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Technically, Tubeway Army are the ultimate one-hit wonder. Formed in London in 1977, the Gary Numan-fronted outfit released just four singles in the course of their brief two-year life, with only the group’s last 7”, Are “Friends” Electric?, peaking higher than No.97 in the UK. But with their final, spellbinding single spending four weeks at No.1 in the spring of ‘79, Tubeway Army suddenly found themselves bona fide stars, and their enigmatic frontman, the pale-skinned face of the burgeoning electropop movement. “The lyrics came from short stories I’d written about what London would be like in 30 years,” Numan told The Guardian in 2014. “These machines – ‘friends’ – come to the door. They supply services of various kinds, but your neighbours never know what they really are since they look human. The one in the song is a prostitute, hence the inverted commas. I had a No.1 single with a song about a robot prostitute and no one knew.” By the end of 1979, not only had Are “Friends” Electric? become the fourth highest-selling UK single for that year but Tubeway Army was no more. Numan’s next release, Cars, would be credited simply as ‘Gary Numan’, though various members of the group would continue as the singer’s backing band on subsequent solo releases and tours.
Steve O’Brien
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