Guitar Player, February 1985

Since leaving Frank Zappa's band to co-found Missing Persons in 1979, Warren Cuccurullo has established himself among the foremost voices of textural guitar playing. Championed by Andy Summers, Steve Stevens with Billy Idol, and Adrian Belew, this sparse approach showcases a player's ability to master technology, conjure many tones and styles, and sort out the unessential. Missing Persons' recent Rhyme & Reason album provides textbook examples: Warren's main contribution to "The Closer That You Get," for instance, are a few massive chords, a simple but effective two-note solo, and a flurry of thirty-second-notes played against a drum roll. He punctuates "Give" with chorused funk rhythms, echoes panned left and right, and a brief, slashing solo. An E-Bow eerily sustains his passage in "Racing Against Time."

"When I joined this band," says Cuccurullo, "I decided to break out of the traditional rhythm-and-solo style. I wanted to make a great sound playing something minimalistic, just getting the most out of each note." His chameleon approach is enhanced by the outstanding musicianship of his bandmates: drummer Terry Bozzio, singer Dale Bozzio (Terry's wife), bassist Patrick O'Hearn, and veteran studio keyboardist Chuck Wild. During the '70s, Dale, Terry, and Patrick expanded their talents performing Frank Zappa's meticulous, multi-rhythmic music. With Missing Persons, they've created dreamy yet driving synth-pop dominated by Dale's chirpy vocals.

Onstage, where the band closely duplicates the tight, smart sound of their Rhyme & Reason and Spring Session M albums, Warren uses guitars that are either uncommon or unique -- such as an electric made from the gutted body of a Vox wah-wah pedal. His latest co-creation, fondly referred to as the Missing Link, has a magnesium body, space-age internal electronics, and two necks joined by a distinctive loop. "I'm trying to take technology one step further," he says. "My guitar and effects rack switching system are one-of-a-kind prototypes that can give me sounds no one else can get. They allow me to combine a lot of different textures into one piece, and any Missing Persons cut has a variety of guitar tones. I just want to cut my own niche in rock and roll guitar playing. I want to be easily identifiable and known as a little wiz. I have kind of a twisted style: When someone hears one of my guitar solos or certain echo effects, they know it's me."

At 27, Cuccurullo claims he's been a rock and roll kid all his life. "All I ever wanted to do was start a band. I'd spend my allowance on concerts. I was into the Beatles, Eric Clapton with Cream; I loved those bands from the '60s." At age 10, he began two years of guitar lessons with Carl Barry in Brooklyn. After that, he taught himself by copying blues records, finding "It's My Own Fault" from Johnny Winter And…Life [out of print] to be especially influential.

Warren played in a couple of dozen bands while growing up in Brooklyn, always trying to hook up with the best musicians in town. "I was into long solos," he recalls. "My brother was a drummer, and we would set up a vamp with a bassist in some odd time signature, and I would just play on top of it for 15 minutes, recording to see what worked. That's how I learned how to play." While he remembers enough about music theory to understand what he's doing harmonically, he regrets never having learned to sight-read. "I'm just a gut player. But I advise kids who want to be players to do good in school, study guitar, and accumulate all the knowledge you can. Learn computers and all the new technology. Listen to a lot of music and make it almost like a job now -- learn all your favorite guitar solos. Start a band."

A Frank Zappa appearance on The Dick Cavett Show in 1970 inspired Warren to change the course of his musical direction. "I thought he was an incredible guitar player who used many different styles. I wasn't used to hearing strings and atonal harmonies. Even in his rock songs you could hear a little classical line played on a keyboard, or some strange Indian-type stuff. I always liked sitar music, especially its rhythm aspects. I heard all of this in Frank's playing." The guitarist soon progressed to listening to John McLaughlin and Allan Holdsworth, as well.

Cuccurullo became a die-hard Zappa fan, traveling by bus to any concert within 500 miles of new York. He met his hero in 1976, when Terry Bozzio and Patrick O'Hearn were members of the band. Attracted by the 19-year-old's enthusiasm, Zappa agreed to listen to his solo tapes. "He thought they were fantastic," Warren claims. "He and Terry thought I had a unique style: I was the kind of guy who would come over to his Twin Reverb, kick it, and turn the vibrato on full. I always had a whole line of effects, like the Foxx Tone Machine [fuzz-tone] and the Mu-Tron III [envelope following filter], for all those bizarre sounds. I was using a Gibson ES-335, so I could press on the strings below the bridge and bend notes. I used to play really fast, too."

Cuccurullo continued his friendship with Frank, always remembering to bring the bandleader a tape of his latest material. His persistence paid off when, a week after his 22^nd birthday, he was invited to L.A. for an audition. "I always thought that there was no room for me in Frank's band. He was the guitar player, and most of his other guitarists were lead singers, which I wasn't. But I was full of enthusiasm and really knew the material. He wanted to have a guitar ensemble with me, Denny Walley, and Ike Willis, where we could play harmonies on certain tunes." Passing the audition, Cuccurullo rehearsed in L.A. for three weeks before leaving for a European tour. In February 1979, he made his first professional recordings during three shows at London's Hammersmith Odeon; these performances are on Zappa's Tinsel Town Rebellion and the three-volume Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar series.

"Frank did all the solos on the records," Warren states. "I played a lot of rhythm guitars and lines, like intricate keyboard parts. Live, I did a solo in 'Cosmik Debris' and played some of Frank's solos note-for-note, like 'Dirty Love.' On some nights when we'd go off into jams, Frank and I played duet solos." Cuccurullo put aside his ES-335 when Zappa presented him with a small-bodied guitar made from a Vox wah-wah pedal case with a groove cut for the Vox neck. To enhance its pair of white, low-output Vox pickups, guitar technician Eddie Clothier added on-board active electronics, overdrive and pan pots. "It's tiny and neck-heavy," Warren says, "but I love it. It has a great sound that's similar to a Fuzz Face." (The instrument appears in Missing Persons' "Words" video).

With Warren on rhythm guitar, Zappa recorded Joe's Garage, Act I and Joe's Garage, Acts II and III. After the sessions, the band was put on hiatus. "During my year with Frank," Cuccurullo sums, "my playing didn't change that much, but I learned the art of discipline. I had to obey and make sure I got my things right every night. Watching a seasoned veteran like Frank affected me a lot. It showed me what a hard life rock and roll is, and what it takes to make it."

Missing Persons came to fruition in June 1979, when Warren and Terry began writing songs with Dale, whose distinctive Boston accent was featured on Joe's Garage, Act I. "We were always hanging around together," Warren says, "and people thought we were a band when they saw us, so we got it drilled into our heads that maybe we should start one. We thought in common, and wanted to do something that would fit our image and be a good musical statement. With our musicianship, we knew we could pull off a lot of great stuff. We felt like we were being wasted as sidemen, so we just forgot everything we ever knew and tried to start with a clean canvas." To enhance their image during their club days in L.A., the band covered stages and back walls with sheets of black or white plastic. Dale added a pink streak to her teased blonde hair and fabricated scant costumes from strategically placed bits of Plexiglas, cellophane, posters, coconut shells, and plastic tubing.

In December 1979, the trio brought in studio keyboardist Chuck Wild and recruited bassist Patrick O'Hearn from Group 87 to record "I Like Boys," "Mental Hopscotch," "Destination Unknown," and a cover of the Doors' "Hello I Love You." While early Missing Persons tapes contained long guitar solos, the groups chose a trimmed-down sound for their first demo: "We wanted everything to be very precise-- nothing that would take anybody's ear away from the basis of the song," Warren says. "We decided to concentrate on the song's melody, and just have nice intricate arrangements in that context." Unable to secure a record deal, the group pressed their own 7" EP, Missing Persons, on producer Ken Scott's KoMoS label. They distributed the EP themselves, making it onto the playlists of 22 stations nationwide and eventually selling 7000 copies. Coupled with the group's ability to fill 4000-seat venues in L.A., this prompted Capitol Records to sign the act in March 1982.

Capitol's first move was to re-release the EP in 12" form. "Hello I Love You" was replaced by "Words," on which Warren combined the Vox guitar's electronics with a A/DA flanger and Morley echo/volume pedal. The raspy solo tone in "Mental Hopscotch" was created by running an ES-335 through a Maestro Super Fuzz and a phase shifter. "It's something you wouldn't want to do," laughs Cuccurullo, "but it just came out okay that day." The jazzy octaves beginning "Destination Unknown" feature echo and reverb, while the song's main riff -- as well as the thick opening of "I Like Boys" -- are courtesy of the ES-335 and an A/DA flanger. "I have five old A/DA's," Warren adds. They have an even and odd harmonics switch. If you put it on odd, you get a warm, rich, hollow sound that's so different." For amplification, he relied on a Mesa/Boogie and 100-watt Marshalls: "The Boogie was run with a full, dirty sound for power chords and solos. I would run the Marshall cabinets with the Boogie heads sometimes; I used different configurations."

Warren reports that the Capitol release sold more than 250,000 copies, becoming the largest-selling EP. Meanwhile, the band embarked on what he remembers as "the nightmare recording tour. We were promoting the Capitol EP by going on the road, and recording Spring Session M at the same time." For their "Destination Unknown" video, the band taped a foggy, surrealistic tale set amid winos and abandoned buildings.

Ken Scott engineered and produced Spring Session M. Warren recorded power chords first, using a Gibson SG with an onboard preamp. Layers of Guild acoustic guitar highlight the verses of "It Ain't None Of Your Business," while the electric lines are colored by the Vox guitar's fuzz. Strats double the SG in "Noticeable One," and flangers with a touch of fuzz pan left and right during the "Walking In L.A." solo. The Vox guitar -- recorded direct and processed with a triplet delay from a Lexicon Prime Time -- produces the rhythms of "U.S. Drag." For "Bad Streets," the guitarist stood in front of his amp and played the SG without effects. Zappa's influence is apparent in the odd times of the LP's final track, "No Way Out": "It goes from like 9 to 4 to 7, and back to 9, but we still keep that four-on-the-floor feel."

Released in October 1982, Spring Session M yielded the hits "Words," "Destination Unknown," and "Walking In L.A." To date, the LP has sold more than 750,000 copies. The band's tour in support of the album was cut short after two weeks when Dale became ill. Missing Persons went out again two months later, starting in Hawaii in December '82, headlining to 18,000 at the Long Beach Arena in southern California, and finishing up in April with a promotional tour of Europe. Their only other 1983 appearance was before a half-million spectators at the US Festival in California. "That was fantastic," Warren reports. "Who likes to play in the daytime? But when there's a sea of people going crazy, it's incredible."

At the festival, Warren introduced a new, small-bodied guitar that he had co-designed with Performance Guitars in Hollywood. Handmade of maple, the neck-through-body instrument is shaped like the Vox wah-wah guitar, only slightly larger. The neck duplicates the size of his 335's and has standard tuners and an ebony fingerboard. Its three pickups -- Carvin humbuckers in the bridge and neck positions with a single-coil Bill Lawrence in between -- are activated by a 5-way switch. Eddie Clothier added its onboard gear, including preamps, a parametric equalizer, two types of distortion, passive tone controls, and a master volume. "You can hear the guitar's inherent fuzz in 'Racing Against Time' on Rhyme & Reason," Cuccurullo adds. "It's real smooth, one of my favorite sounds. In fact, the whole Rhyme & Reason album was done with the Performance guitar."

The band changed strategies for Rhyme & Reason, hiring as co-producer Bruce Swedien, ho engineered Michael Jackson's Thriller LP. Swedien employed the "Accusonic recording process," an expanded multi-track system that records everything in stereo. Warren notes that the lusher texturing of Rhyme & Reason was carefully worked out in rehearsal, allowing the group more studio time to scrutinize sounds.

Cuccurullo brought in a Clothier-modified Carvin mixer that allowed him to switch effects and route his signal. "We had the mix out from the mixer going right into the board," he explains, "so the way I sent it out of the mixer was the way it went down on tape. We also had two Carvin X-100V amps and the Marshall bottoms out in a room with a baffle between them. There was a mike at each amp and one in a chamber 15' away for a distant effect. We would blend all three of these signals with the direct line. Except for the Lexicon reverb, I used my own effects on the album. There are a lot of ping-ponging things where I'd leave the volume pedal on and then come up in the center and spread to both sides; these were programmed into my mixer."

The fat solo tone in "Give" makes use of a parametric equalizer designed by Clothier. For "Surrender Your Heart," Cuccurullo changed the settings on his Performance and the parametric to approximate an acoustic guitar. "In 'Clandestine People,'" he continues, "I scratch on the strings with the 'enhance' control on my A/DA flanger turned way up. The metallic sound in the break is just clean, miked guitar. In the middle section, you can hear overlapping echoes. I also used an E-Bow ["electronic bowing" device] in the solo of 'Racing Against Time' and on 'Waiting For A Million Years' for the sustained sound that resembles a motorcycle being started up in church. The E-Bow lets me sustain forever, do nice things with harmonics and get my Eastern music chops down."

Although Cuccurullo thinks that Rhyme & Reason turned out great, he's disappointed that it hasn't achieved the success the band anticipated. He debuted his Missing Link guitar in the video for its first hit, "Give," while the "Right Now" clip cast him as a lifeguard/pilot and showed him with the Performance. For "Surrender Your Heart," surreal artist Peter Max was hired to create a video largely composed of time-lapsed images. During the summer of '84, Warren, Dale and Terry also made cameo appearances in Frank Sinatra's "L.A. Is My Lady" video. "It's a great art form" Warren notes, "because it shows the image of the band. Your fans love to see you in different roles -- playing your instruments or flying an airplane or hanging out with Frank Sinatra [laughs]."

Between the Rhyme & Reason sessions and tour, Warren co-designed the Missing Link's body with Thomas Nordegg and manufacturer Arndt Anderson. Eddie Clothier designed and installed the guitar's on-board electronics and suggested looping the necks together. "I wanted the strangest-looking guitar that could be," Cuccurullo says, "and we ended up with this space-age, magnetic kind of look. The whole guitar is made out of magnesium, which feels really good. I like its brightness and good high-end, plus it's warm at the same time. I usually use ebony fingerboards, but the magnesium feels fantastic. The neck is thin in the back, almost shaved."

The three pickups on the bottom half -- a Seymour Duncan Mag, a Bartolini single-coil, and a Carvin Extra-Power Treble, from neck to bridge -- work from a standard 5-way switch. The top guitar, which will someday be used for alternate tunings, is outfitted with two double-coil pickups, a Bartolini 1E and a DiMarzio X2N. The bridges are DiMarzio. One of the instrument's advantages, the guitarist points out, is that it works when all else fails. "You never want to go up there naked. I played the first four shows of the latest tour with nothing -- just the guitar into the amp, because my rack broke down. I felt terrible, but because of the electronics in the guitar, I had the ultimate backup." Cuccurullo and his co-designers plan to market the Missing Link as soon as it's perfected.

Eddie Clothier also designed Warren's computerized Mixman console and pedal-board, which allow him to call up a large variety of preset effects combinations by tapping on a touch-sensitive rubber mat. "It looks like a big telephone keypad," Warren adds, "with 0 through 9 and a jump button so I can jump to any program. From program 2, for example, I can jump to program 58 by hitting J-5-8. I also have 10 presets, so after hitting a button that puts me in the preset mode, I can call up my most commonly used effects combinations, such as solo sounds, multiple echoes. I can switch channels from, say, a fuzz to a flanger to an echo, or I can go to three echoes and have them left, right and center.

"For example, all the sounds in 'Give' are stored in order, so all I have to do is change patches. It starts out on the rhythm pickup -- full humbucking -- with a little Ibanez fuzz box; this is for the rhythm sound. Then you hear the pingponging echoes from my EDR Echo Digital Recorders: One is set at .75 for a triplet effect, and the other is on 2. You hear a lot more picking than I'm actually doing because the echo is playing it, too. Then there are volume swells: In the studio, I recorded one chord at a time to let it ring out as long as possible. To get this overlapping effect onstage, I call up a long echo -- like a 1.5 or a 2 -- after the original swell to make it sound like they're overlapping."

Having learned its language and commands, Warren claims that the computerized system simplifies his onstage work, where very little improvising goes on. "Except for little fills and stuff, most of the parts follow the script; they are all part of the song's arrangement. There are a few tunes where I do different things in the solo every night -- 'Bad Streets,' 'Racing Against Time,' 'Noticeable One,' 'Mental Hopscotch.'; I don't find this role limiting; that's the concept of the band: Everybody has their little role to play in order to make it complete. It's more of a sound band."

During their 1984 headlining tour, Missing Persons noted a change in their audience as more young people began showing up for concerts. "I guess it's the appeal of Dale and the men in the band," Warren surmises. "Little girls look up to Dale; they want to sing and dress up like her, color their hair. We appeal to a lot of emotions, plus we have a lot of things to say to people about certain ways to live life. Somebody said Rhyme & Reason sounds like a lot of mantras. All of us are very philosophical persons, but Dale is really the epicenter of it."

While Cuccurullo practices and writes on an acoustic guitar while on the road, back home in Los Angeles he heads to his warehouse to plug in. "First I get a little groove set up in my echo units and play on top of that. It helps my sense of timing and melody, plus I can make up little spontaneous tunes, like a one-man band. By sending my [MXR] Pitch Transposer through a delay that comes back 3 to 5 seconds later, I can play one note and have the seventh come in a lot later and get a little harmony going on. Sometimes I do extended solo pieces with three or four parts being created at once by the digital echo units. I might use a very fast reverse echo setting, but have the dry guitar in the center and reverse on two sides -- real tight, so it gets a pulse sound, almost like a sequencer. You'll hear the original guitar playing forward, and the fast, backwards one giving a strange sound. There's tons of strange things I can do, a lot of which will be on the next album.

I have disks to store all these sounds I come up with during those coffee o.d. evenings at the warehouse. I gave that all up, though -- caffeine and cigarettes. Now it's just pure, natural energy. You can try many things to keep your brain and creativity going, but it's all inside of you. People have a natural, God-given adrenaline and creativity. Just the desire to do things is all you need. I went through some hard times, but I'm more driven now than I used to be. I've learned that beyond the glitter and glamour -- getting dressed up and having girls chase you and scream -- all success means is that you are able to do what you really want."

Cuccurullo would eventually like to record a solo album, but for now he's happy playing with Missing Persons: "This is exactly what we've always wanted: our own band with friends, having something unique to offer. I love every aspect of my work: being on the road, making videos, conceptualizing, writing. As to the future, I just want to make another album and have us retain control over everything we do artistically. I want to become a smash success with this band. Everything is Missing Persons -- that's number one."