Music Connection, May 10-23, 1984

If Missing Persons had a motto, it would have to be this: If you want something done right, do it yourself. The band (with a little help from their friends) manage themselves, design their own instruments, create their own costumes and produce their own records.

It is, according to the band, a modus operandi adopted by necessity. Missing Persons was formed in 1980 at the height of the record-biz doldrums by vocalist Dale Bozzio, drummer extraordinaire Terry Bozzio, and guitarist Warren Cuccurullo, who had met (and in Dale and Terry’s case, married) as members of Frank Zappa’s band. When the band’s demo was passed on by every record label in town, despite the credentials of both the band and their manager/producer at the time, Ken Scott (who had worked with the Beatles, Bowie, Supertramp, Tubes, Devo and Jeff Beck, to name a few), the band took matters in their own hands. “When we went to the record companies,” explains Dale, “and they said, ‘This isn’t the direction of the music of the Eighties,’ we said to each other, ‘They must be deaf.’ So we went and did it ourselves. We went into the street and delivered records out of trunks of our cars.” The band started playing around town to promote the record, which went to Number One on KROQ and progressive stations in New York and Boston. By that time Missing Persons had signed on keyboardist Chuck Wild and another Zappa veteran, Patrick O’Hearn. When their self-made EP had sold 10,000 albums in Los Angeles alone, and the band had sold out the Santa Monica Civic on its own, record companies were forced to pay attention.

In March ’82, Capitol Records re-released the EP and the record went on to become the best selling debut EP in history. By the time the follow-up album, Spring Session M, was released seven months later, the EP had sold over 200,000 units, 125,000 of those in Los Angeles. After touring Europe and the U.S. to promote the album, everything seemed to be going according to plan.

So why, we asked, did the band part ways with manager/producer Ken Scott, who by the band’s own admission had been instrumental to their success. Dale was tactful but evasive. “Ken is a great guy and we accomplished a lot with him. But we were just thinking different thoughts and felt it was better that we go our separate ways.

“Rock & roll is a very serious business,” continues Dale. “There are a lot of talented people out there and there’s a lot to live up to. It’s like the car business. There will always be a better car or a better invention. You’ve got to keep going forward and gain as much self-control and knowledge about your situation as well as let your creative aspects [come] through.”

Racing against time is the way Missing Persons recorded their first album and lived the first three years of their existence. And the band, after taking over their own affairs, is determined to keep forging ahead at a pace that won’t leave them exhausted. “So many bands make the mistake of rushing into their second album,” warns Terry. “They’re barely off the road and they’re back in the studio again, without giving the material all that much thought. We never want to do that. We do want to pace ourselves. And now that we are in control of our situation, we are pacing ourselves, as opposed to the way we used to work. When we made Spring Session M, we had not had a day off in almost a year and a half. We were constantly touring while we were in the studio. It was like a dual job. So this time we only worked five days a week and we took the weekends off. We don’t work more than eight hours a day, so we keep our perspective a little more straight and I think we’re able to do a much better job.”

“We’ve learned to say no,” adds Dale. “Which is something you have to learn in this business, because everybody wants something from you all the time. You have to learn when to give and when to take. People don’t understand. In this profession, they think you’re always on, that you’re always on top of the world, you don’t eat and you don’t sleep or do real things that other people do. But I think you have to do it health-wise or you don’t have a future.”

“We know what our limits are,” agrees Terry. “Whereas before we could be swayed by other people’s influences, because we were so afraid to fail. You don’t want to blow off a magazine by saying, ‘I’m too tired, I’ve been working my ass off,’ even though if you do it a day later, you’ll get better results ‘cause I’ll make more sense.”

While the success of their first album has afforded them more control of their time, it’s also given them the confidence to broaden their music, stylistically. Although less immediately accessible than Spring Session M, the album is texturally rich, in part due to the expert engineering from Bruce Swedien, who also engineered Thriller. Says Cuccurullo, “He has a way of making every little part to stick out – this guy is a master! Everything is so brilliant. We got the perfect sound.”

“It was perfect for the personality of our music,” Terry confirms, “because each part is something that we feel should stand up on its own. If you listen, there’s little keyboard parts that sound great by themselves, little guitar parts that sound great, little drum and bass parts. It isn’t your typical ‘I’ll play the rhythm, you play the backbeat, and Warren will play lead guitar.’ And Bruce is such an incredible engineer to make it all happen. Those things were present in previous recordings, but it was kind of melted down into a soup. We’ve tried to expand and change, while generally keeping our direction consistent, and I think we’ve succeeded. We’ve incorporated a lot of stylistic influences that have always been there but weren’t present in the earlier Missing Persons albums because we were trying to be a little bit more specific. This time we were trying to show more maturity and sophistication in songwriting and let surface the classical, jazz, funk and R&B influences that are part of our make up.”

Has the band traded hummability for danceability? Guitarist Cuccurullo thinks that the band is as rock & roll as ever. “There’s still a variety of stuff on the record. It’s just the first single that is dance-oriented. But there’s other singles on the record that are almost MOR. And then there’s songs with a eighth-note bass and heavy power guitar.”

“Some of the stuff,” adds Terry, “is more guitar-oriented than anything we’ve ever done.”

Continues Warren, “’Give’ is a dance song with a dance groove, but there’s a full-blown rock guitar solo that rock guitar fans will love and lots of drum fills. It’s dance music, but it’s not done the way your typical funk-disco band would do it.”

Dale is like a proud mother with a new baby. “We feel that we’ve accomplished an amazing album. It’s something that we can all listen to and really enjoy. For myself personally, I put the beginning on to the end and I’m thrilled with it. I move through so many moods, but I end up peaceful by the end of a track. It’s so nice to appreciate your own work. And that is why we treat it like a child.”

Unfortunately, this child has been slapped around a little bit by the critics, most notably in Missing Persons’ own backyard, by the Los Angeles Times. But MP has never been a critic’s band, and that didn’t prevent the group from selling out the 6000-seat Greek Theater in 1982. So why don’t they get out there in front of the ultimate critics, the screaming teenagers who are just waiting to testify with their hard earned bucks?

“I’m waiting for my guitar to be finished,” admits Cuccurullo. Dubbed the Missing Link, the custom-made instrument designed by Cuccurullo is made from magnesium just one-half inch thick and looks like a huge, chrome-plated magnet, with two necks joined at the top. The stereo guitar is then plugged into a computer which will flange, pan, delay, distort, compress, or otherwise manipulate the signal in an unlimited number of combinations.

Bozzio also has constructed a custom instrument: an electronic drum set that is almost invisible. “When I sit there, you see me, not a rack of bass drums, tom toms, and cymbals. It’s practically non-existent.” Just an example of what could be another Missing Persons motto: Give ‘em a good show. “We’re no longer in music to just sit down behind a set of drums and play as fast as we can or play whatever lick that is fashionable that may please us. What we want to do is design some music that is both pleasing for us to play [and] commercial and accessible.”

But enough of all that music-biz stuff. What I want to know is the real dirt. What’s it like to be married and in the same band? “Well,” explains Mrs. Bozzio, “everybody has their ups and downs, whether they’re married, in a band, or living together.”

But Warren spills the beans. “Put these guys in one bathroom and they’re in trouble. But now they have three bathrooms and everything is fine.”

The interview’s over. Mrs. Bozzio – looking like an adolescent boy’s dream with her teased, blond hair, bright makeup on ultra-white skin, and a metallic-silver suit which shows off her physical assets to maximum advantage – asks in this funny Bostonian-meets-Transylvanian accent, “Aren’t we boring?”