The Music Industry and Fans Around The World Mourn For The Most Significant And Influential Songwriter And Frontman ''Ric Ocasek'' of The Cars, Dies At 75!
By Kim Cyr-Goodyear September 17, 2019
Rock and roll fans around the world are mourning the death of Ric Ocasek. The Cars lead singer, ultimate new wave infused vocal delivery defined a rock era, was discovered dead on Sunday in his Manhattan apartment at age 75.
The New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner determined Ocasek died from hypertensive and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Pulmonary emphysema was also a contributing factor, per Consequences of Sound.
On Monday, Ocasek’s family issued a statement on the Cars’ Instagram, in which they noted that the musician had been recovering from an unspecified surgery at the time of his death. “Our two sons, Jonathan and Oliver, and I was making sure he was comfortable, ordering food and watching TV together,” the statement reads. “I found him still asleep when bringing him his Sunday morning coffee. I touched his cheek to rouse him. It was then I realized that during the night he had peacefully passed on.”
“We appreciate the great outpouring of love,” the family said in a statement on Instagram. “We, his family and friends, are completely and utterly devastated by his untimely and unexpected death and would appreciate the privacy to mourn in private.”
Ric Ocasek’s death on Sept. 15 elicited reactions from all over the music industry. While Ocasek was best known as the frontman for the Cars, he was also a noted producer, A&R executive, and author. Among the artists to pay tribute on social media in the hours after news of Ocasek’s death broke were Weezer, the Killers, and Courtney Love, musicians who saw crossover success in the ’90s and ’00s, a path first traversed by Ocasek and his Cars.
Tributes are pouring in on social media for the late musician:
The NYPD confirmed that Ocasek’s body was discovered after police received a call regarding an unconscious male at his townhouse. Emergency services pronounced him dead at the scene. The cause of death was heart disease, according to the New York City medical examiner’s office.
The Cars, who were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018, were one of the most significant and influential bands of the late ’70s-early ’80s era. With a sound that infused pop, new wave, and classic rock, the Cars had 13 top-40 singles, including “Just What I Needed,” “Best Friend’s Girl,” “Let’s Go,” “Shake It Up,” “You Might Think” and the ballad “Drive.” Their 1978 self-titled first album is among the all-time best debuts of the rock era and was the first experience of anything resembling “new wave” for a huge percentage of America’s youth at the time. The group split in 1988 but reunited decades later for an album in 2011 and an appearance at their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction last year.
Ocasek was truly a wizard making one timeless radio hit after the next with the Cars, and it was true when he gear-shifted into a second career as an in-demand producer in the nineties and onward. There’s no better example of how Ocasek could make a great band even better than the three records he produced for Weezer — first their classic 1994 debut, the Blue Album, then their triumphant 2001 comeback, the Green Album, and finally 2014’s Everything Will Be Alright in the End, an alt-rock thrill ride that stands as a high point in the second half of Weezer’s catalog.
“Ric meant so much to us,” Weezer wrote in a tribute on Instagram. “He produced three key Weezer albums, Blue, Green, and 2014’s Everything Will Be Alright in the End, and taught all of us so much about music, recording, and songcraft. But more importantly, he taught us that one can be in a respected position of great power and yet be absolutely humble and have the biggest sweetest heart in the industry.”
Ocasek produced albums and songs for artists including Bad Brains (their classic Rock for Light), Guided by Voices, No Doubt, Suicide (“Dream Baby Dream”), Bad Religion, Nada Surf, and Romeo Void. He released seven solo albums, and although none had the impact or success of the Cars’ material, his influence is vast. He didn’t see any contradiction between producing those records and cranking out high-tech radio hits. Three of the Cars’ best singles had the distinction of breaking the Top 10 with ''Drive'' at Number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 — “Good Times Roll,” “It’s All I Can Do” and “Since You’re Gone.”Yet somehow that sums up their weird romance with pop. To cite another example, in March of 1994 Nirvana opened their final concert with a medley of The Cars’ “Best Friend’s Girl” and “Moving in Stereo,” the latter of which was featured in the generation-defining 1982 film “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”
The American rock band the Cars includes seven studio albums, eight compilation albums, four video albums, and 26 singles. Originating in Boston in 1976, the band consisted of singer, rhythm guitarist, and songwriter Ric Ocasek, bassist and singer Benjamin Orr, lead guitarist Elliot Easton, keyboardist Greg Hawkes, and drummer David Robinson. After signing with Elektra Records, the band released their self-titled debut album, The Cars in 1978. Backed by the successful singles "Just What I Needed" (number 27), "My Best Friend's Girl" (number 35), and "Good Times Roll" (number 41), the album was a major commercial success, selling one million copies by the end of the year, peaking at number 18 on the Billboard 200 chart in March 1979.[1][2] The album remained on the album chart for 139 weeks. The band's follow-up, Candy-O, was released a year later in 1979 and peaked at number 3 on the Billboard 200. Its singles included their first Top 20 hit "Let's Go" and "It's All I Can Do", which reached number 41.
Their third album, Panorama, was released in 1980. Although it peaked at number 5 on the Billboard 200 and has been certified Platinum, it was less commercially successful than its predecessors.[1] A single, "Touch and Go", peaked at number 37 on the Billboard Hot 100. Their next album, Shake It Up (1981), fared better commercially, going platinum by the end of the year and spawning their first Top 10 single with its title track.[1] 1985's Heartbeat City was the band's most successful, hitting number 3 on the Billboard 200. It's lead single, "You Might Think", reached number 7 in the US, with three more singles: "Magic", "Drive", and "Hello Again" reaching number 12, 3, and 20, respectively on the Billboard Hot 100.[1] Their Greatest Hits album, released later that year, contained the singles "Tonight She Comes" and "I'm Not the One", and has gone 6x platinum.[1] Their final album before their break-up, Door to Door (1987), spawned the single "You Are the Girl" which reached number 17 on the Hot 100; it was their last Top 40 hit as a band.
Ocasek — born Richard Theodore Otcasek — was raised in Baltimore but moved to Cleveland at the age of 16.. He briefly attended college but dropped out to pursue music, and in 1965 met future Cars bassist/singer Benjamin Orr. The two spent many years struggling before they found success, forming a succession of bands in Ohio and Michigan before relocating to Boston in the early 1970s. There they performed as a duo and eventually formed a folk-rock band called Milkwood that released one commercially unsuccessful album on Paramount Records. They eventually united with future Cars lead guitarist Elliot Easton in a band called Cap’n Swing that received airplay on Boston rock powerhouse WBCN, but rebooted as The Cars late in 1976, bringing in keyboardist Greg Hawkes and former Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers drummer David Robinson.
The Cars were older rock pros who’d already spent years hustling around the Boston scene before they went new wave with the 1978 blockbuster debut. Their first hit, “Just What I Needed,” was built around an oblique reference to the Velvet Underground’s “Sister Ray.” (“Wasting all my time-time!”) But it worked — every song remains in rock-radio rotation in perpetuity. Ric made a perfect vocal combo with Ben Orr, pulling off the same “pretty-boy vs. dork” contrast as Cheap Trick. Orr was a smooth blonde idol, while Ric sounded as gawky as he looked. “My Best Friend’s Girl” showed off both their vocal styles, in an ode to nuclear boots and drip-dry gloves. Ric once said he’d never been in any band without Ben — before the Cars, they traveled around the country performing Buddy Holly songs together. As he joked in his Hall of Fame acceptance speech: “When we started the band, Ben was supposed to be the lead singer and I was supposed to be the good-looking guy in the band. But after the first gig that changed. I got demoted to just the songwriter.”
Candy-O was the ultimate Cars album — a concept album about Ric’s favorite topic, which was girls. His songs serenade the kind of girl who’s the “Dangerous Type,” dancing merrily out of the clutches of any boy foolish enough to think he could impress her. Nobody did songs like these as brilliantly as Ocasek — the doomed romance between an awkward twit of a boy and a tough, worldly, risque-mouthed muse. “Let’s Go” was so irresistible with its handclap hooks, no wonder Prince loved to cover it.
Panorama was the band’s first flop — so bland, most fans didn’t even notice it. But Shake It Up was on the same level as Candy-O. They hit the Top Ten with the title tune, which was basically a remake of Brian Eno’s “King’s Lead Hat,” except with improved lyrics about carefree girls doing their quirky-jerk dance moves, a topic always close to Ocasek’s heart. (Not to mention Eno’s.) It came out right on top of the J. Geils Band’s Freeze-Frame — a strange moment when Boston post-bar-band new wave was the sound of American rock radio. “I’m Not The One” was a deep cut from Shake It Up, but it’s one of his most touching songs, a tenderly vulnerable synth-pop ballad worthy of O.M.D. or early Depeche Mode. Ocasek sings about youthful misery with his Bowie-esque chorus: “Going round and round / Never touching down.”
He also explored his more personal side on the 1983 Beatitude, his first solo album and his best by a mile. “Jimmy Jimmy” made only a tiny ripple on MTV, but it’s the finest moment from his solo work, going for the dark electro vibe of Suicide with vocoder whispers and robot synth drones, like a creepier update of “Shake It Up.” Ocasek narrates the tale of a troubled teenage boy who doesn’t want to go home and take out the garbage: “You don’t look so good tonight. Are you depressed or something? You look spaced out.” When he asks what’s wrong with kids today, you can hear his compassion for both the sincerely baffled parents and their son.
Heartbeat City went for a relatively anonymous sound — they traded in producer Roy Thomas Baker for Mutt Lange, who smoothed out their kinks and tried pop moves that worked much better for Def Leppard. It’s basically a dry run for the world-beating pop sound Lange perfected a decade later with Shania Twain. (“You Might Think” sounds like the prototype for Shania’s “You Win My Love.”) But it has one of Ocasek’s most beautiful ballads, “Drive,” a serious torch ballad he wrote for Ben Orr to sing, giving his bandmate a chance to play it totally straight for once. The Cars returned a few years later with the half-hearted Door to Door, but “Drive” was really the perfect way for them to sign off.
After the band folded, Ocasek became one of rock’s most consistently in-demand producers, taking charge of albums by everyone from Weezer to Le Tigre to Guided By Voices. He had a brilliant scene in John Waters’ Hairspray as an early Sixties beatnik painter, clad in black and fiending for reefer, while Pia Zadora plays the bongos. He and Paulina Porizkova formed the most iconic rocker/model couple of all time — it was sad for fans when she announced the end of their marriage in 2018, 34 years after they met on the set of the “Drive” video. He and the rest of the Cars (minus Orr, who died in 2000) played their last gig in 2018, the night they got inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. For all his fame as a producer, it’s as a singer and songwriter he made his biggest impact. Right to the end, Ric Ocasek kept it real as the authentic voice of teen geek angst — which is why he kept giving us just what we needed.
Their second album, Candy-O, was released the following year, followed by Panorama in 1980 and Shake It Up in 1981. But it was their fifth album, 1984's Heartbeat City, that became a commercial milestone for the Cars. The record reached No. 3 on the chart and included the Top 10 hits "You Might Think" and "Drive," which peaked at No. 3, the band's highest showing.
The video for "You Might Think" snagged the first-ever Video of the Year at the MTV Music Awards in 1984. But by 1988, after one more album, the Cars broke up, and Ocasek released the first of his seven solo albums. In the '90s, Ocasek produced LPs by Bad Brains, Guided by Voices and others, but his most famous work was produced on Weezer's hit Blue and Green albums. The surviving cars got together in 2011 for a well-received final album named Move Like This, which was followed by a brief tour.
The band reunited for the album Move Like This in 2011, without Orr who died of pancreatic cancer in 2000.[4] It reached the Billboard 200 Top 10 and peaked at number 2 on the Billboard Top Rock Albums chart; it's single, "Sad Song", reached number 33 on the Billboard Rock Songs chart. As of 2001, the Cars had sold over 23 million albums in the United States.
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The band reunited for the album Move Like This in 2011, without Orr who died of pancreatic cancer in 2000.[4] It reached the Billboard 200 Top 10 and peaked at number 2 on the Billboard Top Rock Albums chart; its single, "Sad Song", reached number 33 on the Billboard Rock Songs chart. As of 2001, the Cars had sold over 23 million albums in the United States.
He also made headlines for his marriage to model Paulina Porizkova, who was 18 when they first met when the Cars shot the video for "Drive" in 1984. They married five years later and eventually had two sons. They separated in 2017 but remained friends.
The artist was married three times. His last marriage was to model Paulina Porizkova for 28 years, after first meeting on the set of the music video “Drive”. In 2018, Porizkova announced they had separated the year before. They share two sons, Jonathan, 25, and Oliver, 20.
Porizkova posted a photo of some flowers that had been left outside the Manhattan home they shared.
She wrote a simple “Thank you” in the caption.
Later Monday afternoon, Porizkova posted a detailed statement to Instagram:
The influence as a true legend in a league all your own as the most significant songwriter, producer, and singer, that will have changed the music industry forever!
''RIP Ric Ocasek''
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