Peter Missing (Missing Foundation)

"They want me to be some monster from a horror movie, but I'm not. I'm actually the complete opposite: I love working in my garden. I love plants."

If you lived in Lower Manhattan in the late 1980s, there’s a decent chance you would have at least peripherally encountered the groundbreaking industrial band Missing Foundation. Not because you’d necessarily heard of them or their music, though you might have stumbled across one of the many concerts they staged in empty lots and public parks around the East Village and Lower East Side. It was more likely that you’d seen their widely-graffitied logo, an upside down martini glass meant to signify that, given the city’s increasing gentrification, the country’s rightward shift, and widespread environmental destruction, “the party’s over.” Perhaps you’d seen one of their posters forebodingly declaring “We will not act civilized in this fuckin’ city.” You might have heard that they nearly burned CBGB to the ground by lighting a drum kit on fire. Maybe you’d even watched “Cult of Rage,” a three-part special report on CBS News, in which reporter Mike Taibbi (Matt’s dad) not only blamed Missing Foundation for inciting the 1988 Tompkins Square Park riot, but confidently declared that the band was in fact a Satanic cult.

I had hoped to interview the band’s leader, Peter Missing (née Colangelo), for my book, but multiple attempts to contact him in 2020 and 2021 went unanswered. That was disappointing, but not terribly surprising: Missing typically declines interviews, especially if the focus is on his band’s now-distant past. It’s a reasonable position for him to take, given the myriad ways that journalists did him dirty during Missing Foundation’s heyday (“Cult of Rage” is merely the tip of the iceberg).

And then a couple weeks ago, years after I’d abandoned all hope of talking to him, I was stunned to find Missing commenting on my recent interview with his former bandmate R.B. Korbet, which he’d enjoyed. “I’d love to interview you some time as well,” I replied, fully assuming that I would never hear from him again.

But a few days later, Missing reached out to me in the one place where, given his well-documented opposition to corporatization and surveillance, I hadn’t thought to look for him: Facebook. Despite his general aversion to interviews, there were some long-standing misconceptions that he wanted to publicly address, and having read some of the other interviews on here, he trusted me to do it right. Holy shit.

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I had no idea what to expect, given Missing’s reputation for controversy and confrontation. But when I finally spoke to him, I found that, like so many would-be boogeymen, that reputation bore little relation to the real Peter Missing: a thoughtful, soft-spoken guy who is very passionate about making good records (which he continues to do, with two forthcoming LPs currently in the can).

I could see why he finally wanted to do an interview: Missing Foundation’s story continues to spread like a game of telephone, becoming more insane and foreboding with each iteration. While Taibbi’s attempt to peg them as Satanists ultimately failed, his crude portrayal of the band as malignant thugs has largely become canonical, even among fans who should know better.

So here it is: The only long-form, retrospective interview with Peter Missing that’s currently available online. It is my great honor to have conducted it, and I hope it finally does his story some justice.

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What was your introduction to underground music in the city?

Well, I was born and raised in the Bronx, but then in ‘78, I moved from New York to Los Angeles, and I was working for Amtrak downtown. I was a little bit shy at that point in my life and was not in any band. But I was hanging out with the Germs and the Screamers, [so] I left Amtrak and started to go into punk rock music. It was interesting, the LA scene, because I knew the New York scene with Patti Smith, Television, Talking Heads. [The LA] scene was a little bit more aggressive and a lot more experimental. Maybe there were more drugs involved, I’m not sure. 

Then in 1979, I did my first concert: I opened for NON (Boyd Rice). NON was also an influence, because he did a big loud noise for 20 minutes and then walked off the stage. He was drilling holes into vinyl records - I was drilling holes with him in his driveway - and then [he would] play them and the record would move in different directions depending on where the hole was. 

In 1980, I moved back to Hoboken. I stayed there for a year or two and got married, and then my daughter was born in 1983. [At that point], I was in Drunk Driving, which [a band] I started with Bob Bert. [Bob] was a painter and I talked him into playing drums. Then he decided to go [join] Sonic Youth, which was another band that I liked. I was going to see Sonic Youth and Swans at that time; I like both of those bands. Pussy Galore were also interesting; we [Missing Foundation] had the same rehearsal space in CHARAS. 

After Bob left for Sonic Youth, I was in the Holiday bar on St. Mark’s, and I saw a guy tapping on the bar with his fingers. I said, “Hey, you probably would be a good drummer.” He said, “No, I'm not a drummer.” I said, “Well, we need a drummer, so if we got you a drum set, would you play?” He decided to do that, and the rest is history. It was Chris Egan; he continued in Drunk Driving and is also the drummer all the way up till the end of Missing Foundation. He's on every album. 

I created the [“party’s over”] logo in 1981 because I saw the peace logo in the ‘60s, and I decided to make a logo to fit the times. That's what that was about: The party's over for the human race due to the destruction of the environment. It had three rays coming out of it, and then I decided, hmm, that looks like the dog from Keith Haring - he had the three rays coming out of the dog's mouth. So that's why the line is crossed out at the bottom. And at the bottom of the logo, that created a 777, which is the symbol for the Creator. And then the upside down drinking glass creates a pyramid, and the [shape] at the top is “man” in Chinese.

The Drunk Driving cassette was released in ‘83. After [that], I moved my whole family, my wife and my daughter, to Hamburg, because Florian [Langmaack], who played saxophone in Drunk Driving and who is still working with me, he [had been] living in the Lower East Side for one year [but then moved back to Germany].

In Hamburg, I met KMFDM [members] Sascha [Konietzko] and En Esch, and the guitar player from the Abwarts, and with [them and] Florian, we started Missing Foundation in Hamburg. But six months later, [Florian] wanted to go in a different direction, so we both walked away from an album that we had recorded with Mark Chung from Einstürzende Neubauten. I was hanging out with Mark and Sascha at that time, and they were my influences, because I loved industrial music.

So when did you move back to New York?

After a year in Hamburg, we stayed another year in Europe. We were in Greece, and we were living in Crete. And then we moved back to the Lower East Side, and I got an apartment on 1st and 1st with my wife and my daughter. I contacted Chris Egan again, and then we found Adam Nodelman, Mark Ashwill, and Vincent [VKP] - that was the main [band]; they're the ones that are on the contract. 

Missing Foundation is a very loose thing. There was no bandleader. I was not a band leader. Everybody played whatever they wanted; I didn't tell them what to play. We were willing to jam with everybody. And then all these people we jammed with, they say they [were in] Missing Foundation. Maybe they banged on metal at one of our gigs, I have no clue. I only know that I've been making music for 40 years, and if they were in the band for one night, then I don't know who they are. 

And no, we were not hated. We had our own set of friends. I think Rebecca [Korbet]¹ traveled in different scenes. I had a lot of friends - I had too many friends! I had people sleeping outside my door waiting for me to come into my house. I threw a party in 1987 for example, on Rockets Redglare’s rooftop, and 300 of my friends showed up. We burned the logo for the Harmonic Convergence to bring us into the new age; we burned it in a parking lot and everybody was watching it from the roof.

[But] in Missing Foundation, I was the only one who was married with a daughter. I had an apartment and a full time job. I didn't have time to really hang out on the scene.

What was your job?

The job was graphics. I was working on [things] like Lou Reed's album cover, Mistrial. I was doing graphics for different bands. All of the Missing Foundation album covers, I made at my job by hand, because I was working in this graphic arts field. In my spare time, I used their business to make my albums. 

At the beginning, we didn't have any money to buy any equipment, so we start[ed] banging on metal and garbage and whatever we could find, like a percussion [instrument]. We started adding that into all of our shows, so we always had a metal player.

The video of us in 1985 [below], when we played in these parking lots, that's the beginning of Missing Foundation. That really was what we were doing. And you’ll notice there's no audience, [except] maybe some people looking out the window.

Were these performances in vacant lots being promoted as gigs, or were they just kind of spontaneous?

We would spray paint on the sidewalks and put up posters: “We're playing on Avenue C and 9th Street.” And then we would burn some sculptures and do a performance with some drums and metal, playing in these lots. We would show up at the park and start playing on one end of the park, and of course we would get arrested right away, [while a] jazz band kept playing on the other side of the park and nobody bothered them.

If I made rock ‘n’ roll music, maybe they would have left me alone. But because we tried to make anything other than rock ‘n’ roll, people freaked out. They thought it was garbage. “Get this out of here! Shut it down! Pull the plug! Get rid of them!” It was endless. We didn't get treated well in New York.

In 1987, we signed a deal with Purge, a record company [run out] out of an apartment on 9th Street. Then Purge [released] 1933 Your House is Mine, and we started doing concerts [in venues]. Not all of our concerts were disruptive, by the way! We did some great concerts with John Zorn at the Knitting Factory, for example.

In 1988, we played CBGB’s, and that's where the first gig had some problems. What they don't talk about is that the audience, as soon as we started playing, they started disrupting the show. We had this problem with Hilly [when he] only paid us $1 for [our] first show. That was kind of an insult. They took all the money from the door, [which] made the band angry. But also it was just this audience that was inciting and taunting the band to the point where, even before the show, before we even got on stage, we were taunted. 

[By] 1990, I had already stopped playing Downtown, because every time we’d play it was disrupted, or they pulled the plug, so it wasn't even worth it. When we got to Europe in 1989, the whole picture changed. All of a sudden, we were respected and nobody pulled the plug, and we got to play for two hours in each city. And we played 75 cities in East Bloc and West Block Europe, over three tours, and we had very little trouble. Nothing like what we were dealing with in New York. 

Why do you think your New York audiences were so disruptive?

A lot of these people who came thought we were a hardcore band, but we make very [slow music]. They started to realize that the music was going too slow and they couldn't slam dance to it, so they got frustrated and angry. That's why they started throwing bottles and chairs and whatever else and just disrupting the whole thing.

There's a lot of things I would like to clear up about Missing Foundation: We’re not Nazis, we're not Satanists. We're performance artists, we're musicians, and we're activists. Our goal was to make well-produced vinyl records. We were in the wrong neighborhood at the wrong time, because we were one of the only bands [there] that made industrial music. There wasn't even a bin for [industrial music in record stores]. When I put out my first industrial album, they put it in the “New Age” section in Tower Records, which was comical. And then the ‘33 album got misrepresented by a bunch of skinheads, thinking that we were the Nazis from 1933. But actually, I was making references about how fascism was coming back into America. 

Don't forget, we had the police disrupting [shows], because the neighbors were complaining that the banging on the metal was too much outside. Our outdoor shows didn't last long. I was arrested a number of times: After like, 57 seconds, the police would pull up and grab me and smash my megaphone. Many times I was grabbed off the street or I was ticketed for noise pollution, for disrupting the peace, and for loud music late at night after 10:00. It was an endless thing. 

The funniest thing is when I was [living] on 4th Street, Madonna was my next door neighbor. She banged on my door and said, “Hey, can you stop this construction site late at night?” And I said, “That's not a construction site. That's my band.” Her face was just like, really?

A lot of our stuff was not “eat the rich” - this idea that we're just “eat the rich” lyrics is bullshit. My lyrics are more about global issues and a lot about gentrification and housing, because I was a housing activist. I used to feed the homeless in Tompkins Park, and I’d bring homeless people off the streets and put them in empty buildings.

Was the neighborhood already gentrifying?

Through the ‘70s, it was like a desert, totally depressed. The Lower East Side had really collapsed. And then in the ‘80s, there were so many broken and burned out buildings. We were running in and out of these things, kicking junkies out and making housing. I also had my own squatted house on 6th Street between C and D - that's how I was able to make music and go on tour in Europe, because I wasn't paying rent or electric [bills]. We painted the building black, and then some crazy guy cut all our trees down around our building, because he didn't like trees. 

And speaking of trees, [the song] “Burn Trees,” some people think it's about gentrification and putting a fancy tree in front of your house. That's maybe one view. Really, it was our inside joke: “burning trees” [meant] smoking a joint. That's what that's about, but everybody took it a different way. Most of my stuff has two or three meanings. “Your house is mine” could have three different meanings. I purposely did that. 

Then in 1990, I signed a record deal with Restless and put out five albums on CD and cassette. People said, “Oh, it's a sellout [move] to go on Restless.” That’s something that Jello Biafra said to me when I was backstage with him, but I don't agree with that. It’s the same label as the Cramps and the Sex Pistols! I didn't see it as a sellout, because anybody that wants to spread my music and my message, I'm down with it.

I was moving the band away from New York, because they just wouldn't give us a break. And after the “Cult of Rage,” we were kind of finished. The FBI didn't go away from outside my door. 

Let's backtrack a bit, because I want to ask you about “Cult of Rage” and the events that led to it.

“Cult of Rage” was ‘88, so that was around the time of the riot. The band was inside the park when the riots started. They were playing under a tree, banging on drums. And then [the police] came in and told us to stop playing. We didn't, we kept playing, and that's when the trouble started. They attacked Mark Ashwill, my drummer. He turned around and hit them in the face with a metal bar, and I don't know if it was accidental or what, but he ran and they caught him. He was arrested right away, as the riot was starting. 

We didn't start the riot, the riot started by itself. There were people already angry about the closing of the park before I got to the park. It was a protest against the closing of the park at 10:00 instead of [being open] 24 hours, which we thought was worth fighting for. What happened is, as we were being thrown out of the park, that sparked all the neighbors. They all came out of their houses and started rioting, because the police were beating up people.

When Mark hit the cop, they called in backup, and that's when 400 cops showed up. That made the people even more angry, [and] one thing led to the other. I got chased down the block, and I was attacked by a riot police officer. He was choking me with his stick against the wall of some bar down the block and saying, “You'll never learn!”

But to me, these things that the reporters focus on, like the trouble at CB’s or the riot, is not [the totality of] the 40 years of what I've been doing. They only center in on those few bad incidents, and that's all they're interested in. Anything good that we do, they're not interested. They want me to be some monster from a horror movie, but I'm not. I'm actually the complete opposite: I love working in my garden. I love plants. I actually recorded plants on my new album with Mathias Habicht, River of Creative Forms, and took the sound from the plants and put it on the albums.

[“Cult of Rage”] blindsided the band. We didn't expect this. We’d allowed this guy to take film, and this is maybe where we made a mistake, because we ignored him. You’ll notice I don't talk in the “Cult of Rage,” they do all the talking. They had me there talking, but then they blocked out what I said. The angle was to make us look like we're the reason why there's a riot. But I never got charged with anything.

The whole angle of you guys being Satanists was so absurd.

That's what they did to people back in the ‘70s and ‘80s. If they didn't like you, or they didn't like your music, or you went against the government, you're going to have that tag.

One thing that blew my mind was when we played the Marquee uptown, a kid was wearing a police badge around his neck outside the club. I asked him, “Where did you get that?” He goes, “Oh, I found it on the floor.” [A] guy was macing people in the crowd, and if you started to slam dance, two guys would grab you and throw you out - these were cops, go figure. The New York Police Department [was] inside the audience.

So that's what Missing Foundation was dealing with. We were infiltrated by the police and by the FBI. And the developers hated us and neighbors hated us because we didn't pay rent. We were up against the wall. 

When you say you were infiltrated, how did that play out? 

Undercover cops that give you free drugs, they tried to get the band hooked on heroin and whatever else. And then they also caused trouble, like they'd flatten our bike tires, or I caught one cop putting glue in my locks. The cops would put drugs on us and then bust us, because they hated us. We had to be careful and always look over our shoulder. 

So I went back to Europe in ‘93, because you get tired of the whole thing. The Lower East Side, after 10 years, I’d had more than enough of my share of it. And also I didn't like the music scene, I was much more interested in what they were doing in Europe. 

When I came back to New York in 2000, nobody was around, the whole band was gone. There were no more members inside the city, and four of my members had died. Mark Ashwill died two weeks after I arrived, and that was kind of a shock. And then Adam Nodelman died in 2008. And so once you lose those people…I missed them greatly. I had to basically start over.

A point I would like to make to a lot of my fans is that after four of my musicians died, of course you're going to drop off the scene. When you lose your your best bass player and your best drummer…I had to move on and make new lineups. That was not so easy, because you can never replace these people. So of course our sound changed. 

How long did you stay in New York after you came back?

I stayed one year, and then I went to stay with my daughter in Wisconsin. Then I came back in 2003 and ‘04 and made more recordings with Cyril [Mazard], and then I went back to Wisconsin. I was going back and forth. 

Were you performing around the city again? Or was it just recording?

We were doing art shows - I was showing my silk screens, and Cyril’s a painter, he was showing his work. And then we were doing outside pop-up shows on the street. It wasn’t until 2016 that I reformed the band and started doing concerts. We played at Trans Pecos, we played Goodbye Blue Monday. In 2016, we played La Plaza with Lydia Lunch, Liquid Liquid, and James Chance; about 200 or 300 people showed up there, and we put out a live album [from that gig].

You talked earlier about New York being this unfriendly environment, but were there any venues in the city where you did feel welcome?

Well…I would say Uptown at the Gas Factory. The Marquee was interesting. The gigs that we did at the Kitchen were very interesting. There were some other small clubs on the Lower East Side that we played…It's too many years ago.

But one thing is for sure: We were having a lot of fun. I had a great music career, and I don't have any regrets about what we did. The fire that was on stage that they keep complaining about, that was part of our set and part of our aesthetic. When Mark Ashwill lit his drum set on fire, that's the image that he wanted. That’s the image that's going to last through the ages: the burning drum set. That's fun, and to me, the final image is spectacular.

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We were striving to make a new image; we didn't want to copy anybody. The one [musician] that I would copy, of course, is Lou Reed, because I love Lou Reed. I hung out with Lou Reed; we would see each other on the street and we would hang out. He would drink and I would have my tea, because I haven't drank alcohol in 35 years. 

And I used to go to the Beastie Boys’ parties on the rooftop with Run-DMC back in the ‘80s. Almost every week, the Beastie Boys and Run-DMC had parties on a rooftop on the Lower East Side. And they bought my [albums], but then [one of the guys from] Run-DMC said, “Whoo, I just bought your new album. Did you take some kind of Angel Dust when you made that record?” He had to crack a really bad joke. I said, “No, we didn't take any Angel Dust. It is what it is.”

And then Adam [Yauch], we used to go in with Polaroid cameras and take pictures in the Horseshoe Bar over on 6th and B. [The Beastie Boys] were all funny characters. I knew them when they were [a] hardcore band, with “Cookie Puss” and all that. It was a lot of fun hanging out with Adam. I wish he was still around.

We've covered most of what I was hoping to cover, but are there any other misconceptions that you want to clear up?

Only that I'm not GG Allin, let's put it that way. I would say I'm the opposite of GG Allin. I like ambient electronic music, and I like playing with other genres. I don't like being put into a mold, which is a lot [of what people want in] New York: You must play the same music your whole life, otherwise you're an asshole, you're fucked up, your fans hate you. I want to be able to experiment with other genres. And I hope that people will listen; my main hope is that I inspire some people to listen to my music. That’s all I can hope for. And if one person's inspired, I think I've accomplished my mission. 

And don’t forget to put in there: “All different, all equal.” That’s an important statement.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity, brevity, and context.

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You can find Missing Foundation’s records on Bandcamp here and here, and check out some of Peter’s other musical projects here and here.

Follow Peter on Instagram here.

Buy a signed copy of my book This Must Be The Place: Music, Community, and Vanished Spaces in New York City here.

1. In our interview, Korbet described Missing Foundation as “pariahs” during her tenure, and said that “Missing Foundation was an island and didn’t have any friends.”