I still remember - Gary Numan

Gary Numan really impressed me when he recorded 'Change your mind' together with Bill Sharpe in 1985. I played this track all through the year. Then a year later I heard this one, 'I still remember'. I don' t recall where I heard it, but I really liked the kind of melancholy feeling this song evoked. It was only when I bought the single that I found out that it had been recorded to benefit the RSPCA. Shortly after I bought the single, I also got my hands on the picture disc 12" single.

As Gary Numan himself said: 'This version features a different lyric to the version which appears on The Fury album, being written from the point of view of an abused dog, I was watching the animal squad programme and there was a dog that had been starved and it ended with the dog look at the camera and there was a sad Barbara Dickson song playing in the background. I thought it was very, very moving. So I took an old ballad and re-wrote the lyric. What I tried to do was put myself from the point of view of a badly treated dog. That's why the chorus for example was changed from “I still remember” to “How can they do this.”'

The single didn't get any radio exposure. It went into the UK singles chart, at no. 74 for one week on December 6, 1986. And that was that. Numan was frustrated: 'You’ve got a record for charity, for animals, at Xmas and not one single play on the Radio; I found it disgusting, hypocritical, if we’d had the radio behind that we’d have done so much good.'

My collection: 7" single no. 480 / 12" single no. 42

Found: LP top 100, Den Haag, 1986

Cost: 6 guilders / 15 guilders

Tracks: 'I still remember' / 'Puppets' (extended version of A-side on 12")

Download: here