Dale Bozzio

Dale Bozzio emerged as one of new wave's most eye-catching frontwomen through her role leading Missing Persons. Her striking model proportions, rainbow-tinted tresses, and provocative stage attire helped drive the group's early-1980s breakthrough. Born March 2, 1955, she spent the 1970s in front of the camera, most memorably in a nude pictorial for Hustler Magazine, before meeting Frank Zappa. Zappa soon recruited her for backing vocals on the sprawling rock opera Joe's Garage: Acts 1-3. During those sessions she joined guitarist Warren Cuccurullo and drummer Terry Bozzio—whom she later married—to launch a new project. Missing Persons coalesced at the start of the decade, channeling the futuristic synth-driven aesthetic shared by Devo and Gary Numan. The band's image-heavy presentation proved ideal for MTV, yielding an immediate commercial payoff via the gold-certified debut Spring Session M and its signature videos "Words" and "Destination Unknown." Follow-up efforts Rhyme & Reason in 1984 and Color in Your Life in 1986 failed to match that momentum, precipitating the band's dissolution and Dale's divorce from Terry. Around the same period she contributed vocals to Zappa's satirical opus Thing-Fish. Prince subsequently signed her to Paisley Park Records, issuing the solo album Riot in English in 1988; like Missing Persons' later releases, it underperformed and prompted her to step away from solo work. She resurfaced in November 1991 as a guest at the Frank Zappa tribute concert held at New York's Ritz, later appearing on the live document Zappa's Universe. By the late 1990s she was back on the road fronting a reconstituted Missing Persons lineup containing none of the other originals, and she was profiled on VH1's Where Are They Now? In 2001 the classic members reconciled long enough to play a string of American reunion dates, by which time Dale's vocal mannerisms had clearly shaped several contemporary rock singers, among them No Doubt's Gwen Stefani.