Polydor SinglesChange Your Mind - 1985Sharpe & Numan

Sharpe & Numan began as a one-off studio favour. Bill Sharpe — the keyboard player and principal writer of the British jazz-funk band Shakatak — was recording his first solo album, 'Famous People', for Polydor in 1984, and needed a singer for one of its songs. Gary Numan, an admirer of Shakatak's playing and by then running his own Numa Records label, agreed to sing 'Change Your Mind', a track written by Sharpe with Shakatak drummer Roger Odell.

Released as a single in January 1985 and credited to Sharpe & Numan, it entered the UK chart on 9 February and reached number 17 — Numan's biggest hit for several years and, at that point, his highest placing since 'We Take Mystery (To Bed)'. The pairing of Sharpe's warm, jazz-inflected keyboards and Odell's loose funk drumming with Numan's cold, clipped delivery made it a genuine hybrid rather than a Numan record with guest musicians. The 12 inch extended version ran to eight and a half minutes, while the B-sides 'Remix, Remake, Remodel' and 'Fools In A World Of Fire' were Sharpe instrumentals from 'Famous People' on which Numan does not appear.

The two returned in January 1988 with 'No More Lies', again produced by Sharpe with Nick Smith and mixed by Wally Brill, backed with 'Voices'. Polydor pressed it in an unusually wide spread of formats — standard 7 inch, white, clear, blue and blue-marbled vinyl, picture discs in both sizes and one of Numan's earliest CD singles — and it reached number 34. A third and final single, 'I'm On Automatic', followed in May 1989 with 'Love Like A Ghost' and a Nigel Wright remix of 'Voices', peaking at 44.

Bill Sharpe continued to lead Shakatak, whose long recording career has run from 'Drivin' Hard' in 1981 to the present day, and 'Famous People' was reissued in Germany and in an expanded Japanese-only edition as P33P-20004. Numan has spoken warmly of the collaboration since, and 'Change Your Mind' remains a fixture of his compilations and of Shakatak's own retrospectives.