Gary Numan, The O2 Apollo, Manchester: Live Review

By Mike Ainscoe on 1st December 2025 • ( Leave a comment )

Gary Numan w/ Raven Numan – The O2 Apollo, Manchester – Saturday 29th November 2025

GARY NUMAN

Having toured Replicas eighteen months ago and recently released the audio/visual souvenir of his 100th show, we’re quickly onto the next chapter of the Gary Numan story. It turns out to be an emotional one for many reasons. The 45th anniversary of Telekon is all set for celebration, yet the tour has been touched by tragedy with the death of Gary’s brother.

All is played out in front of a huge partisan crowd supporting, literally, their hero. Many will have been on the journey, some back on 8th September 1980 when most (not all as he rectifies tonight) of the then new album was played. As he adds the missing pieces to the jigsaw, structuring the set to run smoothly and capture the flow, Numan twists and writhes and throws his guitar shapes all around the expansive Apollo stage. No longer restricted by the confines of the smaller venues he’s inhabited in town in recent years, The O2 Ritz and The Albert Hall, the huge production plays along with the music, giving the magnificence it deserves.

He occasionally seems to need to take a moment. Crouching by his keyboard rig in what seems like contemplative thought, or retiring briefly into the shadows, maybe to give us a chance to focus on the band or to use the respite to gather himself once more. No more the sullen young man of the eighties, but as he himself admits – father, parent, brother, husband. It’s been quite some journey both musically and personally.

TELEKON REWORKED

The music and songs we’re celebrating is given a dark and dense new reworking. Like much of his most effective recent work, the focus shifts more to 2025 interpretations with the emphasis on complex and intense atmospheres rather than what was oft regarded as clean and soulless, disembodied machine music. The Telekon artwork makes an appearance; the pairs of perpendicular red strips appear more subtly in the moments before the show starts and then take on a greater focus as part of the impressive cages of light and floor level strips of spots that loom up and out to backlight and silhouette the band.

On the other hand, Please Push No More is about as far as you can get from the ‘pioneering electronic music’ label or his more recent industrial slabs of sound. A tender moment that has us holding our breath should the emotions overwhelm. For all the showmanship and smoke and lights that make the show a spectacle, it becomes the unanticipated highlight. Don’t be surprised to find it find a new place in the man’s and the fan’s hearts and become a key part of Numan shows in the future. Segueing into The Aircrash Bureau, it comes across all Berlin Bowie style – a nice move in the same way that back on his ’78 tour Bowie followed the huge Ziggle sequence of osngs with the instrumental Art Decade.

BACK TO THE TUBE(WAY)

The main set ends with the biggies. I Die: You Die and We Are Glass remain amongst the first names on the team sheet to the present day and have earned their status as ‘anthems’. The former is a banger that chugs along with synth parps and has the audience bopping along with a second wind kicking in.

The encore sees him dip back even further for a Tubeway Army selection that finales with another rendition of Down In The Park that’s become synonymous with Numan and the electronic music revolution. Massive synth chords accompanying the melody cement the link between the past and the present. We may have remarked in our recent coverage of all things Numan, but the Indian Summer of his career seems set to last.

RAVEN NUMAN

Dads and daughters in Rock music – Ozzy and Kelly Osbourne, Richard and Kami Thompson, Marty and Kim Wilde etc etc. Gary has both Persia and Raven making their mark in his sets for a few tours, and now Raven and her own band have the honour of opening on the Telekon anniversary tour to packed houses.

He’s talked his pride and acknowledged her bravery in not relying on holding her dad’s hand; instead paying her dues by travelling with the band in the van and using more budget accommodation. Aside from that her music finds Raven Numan apple falling no too far from the tree. She’s covered Nine Inch Nails and has a foot firmly planted in the areas of dark pop with the obligatory electronics never too far from the surface. Brooding and atmospheric with the option to accelerate and lead the band towards huge soundscapes particularly with the Here For Me finale, the guarantee is that the ongoing Numan legacy is safe. It might be a bit obvious, but we’d love to hear Raven and the band having a go at some of her dad’s stuff.