Across the road from a pub and down a flight of basement stairs at number 19 Victoria Street is where the Gary Numan has descended to start work on his band’s debut album sometime in 1978. Despite being underground, the studio is called Spaceward, and over in the corner the something catches the singer’s eye.

“I got to the studio and noticed the Minimoog, and the studio manager said it’s one that was hired in for the band before. So I asked him if I could I plug it and have a go at it. (I) had no idea how to set it up. But I pressed a key and it made the hold room shook. The hire company never turned up so I had it there for the whole day and I put as much Minimoog on to those tracks as I could.”

And even though Numan and the rest of the Tubeway Army had been sent to this tiny space in Cambridge England to ostensibly record an edgy New Wave guitar album, the Minimoog is in fact the first instrument heard on the album. When it came to working on their follow-up a year later, Numan found their first hit in an unlikely spot.

“I wrote ‘Are 'Friends' Electric?’ on a piano. My mum and dad bought a second-hand upright piano from the pub that was out of tune. It came out of two songs. The main verse was written but then I couldn’t think of a suitable chorus. One day I was playing electric (guitar) and came up with a chorus and stuck them together.”

Numan moved his experiment over to his electronic rig and the band found themselves playing “Are 'Friends' Electric?” on a pair of Minimoogs to the nearly 19 million people who tuned into Top of The Pops one evening in May 1979. It not only lit the spark of Numan’s career, but to many people it signaled the dawn of Synthpop in the U.K.