It Bites' sheer èlan, coupled with their ability to grab a wider range of used ideas than their contemporaries, hoisted them aloft and singular as a landmark act.
"[5] In a 2023 interview, Dunnery and Beck cited a wide range of It Bites band influences, from pop (Paul McCartney, Level 42, Donny Osmond, The Carpenters and Racey), hard rock (Necromandus), jazz-rock (Bruford, Soft Machine, Mahavishnu Orchestra and Allan Holdsworth), progressive rock (Genesis, Focus, Yes and UK), funk and soul (George Benson, Cameo, Steve Arrington, Michael Franks).
"[6] Originally formed by drummer Bob Dalton, bass player Dick Nolan and guitarist/singer Francis Dunnery, It Bites started out in early 1980s in the market town of Egremont in Cumbria, UK.
[1] All four members squatted a house in Peckham (50 Nutcroft Road) and spent a year living hand-to-mouth but writing and rehearsing original material.
6 in the UK Singles Chart and gaining the band a huge amount of radio play and many television appearances (including Top of the Pops, Wogan, and The Old Grey Whistle Test).
[1][7] All three singles appeared on the first It Bites album The Big Lad in the Windmill (produced by Alan Shacklock), which was released in the summer of 1986 but met with only moderate commercial success, despite charting at number 35.
It Bites' blend of contemporary 1980s producer-pop, progressive rock and hard rock (setting glossy keyboards and massed harmony vocals against heavy drumming, complex time signatures and Allan-Holdsworth-inspired guitar solos) would draw criticism from some music press writers who accused the band of failing to settle on a coherent direction.
[6] Mark Wallis replaced Froome as producer in mid-1987, with footage of the process being broadcast on Channel 4 TV's "Equinox" programme Twang, Bang, Kerrang!
[6] Dunnery has recalled that "Steve made us realise that we needed to write some three-minute singles because one of the songs [the title track] was almost 16 minutes long.
"[8] Despite the chaotic sessions, Once Around The World was released in March 1988[1] and signaled a departure from the more directly pop-oriented sound of It Bites' first album, demonstrated explicitly by a fourteen-minute title track in full progressive rock style.
[1] During this period, Dunnery also gained some press attention for his invention of the Tapboard, an instrument based on two paired guitar necks and using a ten-finger tapping technique to create exceptionally fast and clear melodic runs and chording.
[13][14][15][16] The third album, Eat Me in St. Louis was recorded in early 1989 at Musicland Studios in Munich, Germany, produced by Reinhold Mack (best known for work with Queen and The Rolling Stones).
The album featured a harder-edged, more guitar-orientated sound than before, with shorter, punchier songs and the direct progressive rock influences cut back.
In contemporary interviews, Dunnery claimed to have become dissatisfied with the more technical and virtuosic side of It Bites' music as demonstrated on the previous album – "That was very important to us at the time.
[12] During this period, Virgin made strong attempts to break the band as a serious hard rock act with several re-releases and video shoots for "Still Too Young To Remember" and the follow-ups "Underneath Your Pillow" and "Sister Sarah".
"[8] In 2023, Dunnery looked back on his time with the band and reflected, candidly, that It Bites "weren’t particularly into being successful – we just wanted to play twenty-minute long songs and smoke pot, after drinking thirty bottles of wine.
This was ultimately replaced by a live album covering the Francis Dunnery years, Thank You And Goodnight, which was mostly drawn from Eat Me in St. Louis tour recordings and released in August 1991.
This project featured John Beck, Dick Nolan and singer David Banks (who'd once auditioned for It Bites and who'd previously been part of the band Mummy Calls, whose song "Beauty Has Her Way" appeared on the soundtrack to the film "The Lost Boys").
Banks had approached Beck and Nolan to help him record an album of Burt Bacharach covers, but the trio had been sidetracked into recording a bizarre cover of Motörhead's "Ace of Spades" (in which they described themselves as having "replac(ed) Lemmy's timeless vocal with David's crooner voice and transform(ed) the heavy metal trash into a dark deranged groove").
This cover version spawned the Unicorn Jones band, which recorded one album – 1996's 'A Hundred Thousand Million Stars' – but did not play live.
[1] Kino's album 'Picture' was well-received on the British prog rock scene during 2005,[7] and the band performed versions of the It Bites songs "Kiss Like Judas" and "Plastic Dreamer" at live concerts.
Although some writing and initial recording did take place, the full reunion of the original lineup never materialised (apparently due to Dunnery's hectic schedule back in the United States, which affected his ability to commit to the band).
In 2006, It Bites opted to formally reunite, but with Beck and Dalton's Kino bandmate John Mitchell replacing Dunnery as lead singer and guitarist.
Nolan would continue working with Ray Davies (and would eventually resurface in 2020 as part of the Subdeluxe band fronted by Scottish singer/songwriter Scott Donaldson).
In summer 2009 It Bites played the Three Rivers Progressive Rock Festival[30] and also toured Japan, with Level 42's guitarist Nathan King covering for an unavailable Lee Pomeroy as bass player.
In 2012, the band announced that the album would be called Map of the Past and that it would be a concept album – "inspired by the discovery of an old family photograph, Map of the Past is a highly personal journey that explores love, passion, jealousy, anger, remorse and loss through the eyes of a previous generation against the backdrop of Britain as it enters a new century and one of the most defining periods of its history."
It Bites continued to play and tour infrequently over the following years, despite the involvement of band members with other projects (notably John Mitchell with Lonely Robot).
He clarified "neither of us were consulted with or informed of the announcement – we have been looking into the possibility of releasing The Tall Ships on vinyl, and had made arrangements to write together in the coming weeks (we already have the bones of four songs written and recorded).
In addition to Dunnery, the band featured bass player Paul Brown, second guitarist Luke Machin, keyboardist/singer Pete Jones, drummer Björn Fryklund and multi-instrumentalist Quint Starkie.
"[34] This was followed in June 2021 by an article in Prog magazine issue 120, in which Dalton blamed the mid-decade foundering of the Mitchell-era band on "a basic lack of continuity.