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<\/p>\n\u201cYou give a rock star a passport and their airline ticket and tell them what flight to catch,\u201d Michael Francis once remarked, \u201cbut the chances of them getting to the other end in one piece, on the right plane and in the right country, are near enough nil.\u201d <\/p>\n
As bodyguard for some of the biggest names in rock, including Paul McCartney, Led Zeppelin, Kiss and Bon Jovi, Francis ensured his stars not only made it onto flights, but also got through their shows unscathed and survived the narcotic-fuelled parties afterwards. Much of his time was spent protecting stars from themselves.<\/p>\n
An ex-boxer hardened by a spell as a West End drug dealer and a few East End pub fights, Francis brought plenty of brawn to the job, but it was often softer skills that helped him to get ahead. \u201cTo last with an artist for 16 months of a tour, you have to be their best friend,\u201d he said. For Jon Bon Jovi, this meant ushering girls out of the room at five in the morning with believable excuses. For Kiss, in the later stages of the band\u2019s career, it meant offering aspirin, ice packs and some TLC after shows: \u201cThey\u2019ve all got rheumatism, but they still put on those 12-inch high boots and run around, you have to take care of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Francis\u2019s talent for using both his charm and his bulk to get stars out of scrapes would serve as inspiration for Dennis Waterman\u2019s character Terry in the ITV show Minder. Francis, like Terry, seemed \u201cgentle as a lamb\u201d, Waterman wrote in his autobiography, \u201cbut if push came to shove, boy could he sort things out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Michael \u201cDanny\u201d Francis was born in 1950 in London to Joan (n\u00e9e Watts), a stallholder, and George Francis, a boxing trainer who worked with Frank Bruno and John Conteh. As a teenager Michael was, in his own words, \u201ca bit of a rogue\u201d. He got into fights often, including with one of his teachers at Holloway boys\u2019 school who hit him on the head for not being able to read in class. Francis, who was dyslexic, knocked him down with one punch. He was just 11 years old. <\/p>\n
At 16 he was dealing drugs in the West End, a short career that culminated in a gang fight at a venue called the Downbeat Club in Soho. One boy fatally stabbed another in the m\u00eal\u00e9e, and Francis was charged with affray and sentenced to nine months in a young offender institution.<\/p>\n
The experience proved surprisingly constructive. It was a wake-up call and his fellow inmates achieved what his teachers never could, teaching him to read and write so that he could correspond with his family. After his release he tried to launch his own boxing career and began helping his father in the gym. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Francis published a book about his years as a bodyguard in 2003<\/p>\n
One afternoon in 1974 they were training Conteh together when McCartney, who had recently featured Conteh on the cover of the Wings album Band on the Run, strolled in. Through the course of their conversation Francis, Conteh and McCartney ended up planning a trip to the cinema for a live showing of Muhammad Ali\u2019s title fight with George Foreman. The night of the fight, Francis picked McCartney up from his home in St John\u2019s Wood. \u201cOut of the blue, Paul says to me: \u2018I could use a guy like you\u2019,\u201d Francis recalled. \u201cThat was it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Through working as security for McCartney, Francis was introduced to Peter Grant, Led Zeppelin\u2019s hard-nosed manager, with whom he worked for eight years. Zeppelin would prove to be much more challenging wards than Wings. They were rock stars at the height of their fame, the kind actually throwing TVs from hotel windows, and they received a \u00a35,000 weekly \u201cexpenses\u201d budget with little to no oversight of what it was spent on. <\/p>\n
Grant himself was involved in many of the binges, leaving Francis to maintain some semblance of control. \u201cThe excess was outrageous,\u201d he said, \u201cit became total mayhem.\u201d Even this was only an apprenticeship for his next challenge: the singer Paul Rodgers, who Francis said was always a \u201cfantastic bloke\u201d right up until the moment he\u2019d had a drink. \u201cWe went through America with Bad Company and probably ended up in a fight of some sort every night.\u201d<\/p>\n
There were more fights to be had when Francis took on one of his longest posts alongside Jon Bon Jovi, although now the people he was dragging his charge off were more often other rock stars. There were tense stand-offs with Axl Rose, the Guns N\u2019 Roses frontman, and a physical altercation with members of the heavy metal band Skid Row. In retaliation for the latter, Francis and his security team were said to have \u201cbushwhacked Skid Row on stage, held them down and gaffa-taped them to chairs\u201d. <\/p>\n
Bon Jovi\u2019s 1986 Slippery When Wet tour was, by Francis\u2019s standards, \u201cthe best rock\u2019n\u2019roll tour of all time\u201d, featuring all of the usual debauchery but none of the missed shows or lost band members. Over the six years he worked with him, Francis became one of Jon Bon Jovi\u2019s closest friends and was even best man at his wedding. \u201cIt was amazing,\u201d Francis recalled. \u201cI was living a fairytale life. But that\u2019s the thing about fairytales. One day you have to come back to reality.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Francis backstage on a Kiss tour<\/p>\n
The Bon Jovi era came to a sudden end when the band changed management and Francis was left off the new staff list. \u201cI\u2019d saved his ass on two dozen occasions,\u201d Francis said of the frontman, \u201cbut in the end, that doesn\u2019t matter.\u2019\u2019 He recalled something the band\u2019s now ex-manager Doc McGhee had told him early in their working relationship: \u201cJust remember, the artist is the enemy. As sure as we\u2019re all going to die, you will get that fax or that phone call. And it won\u2019t be from the artist; it\u2019ll be from their attorney.\u201d <\/p>\n
Thankfully this maxim wouldn\u2019t always prove true. Though his professional relationship with Bon Jovi went somewhat sour, it made way for one of his closest and most significant working relationships, with Cher. After receiving death threats from a crazed fan, the singer took Francis on for round-the-clock protection. For three years he had a room in her Malibu home, and accompanied her everywhere she went. \u201cWorking with Cher was the best job I\u2019ve ever had,\u201d Francis said later, describing her as like a sister to him. <\/p>\n
It was also something of a relief to step away from touring with rock bands for a time. \u201cIt\u2019s like any job,\u201d he said, \u201cafter a while, you think \u2018not another show, not another room full of beautiful women\u2019; you\u2019d rather play a round of golf.\u201d Between 1999 and 2002, Francis lost his mother, brother and father in quick succession. It was a sobering time and he began to reflect on everything he\u2019d missed while away on tours. <\/p>\n
He was used to people expressing jealousy when they discovered what he did for a living and he enjoyed recounting stories from work, but Francis knew that every star-studded party and scandalous anecdote was secondary to the moments between tours that he was able to spend with his family. Many of these were with his wife, June, whom he married in 1970, and their three children, all of whom survive him. \u201cThey\u2019re the memories that matter,\u201d he said in 2003, a few days after turning down an offer to rejoin Kiss on tour. \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t care if I see another rock band as long as I live.\u201d<\/p>\n
Michael Francis, bodyguard to rock stars, was born on August 16, 1950. He died on October 25, 2025, aged 75<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cYou give a rock star a passport and their airline ticket and tell them what flight to catch,\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-159468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}