Missing Persons: Found In L.A.

By Dave Zimmer

Bam Magazine, Nov. 5, 1982

Previously reprinted in Privacy #1

I must confess something. Before even having heard Missing Persons produce a single note, I was attracted to the group because of a photograph I'd seen of lead singer Dale Bozzio. I mean, hey, I'm only human, and there was just something magnetic and slightly magical about her Morgan Fairchild looks and teasing Marilyn Monroe aura. But could she sing? Could the group play? I wasn't sure. Not being an avid Frank Zappa fan, I did not know that Dale had cut her vocal teeth with him. I was also not aware of the fact that her husband, drummer Terry Bozzio, and guitarist Warren Cuccurullo were both Zappa alumni as well. For all I knew, Missing Persons could have sounded like Spanky and Our Gang.

Then last autumn, "I Like Boys" and "Mental Hopscotch" -- a couple of tunes from the group's independently released EP -- started leaping out of my car radio at least once a day. Dale's quirky vocals, filled with high squeaks and hiccups, tumbled across syncopated electro-wave rhythms engineered by Terry and Warren. Slapping my car steering wheel in time to the beats and the squeaks, it soon became apparent that Missing Persons was a group I had to see live.

Planted in front of the auditorium stage at IC Irvine, with smarmy skinheads to the left of me and clean-cut preppies to the right of me, I could feel the air tense following a reckless set turned in by Orange County slam rockers, The Cylinders. Then when the house lights went out, the audience crunched together. And as the curtain rose, a spotlight shot over my left shoulder, picking up Terry Bozzio -- already drilling out a series of licks on his drum kit, set up at the front of the stage. "Yeah, Zappa!" screamed a bespectacled preppie. This same guy howled again when, on top of Bozzio's beats, came Cuccurullo's sharp guitar chomps and Chuck Wild's percolating synthesizer patterns. Then Dale, wearing nothing but a clear plastic bra and flashing neon briefs, purred into her microphone, "Life is so strange, when you don't know…"

Seventy minutes later, caught up in that pleasant post-concert euphoria, I was thinking life was great, and that now I did know Missing Persons could thoroughly entertain a crazy cross-section of people (I had danced just as furiously as the girl in front of me with the pink crew-cut). Here was a band, I was convinced, that had a good shot at some broad-based success.

The next several months did not prove me wrong. In March of this year, Capitol Records signed Missing Persons and right away set about re-releasing the group's EP -- minus a cover of The Doors' "Hello I Love You," but including a new original called "Words." The head-bobbing rhythm and zig-zagging melody of "Words" caught the ears of radio programmers and, subsequently, listeners all over the country. Some of the song's lyrics stood out as perfect comments on the times - "Media overload bombarding you with action/ It's near impossible to cause distraction…What are words for?/When no one listens anymore?"

Just look at all these kids playing video games," says Terry Bozzio. "They don't listen to words or read anymore. That might be an overly cynical observation, but I think people block out a lot these days."

It was difficult to block out Missing Persons, though. Besides getting plenty of radio airplay, they toured across America (including Hawaii) and their popularity grew. But as many fans as the group attracted, there was also quite a contingent of critics. Writer Steve Pond, in an LA Times live review, stated, "Missing Persons looked like a marketing man's conception from the start -- mix Blondie with The Plasmatics, throw in some of this jerky new wave stuff, and the kids'll buy it." Ouch! The group obviously was not wild about such criticism, but, Warren Cuccurullo admits, "It was inevitable. With Dale looking like she does and because of our sound, people just needed something to compare us to. And we've found some people love us, some people hate us. There doesn't seem to be much middle ground."

What's interesting is that Missing Persons has gotten it from different sides. Some hardocre punk fans have dismissed the group as "Holly wave." While at the same time, mainstream rock and rollers have had trouble accepting Dale, in particular. One LA local called her a "kinky fake who sings like a squirrel in heat." Then come the Zappa devotees who want to hear nothing but instrumental solos by Terry and Warren but find Missing Persons "too tame."

Rather than pandering to such criticism, though, Missing Persons thumbed their noses at them. Dale's costumes got more outrageous (though not quite as pornographic as Wendy O. Williams), her voice continued to squeak all over the universe, and Terry and Warren refused to fly off into self-indulgent solos.

Then this past summer, when not on the road or making videos, Missing Persons moved into the studio and recorded their first album. As often is the case with a group's maiden effort, finding enough material was not a problem. The band simply transferred what was already a good portion of their live set onto tape. With sing-songy hooks, the tunes fell along that hazy line between commerciality and experimentation.

Inside a "cooling out room" at Burbank's Chateau Recorders, Terry Bozzio polishes off a tin of sardines then lights up a Cuban cigar.

"No, I'm not celebrating," he chuckles, as billows of pungent smoke encircle his elf-like face. "I just like a good cigar."

With Missing Persons' Spring Session M album finished, he should act like a proud father puffing on a stogy; instead, he is reflective.

"Making this album was a challenge," he says. "We tried to keep things as interesting as possible without alienating the man on the street. There are some weird chords, dissonant chords…odd times you can't really count but can feel. Everything on this album has an underlying pulse. We want to make music that makes people feel good. Not like, okay, everybody clap your hands. Not that bullsh*t. But each of our songs is specifically designed to be something everyone can relate to and can sing along to; songs that can somehow reinforce a person's lifestyle at any given moment."

This kind of attitude is not what you might expect from a player such as Terry Bozzio, who has spent a large portion of his musical life wrapped in avant-garde forms of jazz and classical. He earned an AA degree in music at College of Marin, studied privately with San Francisco drum master Chuck Brown and, during the early '70s, purposely avoided any contact with popular music.

"I only listened to classical and jazz," he says, "mainly because I was a student and learning about discipline. But also, I could not stand rock music. After Jimi Hendrix and Cream, I thought it all went down the tubes. I now think it was kind of a mistake to be so close-minded."

What Terry does not regret, however, is the solid musical foundation he established through diligent practicing and training. After quitting college, he was able to immediately get work as a freelandce classical drummer in Bay Area orchestras and opera companies. He also joined a progessive jazz group called Azteca, and performed in an SF production of Godspell for thirteen months. Then, out of work and receiving unemployment for the next thirteen months, Terry immersed himself completely in the Bay Area jazz scene, playing mainly with trumpeter Eddie Henderson and keyboardist George Duke. In early 1974, it was Duke who suggested that Terry ought to try out for a drum spot opening in Frank Zappa's band. He did, and got the job, beating out a field of over 40 drummers.

During his three-year tenure with Zappa, Terry says, "I learned how a studio operates and pretty much patterned my mode of operation after him. Frank's a real hard working guy. He takes no drugs, no holidays…he just gets up every day and beats it to death. I've tried to do that myself.

"Musically," Terry continues. "Zappa had these very surreal ideas and pretty weird lyric and instrumental concepts. And it was always his music. I couldn't take much responsibility for it. I had to leave Zappa, basically, so I could be more involved with my music. It was time to lay my balls on the line."

Before Terry made this move, however, he met and fell in love with his future wife, Dale Consalvi, at a Zappa rehearsal.

"Dale was just a fan who'd first met Frank at an all-night deli in Boston back in '74," says Terry. "A few years went buy, she came out to LA to try her hand at modeling, and visited a friend who was working on the CBS lot. Zappa happened to be rehearsing right next door. When Dale heard what she thought was Frank's music, she walked right into the studio. Frank recognized her immediately and yelled, 'Hey, teeth' -- a nickname he'd given her in Boston. She ran across the room and gave Frank a big hug and kiss. Everyone in the band was thinking, 'Oh God! Look at this beautiful woman. Frank's so lucky.' But a funny thing happened when we started playing. Dale watched me. I watched her. We fell in love. And even back then, I didn't know how." Terry pauses to take a puff on his cigar, "but I knew Dale was going to be a star."

Dale herself admits, "I remember being about 8, running down my mom's steps hollering, 'Ma, don't talk to me today. I'm a movie star and I'm in a bad mood.' She went along with it and she's been going along with it ever since," Dale grins. "I don't know what I have that's special. Maybe it's my mole." She fingers the spot on her cheek. "It's like a 999…or is that a 666?"

Lounging on a sofa near the control room at Chateau Recorders, Dale sighs. "Nothing's ever seemed so farfetched or out of reach to me. I've set my mind to quite a few things in life and just tried to achieve goals."

Punctuating her speech with a still-heavy Boston brogue (e.g. never becomes "nevaah"), Dale leans forward and murmurs, "I've never just sat back and watched the world go by."

At 16, she quit high school, took a test for her diploma and entered Emerson acting college in Boston. "I thought it would be a lot of fun," she says, "until I realized you had to get up at 4 o'clock every morning and that I wasn't going to make any money going to school." So she left college and worked in a health spa by day and hopped tables as a Playboy Bunny by night. This routine lasted for two years.

"It got to the point where I realized I wasn't progressing," Dale says. "It's like, I was staying in shape, and being a Bunny was fun, but I knew I could do more. So one night I told my Bunny Mother, 'I'm leaving for Hollywood to be a model.' I came out here, ran into Frank, fell in love with Terry, and a whole new world opened up."

Hanging around Zappa rehearsals, Dale was eventually asked, by Frank, to make "some sounds" for a recording he was working on. Then he asked her to sing, although she had absolutely no previous musical experience. Dale recalls, "I just opened my mouth, started singing and Frank says, 'That's great, but can you sing up an octave?' I didn't know what an octave was. I knew nothing about music. So I asked one of Frank's roadies, and he said, 'Sing up like this [she squeaks] instead of down.' I went back in and sang the part high for Frank and he said, 'Great! Come back tomorrow and we'll record it'"

Though Dale's vocal efforts with Zappa were spirited (particularly on "I Don’t Wanna Get Drafted"), even she admits she didn't have much control over what notes she was singing. And Terry, who by this time had left Zappa to play with Group 87, then UK, wasn’t around to offer any encouragement or direction. It was one of Zappa's guitarists, Warren Cuccurullo, who first took Dale aside and talked to her about experimenting more witih her singing and taking a crack at the vocals on this "strange song" he was working on. Like most of Zappa's young proteges, Warren was itching to branch out on his own

Born in the heart of Brooklyn, Cuccurullo says, "I'd always had that basic American fantasy of being a musician in the spotlight. When I was little kid, I had a band, and I figured, when I got older, I'd have another band and be famous. I was obsessed with this dream." He was also obsessed with Frank Zappa. Terry Bozzio remembers, "Warren used to come to every gig within 500 miles of New York City -- by bus, train, truck, car -- however he could get there. He always had a tape recorder with him, and always knew all of the latest Zappa arrangements. He was quick. And one day he brought me a tape of him jamming with his brother and I thought, 'This guy's a great guitar player. What a fantastic rhythm feel!' And a few years later, after I got back from being with UK in London, I found out that Warren had become the guitar player in Zappa's band."

"I was with Frank for about a year," Warren says, "and it was a real education. Just being around the guy, you absorb things. But when you're a side man, you're always wondering if you've got what it takes to do it on your own."

Warren had already been fooling around with a lot of original songs, one being "I Like Boys." And he was curious about how Dale might handle the vocals.

"I brought my guitar over to Dale's apartment," he recalls, "and had her talk/sing some words into an echo chamber with a two track tape recorder rolling. She was on her knees in a corner with her back to me and really put herself into the song."

"When we played it back, I was just crackin' up," Dale says. "It sounded so bizarre, like nothing you ever hear."

But she took a tape of "I Like Boys" to Terry, out on the road with UK, and, after Terry listened to it, he recalls, "I couldn't believe how incredible it sounded. I wanted to start playing with them right then.

I had been with Group 87, but it didn't work out," Terry continues. "They didn't want to do anyvocals. So I opted to just play on their album and not be a member of the band. With UK, I thought that was going to be something I could sink my teeth into, but it turned out Eddie [Jobson] and John [Weddon] had pretty much established a songwriting direction and weren't interested in my ideas."

So Terry's decision to band together with Warren and Dale was not a difficult one; although, he admits, "I was getting offers to go out with Jethro Tull, the Brecker Brothers, Stanley Clarke -- whom I idolized when I aws younger. Warren could have gone on with Zappa. But we all knew Missing Persons was going to be our thing. We wanted to be totally responsible for it, to create everything -- our own music, direction, image, visual appeal and intrigue."

The fact that Dale was completely untrained as a singer and short on experience, while Terry and Warren were both students of their instruments and professional veterans, did not, apparently, present a problem when they first went into the studio as Missing Persons.

"Dale had never been brainwashed about the 'right way' to sing," Terry says. "She came totally out of left field with things and it was so refreshing. Some people think that just because you don't have great technical knowledge or a musical background, you can't come up with any wonderful musical ideas. That's wrong. A lot of Dale's best singing is right off the cuff and fits well with the music Warren and I write -- which is sometimes real involved. We make the music credible. Dale makes it incredible. Rock and roll breeds rule breakers, and we're just continuing the trend."

After rehearsing for several weeks, Missing Persons came to the attention of one of Zappa's engineers, Ken Scott (who had also previously produced David Bowie, Supertramp, Jeff Beck and others).

"I'd always been a huge fan of Terry's drumming," Scott says. "And the first time I heard this group, I thought, 'This is bizarre, but great.' I had a good gut reaction.

Scott helped the group record a demo in five working days, and, says Terry, "Because I'd been with some name bands and because I knew Ken had some industry friends who'd listen to anyting he produced, I figured we'd get a record deal in about two weeks. But every record company in the world passed."

Rather than getting discouraged, though, Terry got mad. "I thought. 'Well, f*ck 'em. I know we sound good. Let's do it ourselves.' I had come from an era where the esoteric image of an artist was this: 'If you're great, people will come to you, you shouldn't have to go to them.' But that's not true anymore. You have to handle yourself like a product, you know, and sell yourself."

"We bossed ourselves," chirps Dale. "We made ourselves go and get everything. Like in our song 'Windows' [from Spring Session M], you can't just look through windows and hope to God it all rides right by your door."

In mid-1981, Dale, Terry and Warren (plus synthesist/bassist Garry Guttman and synthesist Trantham Whitley) recorded a 7-inch EP with the aid of Komos Productions, Ken Scott's management and production company. Afterwards, the groups made sure the EP was distributed to record stores and radio stations in Southern California and other parts of the country. Simultaneously, Missing Persons prepared for their first live shows.

"For me, it was like trying to hurdle this barrier," Dale says. "Except for being in a recital when I was 6, this was the first time for me going onstage in front of a live audience. Being a Bunny, modeling, acting…that was different because it was all kind of make-believe. But singing music onstage, that comes from your soul, you can't fake it, it's got to be real."

"Dale blossomed as a performer," Terry says. "She has such a vibrant personality and exuded all of this positive, magnetic energy. She just spewed it out."

The sexual vibrations that Dale generated and continues to enhance with her revealing stage attire and sensual movements, she says, "are a real part of me. I'm very visually conscious. Even if I'm going to 7-11, I try and dress right. I make most of the costumes I wear onstage, and they aren't out of the ordinary…for me." Dale shrugs. "Some people look at me with their mouths open, like I've just landed from some place else and like they're almost afraid of me. But I strive to break down that barrier onstage. I smile a lot, shake people's hands, try and touch people."

However, Dale does not welcome the overzealous fans who jump up onstage and try and grab her, dance next to her, then -- in perfect new wave form -- swan dive back into the audience.

"That's only inherent to LA," grumbles Terry. "I appreciate the enthusiasm, but I don't care for the violence. Little girls trying to get up front for a closer look get elbowed in the face by some jerk trying to get up onstage and grab Dale. It's a totally exhibitionistic act on their part." Terry hisses, "If someone ever hurts my fragile little wife, I'll skin 'em alive and sue 'em for everything they're worth."

Exhaling a stream of cigar smoke, Terry continues. "We try and be visually exciting, and this, I think, brings out more emotion in our music."

"We're a visual band, in a visual age," adds Warren. That partly explains why Terry sets up his drum kit at the front of the stage. "Most drummers bury themselves in back," Terry says. "Yet a really good drummer is an integral part of the show, has a lot of movement…probably more than anyone else onstage. That’s why I'm on the front line with Warren and Dale."

Missing Persons' "back line" is held down by bassist/synthesist Patrick O'Hearn (formerly with Zappa, Group 87 and various Bay Area jazz groups) and keyboardist Chuck Wild (a session player for Eddie Money, Thelma Jones and the Americathon soundtrack).

"Before Patrick joined us last December, Chuck would play the bass parts with his left hand on a mini-moog and all of the other keyboard parts with his right hand on an OBX," Terry says. "When someone would ask me, 'Why don't you hire a bass player?,' I'd tell them, 'I don't want a bass player unless it's Patrick.' We'd played together before and in Group 87. I knew his style would be right for this band. Then when Group 87 fizzled out, we rehearsed with Patrick, and he fit immediately. Both Patrick and Chuck have the technical expertise to play all of the parts I write and also fit into our visual image."

With their striking look and sound, Missing Persons were a natural choice for a bit part in Lunch Wagon (a wacky comedy currently making the rounds on cable TV movie channels). Appearing as Teddy and the Roughriders [sic], the group performed wild versions of "I Like Boys" and "Mental Hopscotch." This flash of exposure, coupled with their EP and ever improving live shows, helped attract serious record company interest. Capitol Records proved to be the most serious.

"We were all sick and had fevers the day they brought the contracts over," says Terry. "So it was sort of anti-climactic."

When Capitol made an immediate decision to re-release the Missing Persons EP as a "mini-LP," the group did not resist, because, says Terry, "With the exception of LA, New York, Boston and a few other areas, no one knew who we were."

But that fact changed as the band began touring more extensively and "Words," then "Destination Unknown" hit Billboard's charts ("Words" peaking at #42 in late August, with "Destination Unknown still rising with a bullet). While recording Spring Session M, the band became aware that Capitol might want to include these moderate "hits" on the album.

"One thing I did not want to do," says Terry, "was to bump two songs off our album to make room for 'Words' and 'Destination Unknown.' I could understand the strategy behind putting them on the record, but from the artist's standpoint, I wasn't sure about it. So what finally happened is, we added them without taking any others off, so there are twelve songs on the album!

Recorded and mixed throughout this past summer, Spring Session M (the title is an anagram of the band's name) bristles with potential AOR fare. When "Destination Unknown" runs its course, it could possibly be followed by singles "Walking In LA" (a thrusting anthem already getting plenty of airplay in Smogland, of course), and the swirling "Windows." Each of these songs has a surging rhythm that cuts around then pumps up Dale's trademark yelps -- stronger and less brittle than before.

"She doesn't just squeeze out sounds like she used to," says Ken Scott. "In a year's time, she has learned to use her range and really sing."

"At first, I tried to get her not to squeak," Terry adds. "Little did I know that I almost squashed the one part of her singing personality that everyone latched onto."

Dale, however, has learned to be discriminating with her vocal "riffs" and, on Spring Session M, improved her diction to the point where a listener can understand most of the lyrics.

"We're not really a 'words' band," Warren smiles.

"But if you're listening," says Dale, "we are saying some real things…'Walking in LA,' nobody does walk in this town; I am the 'Noticeable One' and sing about what happens; 'Here and Now,' the only thing that matters is what's going on right now, this instant; 'Tears' is a section of emotional living, and all I can do is cry about it, because it's something I want to release."

"Dale's been writing poetry for years," says Terry. "Even when she was modeling, she was writing reams of stuff -- a lot of it really off-the-wall, a lot of it really beautiful. So, we have tons of bits and pieces we can take form to use as parts of songs. Warren comes up with lines, and I write.

"In the studio," Terry continues, "drums are the last thing I think about. I try and arrange everything else first. I'll write all of the keyboard parts, then Warren -- who is also a great drummer -- might say, 'Well, let's try this drum part,' while I might suggest a guitar part to him. And Dale could come in and add something to the melody with her voice that opens up something else. We all help each other."

"It['s like a family organization," says Dale, "a 24-hour-a-day job. My whole life is this band…sewing clothes, writing songs, making albums, going on the road, doing interviews…and it's the greatest thing happening."

"Who knows what'll happen next?" says Terry. "You can get philosophical, plan and build…then walk across the street and get hit by a truck. But we're getting better, as a band, and most creative things that happen come right out of the blue. So what it comes down to is," Terry chews on his cigar, then smiles, "'destination unknown'."