ALBUM inquisition!
As It Bites prepare to tour their milestone 1988 album, Once Around The World, played note literally for note, the band’s founder, singer, guitarist and frontman Francis Dunnery gives Jason Sidwell a track-by-track rundown.
GT: Thirty-one years have passed since the release of It Bite’s second studio album. Why do a tour to celebrate it now?
FD: I’ve been touring for years. I normally play three electric shows per year in January and this is just another one of them. I think the marketing is more forceful, that’s why you may think its new.
GT: You talk of doing the whole album note for note. That level of reproduction is a considerable challenge for everyone.
FD: When you have the original members it’s very easy because they know exactly what to play and how to play it. But with a new band you spend most of the time shaping the approach. It Bites always had a weird approach to songs. They sound easier than they are. To get the songs to sound right you have to spend time with each player shaping the individual parts. So it’s not so much the parts are hard to play, it’s more like the approach is very very difficult to reproduce so it sounds authentic.
GT: Back in the late 80s you were heralded as an impressive guitarist with fast, almost Holdsworthian legato lines that were quite chromatic, adding a unique tension to the songs and quite unlike other impressive guitarists of the time such Alan Murphy or Nik Kershaw. What were the direct influences for your soloing style back then?
FD: I think my brother was the biggest influence on me. I always thought he played guitar the right way. For the record, no one can play like Allan Holdsworth. Allan was untouchable. Many tried and all failed. A lot of modern guitar playing is based on tricks. The musicality of people like Glen Campbell or Larry Carlton are not as celebrated as soloists like Yngwie Malmsteen, but it’s far more impressive when you get older and more mature. I don’t like guitar solos any more. They are boring. I like tunes. I like musical solos you can remember and sing along to.
GT: How long did it take to write then record the album?
FD: We lived those albums. That’s the difference between the original band and the new band. We are all playing the same things but the original band lived the songs. They were with us every day. We wrote and updated them every day. They were our entire life.
GT: What was your typical guitar set-up back then, and will you be duplicating this for the tour?
FD: I had two Seymour Duncan amps, a Rat pedal and a delay pedal. That’s it. I use Laney Lionhearts now. I love them. Really top class components. I still have my old Rat and my old Boss delay.
GT: Do you have any song favourites from the album?
FD: I think The Old Man And The Angel because it’s very melodic. I’m not a big fan of difficult muso stuff. I like The Beach Boys and Paul McCartney. I’d rather go and see James Taylor than Dream Theater and I don’t mean that against Dream Theater. I’m just too old to base my life on a musical piece that demands your entire attention for six months. I used to do that all the time when I was younger with Mahavishnu Orchestra or Return To Forever, Genesis, Yes and the like.
GT: How much pressure was the band under from the record company to create a mainstream ‘hits’ album following your debut with Calling All The Heroes?
FD: We were oblivious to it. I think our manager should have made us write singles. It would have kept us alive a lot longer. It’s very difficult to be in the industry when everyone is enjoying success and you are being told you don’t fit in.
GT: Will you be releasing a CD or DVD of the live show?
FD: Maybe a CD. It depends on how well we play it. Once Around The World, ‘track by track’
MIDNIGHT
GT: The album’s opener has a real sense of power and aggression in both your vocals and the guitar playing. How did the song come about and did anything shape the solo’s development?
FD: I do most things on the fly. I don’t usually work things out unless it is a composition solo. I’m not very musical that way. Some people are extremely musical. I’m not. I’m more creative in a diverse range of things. I admire people like Guthrie Govan who is a complete and utter master at all things guitar. He’s literally brilliant. But the last time I hung out with him he told me he can’t ride a bike.
KISS LIKE JUDAS
GT: This has a great 12/8 triplet feel with very precise guitar. Did the guitar parts come in the initial stages of writing the song or later in the studio?
FD: The guitar line was a composition I had come up with from a bunch of old jazzers. Barney Kessel, Joe Pass and Tal Farlow. I was listening to those guys and it rubbed off in the solo part.
YELLOW CHRISTIAN
GT: For such a progressive sounding album, there are many songs that quickly become ‘ear
worms’. This includes Yellow Christian with numerous harmonic and rhythmic qualities that weren’t typical to the charts back in the 80s.
FD: That was developed playing live. We wrote it on the original demos back when we were squatting in Peckham. It was pretty much the same since its inception.
ROSE MARIE
GT: As famous for your tap board solo as the driving rock groove and the ‘dark’ chords. What inspired the tap board’s creation?
FD: I like to do new things. I didn’t want to make a career out of it but it was very interesting in the beginning. I was tapping like that on the start for a year before and John Hill and Dave Farmiloe from Fender contacted me and asked if they could develop a physical instrument out of it.
BLACK DECEMBER
GT: You’ve spoken a lot over your career of the importance of the band Genesis. Black December has qualities that tie in with this both from a rhythmic perspective and a harmonic one. What links do you hear with Genesis’s late 70s and 80s output and It Bites’ three studio albums?
FD: I think It Bites are a mixture of influences from Focus to Deep Purple to Genesis to Yes to pop. I didn’t listen to Abacab. That’s not real Genesis to me. Genesis stopped at Then There Were Three. I always loved the early Genesis stuff. That will always be with me until the day I die. It was the first music that completely blew me away. I think your influences are the picture frame in which you hang your own authentic pictures.
THE OLD MAN AND THE ANGEL GT: This is the second longest song on the album, clocking in at over nine minutes. How did this song take shape musically and lyrically?
FD: We would go to rehearsals every day and just keep developing the tracks. We would record the rehearsals and then when we got home we would get stoned out of our brains and see if we liked it or not. By the time we got home we had forgotten what it went like so it was like listening to another band. It was still being developed when we eventually recorded it. I think it was all done on the white Squier Strat or the black Fender. I’m not a guitar geek. I just plug in to whatever is there and it sounds like me. My tone is in my hands. There’s too much bullshit being said about amps and tones etc. I saw Dave Gilmour on a Les Paul and it sounded like Dave Gilmour. I’ll play anything but they all sound like me.
HUNTING THE WHALE GT: What inspired this song’s creation as it’s arguably the album’s most abstract number from a production or arrangement perspective?
FD: Definitely pot smoking. Loads and loads of pot. And perhaps the odd knee trembler.
PLASTIC DREAMER
GT: This song features one of your great legato guitar breaks. How quickly did you create your solos at this time?
FD: I don’t really have weird deep reasons for doing things. They just come out. It’s just what I thought sounded great at the time. As I said, I’m an ‘on the fly’ type of guy.
ONCE AROUND THE WORLD GT: The album’s title and its longest piece at nearly 15 minutes. Can you explain how it came about and how you approached creating and recording the guitar parts on it?
FD: They were pieces of music that we just kept adding on to. I think we wanted to test ourselves to see if we could compose and perform something that long. It Bites were a real band. We all did our thing. You take any one of us away and you don’t have the original energy. But the band I have now is about as close as you’ll get...
I SAW GILMOUR ON A LES PAUL AND IT SOUNDED LIKE GILMOUR. I’LL PLAY ANYTHING AND IT SOUNDS LIKE ME
Coming up, Once Around The World tour dates: Thursday 16 January 2020 - St Luke’s, Glasgow
Friday 17 January 2020 - The Slade Rooms, Wolverhampton Saturday 18 January 2020 - Club Academy, Manchester Sunday 19 January 2020 - Bush Hall, London