Mike Francis

Born: 26 April 1961 in Florence (Italy)
Died: 30 January 2009

Mike Francis was born in Florence on the April 26 1961, and already as a youngster he showed the qualities of a premature musician. As a matter of fact when just 14 he puts together his first band with a group of friends met at his school, the Institute of American Studies in Rome: from here descends his natural predisposition to write lyrics in English. After these "adolescent" experiences, he signs his first contract for a record still very young. He then realizes his first album, which includes "Survivor": a hit single that rapidly reaches the top of most European charts. The quick international success does not confuse the young artist who adds a series of collaborations with prestigious artists to the activity of soloist, author and interpreter. Among them we cite the great Amy Stewart, for whom he composes "Friends", a song which climbs to the top ten all over the world. In the years after he realizes other albums that consolidate further the positions reached in the "international music box". He composes also film musics both for cinema and for television. At this point Mike Francis takes a pause of reflection, during which, though, he concentrates on the realization of songs in Italian. So he collaborates with Mogol and Pasquale Panella, who are the two most prestigious lyrics writers in Italy. Between 1998 and 1990 four albums come out of which three completely in Italian and during that period he goes twice to the Philippines for two great tours of which an album "Live in Manila" and two extraordinary "home videos" remain. In the last months of 1999 the album "All Rooms with a View" is published. Many windows, many points of view, many thoughts, like an hotel facing a city or the sea. Like the songs, that are my way to describe what one sees and what one feels. "All Rooms with a View". Why such a title? Probably because a song is just this. The inner gesture of facing a particular reality, a feeling, a memory and representing it. The attempt to crystallize in a sonorous image or in a phrase "that moment", to make it your own and to transmit it to others. In other words the willingness, the desire that have always characterized the work of an artist and distinguish him from the common people. This is what Mike Francis has always done, with coherence and passion, artistically placing himself in an area where, outside of fashion and tendencies, his music is an ideal element of crossover able to hit the mark also after several years. This is the sense of "All Rooms with a View", a record that projects us in the musical world of Mike Francis and shows us its various angles. This is how we discover, or rediscover, than songs like "Survivor" (his first big hit) up to the most recent productions, have in common elegance and rare musicality. Not a simple compilation, but a travel through the musical world of an important artist, seen perhaps through "others windows "and thus discovering that a track is important also when the arrangement has changed. Another constant is the use of English, because the sonorous world of Mike Francis has been always this. Because the digressions in Italian in the early '90s, although important and countersigned by the contributions of Mogol and Lino Panella, did not represent it totally. "All Rooms With A View", not a record to remember the past, but a record to look ahead, to look at the year 2000, which maybe will not be so different from the world in which we live, but where Mike Francis wants to continue to propose his "point of view", maybe moving to a new city, window, hotel, but where all the rooms must be with a view.