Gary Numan had just received the ‘worst news’ ever, he explained to fans while performing on Saturday evening. Now, the 67-year-old musician has explained that his brother John Webb died in the small hours of that morning, just minutes after they said goodbye to each other.
After it was reported yesterday the Tubeway Army star ‘broke down’ mid-song in Birmingham, prompting his wife to comfort him on stage, Gary’s fans have been concerned for the singer.
Now Gary has revealed in a heartbreaking post that his 60-year-old brother had a heart attack while walking to his car from Gary’s Telekon gig in Leeds on Friday evening.
Gary explained his anguish at the thought of John lying in a street ‘just yards away’ from him after they parted ways. He revealed a passer-by called an ambulance, but it was too late.
‘The last two days have been the hardest of my life. This is why,’ Gary wrote on social media this evening, having spent a few days trying to process his great loss.
‘My brother John died suddenly in the early hours of Saturday morning in Leeds, he was just 60 years old.
‘He had spent the evening with me at my Telekon show, catching up, swapping stories, telling me about his newly found love of reading. We talked about authors, music, the loves of our lives, children, our Dad, steam trains, aeroplanes, accidents, friends, enemies, just as much as we could squeeze in in the time we had.
‘We were just enjoying being together again as we see each other so rarely these days. We talked for hours before and after the show but, eventually, I had to leave as we had another show in Birmingham later that night.
‘I hugged him at the door of our tour bus, I think it was about 12:20am, asked him how far he had to walk to get to his car (I always worried about him walking the streets at night), it was not far apparently, we said goodbye and I watched him walk away.
‘Sadly he never made it to his car, betrayed by his own heart. It will haunt me forever that we may have driven off not knowing that he was lying in a rainy street just yards away. Luckily a kind person saw him and called an ambulance, but it was too late.
‘This is not a tribute to John, I can barely think straight enough to find the words for this let alone a fitting and deserving tribute to someone I loved more than the world, those words will come in time. This is to explain why I’m struggling.
Gary explained that he is continuing the tour because his father thinks he should, and because John’s wife said he would have wanted his brother to carry on.
‘I have no capacity at the moment to make decisions of any kind,’ Gary admitted.
‘I’m drifting, broken, shell shocked, just watching one foot fall in front of the other. The emotion overwhelms and then backs away, it screams and then whispers. This is the worst moment of my life and I have no idea what to do, other than to continue doing the only thing I know how to do, the thing John was always so proud of.
‘He loved Telekon. He was only 15 when I made it. So this tour is no longer a celebration of an album, it’s a tribute to John, my brother, the best brother a man could ever have.’
Who was Gary Numan's beloved brother John Webb?
Gary’s late brother and only sibling John Webb, died on November 15, 2025, after spending the evening together on the Telekon tour.
John – who was an airline pilot for 30 years – was not Gary’s biological brother, but was his cousin.
The singer’s parents couldn’t have any more children after him, so when John’s dad – and Gary’s dad’s brother – died, they adopted him as a baby.
Gary once said they had a lot in common, as John started writing and performing music aged 12. He also played sax and keyboard in Gary’s band for years and they were both in the same air-display team.
John, who recorded his own music under the name of Donovan Silver, was also a guest singer when Tubeway Army was a punk band.
The Mirror reported how Midway through his song Please Push No More at the O2 Academy Birmingham on Saturday Gary got upset and explained he had been given the ‘worst news ever’ that morning.
The Cars hitmaker explained he would share the news with fans in the coming days once he had given himself some time to process.
He is currently on his Telekon tour, which celebrates the album of the same name’s 45th anniversary after it reached UK number one in 1980.
He is still scheduled to perform in Cardiff (November 18), Bournemouth (Nov 19), London (Nov 21), Brighton (Nov 22), Southend (Nov 23), Nottingham (Nov 25), Cambridge (Nov 26), Norwich (Nov 27), Manchester (Nov 29), Liverpool (Nov 30), Dublin (December 2), and Belfast (Dec 3) before a Christmas break.
He will then spend the start of next year performing on The 80’s Cruise 2026, before heading to the US for another leg of the tour.
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