He developed a signature sound consisting of heavy synthesizer hooks fed through guitar effects pedals, and is also known for his distinctive voice and androgynous "android" persona.

[27] Tubeway Army's self-titled, new wave-oriented debut studio album, released in November 1978, sold out its limited run and introduced Numan's fascination with dystopian science fiction and synthesizers.

[31] Following exposure in a television advertisement for Lee Cooper jeans with the jingle "Don't Be a Dummy",[28] Tubeway Army released the single "Are 'Friends' Electric?"

[33] At this point Numan was recording his next studio album with a new backing band, having recruited keyboardist Chris Payne and drummer Cedric Sharpley.

[34][35] At the peak of success, Numan opted to premiere four songs in a John Peel session in June 1979 rather than promoting the current album and the Tubeway Army group name was dropped.

[41] The Pleasure Principle was a rock album with no guitars; instead, Numan used synthesizers connected to effects units to achieve a distorted, phased, metallic tone.

In April 1981, Numan decided to retire from touring following his upcoming series of concerts at Wembley Arena,[46] where he was supported by experimental musician Nash the Slash[47] and Shock, a rock/mime/burlesque troupe whose members included Barbie Wilde, Tik and Tok, and Carole Caplin.

[54] With his former backing band, Chris Payne (keyboards; viola), Russell Bell (guitar), and Ced Sharpley (drums) now reformed as Dramatis, Numan contributed lead vocals to the minor hit "Love Needs No Disguise" from the studio album For Future Reference (1981)[55] and lent lead vocals to the first single released by his long-term bassist Paul Gardiner, "Stormtrooper in Drag", which also made the charts.

[58] The heavily percussive funk style made several tracks from the album, such as the 12" version of "Music for Chameleons" and a special remix of "White Boys and Heroes", unexpected successes in the American club scene[59] and in October 1982 he embarked on a US tour.

[75] In 1989, the Sharpe & Numan album Automatic was released through Polydor Records, though this too failed to garner much commercial success, briefly entering the charts for just one week at No.

[79] By 1994, Numan decided to stop attempting to crack the pop market and concentrate instead on exploring more personal themes, including his vocal atheism.

Nine Inch Nails (NIN), who were influenced by Numan's music, and other bands with industrial tendencies were contemporaneously becoming famous, and Sacrifice received critical acclaim.

[83] Depeche Mode's album Songs of Faith and Devotion that came out during the recording of Sacrifice became a massive influence on Numan that both musically and lyrically inspired his new, darker direction.

Numan undertook a brief Telekon 'Classic Album' tour in the UK in December 2006, performing at Rock City, the Kentish Town Forum and Club Academy.

[90] He sold out a 15-date UK and Ireland tour in spring 2008, during which he performed his 1979 number-one studio album Replicas in its entirety, and all the Replicas-era music including B-sides.

[95] Numan was set to perform a small number of American live dates in April 2010, including a Coachella Festival appearance in California, but had to cancel because air travel in Europe was halted by the Icelandic volcanic ash cloud.

[106][107][non-primary source needed] Numan provided vocals for the song "Long Way Down", composed by Masafumi Takada with lyrics written by Rich Dickerson, for the survival horror video game The Evil Within,[108] which was released on 14 October 2014.

Including shows in Norwich, Sheffield, Glasgow, Newcastle, Manchester, London, Bristol, Cardiff, Bournemouth, Birmingham and Nottingham between 19 May and 1 June.

According to Numan, this was an unintentional result of acne; before an appearance on Top of the Pops, "I had spots everywhere, so they slapped about half an inch of white make-up on me before I'd even walked in the door.

[57] Initially, Numan used his invention of the mysterious fantasy character "Mach-man", a machine in human skin dressed all in black, which developed from short stories he wrote at school, as his stage persona.

[140] Wanting to broaden his musical output, Numan's mid- to late 1980's releases featured a jazz-funk style,[35] blending an industrial edge with funk and synth-pop sensibilities.

[148] He has been credited as a key influence by fellow English musician Kim Wilde as she was working on her debut single "Kids in America" with her brother Ricky.

[149] Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal of Tears for Fears, another new wave act of the 1980s, cited Numan's style as one that inspired them while recording their debut studio album The Hurting.

[150] Since the 1990s Numan has been cited as a major influence by a variety of bands and artists from hip hop to industrial rock and Britpop, including Afrika Bambaataa, Fear Factory, Nine Inch Nails,[151] Marilyn Manson,[152] Stephin Merritt of Magnetic Fields[153] and Damon Albarn of Blur.

"[153] Fear Factory produced a cover of "Cars" (featuring a prominent guest appearance by Numan himself) for the digipak version of their third studio album, Obsolete (1999).

[155] Numan had become acknowledged and respected by his peers, with such musicians as Dave Grohl (of Foo Fighters,[156][157] with whom he covered "Down in the Park" on 1996's Songs in the Key of X,[158] and Nirvana), Trent Reznor[159] (of Nine Inch Nails, whose 2018 leg of the Cold and Black and Infinite tour concluded with a guest performance by Numan, who Reznor described as "vitally important and a huge inspiration"),[160][161] and Marilyn Manson[162][163] (who released his own cover version of "Down in the Park" as the B-side of his band's 1995 studio album Lunchbox)[164] proclaiming his work an influence.

[180][181] At age 15, after a series of outbursts in which he would "smash things up, scream and shout, get in people's faces and break stuff", Numan was prescribed antidepressants and anxiolytics.

In 1978, he started learning to fly at Blackbushe Airport, but the success of his music career in 1979 meant that obtaining his pilot's licence was delayed until 17 December 1980.

He also indulged his passion for motor racing in 1981 by sponsoring Mike Mackonochie who drove a Van Diemen RF81 in Numanair livery in the Formula Ford 1600 class.

He and friend Norman Lees, who also owned a Harvard, formed the Radial Pair, performing synchronised aerobatics from the 1992 air display season.