Saturday, March 3, 2012

Missing Persons - Surrender Your Heart

Missing Persons were an iconic early 1980s MTV band.  With their visually flamboyant style, including singer Dale Bozzio's pink highlights and fishbowl bras, they seemed tailor-made for the new music video channel.

The background story of the band goes back to 1976, when Bozzio ran into Frank Zappa in LA (after walking out of an interview with Hugh Hefner to be a valentine for the annual Playboy party).  Zappa hired her on the spot, and she performed with him throughout the late 1970s.

In 1980, Dale Bozzio, along with her husband Terry and several other member of Zappa's band ventured out on their own as Missing Persons.  Two years of working the LA club scene led to a record deal, and Spring Session M (an anagram of the band's name) was released in 1982.  It became a huge hit, and videos for "Words" and "Destination Unknown" went into heavy (and we do mean heavy) rotation on MTV.

For their second album, the band decided on a somewhat more experimental sound.  Although many critics think that 1984's Rhyme & Reason was their strongest album, it did not resonate with fans.  1986's Color in Your Life did even worse, perhaps impacted by the deteriorating marriage of the Bozzios (they divorced and the band broke up in 1986).

Dale Bozzio went on to record one album on Prince's Paisley Park Records, and then mostly disappeared from view.  Terry Bozio continued on as a session musician, and worked with Andy Taylor (of Duran Duran fame) on his only solo hit, "Take It Easy."

For the blog, we went with "Surrender Your Heart" from Rhyme and Reason.  The video uses paintings from Peter Max and is one of the more interesting/artistic videos of the era.


Missing Persons' video for "Destination Unknown" was posted on ERV in October 2022, as part of our annual All Hallows Even party.

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