugely influential Ultimate Breaks & Beats series. In industrial music, both Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson have name checked NUMAN as a significant influence, with the former currently performing the track “Metal” on his tour. “After hearing ‘Cars,’ I knew I wanted to make music with synthesizers,” says Reznor. “The Pleasure Principle is great because it’s so cold sounding.”

Techno pioneers ranging from Carl Craig to Juan Atkins and Richie Hawtin were also grabbed by this strange, futuristic music, creating a relationship between NUMAN and dance music that has spawned the likes of the Basement Jaxx’s “Where’s Your Head At” (samples “M.E.” from The Pleasure Principle) and the “Cars”-mutating “Koochy” by Armand Van Helden. As the newly reformed Devo recently commented, The Pleasure Principle is “so original and cool and groundbreaking and in a way classic. Like, it still sounds great today…like nothing sounds like that today.”

Catch GARY NUMAN on The Pleasure Principle 2010 Tour this fall:

Sun 10/17 Orlando, FL The Firestone
Mon 10/18 Atlanta, GA Masquerade
Wed 10/20 Washington, DC Black Cat
Thu 10/21 Philadelphia, PA Trocadero w/ Emilie Autumn
Fri 10/22 Boston, MA Paradise
Sat 10/23 New York, NY Nokia Theatre w/Emilie Autumn
Sun 10/24 Toronto, ON Opera House
Mon 10/25 Detroit, MI Majestic Theater
Tue 10/26 Chicago, IL Metro
Thu 10/28 Denver, CO Gothic Theatre
Sun 10/31 Seattle, WA Neumos
Mon 11/1 Portland, OR Roseland Theatre
Tue 11/2 San Francisco, CA Fillmore
Wed 11/3 Los Angeles, CA El Rey
Thu 11/4 Los Angeles, CA El Rey

Purchase tickets to select shows so far here.

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