David Bowie’s Weird Beef With Gary Numan

David Bowie inspired generations of musicians – but sometimes that sense of being copied could eat away at him. Perhaps that was the case in his curious beef with Gary Numan.

1980 brought the start of a new decade. Bowie had – artistically speaking – dominated the cultural conversation during the 70s, acting as a progenitor of glam, a harbinger of punk, and an electronic pioneer.

The dawning of the 80s saw a new generation of kids catching up with him, however. His album ‘Scary Monsters’ started to reflect that, with Bowie recruiting faces from the nascent New Romantic Scene at London’s Uber cool Blitz club to start in the video for lead single ‘Ashes To Ashes’.

Yet while he was outwardly content in his godfather role, Bowie bristled at some of the competition. Take his song ‘Teenage Wildlife’ with its dismissive lines such as “same old thing in brand new drag” and “the fingerprints will prove that you couldn’t pass the test…”

At time, it was widely rumoured that the song was promoted by the rise of Gary Numanan artist whose early singles certainly carried a trace of Bowie’s DNA – or as ‘Teenage Wildlife’ infers, a “whisper” of his ‘Low’ album.

“But as the years have gone by, I understood far more the way he saw things then. He was still a young man, with ups and downs in his own career, and I think he saw people like me as little upstarts. But later he said some nice things about me, so that made the whole thing better!”

David Bowie never truly discussed the situation – but he later explored the lyrics of ‘Teenage Wildlife’ and insisted they were merely a challenge to himself.

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