Best known for fronting It Bites during their 80s heyday, Francis Dunnery has gone back to his Cumbrian roots on his latest solo album, England’s Tales Of The Council House Kid. He tells Prog the story behind it, outlines his future with John Payne’s Asia, and reveals possible 40th-anniversary plans for It Bites.
OK, let’s address the elephant in the room: England’s Tales Of The Council House Kid is not a progressive rock album. Nevertheless, its creator remains among the most fascinating and unpredictable artists around. Guitarist Francis Dunnery was a driving force behind It Bites, one of the most exciting and promising prospects of the 1980s – until he bewildered and dismayed his bandmates by walking away from the Cumbrian prog-pop outfit in Los Angeles during the preparation of a fourth album that was expected to break them commercially.
Since then, Dunnery has collaborated with Robert Plant, Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe and Santana, and even auditioned to replace Phil Collins as Genesis’ frontman, in parallel with carving an eclectic solo career. Despite residing in the United States for half his life, Council House Kid proves that it’s impossible to extract Dunnery from his Cumbrian roots – though not the reverse.
Article continues belowDelivered in stripped-down form via the mediums of voice, guitar, keyboards and violin, it revisits what can only be described as a troubled childhood. That said, the album’s contents are often bittersweet. For example, It’s Christmas Day On Tuesday Night juxtaposes the festive excitement we felt as kids with the telling couplet of: ‘Hush baby, don’t cry/Mama is drunk and daddy is high.’
Dunnery chuckles at Prog’s observation that this is an album of slightly twisted beauty. “That’s true, but it takes a twisted man to recognise another twisted man!” he parries with a grin. “Anyone who grew up with alcoholic parents like I did will know what I mean; and if you didn’t then you won’t.”
It’s only through dissection of the album’s tracks that we learn The Council House Walls – which counteracts the nostalgia of 1970s telly children’s classics Crackerjack and Thunderbirds with the misery of standing at a graveside – was inspired by Stan and Hilda Ogden from soap opera Coronation Street.
“The lyric says: ‘I remember when Stan died/ Hilda held his glasses and cried’,” Dunnery explains enthusiastically. “Back then, the Coronation Street cast were heroes. They felt like family.” More transparently, Hungry For A Bigger Piece Of You presents a snapshot of a typical testosterone-fuelled teenager, while Throw Me A Rainbow is a plea to God. “I think the whole album is a bit churchy, and I like that,” Dunnery reflects.
“I’m religious in a non-organised way. I believe in putting your faith in something outside of yourself. If you wish for better weather tomorrow, that’s the religious component in the psyche. In that sense, all of us are religious. Anyone denying it is a liar. You can’t not be – it’s impossible.”
For many, many years, Dunnery hasn’t set foot in the titular council house located in Gulley Flats in which he grew up, though the fact that he named his 2005 album The Gulley Flats Boys reinforces its importance to him. “Gulley Flats is a housing estate much like any other in the north of England, though I suppose Cumbria is a bit weird because it’s off to the side [of England],” he theorises. “Later, when I studied the Cumbrian dialect I learned that it’s the closest to medieval language because it’s untouched. Though I haven’t been to Gulley Flats in quite a while, it still lingers with me.
“As a child you sit beneath the tree and decide to go around the world and find happiness,” he continues. “You do so many things with your life, meeting people and experiencing other cultures. Then you come home and sit under the tree again, feeling lost, and realise there’s a box under your arse. It’s full of treasure and you were sitting on it all the time. When I lived in Beverly Hills I ridiculed Cumbria, but back in my home town I realised, ‘You know what/ I like where I come from.’”
It’s the language of a man who has undergone plenty of therapy; and with Council House Kid, Dunnery continues to deploy his art as a form of psychoanalysis. “You can be in music to make money, or to live the celebrity lifestyle, but listen to my solo albums and it’s quite obvious that I’m a songwriter that uses music to find himself.
“It’s all I’ve ever done. In my life I don’t follow a strategic plan; when I did try to adopt one, it always went wrong. For me, money only becomes important when I haven’t got any. It’s a dangerous way to live, but whenever I get knocked down I get up and carry on again; it’s as simple as that. Joni Mitchell said it best: ‘Nothing lasts for long.’ Come to terms with that and everything becomes so much easier.”
Those early albums were part of people’s lives; you can’t expect them to like something new. In a year or two opinions will come around
Having recorded for some of the biggest record labels in the world, including Atlantic and Virgin, 2026 finds Dunnery in charge of everything, from writing, performing and producing an album to marketing and selling it via his own imprint, Aquarian Nation, plus self-organising any touring opportunities. His recent jaunt around the UK was a mix of unplugged performances and the house concerts that have become something of a speciality.
“I don’t have much choice but to do everything myself because there isn’t a big budget,” he explains. “I used to make a good living with my house concerts until Covid ruined all of that, but survival is all about an ability to adapt – you know, move to where the energy is. At 63 I’ve lost count of the times I’ve reinvented myself.
“I don’t just do music,” he adds. “In this business you can’t just be a singer and guitar player anymore. I do philosophy, astrology, counselling and I take my charity work very seriously. Being extremely busy isn’t unusual to me.”
He believes in playing by his own rules and doesn’t seem overly concerned over rubbing people up the wrong way. As this issue of Prog went to press, he held back the full version of England’s Tales Of The Council House Kid, something that inevitably affected the proportions of our review.
Then again, Dunnery – who, during It Bites’ heyday, routinely lambasted hostile sectors of the media from the stage – has far bigger fish to fry than the opinions of outsiders. Following a doomed attempt to revive their classic permutation way back in 2003, for the first time in decades he’s begun to re-embrace his It Bites heritage, firstly via the concert DVD and Blu-ray Live And Natural, and then with a rebooted entity that he named It Bites FD.
The DVD had every single It Bites song you could wish for. And we got complaints it was too long!
To the further joy of It Bites disciples, an all-new album, Return To Natural, was released in early 2024. But ultimately, the first IB studio set made with Dunnery in more than 35 years – the brand had been continued in the 00s by keyboardist John Beck, bassist Dick Nolan and drummer Bob Dalton, with vocals and guitar from John Mitchell – was an anticlimactic affair that Prog described as “not the It Bites of old,” accompanied by the warning that some “expectation management” was required for fans of the original group.
The mood of lukewarm approval continued when Dunnery took IBFD on tour around the UK at around the same time, even from ‘fan’ writers such as your correspondent. Covering its London date, I complained that the show was more memorable for what wasn’t on the setlist – including Old Man And The Angel, Kiss Like Judas and their hits Calling All The Heroes and Still Too Young To Remember – than the songs that were aired.
Known for a no-fucks-given attitude to reviews, Dunnery doesn’t miss a beat. “Alright, but the concert before that tour that we filmed for the first DVD was a two-hour-and-15-minute show, and we did all of those,” he calmly protests. “It had every single It Bites song you could wish for, all of the ones that you just mentioned.”
Then follows a sense of bewilderment: “And we got complaints it was too long! People moaned that we didn’t do Black December or Till The End Of Time, so we added those to the second DVD, and still there were complaints. That’s why I give that stuff no consideration. The public’s more out of its mind than I am.”
Dunnery was proud of Return To Natural, but he’s pragmatic enough to know that it would always be judged against the past. “You’re up against nostalgia,” he says with a shrug. “Those early albums were a part of people’s lives; you can’t expect them to like something new. In a year or two opinions will come around. It always happens. With Made In Space [in 2011] – which had no guitar and vocoders for vocals – everyone said, ‘You fat bastard, this is terrible!’ But now they tell me, ‘Dude, the songs on that album are fantastic.’ It’s always been like that.”
John wanted everything played the way Steve Howe had done it, note for note. I just couldn’t do it
So is Dunnery considering any further It Bites activity? “Not right now. I’ve done that for two or three years, and I get bored,” he replies. “But you never know – I might speak to some of the guys and put the original line-up back together for the 40th anniversary. Bob and Dick might do it, but nobody knows where John is any more.”
Nothing in Dunnery’s world is ever predictable. Last year he joined the incarnation of Asia fronted by bassist John Payne, only to quit after a solitary show. “I couldn’t remember all of the stuff; it was like an ant’s nest of notes,” he explains. “John wanted everything played the way Steve Howe had done it, note for note. It’s something that Guthrie [Govan, who played on the Asia albums Aura and Silent Nation] was capable of, but I just couldn’t do it. At 60-odd years old, do I want to dedicate myself to Steve Howe? No. I wasn’t born for that.”
Both sides insist the parting of ways was entirely amicable, and Payne later voiced the hope that Dunnery might still appear on the forthcoming album, Aviana. “Oh, I’ll do that,” he says. “John is a great guy and I really wanted to help him re-establish his line-up of Asia. But if I’m honest, I was just crap and I couldn’t pull it off.”
You have to admire Dunnery’s honesty – which surfaces yet again when asked how he’ll gauge the success of England’s Tales Of The Council House Kid upon conclusion of its touring cycle. “It already is a complete success – I like it,” comes the inevitable reply. “That’s all I care about. My brain isn’t programmed to go seeking the approval of others. The next album is already bouncing around in my head.”
Any hints about its content? “No. It’ll be something different, or I’m just not interested.”
England’s Tales Of The Council House Kid is on sale now.
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