Neal Francis sent me a thoughtful note a few days after our SPIN interview. It was like getting a response to a fan letter from one of the Cassidys—Shaun or David—in the ’70s. Francis brings the musical and cultural excitement of that decade to the present with all the analog warmth, sonic sensibility, and enviable style of the era’s cross-section of icons, from the pinups to the pioneers.
This timeless musical persona is what Francis puts across on his albums, including his latest, Return to Zero. His third album in five years, Francis also released the live double album and concert film Francis Comes Alive in 2023, a firm nod to Peter Frampton’s perennial breakthrough work, 1976’s Frampton Comes Alive!
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Not to be mistaken for the cross-continental alternative pop duo Neil Frances, the Chicago-based singer-songwriter and accomplished pianist Neal Francis is Billy Joel shaken and stirred with Frampton, Dr. John, Muddy Waters, and ELO. With feathered hair, flared trousers, big collars, and sharp jackets, Francis presents the ’70s package without irony.
It took Francis a long time to get where he is now. He began his piano training at the age of 4, went through crippling addiction, and came out the other side. His songs consolidate his intense experiences with his eclectic musical background into extremely fun and irresistible aural snapshots. On Return to Zero, guitars hit the dancefloor with gusto, a result of Francis getting deep into Thin Lizzy and spending many evenings on the receiving end of house music pioneer Derrick Carter’s DJ sets at Chicago’s LGBTQ+ party, Queen! This is why his musing, “What if Thin Lizzy cut a disco record?” makes so much sense for Return to Zero.
On the day of our conversation, the Sly Stone documentary, Sly Lives! (aka the Burden of Black Genius) premiered on Hulu. Francis hadn’t seen it yet, but he already read Stone’s autobiography, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) and says that as an addict, he has a lot of “Empathy and compassion reading about what Sly went through. He’s a hero of mine musically.” I wasn’t expecting Francis to bring up his addiction this early on, but I’m glad he did.
“Just this morning, I was thinking about what would have happened had I gotten sober when I was 20,” says Francis, who was 27 when he got sober. “When I was using and drinking, it felt like my life was on fast forward. I had all these ideas and visions. The drugs would sometimes remove inhibitions and allow this vision to be conjured. But then there was no capacity for me to sit down and work on something.”
Escape from general discomfort is the reason Francis gives for his addiction. Plus, fear and social ineptitude were holding back his creativity as much as it was feeding it. “I do this thing I’m sure everybody does sometimes where if I could go back knowing what I know now, I would save myself. There’s this thought of fixing the past, but it’s a fantasy.”
I always think your younger self was probably not ready to hear anything your older self has to say.
I was on this mental health retreat and there was an exercise where we were visualizing ourselves in the future talking to the present self. I can sort of do that now, tell myself things like, “Don’t be afraid. Be yourself. Embody the type of person you want to be.” This sage voice exists inside me. Spirituality is how I envision my higher power.
Are you religious?
No, I do a buffet spirituality, looking around at little pearls of wisdom and taking what I can.
Yet you lived and performed music in a parsonage, where so many musicians hone their craft.
I did have that growing up in the Catholic Church. By the time I was in middle school, I was playing at the school masses. But I feel like the Catholic service didn’t have the same richness around music that I see in the Baptist tradition or Church of God in Christ, where gospel music is so rich here in Chicago. The Catholics kind of got the short end of the music stick. The Lutherans have Bach, who is a true monolith in music to me. That’s what I got to play when I had my church gig after I got sober.
My buddy hooked me up, kind of threw me into that gig, a moment in my life I could never have engineered on my own. I was in that gig for a couple of years and ended up living in the parsonage. That got me reading music again, which I had given up on when I was a kid and gotten away with it. Now the core of my daily practice is reading The Well-Tempered Clavier every day and practicing pieces from that. It brings me so much joy. And it turns out writing music is a really good way to organize your thoughts musically.
Is what you’re doing now what it sounded like in your head when you had musical ideas but couldn’t execute them?
Yeah. I was writing pieces from my second album, even before I got sober. The direction I’m starting to drift in now is different from where I’ve been. But sometimes I get an idea for a song that I might have written when I was 20. I started playing blues and boogie-woogie piano when I was a real young ’un and I grew up playing in blues clubs. That’s always going to be there. But that’s also the basis of rock ‘n’ roll so that’s always there. And I always love drawing in classical music for the interest of chord progressions and arrangements. That’s how I relate to Jeff Lynne from ELO. I also love Giorgio Moroder. I also love more contemporary electronic music and Brian Eno. I never know what’s going to come out.
Yet your albums come out sounding cohesive.
If it seems like a cohesive project aesthetically, it wasn’t born that way. I’ve gotten sober from drugs and alcohol, but there’s still so many things in the way. Over the years, it’s been about finding out what is standing in the way of my expression and what is blocking me from being in the studio. That’s what I came up against with Return to Zero. It was such a struggle to make this record.
I’m already looking at the next record because I feel more able to be present. Even in the space of time between now and when I finished the record, I have so much more capacity to sit and work on something with a modicum of discipline that I’m really excited about the potential that gives me.
Why was it a struggle to make Return to Zero?
I was constantly running away from my problems. I was busy touring. I was trying to write in between tours. I would fill that time with anything else to take my mind off of the fact that I was supposed to be working. Even though I don’t drink or smoke or do any of that shit anymore, there are so many ways to veg out. I had this relationship with the studio that was very oppressive.
I’m glad I aligned myself with a couple people, who, in many ways, gave me a space to create with them. There were a lot of co-writes on this record, because it was more effective for me to be in a room with someone to help me write. Elliot Bergman gave a lot of his time for me to use his studio space in L.A. and just sit there. Sometimes I didn’t come up with any ideas, and I felt like I was wasting his time. But since then, I have a lot more willingness to create.
Is that because you don’t have to create right now? I think everyone knows about finding anything to do instead of what we’re supposed to be doing.
It’s like a procrastination shell game. My Bach practice is like that, too. I can spend a couple hours trying to memorize a fugue, and that feels like work, and it is work, and it is beneficial to me in some way, but it’s not what I’m supposed to be working on.
There’s this fear of the work itself and I don’t know if I’ve ever gotten to the bottom of what the hell I’m so afraid of. Is it the pain that goes along with creation? There’s also this pain in songwriting. I’m also always coming up against my limitations and that’s its own version of suffering. I do find the process of creation very fulfilling. It’s the only thing I want to do with my life. But again, what is it that I’m so afraid of?
Was there a situation where you didn’t feel this way?
I feel like some of the most fully realized creative projects I ever worked on were when I was in architecture school my freshman year. I was doing Adderall and massive amounts of marijuana, but I would just sit in the studio and create. I would be there for so long that it would just come together. I’ve seen songs develop that way, too. The demo process for In Plain Sight was sort of like that. I was living in the church, and I was learning how to record myself. There was this really satisfying sense of control and it was a luxurious amount of time. I love that feeling. I know it’s possible. I don’t always get to choose when it happens. Goethe had a quote where he said, “Some days I don’t even write enough to fill the space under my hand.” He was in his study or wherever, but he didn’t get shit done. I like reading stuff like that.
I love your thought: “What if Thin Lizzy cut a disco record?” That’s basically the elevator pitch for Return to Zero.
I want to realize that concept even more. I want to try and bring that to the live show. Because we’re a four-piece, a lot of this stuff isn’t going to have these auxiliary arrangements, but it can be this tight rock ‘n’ roll, proto-punk, but also very groovy.
I was going to the Queen! nights semi-regularly at one time. Derrick Carter is a really fun guy to talk to, a true music nerd. He’s one of those minds, like Questlove, just an encyclopedia. House music is like cycling, going from a band in a room, getting sampled by someone and getting turned into a house track, and now it’s coming back into a band in a room environment, like this circle of inspiration.
What were some of your analog recording approaches on Return to Zero?
I did a lot of my overdubs for vocals on tape, which was a challenge I threw my engineers. It wasn’t very elegant. We recorded the band analog, then we bounced to the computer, and then the track was in the computer with some overdubs. I bounced that back to a tape machine and added my vocals. That’s never a good idea, because to get it back to its broken apart form for mixing, an engineer has to line up what you did on the tape machine. My apologies to the guys who had to figure that out for me. But I found for my lead vocal on “What’s Left of Me” and “Can’t Get Enough,” in particular, it was a more forgiving way for me to do it.
That seems like the most difficult way to capture a vocal.
There’s a button on the tape machine that says RTZ, which means return to zero. Every time I would fuck up a take, I pressed that button and started over. There’s this moment of rewind, where I have to think about what I’m doing again and compose myself. It’s unlike recording in a computer, which I do a lot, where you do 13 takes of your vocal, and then you go through and you comp. There’s just one track on the tape machine, so it’s like, “Can I beat what I did last time?” That whole process, there’s a meditative element, like the “begin again” I get in my guided meditation. If you get distracted, don’t feel any sense of judgment; begin again, start fresh with your process.
That came at the end, after I had already suffered through the valley of doubt. It synthesized everything for me. Before that, I was like, “This track I’m drawing from Roy Ayers. This track I’m drawing from ELO. This track I’m trying to do boogie meets Bowie.” It all felt very disparate.
But this is Neal’s 2025 where I can use all the history of music that’s come and have the wonderful ability to access that at any time and filter it through this antiquated technology and use whatever process I want.
What you’re saying about “return to zero” is so philosophical. Zero sounds like a negative thing, but it’s also a beginning.
I was reading this book, The Denial of Death and thinking about, “Is all of this because I’m afraid of dying and I need to have this immortality project?” No. I am nothing. This guy the other day said, “There’s an old Jewish saying that you got two pieces of paper in your pocket. One is that the world was created for you. The other is that you are dust and ashes.” It’s everything all existing together.
The fear of death is quite common, but that’s also why being an artist puts you in a different position because you’re leaving these pieces of yourself behind.
I got to see my grandmother right to the end of her life and that was profoundly beautiful. Sometimes I think I’m ready. But is all of this stuff I’m doing just masquerading as a fear of death? I can’t tell you that I’m afraid of dying today, but it could happen. As I experience more loss, as I experience more life, it’s always there. I’m intrigued by it. And I’m wondering what’s after death, too. Maybe I think about it more often than the average person, but it’s endlessly interesting.
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