Beggars Banquet SinglesLove Needs No Disguise - 1981Dramatis feat Gary Numan

Dramatis were formed in London in the spring of 1981 out of the band that had carried Gary Numan through the Touring Principle, Teletour and Wembley Farewell shows. When Numan announced his retirement from live work in April 1981, guitarist Rrussell Bell, keyboard player and violist Chris Payne, keyboard player Dennis Haines and drummer Cedric Sharpley chose to carry on as a group in their own right rather than break up the band, sharing writing, singing and production duties between the four of them.

Signed to Elton John's Rocket Record Company, they released four singles across 1981 — 'Ex Luna Scientia' (May), 'Oh! Twenty Twenty Five' (July), 'No-One Lives Forever' (September) and 'Love Needs No Disguise' (November) — before the album 'For Future Reference' appeared on 4 December 1981. Recorded at Ridge Farm Studio in Surrey and produced by the band with Simon Heyworth, the album is a darker, more European-sounding record than the Numan albums the players had come from: layered analogue synths, Payne's viola and Bell's treated guitar over Sharpley's precise, machine-tight drumming.

'Love Needs No Disguise' was the band's breakthrough. Issued on Beggars Banquet as Gary Numan and Dramatis, with Numan singing lead and Haines taking the vocal on the B-side 'Take Me Home', it entered the UK chart on 5 December 1981 and climbed to number 33 in a seven-week run. Numan also joined the band on stage and on television to promote it, and the song became a permanent fixture of his compilations from 'New Man Numan' onwards.

Three further singles followed in 1982 — 'Face On The Wall', 'The Shame' and 'I Can See Her Now', the last of which reached number 57 — but a second album never materialised. When Numan returned to recording at the end of 1982 the members were invited back into his band and Dramatis was quietly shelved. A planned reunion in 2012 was abandoned after Cedric Sharpley's death from a heart attack on 13 March 2012; Bell, Payne and Haines performed 'Love Needs No Disguise' with Numan that year in his memory. In 2019 Bell and Payne revived the name, releasing 'A Torment Of Angels' in 2020 and beginning work on a second album. The original album was finally reissued properly as a remastered, expanded double CD by Cherry Red Records on 22 April 2022, having spent years circulating under alternative titles such as 'The Dramatis Project', 'Future' and 'Terrestrial Channels'.

Rrussell Bell — guitarist, keyboard player and singer, and the visual identity of the classic Numan band. He joined for the 1979 Touring Principle shows and stayed with Numan on and off for decades, playing on records from 'Telekon' through the Numa years, as well as writing and singing within Dramatis.

Chris Payne — keyboard player and viola player, classically trained, who joined Numan's band in 1979 and provided the string-like textures that define 'Telekon' and 'Dance'. Away from Numan and Dramatis he co-wrote Visage's 'Fade To Grey' with Midge Ure and Billy Currie, and has continued to work as a composer, arranger and touring musician.

Dennis Haines — keyboard player and singer, who joined the Numan band for the 1980 Teletour and took lead vocals on Dramatis material including 'Take Me Home'. He later moved into production, session work and music for film and television.

Cedric 'Ced' Sharpley — the drummer on 'The Pleasure Principle', 'Telekon' and 'Dance', whose crisp, metronomic playing gave those records their motorik drive. He worked with Numan across the Beggars and Numa eras and with many other artists before his death on 13 March 2012, aged 59.