THE SENSATIONAL FRANCIS DUNNERY ELECTRIC BAND PLAYS A SHORT STRING OF DATES IN THE UK THIS WEEK IN SUPPORT OF DUNNERY’S FIRST NEW RELEASE FOR TWO YEARS, THE PROG-TINGED ALBUM FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER.
The album signals Francis returning to the predominantly guitar-based prog-rock of his youth, and many of the songs on it were written by Dunnery’s brother Baz and his band Necromandus. The group had a brief flirtation with the music industry in the early 1970s, after being spotted by Tony Iommi. Black Sabbath’s legendary guitarist took Necromandus out on tour and became their manager, but though a debut album was recorded it was shelved after Baz decided to quit on the eve of release – despite Ozzy Osbourne telling him he’d “got the world at his feet”. Necromandus went back to the working men’s club circuit in Cumbria, and later split.
Francis says: “My mother always sensed that I was the strongest brother, and so she felt very protective about Baz. She often asked me if I would help him get his music out into the world and I tried for years to help – but there was something inside him that resisted any attempt to be successful. Just before she died, she made me promise that Baz and I would make a CD together so that everyone could finally hear him play. That suited me just fine because as early as I can remember all I’d ever wanted to do was share a stage with him. I idolised my brother. He died of cancer before I had the chance to make my mother’s wishes a reality”.

Baz passed away in 2008 and, earlier this year, Dunnery finally pressed ahead with his plan to record an album to honour their mother’s wishes as closely as he could, and to pay tribute to his brother. “I put my heart and soul into FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER,” he says. “It was a labour of love from the very first second I decided to do it, and I have tried the best I can to honour Baz’s creative output, his guitar playing and songwriting”.
Baz’s love of music was a major influence on Francis during his youth, and the new album is his first solo foray into prog-rock since his days fronting It Bites. Parts of it are reminiscent of his best work with the band and, with that in mind, The Mouth Magazine has raided the archive to dig out a previously unpublished interview (conducted in late March 1990) to accompany the release of FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER and this week’s handful of rare UK dates.

It Bites were just a few months from restless Dunnery’s acrimonious departure, though there are only the slightest hints of the collapse ahead despite some world-weary reflection on the state of the music industry. He talks affectionately about early days in Cumbria, playing to working men’s club audiences, before being signed by Virgin and having a Top Ten hit – but ever after struggling to realign the public’s pop perception with the band’s rock sensibilities… Resident in London at the time of the interview (though now living in Pennsylvania), the young Dunnery has an interesting take on the world of 1990, and discusses eye-opening visits to America, Russia and Japan. For details of THE SENSATIONAL FRANCIS DUNNERY ELECTRIC BAND’s dates this week, and a link to buy FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER, see below.

ARE YOU VERY BUSY AT THE MOMENT?
Well, yeah… But just with talking to you.

DO YOU MIND DOING INTERVIEWS, TALKING ABOUT YOURSELF?
Nah… No. It isn’t such a hard thing to do, talk to someone, is it? It’s not hard work. Unless you get on a power trip, or a star trip, and start saying “Wow, man. I’ve got six interviews to do this week, it’s really hard work”. It’s a bit silly to do that really. But people do say it – probably ‘cos they feel insecure about what they’re doing…

…AND DO YOU FEEL SECURE ABOUT WHAT YOU’RE DOING?
Yeah! I do! Yeah! I’m good at what I do, man!

YOU STARTED OUT IN THE EARLY 1980s, IN EGREMONT, CUMBRIA…
Yeah, we did. We all had jobs – I was working as an engineer on a building site. John was in a factory or something, and Dick was gonna be a bricklayer but it pissed the shit out of him so he didn’t bother… Bob was, like, making fucking headboards or something. But we were into our music. We had our own little following, even though we were doing cover versions, which was really odd, really. We were doing quite credible stuff, I suppose. We’d do, like, Alex Harvey covers or Genesis covers – we did I KNOW WHAT I LIKE (IN YOUR WARDROBE). We kept them songs the same, and I suppose that’s how we developed into being able to play our instruments – simply ‘cos we’d worked out their parts they were doing. It was our own thing, and it was different to the other bands up there. In the end a lot of them tended to copy us but, erm, I’m not really into slagging people off. It’s not a competition…

DID YOU DO A LOT OF GIGS IN YOUR EARLY DAYS, THEN?
You don’t really get a lot of work up there ‘cos it’s all working men’s clubs and things like that… When we first started, the most hardest thing was to get the gigs. We were so young. We had to ring up, like, all the time. No agent would touch us, and if an agent did – if he took you under his wing, so to speak – he’d give you one gig every four weeks until he decided he liked you. We just had a bad time, really. We got banned out of every club in Cumbria……

… REALLY? BANNED?!
Yeah! We just wouldn’t take any shit! I mean, what it was, you’d get these club secretaries, or treasurers and all that sort of shit and they’d come in and like… well, my idea was that they didn’t have a very good job in the day, or something like that. Maybe they were under a lot of people. And they’d come in the club at night with these massive power trips, and they’d be “Right! I want this gear down and out of here within quarter of an hour!”… Just really nasty, you know. Treating you like a bit of fucking dirt. And we don’t treat anybody like that, so we just told ’em to “fuck off!”… We had a few fights with a few of them…

YOU’VE LIVED IN LONDON FOR A WHILE NOW, BUT DO YOU GET RECOGNISED AROUND CUMBRIA WHEN YOU GO UP THERE?
Oh, yeah. We do. It’s fucking awful – I get a bit embarassed about things like that. I don’t really know what to do with it, you know? Because I don’t see myself as being idolised in any way, or anything like that…

IS IT DIFFICULT, THEN, MEETING YOUR FANS AFTER YOUR GIGS?
Not at all. Not at all. I don’t mind – I really do mean that, y’know? It’s the Tour Manager who it annoys, because he knows he’s got to get us away. Our fans are quite intelligent, and what they have to say to us is quite valid. I like to hear what they’re thinking, and hear what they like. Also, it’s good for your confidence, ‘cos people tell you your good. It’s nice to have that.

THE BAND’S FIRST SINGLE MUST HAVE SEEMED A LONG WAY AWAY FROM THOSE CLUBS?
It did, yeah. We’d worked hard. It was really exciting, you know? Then, when it comes out, you expect everyone to… We thought our music was really accessible in terms of melody. We thought it was really strong. Really good, I suppose. All I can say is, we are a proper band – as INXS are, as U2 are, as Simple Minds are. They are what I consider to be proper bands. Even somebody like Go West… I don’t think that’s a band. It’s just a couple of decent songwriters.

WHAT’S BEEN THE BIGGEST BUZZ SO FAR, FOR YOU?
Getting a record deal. There was this big build up to it. For years I’d wanted one… But I thought it was gonna be so different when I signed the paper – and nothing happened. I was so naive then, really. My whole life was just exactly the same as it was a few seconds before I’d signed it. I expected a few trumpets to sound off, you know? Ha ha ha… It was like posting a letter. You think about writing the letter, you get the paper out, you put your address on, you write the letter, you take care over the words, then you fold it in half, you get an envelope, you write the address on, you stick the letter in the envelope, you go buy a stamp, you lick the stamp, put the stamp on the envelope, lick the envelope and stick it shut. Then you walk for about a mile down the road to the postbox, and you put the letter in the postbox and… nothing happens. Ha ha ha ha ha… I always wait a minute for the trumpets to sound off when I post a letter. But they never sound off. It’s exactly like that with the music business, when you sign a contract. “Oh, man. It this it?”… You get a deal and then it’s …

… REALLY DISAPPOINTING!
Fuck, yeah! Ha ha ha. I got that feeling from LA, too, actually. When I went over to LA. People are always talking about this club called The Rainbow, and I expected to see all this stuff happening. But it was fucking rubbish. Honest, man. What a myth Hollywood is. A big myth…

SO, HOW WAS 1989 FOR YOU, AND WHAT CAN BE EXPECTED IN 1990?
It was really good, I suppose. I had a few problems – mainly my health. I had a few operations on my ear and stuff like that. But we got a lot of things sorted out in 1989… so, it was better than 1988. A few disasters that year… This year’ll be a bluesy album. The songs aren’t recorded yet, but we’ve got about twenty new ones and we’re going to play a few live, on the tour…

… WHICH BEGINS NEXT WEEK…
Yeah, we’re playing a couple of the new ones.

ARE YOU NERVOUS ABOUT HOW PEOPLE WILL TAKE THEM?
Erm… I’m just nervous because we’ve only actually had a few days rehearsal. So we don’t really know what we’re doing – which can be quite exciting, I suppose. You can’t really tell from one live show, you know? The ones we’ve chose to do are ones you’d probably have to sit down and listen to a few times, ‘cos the subject matter is quite serious. I think that I’ve progressed a hell of a lot since our first album, lyrically. That was just the way I was back then, though. I didn’t really think that much, back then. I was only really young. I hadn’t grown up.

FAIRLY RECENTLY YOU SUPPORTED BOTH JETHRO TULL AND ROBERT PLANT, WHO YOU’VE BEEN LISTENING TO FOR YEARS…
Erm… That was good, really good. If we went supporting Bon Jovi, I’d… I’ve just got nothing to do with what that is, what he’s about. I’m totally against anything of that sort. I don’t hear what he’s doing at all, I think it’s totally sad what that guy has resorted to. No respect for it. But Jethro Tull have stuck to their guns, you know? You’ve got to take your hat off to Ian Anderson, haven’t you? He’s just doing his own thing. He’s totally original, and he’s had some good moments – and he didn’t give a shit about anybody else or what they think. It’s a pleasure to work with people like that. And Robert Plant.

WHAT SORT OF STUFF ARE YOU LISTENING TO THESE DAYS?
There’s a band called Prefab Sprout, they write really good melodic songs. But I don’t like any bands. I hate rock music at the moment, to be honest. I just find it very very boring. I like to be moved by music, you know? I like that feeling where you put a record on and it makes you tingle so much that you’ve got to put it on again. And then you say to people “Hey, listen to that!”… and I’m sorry but there’s just nothing around – no records – that’s doing that for me right now.

YOU CAN GET THAT SAME TINGLE FROM LIVE MUSIC IN A SMALL VENUE, IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE A RECORD, OR A BIG SHOW IN A BIG VENUE…
That’s right. It can help a bit, sometimes, all that, lights and things, a big show. But it’s probably the image bit of it that them big bands are into now. They probably aren’t even into the music. It’s just “how can we look good?” and the music comes secondary. I say all this, but the chances are I’m way behind the times. I think as far as It Bites is concerned, although it’s a cliche to say it, we’re actually more rock ‘n’ roll than that. I want to be known as a band, not an image. When we first started off we had long hair, and then all of a sudden bands like King came along so we cut it off. I’m just not interested in being part of a scene or jumping on a bandwagon, you know? If the 1970s bandwagon comes round, I’m off. I don’t want anything to do with it, with a 1970s revival, or anything like that. We actually go right against the grain most of the time which is good. But it isn’t really a good thing as far as “success” goes…

… BUT YOUR FOLLOWING DOES SEEM TO GET BIGGER YEAR ON YEAR…
Yeah, it does. It does. It isn’t a mediocre reaction – the people that hear it love it. Really love it. That’s success, because you’re actually moving people. Say, THE ICE MELTS INTO WATER… Some girl come up to me and said that track made her cry. That’s success, isn’t it? Because if I’d just stood there and told her to “be sad, now”… you can’t… But she can go home and put this little moment of sadness on… and it’s nice to have that. It’s a nice feeling even though it’s sad. You can recall it at any time. I’ve done that, and that’s the success I’m interested in…

… REACHING PEOPLE…
Yeah! At the end of the day it’s about reaching people… which is about selling records, basically, but… What more can I want? If I look around me, I’m sitting in a five bedroomed house, gorgeous house… I’m living with great people, it’s clean, in a great area, and I’ve got a studio upstairs. I’ve got a nice bedroom and I’ve got food. I’m doing alright, thank you very much, for money, so what more can I want – apart from just to reach more people? If I had more money, what would I actually do with it? It definitely doesn’t make you happy, money. If I had a million quid in the bank, I think it’d probably make me worse as a person, which I don’t really want to be… I would still like the million quid, though. Just to try it out, ha ha…

PERFORMANCE WISE, HOW DOES IT DIFFER FOR YOU NOW TO THE EARLY DAYS?
In the early days, we took ourselves so serious. We were nearly dying before we went onstage, and if one beat was out it was a big argument backstage afterwards. We’d go through it again the next day and get it tight. That’s all it was. We were into being tight. Everything had to be tight, tight. This big thing, tight! And then I just thought “Fuck it, man. I can’t even enjoy myself onstage”. I was so tense, you know, and I can’t be on with that anymore. I’m getting a bit fed up with all this ‘muso’ thing. I’ve done all that stuff, and I’ve proved I can do it. I’m totally bored of showing off… Now I just wanna enjoy myself. Just wang out a couple of G-chords and stamp my foot, ha ha. And then show off, ha ha ha.

DOES IT FEEL STRANGE PLAYING BIGGER VENUES?
Not really, no. I think we belong there. I know that one day people will turn round and get what we’re doing. I think it’ll take one single, just one hit single, and It Bites will clean up…

WELL, YOU DID HAVE THAT BIG TOP 10 HIT SINGLE… BUT THE GENERAL IMAGE AT THAT TIME DIDN’T BODE WELL FOR A LONGER HAUL, DID IT?
True. Virgin got a stylist in and they just marketed us wrong. We’ve had quite a job convincing people we’re actually a rock band, you know? I mean, it’s a bit fucking boring to go out-and-out rocking all the time, I like a bit of a change, but… we’re a rock band. There was a backlash against us this last couple of years. Real serious stuff, press on our backs. Now it’s began to change, people are sitting up and taking notice. We’re selling out everywhere, so it’s coming right. People say “They aren’t writing money motivated music. They’re still writing for their art” – which is actually really fucking unusual in this day and age, believe me…

… YOUR MUSIC CLEARLY ISN’T MAINSTREAM POP. EVEN THE BIG HIT WASN’T A CONVENTIONAL SOUNDING POP SONG…
That’s right. The one it was from, the first album – THE BIG LAD IN THE WINDMILL – was very intense pop-rock. And if you look at the next two It Bites albums, they’re very different from each other… The second, ONCE AROUND THE WORLD… That was more progressive. More dope-influenced, I suppose, if you wanna put it that way, ha ha ha. Y’know, a lot of people said we were like Yes or Genesis and things like that…

… THE TIME-SIGNATURE CHANGES?
Well, yeah, and some of the chord patterns we’ve used, probably. There was the title song on ONCE AROUND THE WORLD that was sixteen minutes long – really really technical. That was just something we needed to get out of our system. There’s one part in that song, near the end of it… there’s a section which was quite hard to learn. It does come easy after a bit. Once you’ve learned them it’s a fucking piece of… you know, we can do them with our fucking eyes closed now. So, anyway, I can see slight similarities to early Genesis, I suppose, but…

… YOUR B-SIDE STARING AT THE WHITEWASH QUOTES DIRECTLY FROM PETER GABRIEL’S SONG FAMILY SNAPSHOT. THE LINE “I SHOOT INTO THE LIGHT”…
Ha ha, yeah, it does do that. Ha ha. I’ve done that on purpose. The second half of our song is made up, but the first part’s true. It’s about this guy in Cumbria who’s locked up and he isn’t that fucking crazy, really, but nobody’ll get him out… Peter Gabriel’s song is about the assassination of President Kennedy, the person who did it. What it is at the end of FAMILY SNAPSHOT, that’s when he’s in the cell… and it’s just a line that I used to love: “I shoot into the light”… It’s lines in songs that really have an effect on me, I’ll stick the odd one in our songs, purposely. It’s something I didn’t really want to say, but there you go… Ha ha… Genesis…

… THE GENESIS CONNECTION!
Well, in terms of melody and things like that? No. Especially sound, really – I don’t sound like Steve Hackett, Dick’s bass sound is nothing like Mike Rutherford’s, Bob doesn’t drum like Phil Collins… Some of John’s stuff has a similarity to Tony Banks, maybe. But that’s about it…

HE’S QUITE A CHARACTER – STARING THE AUDIENCE OUT…
John’s just a fucking headcase, he really is. I mean that in a nice way. He’s eccentric… He’s like a… I don’t know. He’s just a strange sort of person. His dad was like that as well, you know? I can tell you a good story about John. One of his teeth is capped, right? About three or four years ago one of the caps fell off, and he was pissed off. So he just scribbled all over his face with lipstick… You know that lipstick he wears? That was when he first done that. And he painted up his eyes and went out on stage like that. He was deadly serious. He couldn’t give a shit what anyone thinks of him. He really couldn’t.

THE BEST WAY…
It is, yeah.

YOU’RE A TIGHT-KNIT BUNCH…
Ummm. When you’ve been mates with someone for as long as what we have, the friendship is totally diff… You know, I’ve got friends down here in London who I’ve known for about four years or so, and it’s just a totally different thing. It’s on a different level. I met these guys when I was, like, only five years old. We met at school, and then I’ve sat with them all the way through that. So I’ve been through my entire life with them… We’ve got…

… YOUR OWN PRIVATE HISTORY?
Yeah! Like, you know the cover of our first album? That painting of a man doing a painting? Well, the picture that’s in the painter’s easel… There was this absolute headcase in Egremont, he actually painted that. It was a great big thing, and he tried to sell it in the Chinese one night for two grand or something… Ha ha ha. We just wanted to have one of them sort of covers, really, ‘cos it’s to do with them times together. Like, there’s various different things we wanted to say, different things we wanted to try. Like we’ve done that now, and then we’ve done the really technical stuff. The last album, EAT ME IN ST LOUIS, was a lot more rockier. It was a lot harder, a lot more stronger.

A COUPLE OF THE SINGLES FROM EAT ME IN ST LOUIS WERE RE-ISSUED RECENTLY…
Hmm. Yeah. It can’t do you any harm, but it’s not something I would have chose to do. But there’s not a lot you can do, you know? Like, the record company wanted to put out OLD MAN AND THE ANGEL from ONCE AROUND THE WORLD as a single. What?! It’s eight or nine minutes long! So we had to try loads of edits, and the one that came out on single was the only one that we could do that worked. We’re sick of fucking messing around with singles, really. We’re just bored stiff of that whole thing. I mean, you do sell more albums off the back of a hit single, but it’s just not us, really. But Virgin got a new guy in the marketing department recently, and he was absolutely convinced that he could break STILL TOO YOUNG TO REMEMBER. He actually very nearly pulled that off, ‘cos it got to about number 53, I think…

WOULDN’T THAT KIND OF THING SET YOU BACK THOUGH, IF THE NEXT ALBUM IS GOING IN ANOTHER DIRECTION?
Hmm. That’s up to them, really. The fact is, we don’t lose fans. We’re not a band where people say “Oh, I like one album, but I don’t like the others”. When the people get into it, they’re into it. And that’s it. They buy everything. They even went out and bought STILL TOO YOUNG TO REMEMBER again although they already had it. I mean, I know it was a remix of it, and it was in a different cover. But it’s the same song, isn’t it?

WHEN SINGLES ARE PUT OUT IN SO MANY DIFFERENT FORMATS, SURELY IT’S THE RECORD COMPANY BEING CYNICAL, ISN’T IT?
Absolutely. Yeah, I totally agree with that. Say that band The Mission. They actually had fifteen – fifteen! – different formats for their last single. That’s frightening really, isn’t it? They had picture discs, poster bags, 7″ remix, 7″ remix poster bag, 12″ remix, 12″ remix picture disc… all that type of thing. Unbelievable, really… That’s just a sign of the times, I suppose. It’s just the way it is now in the music business. The sad fact is, now, you’ve gotta do all that and have the chorus absolutely fucking banged down your throat every 25 – 30 seconds… And if you don’t have a disco beat or a disco sound you’ll be very fucking lucky to make the charts anyway. Unless you do, like Smash Hits or things like that… which we now totally refuse to do. I’m not bitter about it, I’m just sad. It’s sad, really, ‘cos it’s a rip-off.

THE CHARTS HAVE BEEN LIKE THIS BEFORE, THOUGH – BEFORE PUNK MAYBE?
Hmmm. You see, one of the things about punk that was very negative was that most of the bands who played punk only listened to punk and were only influenced by punk. No disrespect to this band, but say Killing Joke. I actually like Killing Joke, myself – but anybody who listens to them, how could they be musically influenced by them? They didn’t do much… So, as far as ideas go, it was a very negative thing to happen, because all the people who were in it and influenced by it started coming out with… fucking shit, basically.

I DON’T KNOW ABOUT THAT… IT HAD ITS…
Yeah, yeah. There was some great moments. But the thing I liked best about punk was the energy. The “fuck you” attitude. I enjoyed that. We were punks as well, for a bit.

REALLY?
Yeah, I was in a punk band. It was called Waving At Trains. It wasn’t, like, out-and-out punk. It was a more new wave type of thing. But we had our moments…

WHICH OF THE IT BITES ALBUMS DO YOU PREFER NOW?
Hmmm. I like them all actually. I used to rebel against each one, but I realised that each one was what I felt at the time. The progressive album, I really felt like that at the time – but I would never write that sort of stuff again, I don’t think. It doesn’t mean I don’t like it, but I just don’t feel that way now…

… THE BLUESY DIRECTION WILL PROBABLY HAVE COME ABOUT BECAUSE YOU’VE SPENT MORE TIME IN AMERICA?
Well, yeah. We just wanted to go somewhere else, really. I suppose America must have rubbed off on us in some way – but it isn’t typical American rock, if that’s what you mean? It’s still very much recognisable as It Bites – we’ve kept the musical side interesting, and the melodies… but the time changes have gone. I ain’t into that anymore. I just want to tap my foot now ‘cos I’m getting old, ha ha ha.

DID YOU ENJOY AMERICA?
It was alright. I think I’m going to have to learn to like America because, right now, I’m so far removed from their society. My way of thinking is totally different. I don’t tell lies, you know? And there’s a lot of lies told over there. I’m living with an American guy called Tommy, and he’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. So maybe it’s just me, not being open to it, to America..? But Tokyo was the best place I’ve ever been. If you ever get the chance to go there, man, just go… The whole vibe there was so cool. There’s no violence on the streets. If you walk down a street in LA there is this underlying feeling of violence, but in Tokyo everyone’s polite and everybody’s peaceful – and it all rubs off on you. You start to act like that yourself, after a while. You drop your guard, you know? You can fucking live. And that’s really really nice. Plus, you can pull any woman you want…

… PLENTY OF THAT BEEN GOING ON THEN?
Ha ha. No, no. Not really. I don’t want to have to deal with that sort of thing, to be honest. But it’s nice to have your ego stroked once in a while.

… JUST YOUR EGO?
Ha ha ha. Yeah, just my ego. Ha ha. Rule Number One is don’t sleep with your fans. You’d ruin their lives. There’s a certain responsibility I have to have. There’s a certain thing I have to be. There’s Frank, which is me sitting here talking to you now, and there’s Francis Dunnery. That’s a different thing. A different act. I’ve gotta do that one because that’s what they want to see…

… DIFFERENT MASKS FOR DIFFERENT SITUATIONS…
Yeah, man. We’re all just acts. If I was sat talking to a doctor I’d be acting different to what I do when I sit down and talk to you. Basically, I know that I have to be Francis Dunnery out of It Bites, and talk to them that way. I’ve gotta say the things they want to hear – which is probably how I’d want to act anyway, or what I’d want to say. But I mean, if you take a girl back to your hotel room, what the fuck’s she gonna think? Like, say you were into, I don’t know, Kate Bush or someone, and you ended up back at her hotel room… It’d be like “Wow, what the fuck is going on?”… So, they’d think that they mean something to you or something like that, and you’d completely fuck their head up. That’s just not fair. I’ve had it done to me – so I am not going to do it to anybody else…

YOU ALSO PLAYED IN RUSSIA, WHAT WAS THAT LIKE?
It was really sad, I suppose. They showed their military power off in Red Square. It all looks hi-tech, like they know what they’re doing, but it’s basically a Third World country. The people haven’t got anything. All that thing you’ll have read about the queues at shops and that, it’s true. But worse. The children were running round the streets with bits of stale bread, there’s no sweets or anything like that. The people have got nothing to strive for. You’ve got to give humans something to strive for, ‘cos that’s where they find their happiness, y’know? Personally speaking, as soon as I’ve got something I don’t want it – it’s the strive for the thing that’s good. In Russia, they haven’t got anything to strive for. The pleasure of building yourself up after being down in the dumps has been taken away from them. It is actually a great pleasure. It’s exciting to build something up, so you can say “Yeah! Look at this! It’s fucking great!”… They can’t do that, there. They’re told what to do, where and when. End of story. It’s a real downer. Absolutely horrible. Just a horrible place.

IT’S INTERESTING THAT POLITICS HAS BEEN CREEPING IN TO YOUR WRITING, FRANCIS. THE LAST TIME WE SPOKE, YOU SAID THAT THIS WAS SOMETHING YOU DEFINITELY DIDN’T WANT…
Yeah, well, what I probably said was… well, I don’t know what I said because I was a twat then, anyway. But the thing what I’m saying now is that it’s opinions on politics that I don’t like, that I disagree with. Opinions are different things than fact. MURDER OF THE PLANET EARTH off EAT ME IN ST LOUIS isn’t about any opinion, is it? It’s an actual fact that those things in that song are happening to the planet Earth.

ALBUM TRACK SCREAMING ON THE BEACHES WAS AN ANTI-WAR SONG…
Basically, it was, yeah… Well, it wasn’t anti-war, like a protest song. It was just telling a story. A sad tale. It was wrote as a war song, but I changed a few lines because it could mean the thing about radiation, too… It was a double meaning for Sellafield, near where I’m from, the nuclear power plant… But the thing with me and politics is, I couldn’t stand up and sing that “the Labour government is brilliant” or that “the Conservative government is shit” – because I actually think that they’re all a pack of twats. I wouldn’t vote for any of them. They don’t tell the truth. They lie and they are actors. Liars and actors – and I can see through all of that. They’re not going to con me…

… AND WHICHEVER PARTY IS IN POWER THE PEOPLE ARE IN TROUBLE ANYWAY?
Absolutely right. There’s a song on EAT ME IN ST LOUIS called THE PEOPLE OF AMERICA, and that’s about… Did you ever see that film, THE OMEN? Well, that song is about that side of the American government. I looked at them and they had Ronnie Reagan sticking out his hand, this nice guy thing… Well, fuck! He had some power-mad warmonger bastards behind him killing people. And all those Evangelists in America… You’ve got old women giving their last dollars to these bastards. That’s terrible. Really evil – evil at a pure source. Hiding behind a front of goodness, these absolute fucking leeches. I mean, how can they even live with that, man? It’s a horrible horrible thing. But that’s the human race…

THINGS ARE COMING RIGHT THOUGH AREN’T THEY, FRANCIS? CHANGE IS IN THE AIR… THERE ARE POSITIVE THINGS HAPPENING – THE BERLIN WALL CAME DOWN RECENTLY, NELSON MANDELA RELEASED A MONTH AGO…
Things like that, though, I don’t actually pay a great deal of attention to. I don’t know enough about it, and I’ve got too much going on in my life. I don’t care. People say they care about Nelson Mandela… I said in an interview once “I just don’t care about it,” and it was took really offensively, you know? But the care I’m talking about is… like, if they were going to shoot my mother tomorrow, I’d care. I’d live that for 24 hours. It’d be on my mind all the fucking time. That’s the sort of care I’m thinking about. I wonder how many people do actually care about Nelson Mandela? I suspect 98% of the people who say they care don’t. It’s great that the guy is out – that’s really cool. But you don’t walk around saying “Nelson’s out – fucking wow!”… Human’s are selfish, and you don’t do one single thing that isn’t for yourself. You give someone a present and somewhere inside you will be a part going “Aren’t I great for giving them that present?”… I’ve taken us back down again, I know… but… that’s what we are…

 

Another interview with Dunnery featured in an extended edition of The Mouthcast published late last year – listen again, here. The new album FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER is now available as a high-quality download (MP3 or FLAC) from Dunnery’s Bandcamp page, here – or as a CD directly from his webstore, here.