Francis Dunnery

Francis Dunnery (born 25 December 1962) is an English musician, singer-songwriter, record producer and record label owner. Dunnery was the lead singer and guitarist for British prog-pop band It Bites between 1982 and 1990. Since 1990 he has pursued a solo career, and has owned and run his own record label, Aquarian Nation, since 2001. He has collaborated with artists including Robert Plant, Ian Brown, Lauryn Hill, Santana and Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe and as a producer and/or collaborator with David Sancious, Chris Difford (of Squeeze), James Sonefeld (Hootie and the Blowfish), Erin Moran, Steven Harris (ex-The Cult, Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction), and Ashley Reaks (Younger Younger 28s). Dunnery was one of the candidates invited to audition as a lead singer and frontman for Genesis following Phil Collins' departure in 1996. He also played in the reformed 1960s beat/prog band The Syn between 2008 and mid-2009. Francis Dunnery grew up as part of a working-class musical family in the small Cumberland town of Egremont (at 28 Queens Drive on the Gulley Flats estate). He is the younger son of Charlie Dunnery (a former member of the Jimmy Shand band) and his wife, Kathleen. He displayed an interest in music from an early age, with his mother later recalling that "he was always drumming with his hands. Asking him what he wanted for his tea, he'd be drumming on something the whole time." His elder brother Barry "Baz" Dunnery (whom Dunnery cites as his greatest single influence) was a guitarist with heavy rock band Necromandus and subsequently Ozzy Osbourne's first post-Black Sabbath band and the ELO-spinoff Violinski. "The only thing that was ever permanent in my life was my Genesis collection. When things got weird at home and the alcohol cycle was in full rotation, I could return to that little piece of upper class England where Peter Gabriel and his boys were playing croquet on the lawn, eating cucumber sandwiches and deciding which one of their country cottages they would visit next. Still to this day, old Peter can soothe my anxiety faster than Eckhart Tolle... My Genesis albums were my security." — Francis Dunnery on the inspiration he found in the music of Genesis Dunnery has described his family home as having been like "a bustling café" full of musicians and family friends of all generations, and recalls "my Mam and Dad were the greatest. They were kind, funny and gracious in a working class way. They were giving people. They had a way about them that made everyone feel welcome in our home... My Mam and Dad would feed them great food, share cigarettes and partake in humorous and interesting conversation." His childhood was blighted by his parents' mutual alcoholism. He described them as "binge drinkers, two weeks on and two months off... Once my Mam and Dad started drinking alcohol I never knew what was going to happen. Everything seems to happen fast. One minute it was paradise and the next minute it was sheer hell. It was horrific. ... Anyone who has lived under this nervousness will know exactly what I mean. I lived under this constant threat all my life." From the age of eleven, Frank spent four days a week living by himself on a trailer park to avoid problems at home, going to school during the day and bolstering his independence and living expenses by working as a musician at night. His first professional work was as half of an early teens duo with his friend Peter Lockhart which played local venues including the Tarnside Caravan Club and various cabaret venues. He recalls "we were the cute little duo that would open up for the main act... I would just bash along as Peter sang Elvis songs and played the organ." Adding guitar and singing to his musical skills, Dunnery moved on to other projects of varying levels of commitment – "I played in a few local bands and with lots of different musicians, especially a group called Waving at Trains I was in with Don Mackay, who is a fantastic musician. He wrote some really good songs, too." Waving at Trains featured Mackay as frontman, Dunnery on lead guitar and vocals, and Glyn Davies and Frank Hall on bass guitar and drums respectively (both of the latter having also played in bands with Frank's brother Barry, including Necromandus and Nerves). Regarding this period, Dunnery commented "There was no one I could rely on... I somehow made sure that I had other places to live and spend my time (talk about the power of the human spirit) because I couldn't bear to be at home when my parents were drinking. I can still remember the smell of the house when my parents were drowning in hops. To this day the smell of Carlsberg Special Brew makes me want to vomit." In 1982, when he was nineteen, Dunnery formed the rock band It Bites (taking the role of lead singer and guitarist). The other members of the band were his Egremont school friends Bob Dalton (drums, vocals) and Dick Nolan (bass, vocals); plus John Beck (keyboards, vocals) who came from Mirehouse, a suburb of Whitehaven. Following a career playing the pub and youth club circuit the band temporarily split, with Dunnery moving to London. The band reformed when Dunnery convinced the other members to leave Egremont entirely and relocate to London in 1984. The quartet squatted a house in Peckham and wrote and rehearsed every day, eventually signing a record contract with Virgin Records. It Bites released three studio albums, the debut The Big Lad in the Windmill (1986), the critically-acclaimed Once Around the World (1988) and the rock-oriented Eat Me in St Louis (1989). There were three singles from each album, with the biggest hit being "Calling All The Heroes" in 1986. This was the second single from The Big Lad in the Windmill and reached No. 6 in the UK Singles Chart after extensive radio play and TV coverage. The band gained a very loyal cult following due to the exceptional Once Around The World album and, arguably, their career peaked with a rapturous show at the Astoria in London in May 1988 to promote it. It Bites split up in mid-1990 on the eve of recording their fourth studio album in Los Angeles. Commenting on the breakup, Dunnery said: "the band had come to the end. It was a natural process. We fell out over a few things, there wasn't one big issue or problem, it was daft little things. We had just drifted apart. It wasn't anyone's fault, but we split." In 2024, however, he recalled: There are a million different answers I could give you. We were under a lot of pressure to come up with huge success when nobody really knew what we should be doing. All we were being told was: "No, that's not right," or, "No, you can't do that." Towards the end of It Bites there was a lot of trying to make the sun shine when it was raining. It became obvious that we just didn't fit into what was going on within the industry. Nobody wanted us. It was like being English in a Welsh bar. The most profound thing was realising that it didn’t matter the kind of music we were making. The music side of things was the least important. That was the saddest thing. Walking away from all of that felt very liberating. I've got a brash personality and that didn’t help. I was still drinking and I didn't have very good social skills. I was too much of a live wire and in that sense I contributed to my own downfall. Following Dunnery's departure, It Bites briefly continued with a new frontman (Lee Knott) and a succession of new names (including Navajo Kiss and Sister Sarah) but split up after failing to sign a new recording deal. A post-breakup It Bites live album (drawn mainly from 1989 concerts) called "Thank You and Goodnight," was released in 1991. "The last night I drank I had a gun put to my head and I was smoking crack on Hollywood Boulevard, out of my brains on whiskey, crack and crystal meth. It scared the living shit out of me. That was the moment in my life where I went, 'Something's gotta change.'" — Francis Dunnery on quitting alcohol and drug abuse Following