Warren Cuccurullo

Warren Cuccurullo - Thanks To Frank - 1996 - Imago (aka w@r.ren.CUCc.u.ruLLO* ‎– th@n.ks 2:/Fr@n.k)

Guitarist Warren Cuccurullo began his career with Frank Zappa, so it should come as no surprise that when he made his return to experimental music after years of pop craftmenship with Duran Duran and Missing Persons, he would do so under the guise of Thanks to Frank, a tribute to the late composer. Working with bassist Pino Palladino and drummer Vinnie Colaiuta, Cuccurullo sounds creatively reborn. Drawing from a variety of different world musics, the guitarist fashions complex and challenging soundscapes that prove he learned a lot from Zappa. It's not a consistent record, but the best moments on Thanks to Frank showcase a guitarist overcome with the joy of finding his own voice. © Stephen Thomas Erlewine © 2014 AllMusic, a division of All Media Network, LLC. | All Rights Reserved http://www.allmusic.com/album/thanks-to-frank-mw0000185406

"Thanks 2 Frank" is an all-original Warren Cuccurullo rock guitar masterpiece. The album is named, of course, due to Warren's great respect and admiration for Frank Zappa. He has often said in interviews that if not for Frank, he would not have his career...that he owes it all to him. Hence, "Thanks 2 Frank". However, there are no Frank Zappa songs on the album...these are all Warren's. He recorded the album live, with no overdubs, in two days (August 20 and 28, 1994) in Metropolis Studios, London, except for the title track, which was recorded July 7, 1994 at 2:30 AM, at his first solo show, at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park, NJ. He also handled all production duties. Written during the 10 day period before his Stone Pony solo show (except for "Galactic Ballerina," which was written later), these songs are a mix of precision and passion. © 1996-2013 Guitar Nine All Rights Reserved http://www.guitar9.com/thanks2frank.html

“Thanks To Frank” was recorded and mixed by Warren Cuccurullo founder member of American act ‘Missing Persons’, and former member of Duran Duran and Frank Zappa, in less than ten days. In fact, Warren states on his website (www.warrencuccurullo.com) tha “I knew it was do-able, and we got it done. It was beyond magic. The album was completely recorded in two days and mixed in three.” If you haven’t heard of Warren Cuccurullo, it is not surprising as he spent years playing with Duran Duran and also the late Frank Zappa whose powerful and charismatic personality, not to mention musical genius overshadowed many great musicians. This album is full of brilliantly composed material and great guitar work from a much neglected musician. The album has been called “a rock guitar masterpiece”. It is not a guitar shred album or full of mind numbing guitar solos, but Warren’s guitar playing is unique and very original, and the album is enthralling. Other musicians on the album include bassists Pino Palladino and Nick Beggs and the incomparable ex-Zappa drummer Vinnie Colaiuta. The album is HR by A.O.O.F.C. Check out Warren’s “Road Rage” album on this blog and listen to his “The Blue” album. Read more @ http://www.warrencuccurullo.com/archives/fanzine/iss11.html#thanks [All tracks @ 320 Kbps: File size = 149 Mb]

TRACKS

1 The Canarsie Daiquiri 5:25
2 Orgasmatron 4:51
3 Ass Man 5:12
4 Jam Man Jam 2:42
5 Hey Zawinul 6:28
6 The Galactic Ballerina 3:06
7 Low Speed Chase 7:42
8 Indian Time Zones 7:02
9 Tardinha 4:44
10 The Spider 7:34
11 Thanks To Frank 8:38 *

* Recorded live at the Stone Pony, Asbury Park, NJ on July 7th 1994

All tracks composed by Warren Cuccurullo

MUSICIANS

Warren Cuccurullo - Guitar
Nick Beggs - Bass on Tracks 1, 3, 4, 7, 11: Chapman Stick on Track 10
Pino Palladino - Bass on Tracks 2, 5, 6, 8, 9
Vinnie Colaiuta Drums on Tracks 1-10
Jerry Cuccurullo - Drums on Track 11
Talvin Singh - Tabla on Track 5

BIO

Guitarists such as Steve Vai and Joe Satriani received the lion's share of attention during the late '80s/early '90s, due to their otherworldly instrumental chops. But several other guitarists were just as talented, yet failed to receive as much recognition, especially Warren Cuccurullo. Born on December 8, 1956 and raised in Brooklyn, NY, Cuccurullo started playing drums at an early age before moving over to guitar in time to jam with friends. By the early '70s, Cuccurullo had become a die-hard Frank Zappa fan, and for much of the decade, would travel far and wide to catch Zappa in concert. It wasn't long before Cuccurullo became friends with members of Zappa's backing band, and eventually, Zappa himself. He appeared during a backstage segment for Zappa's concert movie Baby Snakes, and in December of 1978, got the phone call he'd been waiting for, when he was invited to try out to for a vacant guitar slot in the band. Cuccurullo got the gig, appearing on several Zappa tours and such albums as Joe's Garage: Acts 1-3, Shut Up & Play Yer Guitar, Tinseltown Rebellion, and volumes one, four, and six of the You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore series. Shortly after the dawn of the '80s, Cuccurullo quit Zappa's band to form the new wave outfit Missing Persons, along with the husband-wife team of Terry Bozzio (drums) and Dale Bozzio (vocals). The band enjoyed success early on with such hit singles as "Words" and "Destination Unknown," as well as a gold-certified debut album, 1982's Spring Session M. But after two further albums that failed commercially, 1984's Rhyme and Reason, and 1986's Color in Your Life, Missing Persons broke up. Cuccurullo got word from an insider that one of the world's most popular pop groups, Duran Duran, was about to lose founding guitarist Andy Taylor, and he inquired about joining. Cuccurullo was soon invited onboard, and appeared on such subsequent albums as 1986's Notorious, 1988's Big Thing, 1990's Liberty, 1993's self-titled release, 1995's Thank You, 1997's Medazzaland, and 2000's Pop Trash. During the same time, Cuccurullo began issuing solo albums on his own, including 1995's Thanks to Frank, 1997's Machine Language (an album he'd been working on since the '80s), 1998's Roadrage, and 2000's The Blue. The '90s also saw Cuccurullo either collaborate or record with Blondie, Meat Loaf, and Michael Jackson, but in all three cases, the material was ultimately shelved. Cuccurullo eventually left Duran Duran (when it was announced that its original lineup was reuniting), but kept himself busy with running his own extensive website, opening up an Italian restaurant in Santa Monica (Via Veneto), and issuing his own adult toy, the "Rock Rod." The guitarist also took part in several Missing Persons reunion shows during 2001, while his next solo release, Trance Formed, is scheduled to be released sometime in late 2002. © Greg Prato © 2014 AllMusic, a division of All Media Network, LLC. | All Rights Reserved http://www.allmusic.com/artist/warren-cuccurullo-mn0000814957/biography

BIO (WIKI)

Warren Bruce Cuccurullo (born December 8, 1956 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American rock musician who worked with Frank Zappa, was a founding member of Missing Persons, and has been a long term member of Duran Duran. Warren Cuccurullo is the son of Jerry and Ellen Cuccurullo, the oldest child of four. He has two brothers, Jerry and Robert and a sister, Stephanie. His Italian American heritage has its roots in Nocera Inferiore in Campania, Italy, and he also has some Greek ancestry. He grew up in the Canarsie neighborhood of Brooklyn, and began playing drums and guitar as a young child. He graduated from Canarsie High School in 1974. Cuccurullo has one adopted child, Mayko Cuccurullo (born 1983) who lives in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, who is actually the son of Claudia Bueno (Warren's former longtime girlfriend). Mayko is featured in the Duran Duran video Breath After Breath, filmed in Argentina in 1993 and contributed some minor vocal work on the N'Liten Up project. Cuccurullo returned to the United States in 2001 and lives in Venice, California. His current focus is on musical projects having to do with film scores. In his teen years, Cuccurullo became a devoted fan of Frank Zappa and began traveling to every show within 500 miles of his Brooklyn home. During the mid-1970s, he befriended several members of Zappa's band, including Terry Bozzio and Patrick O'Hearn. Over the next three years, he appeared with the band on stage at a couple of shows as well as in the 1979 Zappa film Baby Snakes (filmed October, 1977). He impressed Frank Zappa by knowing the guitar parts to every Zappa song in the catalog, including the strangest sounds and most bizarre time signatures. In December 1978, at the age of 22, Cuccurullo was invited to audition as a guitarist for Zappa's new road band, in which many members were replaced (including Bozzio and O'Hearn). Several shows on the early 1979 "Human Jukebox" European/Asian tour were recorded for Zappa's live albums. After the tour, Cuccurullo returned to the studio with Zappa to work on the Joe's Garage albums, for which he provided rhythm guitar and several vocal parts. Terry Bozzio's wife Dale Bozzio, also contributed vocal parts to the album. Cuccurullo and Dale Bozzio began writing songs together, and eventually they convinced Terry Bozzio that the three of them should launch their own band. Zappa asked Cuccurullo to play on his 1988 tour, but the latter's involvement with Duran Duran had begun by then and so he declined. Cuccurullo is name-checked four times on Zappa's Joe's Garage, first by (Dale Bozzio's character) Mary in "Catholic Girls", by Zappa (in character here as Larry) in "Crew Slut", when reassuring Mary, "of course I'll introduce you to Warren!", in the track "Sy Borg" when Ike Willis sings "little leather cap and trousers -- they look so gay... Warren just bought some," and once again by Zappa during "Little Green Rosetta" 'Then everybody moves to New York and goes to a party with Warren. hey!' In 1980, Cuccurullo and the two Bozzios formed Missing Persons, added Patrick O'Hearn and Chuck Wild, recorded a 4-song EP called Missing Persons, toured, promoted the EP, and appeared in the movie Lunch Wagon. Two years of hard work led up to a signing with Capitol Records in 1982, the release of the album Spring Session M, and the subsequent success of Missing Persons on radio and MTV. The singles "Mental Hopscotch", "Destination Unknown," "Walking in L.A.," "Words," and "Windows" all met with success. They appeared at the three-day Southern California concert, the US Festival in May 1983. In 1984, Cuccurullo invented a new type of guitar he called the "Missing Link", and used it on the experimental album Rhyme and Reason (1984). The band followed up with the more conventional Color In Your Life in June 1986, but during the short-lived promotional tour, increasing tensions between then-husband and wife, Terry and Dale Bozzio, led to the end of the tour and the band. On his own again, Cuccurullo began recording some music in his bedroom that was eventually released on his solo album Machine Language. Missing Persons shared their label Capitol Records with British band Duran Duran. As Missing Persons fell apart, Bozzio and O'Hearn were approached by Duran guitarist Andy Taylor in Los Angeles for work on a solo album. In this way, Cuccurullo learned that Taylor did not intend to rejoin Duran in England to work on their next album, even before the rest of Duran Duran knew. Cuccurullo sent a tape and a request for an audition, but was turned down, with some puzzlement. As it became clear that neither enticements nor lawsuits would get Taylor back in the studio, Duran Duran hired Cuccurullo as a session guitarist to complete the album Notorious. He went on to tour with the band, and returned to contribute his increasingly experimental guitar work to the album Big Thing. At the end of the grueling ten-month Big Thing world tour (in June 1989), Cuccurullo was made an official member of the band, and moved to London. Shifting record label politics and the unsuccessful album Liberty almost derailed the band, but after Cuccurullo offered them the use of his home studio (named "Privacy") in Battersea, Duran Duran was able to shift to a more comfortable and controlled music-making style. Cuccurullo's songwriting, guitar skills and driving personality contributed to the band's return to fame with 1993's Wedding Album. He was the primary composer of the hit singles "Ordinary World" and "Come Undone", although the lyrics were written by Simon Le Bon. He created new arrangements for many of the band's old hits for the acoustic-flavored tour that followed, as well as arranging full acoustic pieces for the piano and six-piece string section that performed with them on the MTV Unplugged show. After Frank Zappa's death in December 1993, Cuccurullo performed the instrumental guitar piece "Watermelon in Easter Hay" (from the Joe's Garage album) in his honor at several Duran Duran shows. Tentative plans for a Missing Persons reunion in 1994 were shelved over remaining tensions between former band members. Cuccurullo and keyboardist Nick Rhodes continued to hold Duran Duran together during the band's lean times in the 1990s. The covers album Thank You (1995) was an attempt to keep the peace among band members who had increasing trouble writing music together. Medazzaland (1997) and Pop Trash (2000)—written after the departure of bassist John Taylor and Duran Duran's separation from Capitol Records—featured mostly new Cuccurullo/Rhodes songs and reworked TV Mania material, but failed to dent the charts even though the band sold out multiple nights in most cities on the 2000/2001 tour. In early 2001, Cuccurullo was asked to leave the band so that the original members of Duran Duran could reunite. At first the split was amicable, hinging on a financial settlement which granted him compensation from the band's forthcoming reunion album (to which he was not expected to contribute). Two years later relations soured considerably during the reunited band's American tour when he was asked by management not to attend the Las Vegas show after the band had invited him (no reason was given), and he began confirming some of the rumors that had spread about the 2001 split. Cuccurullo claimed that he was fired from Duran Duran by letter because Rhodes and Le Bon feared his reaction, though he told Duran Duran biographer Steve Malins: "I would never get aggressive in a situation like that. There were things that had to be sorted out in a professional manner, so, that's what I did." Cucurrullo remained on good terms with Rhodes however, and in 2013 they released an album containing material from their side project TV Mania. Beginning in the early 1990s, Cuccurullo collaborated with Duran bandmate Nick Rhodes, calling themselves TV Mania, and began writing an experimental rock opera trilogy called Bored With Prozac and the Internet? (initially unreleased save for a few songs on Cuccurullo's website and in the movie Trollywood). Rhodes and Cuccurullo wrote and recorded a song called “Tomorrow Never Dies” with vocalist Tessa Niles for the James Bond film ‘’Tomorrow Never Dies’’. The song wasn't chosen, so Duran Duran re-recorded it for the Pop Trash album with new lyrics under the title "Last Day On Earth". In December 1996, Rhodes and Cuccurullo wrote and produced two songs for a never-completed Blondie project ("Pop Trash Movie" and "Studio 54"); the re-recording of the former gave the Pop Trash album its name. The Duran Duran albums Medazzaland and Pop Trash were made up of reworked TV Mania songs, with Rhodes writing all lyrics to both albums except the song Someone Else, Not Me. The full, 11-track album Bored With Prozac and the Internet? was given an official release on March 11, 2013. During breaks in Duran Duran's 1989-1990 tour schedule, Cuccurullo worked with Tetsuya Komuro, Shenkar and Patrick O'Hearn. In 1994, the preparations for a solo show near his hometown led to a burst of creativity; he recorded and mixed the Thanks 2 Frank album in less than ten days, with bassists Pino Palladino and Nick Beggs and ex-Zappa drummer Vinnie Colaiuta. The album was released on Imago Records in 1996. In 1997 Cuccurullo completed Machine Language, an ambient instrumental guitar album, also released on Imago. He followed up with a live album, Roadrage in 1998 (on Bandai Records). The Blue (recorded with Shenkar in 1992) was self-released in 2000. Another ambient album, Trance Formed, was released on One Way Records in 2003. In 2005, Cuccurullo and Terry Bozzio collaborated on a CD titled Playing in Tongues, which was released in Europe on Edel Records and in the U.S. on Zappa Records in 2009. Cuccurullo still has as-yet-unreleased projects including a concept album titled N'Liten Up, recorded at The Village studios in West Los Angeles by Kent Huffnagle and produced by Simone Sello. Begun prior to Playing in Tongues, N'Liten Up is currently planned for release in Europe prior to its debut in the U.S. Spring Session M was released on CD in 1995, followed by Rhyme and Reason and Color In Your Life in 2000. Each of the three studio CDs were newly augmented by six rare B-sides or live tracks. Classic Remasters is a compilation of remastered tracks and dance mixes issued by Capitol Records with no band involvement. Beginning in 1997, Cuccurullo began work on his "Missing Persons Archival Trilogy" project. The first CD to be released was Late Nights Early Days in 1998, a live concert recorded in 1981 with the added 1980 studio track "Action/Reaction." This was followed up by a compilation of modern remixes of classic MP tracks, Missing Persons Remixed Hits (1999) which included the TV Mania remix of "Destination Unknown." In 2002 Lost Tracks was released, a collection of extremely rare Missing Persons live tracks from five different eras of the band. Meanwhile, in late 2000, Cuccurullo and Dale Bozzio again began discussing a Missing Persons reunion to feature original members Warren, Dale Bozzio and Terry Bozzio, with new keyboardist Ron Poster (of Dale Bozzio's band) and bassist Wes Wehmiller (formerly in Cuccurullo's solo band and Duran Duran's tour bassist from 1997–2001). The short-lived, official reunion consisted of promotional activities and three live performances in July 2001. Late 2002/early 2003 brought us "Missing Persons Featuring Dale Bozzio and Warren Cuccurullo." Filling in were keyboardist Ron Poster, bassist Wes Wehmiller and drummer Joe Travers (formerly in Cuccurullo's solo band and Duran Duran's tour drummer from 1999–2001). This version of Missing Persons was featured on Access Hollywood (performing "Destination Unknown") and did three live performances in February 2003. Following this, Dale Bozzio returned to touring as "Missing Persons" with hired musicians. In 2011 Cuccurullo rejoined Bozzio as part of another short-lived Missing Persons reunion tour. Cuccurullo was raised with a strong Italian-Catholic background and attended a Catholic elementary school in Brooklyn. During most of his adult life, he had a strong disdain for religion of any sort but believed in reincarnation. After a life-threatening illness in 2003, he experienced a spiritual epiphany that he wanted to share with his fans as well as the rest of the world. These new views, which include a somewhat Universalist belief in God's existence inside everything and everyone, are not connected with any organized denomination or religion, for which he still retains a strong antipathy. In mid-2002, Cuccurullo purchased a Santa Monica, California, Italian restaurant called Via Veneto. It has become a Los Angeles-area hotspot and a favorite with celebrities. More recently, he also funded the opening of a restaurant called Hidden and Vietnamese cuisine restaurants with Michael “Bao” Huynh. Re-focusing on his music, Cuccurullo started a new collaborative project with composer Eric Alexandrakis, drummer Steve Ferrone, and producer Anthony J. Resta. Explaining the purpose of that project in a Modern Drummer news release Alexandrakis said, “The four of us decided to create a scoring collective to pursue scoring projects in TV themes, film, and advertising…” Cuccurullo released the debut album from his collaborative effort with vocalist Neil Carlill, Chicanery, on May 11, 2010. Recorded a few years earlier, the album, also titled Chicanery, was released on CD and digital media through dPulse Recordings. Musicians who joined Cuccurullo and Carlill for selected sessions on the Chicanery album included among others, Terry Bozzio, Joe Travers, sarangi virtuoso Ustad Sultan Khan, and producer Simone Sello. Also in 2010, Cuccurullo formed a local free jazz group called Theoretical 5 in Mar Vista, Los Angeles with Frank Zappa alumni Arthur Barrow (bass) and Tommy Mars (keyboards, vocals), and also Larry Klimas (saxophone), and Andy Kravitz (drums, percussion).