missing persons

Zappa alumni Dale Bozzio, Terry Bozzio and Warren Cucurullo formed the Missing Persons in 1980. Patrick O'hearn joined a couple of years later. The band existed from 1980 until 1986. They did a reunion concert july 2001.

	missing persons: 4 track maxi single (words) (ps) (1982, 12", ger, capitol k062-400 094) (ps) -
1	missing persons: spring session m (1982, lp, usa, capitol)
	missing persons: words / hello i love you (ps) (1982, 7", usa, capitol b-5127)
	missing persons: walking in l.a. (1982, 7"-pro, usa, capitol p-b-5212) (white label promo)
	missing persons: destination unknown (ps) (1982, 7"-pro, usa, capitol p-b-5161) (white label promo)
	missing persons: windows (s/m) (ps) (1983, 7"-pro, usa, capitol p-b-5200) (white label promo)
	missing persons: windows / rock and roll suspension (ps) (1983, 7", usa, capitol b-5200)
2	missing persons: rhyme & reason (1984, lp, usa, capitol)
	missing persons: give (1984, 7"-pro, usa, capitol b-5326)
	missing persons: give / clandestine people (ps) (1984, 7", usa, capitol b-5326)
	missing persons: right now (1984, 7"-pro, usa, capitol p-b-5358) (white label promo)
	missing persons: right now / racing against time (ps) (1984, 7", usa, capitol b-5358)
3	missing persons: color in your life (1986, lp, usa, capitol)
	missing persons: i can't think about dancing (1986, 12"-pro, usa, capitol 9721)
	missing persons: i can't think about dancing / face to face (ps) (1986, 7", usa, capitol b-5569)
	missing persons: i can't think about dancing (3 versions)/ face to face (ps) (1986, 12", usa, capitol v-15233)
	missing persons: the best of the missing persons (1987, cd, usa, capitol cdp 7 46628 2) = compilation
	missing persons: the best of missing persons (2002, cd, usa, capitol 7235-36234-2-5) = compilation
	missing persons: late nights early days (1997, cd, japan, bandai music entertainment)
	missing persons: lost tracks (2002, cd, usa, one way records one35189)

It took a 52-foot fall from a window in Los Angeles to seal Dale Bozzio's fate as lead singer of the '80s new wave rock band Missing Persons.

"It's a miracle I lived through it. I landed on pavement," the Somerville native said of her accident, speaking from the New Hampshire farmhouse she inherited. Bozzio, now 51 and a mother of two, brings the current Missing Persons lineup to the Middle East in Cambridge tomorrow.

"I was blind for an entire year afterwards," Bozzio said. "When my sight returned I had to relearn how to walk."

Locked in the confines of her mind and heavily medicated, she toyed with poetry. Some of it would become lyrics for Missing Persons' Frank Zappa-funded 1982 debut, "Spring Session M."

Bozzio's eye-popping outfits of transparent, multicolored plastic and her teased fluorescent hair put the videos for "Words," "Destination Unknown" and "Mental Hopscotch" in heavy rotation on MTV. But the story really began a decade earlier in 1971, when Bozzio had better luck crawling through a window at the old Boston Music Hall to get backstage during Zappa's sold-out "200 Motels" show.

"I'd hoped a friend working at the Music Hall could get us in," she recalled, "but we arrived late and had to sneak up the fire escape and into a window to get backstage. I was only 16. It was quite a sight, me in glittered high heels climbing the wrought-iron stairs."

Zappa appreciated the girls' determination. He asked them out to eat and later invited them to his hotel room. Bozzio passed on the hotel visit, but the impression she made on the Mothers of Invention mastermind would pay off down the road. Meanwhile, she pursued modeling.

"I worked at Boston's Playboy Club and was named Bunny of the Year in 1975 under the name Toni Consalvi," Bozzio said. "I was invited out to the Hefner mansion. This was a tremendous opportunity. If Hugh liked me enough I might've gotten to live there, which is what I was banking on when I made the trip in '76."

"Hefner stood at the top of the stairs in his bathrobe and asked me to come up, but I didn't think that was wise," Bozzio said. "So I asked him to please come down and talk to me. When he wouldn't budge, I turned and walked out the door."

With no dough and no mansion address, Bozzio was up the creek sans paddle, but running into Zappa again proved serendipitous. A phone call to her only L.A. friend, a musician, landed her at a recording studio where Zappa happened to be working. Barging in on him a second time resulted in a mentoring relationship that lasted a decade. It's also how she met her future husband and Missing Persons band mate, Terry Bozzio, then drumming in Zappa's band. So began the romance that sparked Missing Persons' pop success in the early '80s - a success that came only after Bozzio's recovery from her 52-foot plunge. But the band's reign was woefully short-lived. When the Bozzios' marriage dissolved in 1986, so did Missing Persons. Now Terry tours with the Zappa on Zappa tribute show, while Dale periodically revamps Missing Persons with a shifting lineup of longtime friends.

Does she miss the fleeting fame she enjoyed more than 20 years ago? Or hope to recapture it?

"I firmly believe that if you dwell on yesterday and tomorrow, you can't live in today," Bozzio said. "You need to find strength to handle life as it happens. I've learned not to expect anything, and that way I'm never disappointed."