Writing For The Future: An Interview With Warren

Photo: Warren at the MGM Hand-Cementing Ceremony, June 2000, photo by Jane Horsley

Warren's a very busy man these days. Besides his work in his home studio, his bodybuilding and nutrition, and surfing the Net, he's also got some Duran Duran shows coming up in December. Equally as anticipated by his fans is the December issue of "G" magazine, which features Warren in 18 pages of photos. But he took time out after I interviewed him about the Missing Persons re-issues to talk about some of the things many fans, including myself, have been wondering about.

WARREN: There's a lot of other things that Missing Persons have done that were never recorded, and it's a shame that the fans haven't heard it, because I really prefer what we were doing way back in the beginning. I'd love to get some of these very early Missing Persons songs released. And it would be something that EMI or Capitol would have no rights to. I've been going out of my mind trying to find decent demos that we had of this stuff, and to this day I still can't find them. They were on cassette, but they were good quality.

PRIVACY: Thomas doesn't have them?

WARREN: Nobody had them. I checked with everyone from around that time. No one's got them. I can even see the tape. I know what it looks like, I know what it says on it...we were called "Mrs. B" at the time. We didn't even have a band name. I mean, this is pre-"U.S. Drag." But we had some great songs. Eventually I'll just put out the ones that I have here that are the rehearsal tapes. They're not great quality, but you can still hear what they are. The tape that was made that Thomas recorded was on a two track cassette, stereo cassette. It's a shame it hasn't been located. Eventually I'm either gonna dig up all these old songs from rehearsal tapes, or we'll just have to record them again. Just do it. We're gonna do all the old songs...the first ones, the ones we never put out..."Dark & Dangerous Guy," "Centerfold Girl," "Miss America," mmm...God, there's so many. "Invisible," "Radio On," "On Vacation" (laughs). Yeah, "On Vacation" was a guitar thing. It was some weird guitar sound with some cool chords and Terry playing the melody on a zither (laughs).

PRIVACY: Cool.

WARREN: I took the title for "On Vacation" from Eraserhead, that David Lynch movie? Where Henry, the main character, is over in his girlfriend's front room with the girl's parents...Mary's parents. And they say, "Oh, Henry, what do you do?" and he says "I'm on vacation." (laughs). Yeah, that's one I'd like to get out there. It's very cool. I'll tell you what would be amazing, is if Missing Persons all got together and just played.

PRIVACY: I know it. It would be.

WARREN: It would just be...it would be so strange. One day we should do something.

PRIVACY: Well, considering all the stuff you've done since...

WARREN: Mmmmm. It would just be really cool! Some kind of huge party or something. VH-1 25th Anniversary. Actually, just thinking about it sounds pretty crazy. It'd probably feel like, wow, we played that song twenty years ago, but it seems more like twenty minutes!

I do have to say this though...what Dale is doing, going out and doing these dates, I think it kind of dilutes what the band was about...kind of lessens the name "Missing Persons." Because I hate when people call me up and say that Missing Persons is playing next week. I do understand that she's doing it to try and keep it alive, keep the band in people's minds, but I'd gone through this with Dale about the way her solo gigs were promoted and advertised, and we'd both agreed that it should be "Dale Bozzio from Missing Persons." But I kept getting these calls from people saying that it was advertised as "Missing Persons," and I had to keep making Dale aware of this, because like I said before, I'm trying to keep it like a cool thing. We've put out a few records on our own, since we split up...the ones that I've basically put together. And we've probably got enough stuff to make another one or two. But if there's this sort of covers band out there, backing up Dale, who in many ways signifies what Missing Persons was...her image was so strong...people aren't going to believe it if we ever did do something where it was all of us together again. It wouldn't really have the same impact. It wouldn't be special. It's not as if Dale and some other musicians had kept the band going for the last fifteen years and made seven or eight albums.

But Dale and I are really good friends...we're all still really good friends. I especially want her to do well and take care of her kids and everything, but there's that other child we created...Missing Persons. I think it's been slightly tainted. It's a shame.

PRIVACY: Do you ever miss the Missing Persons music?

WARREN: No...but just talking about it now, I just felt like, wow, it'd be great if we did this, this, this and this (laughs). I never do, because I'm more or less living in the present and writing new stuff for the future. I mean, I've been waiting three years to get the goddamn TV Mania album out. I am so excited about that. I've been sitting on The Blue since '92! There's an overwhelming abundance of unreleased material.

PRIVACY: So are you going to get TV Mania out? That would be good.

WARREN: Oh yeah...2001! Yeah, it'll be real good (laughs). It's been finished for years. We finished mixing in the middle of '96. That's a long time ago.

PRIVACY: So are you guys still working on that?

WARREN: Well, the first one is done.

PRIVACY: But are you going to make more?

WARREN: Well, there is. There's tons of songs. A ridiculous amount of songs. There's quite a few things that we brought into Duran. The title track from Medazzaland is very TV Mania.

PRIVACY: You probably know this, but there's another version of Medazzaland that the fans have, and that "Midnight Sun," everybody likes it better.

WARREN: They like the early one? With the long ending? (sings the melody of the deleted solo)

PRIVACY: I do, too.

WARREN: We just thought it was a bit too rock, a bit too overdramatic, but that's what happens when you're sitting on something for f*cking years. That album took so long to make with Simon's blackout on the lyrics and then John leaving and all that other crap.

PRIVACY: You had to re-do a lot, didn't you?

WARREN: Oh yeah. And we had to write some new ones. "Buried In The Sand" was f*cking awesome. I really love that. Yeah. (laughs) Definitely what Oasis wishes they could sound like. I mean, if you're gonna sound like the Beatles, you should try and sound more like this, as opposed to the Rutles, know what I mean? (laughs).

PRIVACY: I know most of the fans probably don't agree with me, but I liked when you took the songs and did different stuff with them.

WARREN: Which ones?

PRIVACY: Like on the 93/94 tour, "Notorious" and "Save a Prayer"...they didn't quite sound like they do on the record. Not the '93 part of it, but the '94, when you didn't have the string section and all that.

WARREN: Right, but we still had the same arrangements.

PRIVACY: But you played a lot of it on electric guitar.

WARREN: Right, right, right...that was just to surprise people. We're always trying to.

PRIVACY: I played, for my sister, "Watermelon In Easter Hay" and "Save a Prayer," (from the Jan 13, 1994 NYC show) and she was like, "my god!"

WARREN: "Save a Prayer" had that great ending.

PRIVACY: It was awesome. And I said, "you gotta hear this," because she doesn't like "Save a Prayer," because she's not a Duranie, and she was, I guess, too old for it when it was first released (1982), and she heard it a lot, but I said, "you gotta give it (the 1994 live version) a chance."

WARREN: Right. It was different then (1994) because we weren't using computers, and now we're more into the sequencers thing. The good thing about it now is that we've got Joe and Wes. The tracks breathe in a way that they never did before. The rhythm section is just so powerful, so groovin'. So even though we're playing through sequencers and stuff on most songs, it feels so human with those guys playing. It's a pleasure. That's been a really good change. Joe is just the ultimate. Such a great drummer.

PRIVACY: I just got a tape of the Hard Rock Live a couple weeks ago, and he is really great.

WARREN: Oh, man, the guy is...probably my favorite drummer, really. It's incredible. The stuff that he did for the solo stuff...he just blew me away. Especially when it was him with Wes, that was always much better than when it was him with Nick Beggs or as it was with Wes and Steve Alexander. Or with Nick Beggs and Steve Alexander. The perfect combo was me, Wes and Joe, just...wow.

PRIVACY: I remember. I was at that one (laughs).

WARREN: Yeah, and I'd love to do some more stuff with those guys, but at the moment I've got a lot of music I've got to get out. The Trance Formed album is like a darker Machine Language. It's very, very, very strange. I love it, it's great. But then Color Blind is a whole other... It's almost done, but there's a couple of tracks on there that I could actually do with a really big ensemble, and I'm not sure if I should keep it like it is, sort of demo-y, or go into a studio one day and get like a f*cking 15-piece mini-orchestra and a drummer, and a percussionist. It's a question of budget. What I want to spend on it, how much time do I want to spend...do I want to...what I'm really saying is do I want to produce this album, as opposed to just keeping it really simple and demo-sounding. I can hear this one piece very orchestral, also. It's sorta like "Suddenly Spring," but it's written for like four or five...well, it was written for three people, but I can hear it being done by many (laughs). It's very in the vein of Ravi Shankar film music, what he's done for films. Sorta like "Suddenly Spring" but on a few different levels.

PRIVACY: What's the name of that one?

WARREN: That piece..."Fourth Dimension." And there's also stuff on there with the artist Neil Carlill, from Delicatessen (the TV Mania singer). He's on a couple of things. A few collaborations between me and Sultan Khan, or Sultan, Neil and me, or Neil and me, and there are things that are created by just me, a la Machine Language or Trance Formed.

PRIVACY: Yeah, I think you told me about this a few years ago.

WARREN: Yeah. Well I did it...July of '98. It was right after I shaved my head...the World Cup was on (laughs). I remember that. It was July sixteenth or seventeenth and Sultan Khan was in town, and I said, "okay, I'm gonna write a record for when he gets here." And I got a bunch of stuff together, and I just said, "okay, you can do what you want on this one." Unbelievable. But the big piece, the one that I spent the most time on, is in kind of a scratch form, which is a nightmare. That's the one, "Fourth Dimension." So I'm not sure what I should do. And I don't want to put it out without it. And I don't want to put it out the way it is and say, "demo" next to it. I'm really happy with the pacing of the record as it is. And I love Sultan Khan's work. He's a genius beyond all measure.

I've been really lucky to work with great artists like Milton Nascimento, Shankar, and Sultan Khan. For example, I used to go see Shankar at Carnegie Recital Hall when I was in my late teens. And now I listen to The Blue, and I think, "we created this music together, at the same time, while the tape was rolling. How did we do that?" On his days off from working with Peter Gabriel, he slept on my couch and we'd get up, turn on the machines and go. How the hell did we do that?

But then again, I listened to Thanks 2 Frank the other day and I said the same thing. How did I do that? How? Vinnie flew in completely jetlagged, never heard the stuff. Then before each song, I'd say, "okay, what do you want to do now? A hard one or an easy one?" "Oh, let's do a hard one." (laughs). And Pino as well. I mean, Nick Beggs, my bass player, he had the benefit of being able to rehearse the stuff at my house with me for a couple of days before we recorded. But he was only available for one day of recording. Pino Palladino took the other day, and he came in...never heard any of the stuff either! (laughs). And what he's playing on "Orgasmatron" and "Galactic Ballerina" is unbelievable! I wrote "Galactic Ballerina" the night before we went into the studio. And it's pretty f*cking cool. I love the way it turned out, and it's one of my favorite pieces that I've ever written.

PRIVACY: That's an amazing song, too, the chord changes, and...

WARREN: It's incredible! I often wonder how I did that...pull off getting all this stuff done and to that standard.

PRIVACY: When you accomplish something, you look back at it later and think, God... Even stuff I've done, I look back at it and think, when did I have the time?

WARREN: The thing is, I had no time!! (laughs loudly)

PRIVACY: Well, you did that in two days.

WARREN: That's what I mean, I had no time. That's the thing that really blows me away. I didn't have the time! I just...did it. I did it in no time.

PRIVACY: The Lizard King has a message board about you, and one about Nick, and one about Simon, and all this stuff. I got on your board, and they're talking about the zebra bed - they want to know if that's your bed.

WARREN: That's the master bedroom, yeah. But that spread I bought when I was living in Sherman Oaks. It's old, man. (laughs). That is like 1989 or '88 when I got that.

PRIVACY: You wouldn't believe what you started...everybody's like "we're all gonna wear zebra clothes to the shows now, 'cause he likes zebra."

WARREN: (laughs) Oh, I have the zebra fridge and the zebra dishwasher.

PRIVACY: That's cool.

WARREN: I just want it to be white. Nothing left. I wanna gut my f*cking house. I do.

PRIVACY: The regulars on the LKWC board would also love to know more about the red guitar.

WARREN: The SG.

PRIVACY: Yeah, they want to know if you're going to use it again.

WARREN: I just bought one. So they liked it?

PRIVACY: Yeah. They're all going nuts over it, they love it. Does it have a name?

WARREN: It's called a Gibson SG. Frank used to play one. When I first used to go see Frank, that's all he used to play was a Gibson SG.

PRIVACY: Okay. I didn't really notice it when you were using it before, but watching some of the older stuff, the one I started noticing was that acoustic on the 93/94...the black one?

WARREN: The Parker.

PRIVACY: Yeah. That's a really pretty-sounding guitar.

WARREN: Yeah, it's great. But I want to use old things. I always was a Gibson player, and then I went to Steinbergers, which were owned by Gibson. The necks felt like Gibson but didn't look like it. And I liked the whammy bar on it and the transposing tremelos. The Parker was great because it had the acoustic and the electric, which was nice.

PRIVACY: I think what I noticed it on was "Ordinary World" at the MTV Movie Awards.

WARREN: Right.

PRIVACY: That was just a really nice sound.

WARREN: Yeah, but a crap performance (laughs). Oh, it's a Gibson SG Standard [the red guitar].

PRIVACY: I think what they really want to know is if you have a pet name for it.

WARREN: No. I don't name my guitars, I name my racks. The rack that did all the stuff on the song "Thank You," Machine Language, and Trance Formed, it's called "Delilah." But she's retired. Her guts are out of her. Took the gear out, broke the rest of it down and put it in storage. The one I use now is on some of the things on Color Blind, some of the ambient sounding things. It's not quite like Delilah, but it's pretty powerful. So why do they like the SG?

PRIVACY: I don't know, I think because it's red, they were in front row, and it was cool.

WARREN: And it was a surprise (laughs). The only time I ever broke a string on the whole f*cking tour. I think it was the only time I ever broke a string on the last two tours, was that night.

PRIVACY: They're all excited about the New Year's Eve show.

WARREN: Oh yeah?

PRIVACY: They're all going to go. You'll see them, they'll be wearing zebra.

WARREN: Oh my gosh. They'll be holding up the f*cking magazine by then! People are not gonna believe this. (laughs) It's very normal in Brazil for guys to do this magazine. A lot of the athletes do it, TV people, and I guess it's just different.

PRIVACY: You should do what you want to do.

WARREN: Oh, for me it's not a problem. With my past, of course...I mean, I've gotten pictures mailed to me from backstage where I'm stripped down to my underwear with my abs out and everything, and I'm posing with people! (laughs) That's in a room full of people! But I did a lot of press. They're talking about Duran Duran now more than they have in f*cking years, down in Brazil.

PRIVACY: Good.

WARREN: It's great! Great. Claudia did a good job.

PRIVACY: What are you eating these days?

WARREN: The works. Mostly egg whites, chicken breasts, a little bit of beef occasionally, maybe once every two weeks, oh, fish. Tuna, salmon, tuna, salmon, tuna and salmon. That's basically it, lots of veggies...broccoli, spinach, cauliflower, that's my main three veggies. Asparagus...I love asparagus. I eat greens at least...at two of my meals I have a huge serving of vegetables. But I eat lots of proteins and carbs, and drink six liters of water every day.

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