Back in February, The Grauniad had Gary Numan look back at how he wrote Are ‘Friends’ Electric and what it meant:
All my early songs were about being alone or misunderstood. As a teenager, I’d been sent to a child psychiatrist and put on medication. I had Asperger’s and saw the world differently. I immersed myself in sci-fi writers: Philip K Dick, JG Ballard. The lyrics came from short stories I’d written about what London would be like in 30 years. 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. It was released in May 1979 and sold a million copies. I had a No 1 single with a song about a robot prostitute and no one knew.
Of course now it is thirty years later and while its vision of the future never quite came to pass, it still sounds as futuristic and chilling as it must’ve done in 1979. That both Ballard and Dick were influences on Numan doesn’t come as a surprise; it’s clear from the music.
Bonus: Nine Inch Nails invites Numan up on stage for Cars.