Annoyingly it’s taken me almost a week to get round to writing this, but Saturday 14th October saw us heading to Manchester Cathedral. Despite being born and brought up in Manchester and still working there (on my increasingly infrequent visits to the office), I’d only ever set foot in the cathedral once before. That was for a memorial service. Won’t go into details, but obviously a prominent person in the life of the city who I’d met via work a few times, and I was there in that capacity.
This time it was to see what struck me as a rather intriguing event when I first saw it advertised. We’ve seem Gary Numan a couple of times recently (both occasions at Manchester’s Albert Hall) and been blown away by the performance. If you’re not familiar with his more recent output, it’s a lot heavier than the songs he made his name with – and even the old tunes that he does play get the heavier treatment. I wasn’t sure Mrs TGG would be that keen, but I think she enjoyed those shows even more than I did. So when he announced an acoustic tour, she was straight on it and grabbed some tickets for a show that was sold out in a matter of minutes.
At this point, I’m going to say there is a far better review than anything I could write. It’s on the Louder Than War website – link here: https://louderthanwar.com/gary-numan-manchester-cathedral-live-review/
I concur with that review. It was one of the best shows I’ve attended, largely due to its unique nature, but also because Gary Numan and his fellow musicians truly pulled it off.
Even leaving aside the amazing reworking of so many songs, it was a real deep dive into his back catalogue. He admitted that one song had only been included because his daughters had told him to, and that he couldn’t actually remember writing it, let alone recalling which album it was from. Another older track he confessed to not remembering what it was about. As the review above states, there was a very personal feel to what he was sharing with the audience. Normally, he says next to nothing at a show, but following him on Facebook does give an insight to life in the Numan household, and it was that openness which came across here.
It was also great to see everyone on stage, including the man himself, laughing, joking and clearly enjoying themselves. Here’s a clip of one you’ll know performed on the night and filmed from just to the left of where we were.
Not sure how long it will be on there for, given the brevity of some live performances’ existence on the service, but hopefully it illustrates what the shows on the tour were all about.
TGG
Wasting time in the study 
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