Ric Ocasek
We’ve lost Ric Ocasek of The Cars, and the news of his passing has sent my mind back in time. Visions from my trip down this memory lane are plentiful. I have a lot of good memories attached to their music and of when and where and who I was with at that time I was hearing their songs. The Cars, creatively lead by Ocasek, came on the scene during the “New Wave” era. Yet, The Cars didn’t seem to belong to that new genre at all. They were very much a part in the pop rock lineage that began with The Beatles, The Monkees, The Bay City Rollers, and anyone else who just wanted to craft a nice pop ditty to grab the ears and motivate the imagination.
I still remember the excitement over their debut album in 1978. Boston’s radio stations WBCN, WCOZ, and WAAF couldn’t get back to another cut soon enough. It was like an endless burst of creativity coming from Ric O Casek, Ben Orr, Easton Elliot, Greg Hawkes, and David Robinson. The Cars dominated the national FM rock stations that year.
The Cars’ mysterious and quirky pop rock sound seemed to be embodied by its peculiarly relaxed but pensive co-front man Rick Ocasek. His tall, wiry physique, often clad in black leather, and his raven dark hair may have made many feel he could channel in his songs from another dimension of sight and sound. The Cars, actually, seemed to always be on a wavelength of their own, each member an antennae picking up the sound signals of their late 1970s’ world and playing them back to us:
Life’s the same/I’m moving in stereo
Life’s the same/Except for my shoes
Life’s the same/You’re shakin’ like tremolo
Life’s the same/It’s all inside you
Aside from the other worldly “Moving In Stereo,” there were the love songs that all of us young men could relate to, especially those of us who were still young when The Cars debuted:
It’s an orangy sky
Always it’s some other guy
It’s just a broken lullaby
Bye/Bye love
Who could forget the unique and highly infectious pop music on their sophomore album, Candy O? Those confections of sweet, catchy synth, rhythmic patter, and tastefully pretty lead guitar phrasing. Those tunes remain indelibly etched inside the minds of fans as much as the leotard clad beauty sketched onto a car hood on the album cover. The hand clap, bouncy synth on “Let’s Go” and the factory like precision of the title track “Candy O” keyboards will never be forgotten by anyone who was around in those days.
Most of us here in New England will always wave a flag to their local Boston music scene ties. We practically jump and down and holler “Hey, their from here.” But, we, to some extent, cannot really claim them as our own. They were itching to bolt from their formation. They started out in our local bars but it was soon clear they were not an ordinary local band. The Cars, lead by Ocasek, were swept onto the national scene with a rushing inevitably.
I never saw the band live, but I remember seeing them perform on television. Their bright, colorful videos, splashing with personalized imagery, were as oddly infections as their singular songs, making them a favorite of the MTV generation. Any live footage of The Cars always showed a supernaturally cool Ric Ocasek up front, serious, deadpan, and very much dedicated to getting the song done correctly. If Ocasek didn’t become a rock star he might have become a movie star, someone who always played a role of mystery, someone of unknown origins, and of unknown motivations.
Ocasek, remembered as much for his image as his music, will forever be revered as one of the mechanics who kept The Cars out there on the cutting edgy of pop rock ingenuity. Some of us, myself included, will feel as if a part of our youth has just moved in stereo to some place from which we can never get it back. RIP Ric Ocasek.
