Last updated 15:54, Thursday, 28 August 2008

Five men crammed in a one-bedroom flat, a 12-string acoustic guitar with only six strings and three months worth of giros. That’s what it takes to make it big.

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The cover of It Bites’ Calling All The Heroes

In fact, that’s what it takes to make it massive.

It might sound like a mother’s nightmare for her teenage son, but a grimy Peckham flat, battered instruments and no money – apart from the scraps saved for booze, fags and an occasional tin of beans – was the recipe behind Cumbria’s biggest rockstars.

Nobody from the county has ever beaten Egremont-born Eighties band It Bites in chart success or popularity. From humble beginnings jamming in the garage they went on to sell out all their Cumbrian gigs.

Then London called and they were promptly snapped up by Virgin Records and tasting stardom. One of their tracks, Calling All The Heroes, blasted into the charts at number six and several successful singles and albums followed.

Those were the younger years. Since the late Eighties it has been relatively quiet on the It Bites front – until earlier this month.

In true It Bites style, the four-piece strummed and bashed back onto the scene; not with a quiet comeback gig for hardcore fans, but as the main support for Status Quo’s Whitehaven concert celebrating Whitehaven’s 300th anniversary on August 2.

That got the team reminiscing about the good old days, so for the first time in 16 years they’re playing new material at Whitehaven Civic Hall this Saturday.

Drummer Bob Dalton has been ready for this moment for years. “Cumbria was the start of everything for the band, so it’s excellent that it will all kick off from here again,” he says. “We started up in 1982 playing gigs at working mens’ clubs and nightclubs but we were young lads at the time and fairly irresponsible. We ended up getting banned from nearly everywhere because we got so drunk and rowdy.

“One time we were playing a two-night gig at Carlisle nightclub Talk of the Border. The first night went great but by the second I was so drunk I thought it’d be a good idea to pull Dick’s shorts down. Then we all decided to do it. Naturally we had nothing on underneath.

“Some sneak decided to sell the story to the Sunday Sun. They headlined us ‘Bottom of the Pops’. We never lived that one down.”

Despite the numerous pub and club bans the lads were always invited back to play because they were too popular to give up.

“We always used to sell out our gigs so the places that banned us couldn’t afford to drop us for long,” says Bob. “As soon as the nightclub down the road booked us up, they wanted us back.

“At the time few bands could fill a place so we were quite valuable. We took advantage of it too. If a place asked us back after they’d banned us we’d always ask for more money, because we could. We were quite cheeky really.”

Following their sweeping success in Cumbria, the quartet – with Francis Dunnery on vocals, Dick Nolan on bass, John Beck on keyboards and Bob on drums – trooped to London to sniff out their big break.

Francis ended up squatting with his girlfriend in one flat, while the other members shared a one-bed flat with two roadies. Immediately they began pooling their giros so they could afford a studio recording session. It left hardly a penny for anything else.

“The flat had nothing in it apart from equipment and us. We slept on campbeds that we put away during the day,” says Bob. “But it was actually the perfect situation because all we could afford to do was write songs 24/7. All that time was the making of us. We became strong writers and strong players.”

Their confidence wasn’t misplaced. Three months and a scrappy pile of banknotes later, they could at last afford a three-day session at an eight-track studio in Camberwell.

The resulting demo was hawked around London’s record labels and it didn’t take long for them to strike it lucky.

“We were trying to blag our way into Warner Studios one morning when a lad came up to us and said he’d have a listen,” says Bob. “We had no idea who he was but he turned out to be Martyn Mayhead from WEA Records. He liked our stuff so he agreed to pay for rehearsal time, polish us up and get us a record label.

“We were both meant to be a stop gap for each other but by the time he introduced us to Virgin we’d all gotten so attached he ended up being our manager.”

Under Virgin the band scored their top six single, plus a string of lesser hits and three albums.

Debut album Big Lad In The Windmill, released in 1986, scratched the top 40 chart, followed by Once Around The World in 1988 and Eat Me In St Louis a year later. The latter received storming reviews in Kerrang and Raw, but its commercial success didn’t match their debut.

Over the three years there were several performances on popular programmes including Top of the Pops, Wogan and The Old Grey Whistle Test. They also supported Robert Plant during his 1989 UK tour, before jetting off to America and Japan for sell-out gigs as support for Jethro Tull.

Bob describes their success as “consistent but not mindblowing”, which he laments, but refuses to complain about: “We never had that really successful album; we weren’t one of those bands who create something truly amazing. But we can’t complain. By the end we were playing 3,000 capacity venues like Hammersmith. Our fans were hardcore and loyal.

“Part of the problem was the friction between us and Virgin bosses. They were predominantly a pop label so they wanted us all poppy but we were determined to stay prog rock.

“In the end we were a curious mix between the two, which was good in a way because nobody had that sound apart from Genesis. But we resented it and Virgin found it hard to market us.”

This creative tension was one of the reasons frontman Francis Dunnery left the band, effectively leading to their disintegration in 1991.

“Francis didn’t like the way the band was going,” says Bob. “He had moved to America and his style had become very Americanised. He wanted to tour differently and to play differently. He also wanted John out the band.

“We didn’t agree with any of it so we agreed to part ways. He stayed in America and we came back here and buried ourselves in other music projects.”

“We ended up jamming songs in our old primary school,” says Bob. “After that Francis said he wanted to revive the band. We did a bit of writing and it looked like it was all back on but logistically it was never going to work.

“Francis loves the US and he couldn’t leave because he was in the middle of university. He talked about working across the web but we knew it wasn’t practical. We realised it was a well-meaning dream that we had to let go.”

Still the fire had been re-lit for the remaining band mates. They wanted It Bites back together for a second piece of the rock‘n’roll action. A new frontman was discovered in John Mitchell, from the band KINO, a lifelong fan of It Bites, who Bob and Dick had previously worked with.

In 2006 they performed a mini-tour, playing mainly past singles to test the water. Positive feedback inspired a concrete revival, and they began planning a UK tour and creating a long-awaited new album, The Tall Ships.

There was only one more change to be made: the replacement of bassist Dick.

“Dick’s heart wasn’t in it anymore. He’d grown out of us,” reveals Bob. “We had all realised that the revival was something we really wanted to do and we needed dedication.

“While we know the band isn’t going to relive the glory of the Eighties, we’re serious about producing good music. Lee Pomeroy filled that gap and now we’re ready to go.

“We do have a slightly different sound now, but we’ve still got strong It Bites formulae running through our music,” Bob assures. “We purposefully took two years to create the album because we wanted to get the balance between new and old exactly right.

“The first gig at Whitehaven is incredibly important to us. When Francis left we never thought we’d fill the hole, so we can hardly believe we’re here now. But we’re revived and ready to bite again.”

Tickets for Saturday’s gig cost £17.50 from www.ticketweb.co.uk or by calling 01946 514960.

The Tall Ships is available from October 1. The It Bites tour starts on September 26 and finishes on October 7.