The Pleasure Principle

The Pleasure Principle is Gary Numan’s third album and marks the first time where he is not credited as The Tubeway Army. After his U.K. chart-topping Are Friends Electric, he had enough clout to convince his label (Beggar’s Banquet) to allow him to go with a solo identity.

This album was a departure from the more guitar-based punk of Gary’s first two albums: Tubeway Army and Replicas.

I wanted to experiment by making an album without guitars; I wanted to make a purely electronic album. It wasn’t intended to be a great artistic statement although I did feel synths were, to this new form of music, what guitars had been to most of the musical styles that had gone before.“ – Gary Numan, Liner notes to 20th Anniversary edition

Numan first used the Vox Humana string-like sound on the PolyMoog synthesizer in several tracks on this album, including his most famous song, “Cars”.

In addition to these “new at the time” synthesizers, The Pleasure Principle is notable for being is Gary Numan’s only album with no guitars on it. It is also the first where he started adding viola and violin to the mix.