KLOS Local Music Show

Interview with Terry & Warren (March 28, 1982)

(this took place two weeks after Missing Person signed with Capitol Records)

Terry: "Hi, this is Terry Bozzio."

Warren: "And Warren Cuccurullo.

Terry: "Of Missing Persons."

Warren: "And you are listening to the KLOS Local Music Show."

Terry: "Yeah!"

(part of "Words" is played)

Host: "Well, good evening! This is Joe Benson, welcome to the KLOS Local Music Show. Tonight, we`re going to be talking with Missing Persons. We have with us Terry Bozzio…"

Terry: "Hi."

Host: "And Warren Cuccurullo."

Warren: "Right, how`re you doing?"

Host: "Boy, you guys have been making quite a splash for yourselves lately. Um, the EP came out…"

Warren: "Last April. April of `80, right?"

Terry: "Yeah."

Host: "And you got yourself a bunch of airplay, you`re playing around quite a bit. And you just signed a contract with Capitol Records, I believe it was."

Terry: "Right."

Host: "When was that?"

Terry: "Just a couple weeks ago. We were deathly ill, and they brought the contracts over, and we signed them in bed…it was total anti-climax."

Warren: "I was the only one in the band who didn`t have a 104 fever."

Host: "You felt out of place." (everyone laughs). That`s probably the best condition to sign contracts under sometimes, though."

Terry: "Yeah, really! Initialing all those pages was lots of fun."

Host: "How did you originally get together on this? Is it something that`s been going on for quite a while in the background?"

Terry: "Well, we all met each other while I was playing with Frank Zappa, and…"

Warren: "I was going to shows and watching Terry play drums, and I was a big fan of Frank`s."

Terry: "Warren was an incredible fan. He used to come to every show within 500 miles and know all the songs and know all their latest arrangements. And then one day he played a tape for me, and I said, `God, he can really play well.` And in a few years, I thought, he`d be a great guitar player."

Warren: "Next thing he knew, I`m in the band."

Terry: "Yeah, really!" (everyone laughs)

Warren: "He left, and I was in the band, and I moved out to Los Angeles, and he was living here, and we became real close."

Terry: "Yeah. And Dale walked in on a Zappa rehearsal one day while I was playing, and we fell in love and got married, and later on…"

Host: "At a rehearsal?"

Terry: "Well, yeah, virtually. And later on, she and Warren, while I was on the road with this band called UK, she and Warren got together and made a tape. That was the original inception, or conception, of `I Like Boys.` And, we decided to form a band."

Warren: "In its roughest form. It was just a strange little tape with Dale talking lyrics over it into a space echo."

Terry: "Yeah, Dale had never sung before. And at the time, the B-52`s and the Flying Lizards were very popular. She was sort of talking the lyrics, and we thought, you know, well this is great. And Dale has this incredible sounding voice, so we just started doing it like that, and then after a while she learned to sing as well as she does, and blossomed into this incredible performer that now has to be protected from bodies being flung onstage and whatever, trying to get at her."

Warren: "Pretty wild."

("I Like Boys" is played)

Host: "What`s the date on your Santa Monica Civic show?"

Terry: "April ninth, I think."

Host: "April ninth."

Terry: "Yeah."

Host: "We`re going to be over there. That`s actually your first headline concert quote-unquote concert, gig."

Terry: "Well, that`s what we would call our debut in L.A., as far as a concert. We`ve been headlining at places like Perkins Palace and the Roxy. Sold out three nights at the Roxy around Christmas time."

Host: "For the first number of months after your inception, you were an up-and-coming band playing these places, and all of a sudden now…it seems like all of a sudden…all these things happened, now you`ve got a headline gig coming up, you`ve got a record contract…"

Terry: "Yeah."

Host: "Which happened, uh, that`s the first time somebody around L.A.`s gotten a contract that quick in quite a while, I think."

Terry: "Well, actually, we`ve been together for two years. We started in January of `80, and we took several plans of attack. The first one was, we thought, hey, we`ve all been with these name bands, and you know, we`ll get a record deal in two weeks, we`re Joe Buddy-Buddy with all the guys at the record companies, and we can just go in there with a rough cassette and they`ll love us, you know?"

Warren: "And they didn`t."

Terry: "Little did we know!" (everyone laughs). "So at any rate, we made a demo, hooked up with Ken Scott."

Host: "How did that happen?"

Terry: "Oh, well, that was through Frank, too. Why don`t you tell that story?"

Warren: "Well, we were bringing tapes up to Gail Zappa, that`s Frank`s wife."

Host: "Mm hmm."

Warren: "And she was real interested in what we were doing, and she told Frank that we had this little band. And he`d just finished his recording studio, which was an incredible place, and no one had ever been in it or anything, and he had to go on the road. And he said, `it`s too bad I don`t have an engineer for you to come in and work while I`m on the road.` So Gail…"

Terry: "He said we could make a nice demo there."

Warren: "So Gail said, `well, what about Ken Scott?` and Frank said, `sure, if you get Ken Scott, come in here with him.`

Terry: "What happened was, Ken Scott had evidently seen me play with Zappa in years before, and unbeknownst to me, he had been following my career and stuff, and liked me. So he was always asking Gail, `what`s happening with Terry Bozzio?` So we went over and took a rough tape to Ken, and he said that he liked it, but he wanted to hear us live, so he came down a couple weeks later to a rehearsal and saw us play and fell in love with us. And the chemistry between us was immediate and just really incredible."

Warren: "The next day, we were in the studio, putting down tracks."

Terry: "And we whipped all this stuff out, with the exception of `Words,` in about five working days at Frank`s place."

Host: "How many songs did you do then? Did you do the four…"

Terry: "We did five. We did `Hello, I Love You` by the Doors, that made the four, and then there`s another song that`s not released yet called `Action, Reaction`."

(part of "Hello, I Love You" is played and continues as they talk)

Host: "This came out pretty good for a first session."

Terry: "Thanks."

Warren: "We were real surprised. We didn`t know how it would come out. We were just making a demo. And when we heard it back, we couldn`t believe it."

Terry: "Yeah."

Host: "So a lot of this material before you went in to record this for the first time with Ken Scott, had you worked out almost all of this live?

Terry & Warren: "Yeah."

Host: "So it pretty much just transferred itself over."

Terry: "Yeah, but I mean, the difference is like night and day, because we really didn`t know what to expect. We had worked out all the arrangements and what we thought were the correct sounds for each individual part, but then when we went in there, the thing just blossomed. Everybody, including Ken, we were standing there with our mouths open. We really couldn`t believe what we`d brought about. And Ken was…his philosophy was…he kind of took us under his wing and said, `well, I have several record companies who would be interested in anything I do, and we`ll make this demo, and we`ll bring it around to them, but I`ll tell you, I don`t want to make this sound too good, because you have to let record companies think that they have some kind of involvement. If you bring them something that`s too polished, they immediately turn it off, and they go, `well, nice production, but the band isn`t so good and the songs aren`t so good.` So, you know, here we are, Ken`s trying to make this not sound too good, and it sounded like this, yeah."

(song ends)

Host: "Everything on the recording is just you three, then?"

Terry: "Well, we have two, actually four…there were two originally…additional musicians. One is Gary Guttman, and another one is Trantham Whitley. Trantham`s played with Cindy Bullens and some other people around town, and Gary`s an amazing little composer from Ithaca, New York. He does incredible classical scores and things like that. But at any rate, they were playing the synthsizers on it. Then later, we got Chuck Wild, who is at present our synthesist, and Patrick O`Hearn, who used to play with me with Frank Zappa, was playing bass synthesizer and electric bass."

Host: "When you perform live, then, does Dale pretty much front the band?"

Terry: "Yeah."

Host: "Or is the spotlight…"

Terry: "Yeah. It`s pretty much an equal thing, I guess, but Dale is an amazing…it`s hard to steal the show from Dale. She`s really, really amazing."

Host: "I liked the way some of the songs…the different texture involved in some of them. We just heard `I Like Boys` and that`s the spacier delivery. You were telling about where that came from in the first place. `Mental Hopscotch" is maybe a little bit more guitar-oriented."

Terry: "Right."

Host: "But the lyrics, too, have a strange bend to them."

Terry: "Mmm. Yeah. I wrote that about Dale. She`s sort of, um…I mean, she`s an amazingly strong person, and very, very together, but at certain things, like ordering in a restaurant, she can`t make up her mind." (Warren laughs) "Or choosing a costume or something like that. It gets real funny sometimes. Like when we`re on the road, you know, and you have some strange waitress who`s in a hurry, and there`s 20 people sitting around the table waiting for you to order. Dale can`t make up her mind. It`s sort of mental hopscotch, so I kind of wrote that about her."

("Mental Hopscotch" begins and Terry laughs)

Terry: "If she was here to defend herself…"

Host: "We wouldn`t be getting this story."

Terry: "We would turn this show into `Divorce Court.`"

(everyone laughs & song continues)

Host: "That was `Mental Hopscotch` - Missing Persons here on the KLOS Local Music Show. This is Benson, we`re speaking with Terry Bozzio, the drummer, and Warren Cuccu…Cuccurullu…"

Warren: "Cuccurullo."

Host: "Cuccurullo." (everyone laughs)

Warren: "Comes right out."

Host: "I think I`m trying too hard, that`s why."

Terry: "Oh, man…"

Host: "We`re just gonna call him `Warren` from now on."

Warren: "All right." (everyone laughs again)

Host: "We were talking before, and you mentioned that Dale pretty much fronts the band and that. Has it gotten to the point yet where you feel uneasy that maybe a large number of the audience is coming to look at and stare at her instead of to absorb the music, perhaps?"

Terry: "No, not at all. That`s something that my father pointed out to me."

Warren: "Our parents are big fans of the band, of course."

Terry: "And our parents have seen us play, like, with Zappa, who`s known as a very heavy, musically intellectual type of person."

Host: "Yes."

Terry: "They`ve seen all that kind of heavy music that we`ve played in the past, and they say that it`s really amazing with Missing Persons because when people see our show, we put on a fairly strange presentation. We cover the stage in plastic, and all the instruments are covered in sheets of plastic. And we have a weird light sculpture, some sort of abstract neon light sculpture, and Dale wears these bizarre costumes, and we wear make-up and blah-de-blah. It`s really hard to see through the image. But then, when you finally do, you realize that there`s all this deep music there."

Host: "Mm hmm."

Terry: "And, it`s just not the normal three chords, guitar, bass and drums stuff. When people actually do get used to how bizarre we look and settle down, they start listening and they go, `my God, this is really something`."

Host: "Now you worked with Zappa for how long, Terry?"

Terry: "About three years."

Host: "About three years. Ooh. How about you, Warren?"

Warren: "I was with Frank for a year. A little over a year."

Host: "Now Frank is someone who writes his material, he handles all the recording for it, I believe, all the aspects. His tour scheduling he`s into, his own record company a couple times now."

Warren: "Right."

Host: "Very intensely into things. Did you pick up a lot from him?"

Warren: "Oh, yeah."

Terry: "Yeah."

Host: "Besides music, maybe also some of the business?"
Terry: "Yeah. If you spend some time with Frank, and you have any sensitivity and astuteness whatsoever, you can learn so much. You can learn enough to do whatever you want in the business."

(part of Frank Zappa`s "Fembot in a Wet T-Shirt" is played, featuring Dale on vocals)

Terry: "Let`s put it this way. He has taught us, by being with him, how to go about what we`re doing now. And we`re very thankful."

Warren: "He`s still close with us."

Terry: "It`s more on a personal level. We can go up to Frank and talk to him, and like a father he`ll sit down and say, `well, what are you doing?` and `how about this?` He guides us in a lot of ways. It`s really nice to have that kind of person looking out for you. I like surrealism, we all like surrealism. When we formed the band, we knew we had to do something like that. We really didn`t formulate it, but as most creative things happen, they just come out of the blue."

Host: "Out of the blue, does that have something to do with the song `Destination Unknown`?"

Terry: "Yeah."

Warren: "Everything has to do with `Destination Unknown`." (laughs)

("Destination Unknown" begins & is played in the background)

Host: "Is that a song that came along at any particular point in time?"

Terry: "It was in the early…"

Warren: "Early."

Terry: "…days, yeah, within the first couple of months. It started out just as the music. And Dale just said, `this sounds like destination unknown, and at that point we didn`t have any lyrics…"

Warren: "That was the only lyric in the whole song."

Terry: "She was just going, `destination unknown` all the way through the song.

Warren: "We`d just keep playing it and playing it."

Terry: "And it sounded so nice, it was just one of those things that you could just keep playing over and over, and it felt good. So after a while we wrote, I guess, the rest of the lyrics except for the `life is so strange` part, and then I came up with that one night, and it seemed to tie it all together. But basically, the song is so open for interpretation. It could be about anything. But basically we just sort of look at it as a very philosophical, fatalistic outlook." (everyone laughs) "You can plan and build and do this, that and the other, and you never know, you know? You can walk across the street, get hit by a truck, and…" (everyone laughs again) "Or you can be down and out, and the next day on top of the world. Who knows what`s gonna happen?"

("Destination Unknown" is re-started and played)

Host: "When you wrote this stuff, you`d mentioned you had a rough demo to begin with, but did you actually practice and work on a lot of this stuff in a studio so you knew what you were doing right along the bat, or is this something you worked out…"

Terry: "No."

Host: "…just basically in the room where the band rehearsed?"

Warren: "We rehearsed in a studio for a long…in a rehearsal studio for like, seven or eight months, and we were working out the arrangements, then doing presentations for record companies trying to get a record deal, because we didn`t want to play live in L.A. We didn`t want to go out and play the Madame Wong`s circuit."

Terry: "It was only four months."

Warren: "It was four months?"

Terry: "Yeah, because in April, right? we made it."

Warren: "Oh. Whatever." (laughs). We`d stayed in after…"

Terry: "Yeah."

Warren: "We even went back in after that because that was our only rehearsal hall."

Terry: "Right."

Host: "And after doing this then, playing for the record companies and whatnot, you finally came to the conclusion that, what, you had to go out and play?"

Terry & Warren: "Yeah."

Terry: "It just wasn`t getting it, you know? We had Atlantic down for a while, and they were real interested, but then they ultimately passed."

Warren: "RSO, Alpha…"

Terry: "Yeah, RSO and some others. The thing is, is when you play in a very sterile environment like a rehearsal hall, it`s just not the same. And today, with the market sort of crashing all around the record companies, it`s…"

Warren: "They wanna see people."

Terry: "They wanna see the whole thing. It`s like they have no imagination anymore. You have to go in there with a completed package, a total…the artwork, the record already pressed up, and an incredible stage show. And then they`ll say, `wow, this band is good, and we can do something with them. But if you don`t take it to that extreme, they haven`t got the wherewithal to fill in the blanks and make a band happen before it`s sort of all formed."

Host: "We mentioned before that you started out as a band to keep your eye on, an up-and-coming band, moving from venue to venue, getting bigger as it went along. Now it`s reached the point, with your record contract that you`ve gotten, everybody is watching you a lot more intensely. Does it feel any different being under more closer scrutiny?"

Warren: "Feels great."

Terry: "Yeah. Wow, I don`t know, it`s hard. The only thing I worry about is just where it`s gonna come from next, because I don`t know where it came from up to this point. It`s just one of those things that happened, you know? And every once in a while, I go, `God, how did we do what we did, and are we gonna be able to do it again?` But we`ll work it out."

Host: "There`s a live show…a live show would recharge you then, I would suppose."

Terry: "Oh yeah, well, the live thing is a different entity. Coming up with material is one thing. The songwriter, production, making records aspects of it is one thing, and then going out and playing…I mean, you can get away with murder going out and playing. I`m not really worried about that. Because some bands have been playing the same material for years and years, but it`s so much fun to play. And when you enjoy it, and you know you`re a fairly good performer because the people are enjoying it, it`s just the greatest."

Host: "Before I let you go here this evening, do you have any advice you might want to pass along to people who are out playing in the trenches, who are thinking of attempting to get into recording as so many bands around California do? Anything in particular?"

Warren: "Just keep on going, and…"

Terry: "Believe in yourself."

Warren: "Believe in it, that`s all."

Terry: "That`s the main thing. Believe in yourself. As far as from our personal things, we learned how to play our instruments really well, but nowadays that isn`t really so necessary with the technology that`s happening. You get incredible new concepts from non-musicians playing machines that you don`t have to be a musician to play. And there`s so many in-bred, stupid cliches that most musicians play, because they don`t really try and conceptualize. They try to play what they`ve learned or show off. It`s really wide open for people who don`t even play music to make great new things. So just believe in yourself and keep at it. And also, do everything you possibly can yourself. Get involved in your artwork, your presentation, your management, your business, the English language that you use, you know. Yeah, everything you can."

Host: "Well, thank you very much for stopping by. You`ve got the gig coming up again at Santa Monica Civic, that`s April…"

Warren: "April ninth."

Host: "April ninth."

Terry: "Yeah."

Host: "Good luck on that. I`ll probably see you there."

Warren: "Great, that`ll be good."

Terry: "Thanks. And thanks to you and to this show, too, you know, for…"

Warren: "Giving us the time."

Terry: "And for giving us this spot. It`s really nice what you do for local bands. We appreciate it."

Host: "Thank you." ("Words" begins) "Check`s in the mail." (everyone laughs)

Terry: "How much?"

("Words" is played)

Host: "`Words, Missing Persons on the KLOS Local Music Show, again, thanks to Terry and Warren for stopping by there, and looking forward to seeing them live, in person. Good luck with that, it`s coming out on their new EP, which has just been released as well."

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