And the Welcome everybody to Soda Jaker on songwriting songwriting I'm Simon to my leftist Brian and

joining us today is a singer songwriter and synth pop pioneer as the arresting

paroxi blonde frontman of Tube way army he took the British music scene by storm in the late 70s before

launching a solo career that won him legions of devoted fans, inspired future rock icons

like Trent Reznor and Dave Grohl and continues to flourish to this day.

In recent years he's enjoyed a richly deserved critical and commercial Renaissance and in May of

this year was the proud recipient of the Ivanovello Inspiration Award.

His brand new album, Savage, Songs from a Broken World,

demonstrates an artist who still has plenty to say lyrically while continuing to push himself musically.

We're delighted to welcome the great Gary Newman to the show.

Gary was in our hometown of Liverpool recently to perform at the exhibition centre on the

banks of the River Mersey.

Before the show we were able to sequester him in a sparsely furnished room for 40 minutes and quiz him about his songwriting.

Very accommodating he was too. We didn't even have to use the cattle prod.

Seriously though Gary was a lovely guy and he had some really interesting insights to offer about his craft

so we think you're really going to

enjoy this conversation. You know along with David Bowie and Michael Jackson and Prince Gary is actually one of the first pop stars I can remember being aware of as a little kid. A big sister had the 1979 luckin annual, do you remember

looking? Yeah, right. And I remember looking through it when I was about five and being

terrified by this pale, unsmiling androgynous creature staring out from one of the pages.

What a milk sop you were?

That was five years old.

There's no excuse.

...