Map To Nowhere?

“We tried to get John Beck and Bob Dalton involved in the sleeve-notes, but it was like getting hold of Lord Lucan and Jesus Christ.”
John Mitchell

The saga of It Bites could easily fill an entire issue of Prog. Formed in Cumbria in ’82, the quartet made some of the most exciting music of the 1980s before crash landing in the most spectacular fashion in the early 90s during the buildup to their fourth album. Having just completed a tour that included a date at London’s Hammersmith Odeon, expectations from fans and their record label were sky-high, and the band flew to California to write and record. What happened next perfectly highlights the volatility that went hand in hand with such Olympian levels of creativity.

“Frank’s first conversation with me in Los Angeles was: ‘Let’s get rid of John Beck,’” recalls drummer Bob Dalton. “He had decided that we should become a guitar band like The Black Crowes.”

Although Frank, aka guitarist/vocalist Francis Dunnery, was the group’s