In 1993, as sidekick to former Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant, Francis Dunnery had what he now calls "the biggest guitar job in the world". He knew it wouldn't last forever, but three decades later the kid from Egremont in Cumbria still gets a kick from remembering that he played the guitar solo to Whole Lotta Love in stadiums across the world.
During the previous decade, Dunnery's band It Bites had been loved by fans and hated by the press over the course of three resolutely fascinating albums that to this day still stand up as masterpieces. Formed in 1982, It Bites enjoyed chart success in '86 with Calling All The Heroes but just a few years later, the guitarist and singer dismayed and puzzled his bandmates by opting to walk away for a solo career.
Defined by his unpredictability, the self-confessed "live wire" has been an independent artist and record label owner for many years, and he prefers it that way. Back in 2021 he released a 42-song, tripledisc solo album entitled The Big Purple Castle and his most recent release, the Blu-ray/CD set Live From The Black Country, sees him performing some of It Bites' bestloved material in Wolverhampton.
As well as fronting his own incarnation of It Bites, Francis Dunnery has a pure blues side band called Tombstone Dunnery. Away from music, he's a student of astrology and Jungian psychology.
Your father was a musician and your brother Baz played guitar for the noted Cumbrian rock band Necromandus, so when did you first become aware of progressive music?
There was a lot of jazz fusion around: Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Isotope, Soft Machine and the Mahavishnu Orchestra, mixed in with the blues of Muddy Waters. In our house it was just as normal to listen to the Mahavishnu Orchestra as David Cassidy. My brother was heavily into Yes, so that would have been the first real progressive rock I knew.
This story is from the Issue 146 edition of Prog.
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This story is from the Issue 146 edition of Prog.
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