That night in Luton when things started to turn ugly and beer glasses shattered heavily onto the tiny stage, Tony Webb placed himself nervously among half a dozen thugs and prayed his presence there might defuse a potential angry audience explosion.

Luckily, his bluff paid off and Gary Numan finished his set, shaken but still in one piece. As for Tony, he breathed a sigh of relief; it hadn't been just any old musician up in the firing line — it had been his son.

In those blood and booze days of the pub circuit, before Numan ruled the Pop roost in the twilight of '79, Tony busied himself in the several tasks of the supportive father; driving the van to and from gigs, lumping equipment about and, generally, just keeping a watchful eye out.

Then it dawned on him: "It was during Gary's first UK tour," he remembers, "that I went out on the road and started to see some of the things that were happening around him. I realised when we were out that everything involved — the equipment and so on — whoever had arranged it all, the person that paid for it was Gary.

"I suddenly became aware at that point that somebody else was now controlling where his money went. He didn't have a clue, he had his own problems doing what he was doing, so that side of things was left to someone else.

"It really hit me just how vulnerable you were and how much trust you have to put in the person who was literally going to spend your money for you. It was during that time we decided that I'd have a go at managing Gary."

The move had almost been a last resort; a temporary measure for a year, spurred on by Tony's previous fruitless search for another manager. Nearly five years later, the relationship survives.

Its longevity has been down to chance as much as Numan's successes — as Tony freely admits. "I had absolutely no experience of the music business at all when I came into this," he confesses. "I knew nothing. I was actually working on the motor transport side of British Airways at the time things started happening for Gary. I was settling down at that point — driving buses and trucks — and thinking: 'Well, this is me for the rest of my days, this is.'"

But Tony's initial, cautious tip-toeing through the musical minefield was aided by a pragmatic, common sense approach, the benefits of which can be seen today in Numan's career — in his Rock City recording studios and his newly-formed Numa label.

Musically speaking, not knowing his backside from his elbow never bothered Tony Webb. "I got hold of the very first contract that Gary signed, with Beggars Banquet, contacted my local solicitor and said 'Can you point me in the direction of a really good music business lawyer to go through it with me?' He said 'We've got people on our staff who can deal with that.'

"It all sounded quite good — and handy because it was near home in Ashford, Middlesex, so I went down to see this fella and looked over the contract — bearing in mind I'd just come away from driving my bus!

"The solicitor picked out various points which he thought were right or wrong, and I ended up with maybe a dozen or so points drawn up in the contract which he felt ought to be amended, one way or the other.

"So I went back to Beggars with this — by now a little bit worried. Because I said to myself 'Some of this seems a bit strong to me, because I know that record contracts aren't easy to get — and now Gary's got one, here's me, Joe Bloggs — and I might blow it for him if I do this wrong.'

"But the people at Beggars sat down and quickly conceded all the points, no problem; yes, yes, yes. Just like that — and that worried me again! I thought 'this can't be right, this is too easy. This can't be a very good contract, there must be a lot in favour of the record company."

"But there was nothing else that I could do. My experience at that point didn't take me any further than going to a solicitor and getting his advice. So we signed the deal. As it turned out — and I'm not knocking Beggars and saying it was a terrible deal — but it was a terrible deal!"

The whys and wherefores we won't discuss here, but suffice to say that the whole episode primed Tony in the art of negotiation, which has since taken Numan from Beggars Banquet to WEA Records and, finally, away from that particular recording giant to his own label.

Lessons learned

The path has been strewn with hassles, disagreements and lack of satisfaction on Tony and his offspring's part over what was on offer and how they were treated — but important lessons in career management have been learned and absorbed.

"The main thing I've learned is that, in negotiations, you've got to have the best solicitor you can get hold of. You can't go to Ashford High Street and talk; you've got to go up town and try to secure the services of the best bloke.

"The point is, that once you've got someone like that sitting next to you — you're as good as anyone. That's really what it boils down to. The other important thing to remember is that, the stronger position you're in the more you're going to get. Strength in this game is determined almost entirely by success. The attitude of a record company always changes when you've got something which sells on offer. When I started working with Gary, he always had that something — which made my situation a lot easier than it could have been."

But what, at times, hasn't helped Tony in his job is his extra-managerial relationship with Gary. "Gary is my son first, and everything else after that, most definitely.

"Because there are lots of things we do which I don't necessarily agree with. I've always seen my function as his father, and not as some pushy taskmaster, which, incidentally, may not always have been quite right.

"I often wonder whether, if Gary had had really strong, professional management, his career would have gone along a different road. Perhaps that kind of management would have handled things with less emotion, directed him in other ways and said 'No!, you're not going to do that.'

"I believe that's probably true, to be honest, and I think that my managing Gary has brought him benefits — as well as things that work against him because I'm there."

"I use people all the time to help me do my job"

Tony, 48, refuses to view his position as a double role. "There isn't any divide and it's impossible to make one," he says. "Gary and I just try to discuss things as much as we can. We're gradually getting a bit better, a bit more realistic at that side of things. I'm not being quite so soft with the things that we do.

"But, in the early days, when Gary came up to me and said 'I want to buy an aeroplane', well, I knew that we shouldn't be buying it, that we should be putting that money into something a lot more realistic than a plane.

"But I'd say to myself 'Hang on a minute, it's his money! He's earned it — what right have I got to tell him he can't buy an aeroplane if that's what he wants.' It's that sort of thing which can be difficult and, looking back, we've done a few things which we'd have been better off not doing.

"I think back and see that I really should have insisted we didn't. But I'm pretty sure — positive, in fact — that if I insisted that Gary didn't do anything, then he wouldn't. So I could actually control things a lot more tightly if I thought we were going the wrong way.

"But it's a question of me getting over myself, if you like; whether I actually should be like that.

"It was like Gary flying around the world. He wanted to do it, he had this thing, and I think, for him as a person, it was important and did him a lot of good. But it cost a lot of money and it was quite dangerous. In that sense, I'd sooner he hadn't done it.

"I frequently wish I'd talked him out of it but, once things are done, they're done. That's the end of that. Really, you've got to think about what you're doing tomorrow — rather than what you ought to have done yesterday. At least you may have learned something from it."

That's my boy

Tony is quick to point out that he doesn't use his flesh and blood tie with Gary as an added weapon to help him through his job. "A lot of people don't realise I'm Gary's father — there's no reason why they should — and I never, ever tell them I am as a prelude to anything.

"It might inhibit people to discover I'm Gary's dad, I don't know, but I should imagine that they'd be just as inhibited by the fact that I'm his manager. I mean, if someone says something against Gary to me, I don't have to be his father, just his manager in a respect — because I'm not going to like it, am I?"

And, of course, it's not unknown for barrages of sneering criticism to be blasted Neman's way. A particular, constant target being the performer's solemn, unsmiling and hard image.

"People do approach me often from the aspect that Gary's a hard-faced so and so, there's no doubt about it," says Tony. "But the thing is that the Press really created his image for him. They decided that he didn't smile or do this and that.

"So I think it was more a case of Gary then thinking 'Oh, if that's what I am, I'll be like that then.' But the reason Gary didn't smile too much in his early days was down to the fact that he was so bloody nervous every time he did anything in public! He didn't feel like smiling! He was tense and thinking 'Bloody hell, what's happening! But it came across as him being ice cool — which wasn't really a bad image at the time."

Tony Webb is something of a sore thumb in the music business; modest, easy-going, capable of logically viewing two sides to an argument and he "hates the false ligging side of the industry — those people who, for some reason, have to come backstage and be seen."

As a manager he has enthusiasm and no shortage of ideas — uppermost among them his consuming desire to have Gary Numan established around the world as an artist with a following.

Helping him towards that aim is his wife Beryl. "She does anything," he says. "She runs the reception at Rock City, runs Gary's fan club, answers the phones, orders equipment, takes studio bookings — she just gets involved."

Then there's Gary's brother, John. "He's another Jack of all trades," says Tony. "He's in Gary's band and is now working on an album's worth of material on his own. On a day-to-day basis, he does whatever comes up — but his main function is slowly transferring all our business onto a computer."

And Tony is not frightened of exposing his weaknesses. "I use other people all the time to help me do my job," he explains. "I don't see anything wrong with that."

Gary Numan and Pop; it's a family affair and the man's career is in good, loving hands.