The band Asia, featuring John Payne, plans a tour and a new LP
You never know what the future holds. This can be especially true with journalism, where today’s breaking story can be negated by tomorrow’s events.
That’s what happened recently with Asia Featuring John Payne. When Payne (who fronted Asia from 1991 to 2006 and now tours and records with his own version of the band, Asia FJP) announced in July that guitarist Francis Dunnery (formerly of It Bites and Robert Plant, and a prolific solo artist) was joining his band, I jumped at the opportunity to interview Payne to discuss this exciting development.
At the time, Dunnery was learning the material in anticipation of his first gigs as a member of Asia FJP set for early August. With Spock’s Beard keyboardist Ryo Okumoto back in Asia FJP for this tour, it looked as if this Asia was a true supergroup in the tradition of the band’s original 1980s lineup.
When we spoke in July, Payne was excitedly looking forward to gigging and recording with Dunnery, and there was no reason to think this combination of musicians would be anything less than absolutely amazing. But then Dunnery’s first gig with the band on August 2 turned out to be his final show with Asia FJP.
Why? What happened? In his August 4 announcement on social media, Dunnery wrote, “John needs a guitar player who can come in and play all the styles and all the sounds that are on the records, and unfortunately, that's not what I do. There are much better people at doing that than me. It is impossible for me to adapt to that role. I don't have the personality or the playing style to fulfill what he needs. … There are absolutely no weird or hard feelings, and I wish him and the band all the success in the world. But now, I have to close this brief chapter.”
A day later, Dunnery confirmed that he will still be contributing to the upcoming Asia FJP album. “I'll be writing and recording with John for the next Asia album,” he wrote. “I just won’t be touring.”
“We both agreed that covering Asia’s works from 1982 to 2006 was not Frank’s wheelhouse,” Payne wrote in an August 6 statement. “Dear Francis Dunnery is just that, he’s Francis Dunnery, and we were trying to hammer a round peg into a square hole!” Payne also confirmed that former Asia FJP guitarist Jeff Kollman would be rejoining the band for shows through September.
The good news is that the band’s collaboration with Dunnery is still a go, at least in the studio; the less-than-optimal news is that we won’t see that play out live.
Still, the following conversation with Payne is a fascinating peek behind the scenes at how this grouping came together, and what we can expect from the band’s upcoming album—still set to feature Dunnery.
GM: We should start with your big announcement: Francis Dunnery is joining your band.
JP: Yeah. It’s funny. He just called me and said, “The first part of ‘Time Again.’ Can we go through it?” And I said, “I’m just about to do an interview. I’ll call you back later!” I’m very excited about Frank joining us. I can’t think of anybody more apt to be in the band, really.
GM: He's an amazing guitar player—and singer, too. I recently interviewed Dave Kerzner, who did a version of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway with Frank as his “Peter Gabriel.”
JP: I know Dave very well. We’re good friends.
GM: Dave was talking about Frank's perfectionist ways, how he could be very picky about certain things. He is a big Genesis fan.
JP: Oh yeah. He's a huge Genesis fan, and so am I. And it's so funny—we've both been managed by the same people. We both had the same sound guy, Nigel Luby, who was Chris Squire’s sound guy who worked on Fish Out of Water. We were both managed by Bill Curbishley, The Who's manager. There are so many coincidences. We both had the same first guitar, a Hoffman Verithin. And Francis is very astrological. He’ll say, “The stars are aligned,” and all of this stuff. We’re getting on great. He's a very bright guy.
The very first album he did with It Bites was produced by a very good friend of mine, Alan Shacklock, who was the guitarist in the band Babe Ruth. Alan lived in my local village in England, called Uppingham, and he said to me one day, “Oh, I want you to come to the studio to work with somebody.” This was my first break, and it was doing backing vocals for Under a Raging Moon by Roger Daltrey. At around the same time, Alan was producing It Bites at Mickie Most’s RAK Studios in London. I came up to London, and Alan said, “I want to play you some mixes.” He was mixing the first It Bites album.
I didn’t meet Frank, but it’s like we’ve almost been in the same room at the same time, so to speak, but have not collaborated ever. I’m friends with Steve Hackett, who Frank’s worked with. Being such an incredible guitarist, I know that our longtime guitarist Guthrie Govan, who was also in GPS with me, was a big Francis Dunnery fan. Frank is a perfectionist. He’s going through every single Steve Howe note on the original Asia album as well as the new stuff, because he really wants to do a good job.
GM: I'm sure he will. How did you pull Frances into the band?
JP: I just had a moment of madness. I was thinking, “We’re doing this new album called Aviana, which means birdlike. I wanted to carry on with the Asia tradition of album names starting and ending with the letter a. I got Rodney Matthews, who’d done the Aqua and Arena album covers. I thought I needed someone to pivot on musically.
Jeff Kollman has been playing guitar with me for a while, but Jeff's quite scattered with a lot of session work. He’s working with Alan Parsons, and during the period I want to record the album, he's off in Japan with a guy called Eikichi Yazawa, who's like the Paul McCartney of Japan. I had a chat with Jeff and said, “Look, I really need to find somebody,” and he said, “Yeah, there’s no one I can really recommend, but I’ll have a look.”
And then it just dawned on me—“I wonder what Francis Dunnery is doing these days?” I see his name pop up with Dave Kerzner sometimes, and I always rated him really highly as a guitarist, a frontman, and a singer. I need someone strong for the backing vocals with me, and Frank’s got such a kind of “clean” voice compared to mine. I knew that would work well. I just went onto Facebook. I don’t think we were even Facebook friends. I messaged Frank with, “I’ve got an idea. Would you be interested in joining Asia FJP and doing the new album?” He got back to me, “Give me a call.” So, I called him and we had a two-hour conversation. We probably speak now for two hours every day, going through stuff. He's coming in for rehearsals soon. We start August 2 on the U.S. tour and end up in the U.K.
We've been pushing ideas backwards and forwards on new songs, which are coming out great. I’ve got a lot of the album already written, but I really want Frank's influence heavily on it too, so we will come up with some new songs and then also adjust the ones that I've got. It’s looking like one of these things that was fated to happen.
GM: So, he'll be contributing to the writing. Do you think you'll see some It Bites influence on the album?
JP: Oh, I definitely think so, and I'd actually like that, too.
GM: It Bites was a great band.
JP: Oh, what a great band. They didn't really take off in America like they did in Europe—the U.K. and Germany particularly, where they did very well. I think they just were a band that suffered from not the right promotion at the right time. The guy is phenomenal all-around. He's just a musical genius. He plays keys as well. It’s a really exciting chapter in in my career, and I think we're going to come up with something special.
GM: I can't wait to hear it. And you also have Ryo Okumoto back in the Asia FJP lineup on keyboards.
JP: Yes. I've known Ryo for a long, long time. He's such a great front person, too. We've actually been doing a blues project together, the British Blues Invasion, where I play the guitar—not bass—and sing. Ryo is working with me on that. He was in GPS with me. He’s obviously committed to Spock’s Beard, but they tour for just a couple of weeks a year. They’re putting out a new album, and he did play me some stuff while we were writing new stuff for the Asia FJP album here at my studio. He just got the masters for the new Spock’s Beard record, which is phenomenal.
Ryo’s been touring with me now, all this year. We’ve done quite a few dates, and he’s such a great fit for the band. Again, another superlative musician. These guys have really got me on my toes. It feels like going back to joining Asia in 1990 and 1991, where I was the unknown cat playing with people like Carl Palmer, Steve Howe, Simon Phillips, Al Pitrelli—really incredible musicians. I was stepping into some very big shoes of John Wetton, who I’m a huge fan of. It feels like that again.
This really is a very cool chapter. In the U.S., we’re touring with a great drummer called Aaron Olsen. Aaron’s been in the band nearly two years now. He’s also in a Rush tribute band, so that gives you an idea of his musicality, because that’s a hard chair to fill. But also, on the record, and in the U.K. and moving on to select dates, we’ve got Thomas Lang. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Thomas?
GM: I am. He is one of the guys who tried out for Dream Theater. There is a video of all of the tryouts, including his, when he was a candidate to replace Mike Portnoy in the band.
GM: He was one of seven candidates for the drum chair in DT, and they chose Mike Mangini.
JP: Right. And of course, Portnoy’s back now. I know some of those guys, and James (LaBrie) I know fairly well. I’ve loved that band since the very beginning. Images and Words was just a stunning record. But I didn't realize he tried out for that, He's another one of these incredible drummers. I've always been lucky to work with great drummers, from Simon Phillips to Chris Slade to Carl Palmer to Vinny Colaiuta.And I think Thomas will be a great addition on the album.
GM: He's playing the drum tracks on the album?
JP: Yeah. It’s going to be a very musical group. But one thing about Asia that should never be lost, or at least in my version of Asia, is that there has to be a certain sensibility. I was talking with Frank—we were saying there’s one thing about prog music being clever with different time and tempo changes, and different time signatures, but you don’t want to end up as music by the numbers. I think some prog bands do, whereas with bands like Genesis—and I was talking to Frank about this—there’s always a great song in there. There are always great hooks, a great melody in there.
And that's the thing that Asia's been known for. I think Asia surprised some people when they first came out, that it was a commercial sound. It shocked and maybe disappointed some prog people initially, that it wasn’t in the mold of a so-called supergroup. It had some very, very commercial songs, and I love that about Asia. If you think of a song like “Don’t Cry,” which is probably the most pop song any prog band has ever done—but the beginning of it, the intro, is very prog, and then it goes into this pop song.
So, Asia's always had the flexibility to be extremely melodic and be extremely radio-friendly. That's what we're going to go for on this album—to have the prog aspect mixed with the commercial song aspect. Yes did it very well with 90125. Genesis have done that on some of the later Phil Collins albums. I really want this to be the best record that I've ever done. We're 100 songs in now, probably, and we have to choose 10. And now, I'm expecting a load more with Frank.
GM: Wow.
JP: I’ve always done that. Even when I wrote with Geoff [Downes].
GM: It sounds like you’ll have a good inventory of songs for future albums, right?
JP: Definitely. I’ve always been searching for another Geoff Downes to work with. Ryo’s really great, he’s fantastic. We’ve written some amazing songs. I think with Frank, we’re going to strike up a really strong songwriting relationship, because both of us don’t give up. Both of us are really nerds of minutiae, and Frank’s coming from the same school that we have. He keeps saying to me that we need the “No More Tears” Ozzy version of Asia. We need to get back onto the radio. So, we’re very much looking for a couple of songs on there to really get the band pushed in front of people’s faces again. We’re going to do a big marketing campaign. We’re going to do three or four videos from the album. Asia featuring my good self hasn’t done a proper studio album.
GM: This will be the first studio album of original material from Asia Featuring John Payne?
JP: Yeah. I did one which was virtually a solo album. When I had my Vegas show, Raiding the Rock Vault, I did the Recollections album [credited to Asia Featuring John Payne], which was a bunch of covers of songs that have influenced me, from Alan Parsons onwards. That was kind of an interim thing, but this is going to be a proper studio album, and we’re very serious about it. It's still everything I do. Someone asked the other day, “What do you do most of the time?” For over 30 years, I’ve just really done Asia music. I’ve had a couple of dances with Dukes of the Orient and GPS. But it’s been my life’s work doing this. So, this is really important to get right. Rodney's done an amazing cover with a mechanical bird on it.
GM: That sounds fantastic.
JP: I think we’ll be finished with the album this winter, and it will be out very early next year. I was hoping to get it out before. But now Frank’s on the scene. I really don’t want Frank to be just an addendum. I want him to be a full quarter of this album, if not more. Knowing Frank, he’s going to push me, I’m going to push him, so there’s going to be a heavy influence from Frank and It Bites. Fans are going to love something that’s really part of him. I’ve said to him, “You’re not coming into the band just like ‘I’ll produce you, you play this bit, you play that bit.’ I want your voice to speak on this album.” I want this to be as much Francis Dunnery’s album as mine. Same with Ryo.
GM: Francis is a big fan of Allan Holdsworth. Do you see some U.K. influence coming in, with him playing in that style on the album?
JP: I hope so. Did you know that, shortly before Allan died, Geoff Downes and I were talking about him working with Asia? I’m a huge fan. That U.K. stuff that Allan did with John Wetton was just phenomenal, and the guy is one of the most prominent players that ever existed, influencing people like Eddie Van Halen. Allan wanted to play saxophone, and apparently that’s why his guitar sound doesn’t have much attack. It’s this fluid line with almost an “envelope” at the front where the sound crept out. But yeah, I see some crazy musicality guitar-wise coming.
GM: What can we expect on the set list for this upcoming tour?
JP: Basically the whole career of the band. I know for people coming to see the band, even though I didn't sing them originally, we have to pay homage to early Asia—which is great and which put the band on the map—even though I did eight studio albums with them. I want to pay homage to the John Wetton period, so we will be doing some of the first album, songs like, obviously, “Heat of the Moment,” “Only Time Will Tell,” “Wildest Dreams,” and “Time Again,” and “Go” as well, from the third album. Obviously, we’ll do stuff from Aqua. We do “Who’ll Stop the Rain.” From Aria, we do “Military Man” and “Don’t Call Me.” We play “Silent Nation.” Then, we’re going to throw in a couple of sideways ones.
GM: I just listened to Silent Nation today. What a great album.
JP: Thank you. That was a fun album to do. So, it's going to be a whole career retrospective for me. It’s a fun set, and there actually is one track I throw in because there was one guy I always wanted to work with, and again, we were reaching out at the time of his death. I wanted to have Jeff Beck play on a couple of tracks on this album, and then unfortunately, he passed away. A lot of people don’t know that I started off as a guitarist, so I do a tribute to Jeff Beck in the middle of the set and tell the story of how we were reaching out to him. I do a song called “Because We’ve Ended As Lovers,” which was written by Stevie Wonder for Jeff. When Stevie was writing “Superstition,” Jeff Beck was playing drums in the rehearsal room with him, and Stevie said, “Oh, thanks for doing that. I’m going to write you a song.” And that’s how they did that.
It’s a very varied show. There’s a lot of light and shade. There are a lot of stories. I’m sure there will be quite a bit of camaraderie between us. Normally at the shows, my manager tells me to stop talking so much because I love going into the stories of why a song was written or the story behind some interesting facts on the road. It’s normally me who talks, but I’m sure I’m not going to be able to shut Frank up, because with this conversation we’re having now, it’ll be like a cross between a gig and a comedy show.
GM: I interviewed him backstage in 2013. We had a great conversation, but he never stopped playing guitar as we talked.
JP: I know! Funnily enough, he's doing the same with me. He's got this red guitar on, and he’s sitting, and he’s like, “Yeah, John, well I think we should do this, there’s this song I was thinking about…” but there’s all this shredding. He’s not even thinking about it! It’s like, “You’re crazy, man.”
GM: He's a guitarist’s guitarist.
JP: Yeah. As I said, Guthrie Govan, who I found working in a school, and now he’s probably one of the best players on the planet, is a fan. Guthrie was the best player.
GM: You've had very good luck with guitar players. You’ve worked with some of the best.
JP: I've had incredible luck. Elliott Randall from Steely Dan was on Arena. All of them, starting with Steve [Howe]. I’ve been really lucky, and this time, I think I’ve hit the jackpot again. It’s going to be a hell of a band.
GM: Absolutely. So, John, we now have a situation where there are two versions of Asia—yours and the band Geoff Downes recently toured with. It reminds me of when there were two versions of Yes a few years back—Yes led by Steve Howe, and Yes Featuring Anderson, Rabin and Wakeman. I talked to Steve back then, and he said there was some confusion with promoters running photos of the wrong version and things like that. Have you encountered any difficulty delineating your version of the band from the other lineup?
JP: Yeah. It happens quite a lot, because even now, a lot of ticket companies are AI-generated. They’ll just pull in the pictures. They’re not a couple of old farts like you and I. They’ve got a 20-year-old guy in the office running the posters and photos and that kind of stuff. And they haven’t got a clue who Asia is. We get that that happens.
I try to make it clear. When we had the agreement (in 2006), I didn’t want my name in [the band title]. It almost would have been better to call it Asia Mark II or something. But I think, to differentiate it when they got back together, they wanted to go out as Original Asia. Then it was agreed that I’d go out as Asia Featuring John Payne. It always feels like I’m talking about myself as a third party, which I hate, but I have to delineate it that way. I’ve seen stuff with Frank saying, “What’s going on? You’ve got one It Bites guitarist in one thing (John Mitchell, who replaced Dunnery in It Bites from 2006 to 2018, is playing in Geoff Downes’ current lineup) and you’re in this thing. Isn’t this confusing?”
People get very heated about it. It’s only music, even though it’s my life. Now you’ve got double the amount of Asia music you can listen to. If you don’t want to listen to it or don’t want to go to the concert, don’t go. They’re going to be doing some studio stuff; I don’t know about road stuff. I know how busy Geoff is with Yes. But as these bands go on, 40 years later, there are always offshoots of these bands, like with Sweet and Little River Band. The telling thing is, are they making good music? Are they entertaining live? Asia is not the band it was back in 1982. Even if John (Wetton) was alive and Steve and Carl and Geoff were playing in it together, everyone’s older. It’s not the same thing. And you can’t expect, nearly half a century later, that it’s going to be the same.
In an ideal world, yeah, we would have Journey out with Steve Perry. But I don’t think that’s going to happen. And with Geoff, obviously the “original Asia” thing is diluted because Carl and Steve are not doing it. Someone posted saying, “Why aren’t you playing in the lineup with Geoff?” I said, “Well, they didn’t want me. They didn’t ask me.” So, fine. I’m a grown man. Geoff wants to do what he wants to do. We were very close friends at one stage. We even shared houses together. We lived in a recording studio together down in Wales.
I think when he had to put together the original lineup, he came up with a hard decision friend-wise, but an easy decision musically—the chance to put the original band back together, which would create more interesting and bigger shows. For a certain amount of time, I think it did. Friendships change, life changes. I honestly wish him all the best. I don’t think it’s unhealthy to have two versions of the band being out there. In fact, it’s healthy. I wouldn’t be averse to do a double bill with them. I don’t think that will ever happen, but yeah.
GM: That would be cool. But I’m glad Asia FJP is still going strong—stronger than ever, in fact.
JP: My version is different. When I joined the band, Geoff didn’t want me to be a John Wetton clone. Geoff wanted me to do my own thing, to create a different version, maybe more rock-focused vocally than before. And so, I just want to continue doing what my legacy is with the band. And that's fine with me.