Face To Face: Warren Speaks Out About Missing Persons

Photos: TOP RIGHT - R&R Promo photo ©1984 Capitol Records, photo by Helmut Newton. (Center: Dale Bozzio, Clockwise from Top Left: Terry Bozzio, Warren Cuccurullo, Chuck Wild, Patrick O'Hearn); CENTER - Warren with the Missing Link Guitar, 1984; BOTTOM LEFT - Color In Your Life poster, 1986: Clockwise from Top Left: Dale Bozzio, Terry Bozzio, Patrick O'Hearn, Warren Cuccurullo)

In November, 2000, One-Way Records (Capitol Special Markets) re-issued Rhyme & Reason (1984) and Color In Your Life (1986). These two albums had never been released on CD, so this is a real treat for fans, who can now hear these songs in better quality than we've ever had the opportunity to enjoy before. All three of the full-length Missing Persons albums released in the 1980's are very special to the fans, while each album has its own supporters when the ever-recurring discussion about "which is best?" happens. Additionally, these two re-issues were anticipated because they include unreleased material that fans of the band have been dying to hear for years.

Founding member and guitarist Warren Cuccurullo had some things to say about these albums, as well as some behind-the-scenes Missing Persons memories and strong words about re-issues that happen without band input.

Rhyme & Reason

WARREN: I haven't heard Rhyme & Reason in ages. So I don't even know what I think about it. I'd have to say, I think one of the things that was most surprising, the last time I listened to it, was having one of the greatest drummers in the world...not playing drums on the album. It was a drum machine. The Linn drum. Played just like he would play it on a drum kit, but I just think the sound was not exactly what was needed for the music. It would have been much better with real drums.

It was kind of a shocking experience to start making that record, because we split with Ken Scott, who we worked with on the EP and Spring Session M, so we had to get in with a new person. We got really lucky, we got hooked up with Bruce Swedien, who was Quincy Jones' engineer. He was a very nice guy, and that was great. The thing that happened was, being that we were a band that definitely had a lot of edge, working with Bruce, whose background was more in the R&B world, and then having Terry play Linn drum instead of playing the drums...in hindsight it became too much of a stylistic and sonic change that probably shouldn't have happened. I remember Ken saying he didn't think it was a good idea to use a rhythm unit.

We started writing songs with Patrick then, and we had a song called "Give" that was this great groove that Patrick had that had really nice chord changes, and we turned it into a fantastic song. Terry had a great idea for a lyric, and it was saying something very positive. It was our first single off the album, and we had a lot of fun making the video for it, but when we finally got to see the footage, there was a bit too much of this juggler guy (laughs). And we all decided that we had to lose the juggler.

PRIVACY: Yeah, I don't remember him.

WARREN: The director (Peter Heath) was really going for the juggler (laughs). So we had to fly to New York and re-edit it with Peter, who'd done the Power Station video. And it was a real experience, because we didn't have enough footage to really make a full promo, but we managed. We got rid of the juggler completely, but it took pretty much two full days and nights to find all the footage we needed to complete the clip from the performance stuff that we had shot. About two weeks after that, I completely lost my mind. I had a manic episode. I actually believed that I met Jesus on 22nd and Lex. I guess that's what lack of sleep over a three or four day period can do to you. I kinda snapped. They tried to get me onto lithium, but that really didn't work, and I got off it. They tried to stop me from recording everything that was going on in my life at the time, and that didn't work, so I've got it all on tape...the whole episode...nineteen tapes. They're in a box that says "The Insane Tapes." Eventually I got myself in a strong enough state to play music again and go out and do the tour in '84. (laughs). What else is there on that record?

PRIVACY: "Right Now."

WARREN: "Right Now"...that was another song that we did a video for, also with Peter Heath, which I'd probably cringe at if I saw it right now. Right now (laughs). There's some really interesting things on there too, like "Racing Against Time." Once again we revisited odd time signatures along with four on the floor so that people could tap their foot to it.

PRIVACY: And "Surrender Your Heart."

WARREN: "Surrender Your Heart" was really beautiful. The good thing about that one is that we got Peter Max to do a little computer video. I think it was one of the first computer videos ever made. Actually when I saw "Someone Else Not Me," it reminded me of a mixture of "Surrender Your Heart" and Yellow Submarine. But it was really great working with Patrick as part of the writing team on that album. We just went in a lot of different directions. It was a bit of a weird album, in a lot of ways. Melodically speaking, it got into another area that was a little bit more difficult for Dale to cope with, a lot of which wasn't fair.

PRIVACY: Besides "Give," I think I like "The Closer That You Get."

WARREN: Yeah, I really like that one, too.

PRIVACY: That really is a great song.

WARREN: That was a really good one. It was more in the spirit of the first album. But then again, with that drum machine on it...oh well (laughs). I feel really bad for Terry, because both Terry and I always wanted to take things to the future. I was doing the same thing with the guitar and all my effects...I always have. And he had this idea for this drum kit that would be triggering all these samples, and seeing what Frank was doing on his records, using the Linn drum on everything, Terry wanted to take it to the next level where he'd actually be playing the Linn drum sounds. He did that onstage. He had all that, but it was kind of an exercise in futility because there's nothing better than seeing a drummer play a real drum kit. Nothing. It's fantastic.

PRIVACY: Especially him.

WARREN: Especially him, right. So we lost that. Terry was standing there banging this piece of art (laughs). So the kids in the front were hearing somebody banging on metal. And I was playing that 25 pound, paper clip-looking guitar! But that's the way we were...we were always trying to do things that were a bit different visually, musically. We knew what we were up against, and we knew what our strengths were and wanted to go with it. And we had fun. Things were difficult with having a marriage in the band, but nothing compared to Fleetwood Mac! (laughs). You might say we were having complications with our complications.

Color In Your Life

PRIVACY: I think there's a lot of change in between Rhyme & Reason and Color In Your Life.

WARREN: To quote what I said in an interview for Medazzaland Discs, "Color In My Life was a complete nightmare. Dale had left the group, we found a replacement, the producer was having drug problems, Dale re-joined, much to Terry's disappointment because he wanted to be the singer...do I need to go on? The funny thing is, I prefer the final result of Color to Rhyme & Reason. The really enjoyable times for Missing Persons were from 1980 when we started until the end of the Spring Session M tour. After that, it just kept getting more and more difficult. We had three incredible years and three that were tumultuous to say the least."

Color In Your Life was the Medazzaland of Missing Persons. It's really hard to believe the album ever got completed. We thought it was difficult, and a big change, when we split with Ken Scott. During the writing of the songs for Color In Your Life, Dale had left. Talk about complications with your complications! We got another singer in, Lisa Dalbello...an amazing singer...a recording artist who was turned onto us by somebody from Capitol. But it really didn't work out, because she wanted to change a lot of the lyrics, and we were very happy with what we had. Everything was more or less complete.

Throughout all this, we had Bernard Edwards lined up to produce the album, and we were still very excited about that because we'd liked what he'd done with "View To A Kill" and the Power Station, loved all his work with Chic. Patrick was dying to work with him. Bernard really liked Pat's playing. He liked the demos a lot. But then we had to go through this recruiting a new singer thing. It definitely put the project back a bit. When we finally got Dale back, since it was obvious it wasn't going to work out with the other girl, we convinced Dale to make the record even though she and Terry were having serious marriage problems. We said we would do a tour and promote the record, and we had just gotten new management. We felt pretty positive about it, but there was still this underlying tension due to the marriage situation. We came up with some really good songs, very early Missing Persons-sounding. "Color In Your Life" was cool. What else is on there..."Go Against the Flow"...

PRIVACY: "Face to Face."

WARREN: "Face to Face" was great.

PRIVACY: That's my favorite one. (laughs)

WARREN: Love that one. I was thinking about that song the other day. Yeah, that's probably my favorite, too. I really like that. One of the important things that we did with this record was we said, "look, if we're gonna be a band, we're gonna have to share in the songwriting like we did in the beginning." One of the greatest things in a group, no matter what anybody does, is that collaborative atmosphere, even if the song comes from one person. Everybody's gonna do something to it. And then somebody else's gonna come in with another song that maybe somebody else didn't have anything to do with. You're working together for the same thing. And most groups that go by the wayside are bands that don't treat everybody in the band equally. And it's worse if the band isn't treated equally when the talent is equal. Of course there's some bands that probably half of them in the group wouldn't know how to write a song, so they're very happy to be in there playing music, but in Missing Persons or Duran Duran, you know, these groups, we all can write songs individually.

So anyway, on Color In Your Life, we all decided, okay, we're gonna do it like we did in the old days. It was just a really creative, healthy, inspiring atmosphere when we wrote the music and the lyrics. I actually did a bit of lyric writing on that album for the first time in ages because Dale wasn't in the band at that point, and I came up with "No Secrets." I really like that one.

PRIVACY: "Come Back For More" is good too.

WARREN: "Come Back For More" - yeah, that was alright. Another one I liked was "Can't Think About Dancing." That was a really old idea. All it was was this hookline (sings "I can't think about dancing"), and I never had any music to go with it. One day I went in the studio and Patrick had this groove, and I went "That's gonna be 'I Can't Think About Dancing'." And we did it...bang. It came together real quick. It turned out great, and we wound up doing a video with Zbigniew Rybczynski for that. He'd done the Pet Shop Boys video, and a Simple Minds thing; he was definitely the flavor of the moment. Really nice guy. And that was the last thing we ever did.

PRIVACY: Yeah, you did a tour, kind of, but...

WARREN: Yeah, there were a few dates. I got to debut my ass-less pants (laughs).

PRIVACY: Well, damn, I missed that.

WARREN: The ass-less pants, that was great.

PRIVACY: I think Dale told me something about that one time, they were like leather chaps or something?

WARREN: No, these were just fake suede...ultrasuede things with the ass cut out.

PRIVACY: And you wore them onstage?

WARREN: Oh, yeah!

PRIVACY: "We Don't Know Love At All" is on Color In Your Life, too.

WARREN: Yeah, that was kind of a weird one. (laughs)

PRIVACY: It's pretty, though. I like the stuff you did at the end.

WARREN: Yeah, it's a very beautiful song. I really love it, but what I mean by weird is Dale was supposed to sing it. But it didn't really sound right when she tried...but it didn't really sound right when Terry sang it either, and his vocal's the one that's on there. I'm one of those people that believe that you're born a singer. You either have an incredible singing talent or you have a vibe. And if you've got ideas and you don't have the tool, then don't do it. It's funny, because I was showing someone a video of me performing and singing "20th Century Boy," the T. Rex song, and she said "I can't believe you don't sing, you really sell yourself short." I'm not a singer. You know? I have a lot of soul...I'm really soulful, I know how things should be sung, and I know how I would want myself to sing. But I'm not a singer. And she said, "Oh, you are," and I said, "No, I'm not." It's just funny when I hear Terry singing that stuff, 'cause he has such f*cking great ideas, but his voice isn't up to it. I prefer Terry's kind of joke rock voice that he did with Frank, when he was doing "Punky" and "I'm So Cute."

PRIVACY: Yeah, "I'm So Cute" is great!

WARREN: I love that! But when he was trying to sound like David Bowie, it didn't sound like David Bowie, you know what I mean?

PRIVACY: But he's a genius drummer.

WARREN: He's a genius composer, as well...a genius musician. A f*cking amazing guy, but I don't think he's a singer (laughs). It kinda hurts (laughs). It hurts because I'm such a f*cking perfectionist, and I just go "ouch." But it was a difficult situation for him in that group. Terry was a legend in the drummer world, and we started a group that put his wife in front of everybody...she got all the attention. So on a lot of levels, that's not an easy thing to deal with.

Previously unreleased/live songs

As most of you know by now if you've bought these re-issued CD's, there are four "previously unreleased" songs on them (two on each CD) as well as eight live tracks (four on each CD). The eight live tracks and the studio version of "Action, Reaction" have already been released on "Late Nights, Early Days," which Warren produced and released a couple of years ago on his Lo-Fi Records/Designer Fruit label. That leaves the three "new" songs that we fans have never heard before. These three songs, along with "I'm The One" (also with Terry on lead vocal, released on Sedated In The 80's, vol. 4), were all copyrighted in 1985, and all of them were written by Terry, Warren and Patrick (see the Missing Persons Discography and Privacy Issue 17 for details).

If you've been reading the Privacy fanzines or the website, you have heard of these, because at one point I did some research at the Library of Congress and found them...and I had always seen the title "Fight For Love." When the CD arrived at my house, the title of this song was listed as "Fight For Life," but Warren says the actual title is "Fight For Love." The song is instrumental. "It's a Must" is another instrumental. Those of us who are Warren fans were greatly excited to read in the liner notes that Warren does the lead vocal on "Hot To Cold"...however, he said he never sang this song and it's Terry on lead vocal. I asked Warren to comment on these formerly "missing Missing Persons songs," as I used to call them in the zine.

WARREN: "Fight For Love," "Hot To Cold," and "It's A Must" are three songs that we felt didn't get to the point where they were good enough to be on any album, and unfortunately we didn't erase the masters. I'm sure if we revisited these tracks, we could have turned them into something great. But here they are in their unfinished forms. That's what happens when you raid the vaults and you're desperate for material, when you're a big record label.

PRIVACY: "I'm the One" came out a few years ago.

WARREN: (laughs). That blew me away. The guitar on that...I forgot about that one.

PRIVACY: It's awesome.

WARREN: What a f*cking guitar sound! I just couldn't believe it. Shame about the vocal (laughs). If I'd have mixed it, I would've put it through something, made it sound kind of weird. Whoever did these mixes didn't really take care of it. That's one of the problems I have with these re-issues. First of all, they didn't even contact us when they put out "I'm The One." It says "publisher unknown." That's ridiculous. I wish, in a lot of ways, with our old stuff, that they took the care that it deserves. At the time they put out "I'm The One," I was still a f*cking Capitol recording artist! And they didn't even contact me! It's ridiculous. And it doesn't seem like they paid much attention to the mixing of these tracks, and they could have at least gotten one of us to be involved. I've taken enough care for some of the other Missing Persons things that I've put out myself, to get the packaging correct, and that's really important, but they don't really pay much attention to these kinds of details. And there's nothing we can do about it, but they should know that the band is still there. There's people that really care about what they've done in the past, and the label is just throwing it out there, and I think it really sucks.

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