While his work with The Cars produced some of the best-known music of the New Wave ‘80s, many facets of the life of the band’s resident genius, Ric Ocasek, remain a mystery – one as tall as the man himself.
With his unexpected death in 2019, shortly following his equally surprising split from his high-profile marriage to supermodel Paulina Porizkova, Ocasek’s critical standing has seemed to recede a little more with each passing year. The man who penned thirteen Top 40 singles in less than a decade, the visionary who then went on to enormous success as the producer of milestone recordings by Weezer, No Doubt, Guided By Voices, the Bad Brains, Suicide and more, is rarely, if ever, accorded the wealth of accolades he truly deserves – as an innovator who introduced some much-needed avant garde spice into mainstream pop. And little, if anything, is ever discussed about his long apprenticeship, the decade-plus of experimentation, struggle, personal sacrifice, and serial band failures that occurred before he struck platinum status with The Cars.
But that may change now with the publication of Moving In Stereo (Backbeat Books), a richly detailed and eminently readable journey through the life of the driving force behind The Cars by Peter Aaron. Aaron is a musician and scribe best known as the frontman of the influential NYC punk band The Chrome Cranks and author of several well-received books about music, including If You Like The Ramones. His writing has also appeared in the Village Voice, Boston Herald, and Chronogram, a popular Hudson Valley-based culture magazine where he has long served as arts editor.
Consider this fact: Ocasek was 34 years old when The Cars released their hugely successful debut album in 1978, more than a decade older than his emerging contemporaries like Elvis Costello and The Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten. He had picked up a guitar at 14, inspired by another geeky music head, Buddy Holly, and would cycle through a multitude of bands and musical identities beginning in the mid-60s. It is Aaron’s exploration of Ocasek’s long apprenticeship and the impact of his many changing influences on his music that I found most fascinating. It is something that rightly consumes the first half of this fact-packed, fast-paced 200-page read.
Ric would come of age in Baltimore, a Catholic school kid, a sometimes altar boy/sometimes juvenile delinquent who was relentlessly teased for his height and slimness, which earned him the nickname Noodle. With his family’s move to Cleveland in his teens, he would fall under the influence of the Beat poets, Bob Dylan, and, most notably, The Velvet Underground. He would see the VU repeatedly during their 24-show stint at Cleveland’s La Cave Nightclub, along with other progressive bands of the era. Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground would be a significant influence on his first band, Id Nirvana, which would add their raucous “Sister Ray” to their live sets.
In 1968, Ocasek would meet his most important musical partner, Benjamin Orzechowski, aka Benny 11 Letters, who would shorten his name to Ben Orr for the stage. The handsome bassist with the choir boy voice would serve as Ric’s faithful second and foil in The Cars and a series of bands that didn’t quite break on through before that. These included Leatherwood and Milkwood, the Crosby Stills & Nash-inspired band that came together with the duo’s relocation to Boston. The failure of Milkwood’s one album from 1972 would rattle Ric to the point where he would lose all his hair via a temporary bout of alopecia.
Thanks to food stamps, working wives, and a series of jobs at trendy boutiques, Ric and Ben would soldier on – first as an acoustic duo, then with Richard and the Rabbits (named by friend/influence Jonathan Richmond) and, finally, Cap’n Swing. The latter would be the gateway to The Cars, as it included the spectacularly talented guitarist Elliot Easton (George Harrison tasty with Al Di Meola chops) and keyboardist Greg Hawkes. Serious buzz would accrue thanks to the support of two influential Boston DJs, WBCN’s Maxanne Satori and WTBS’s Oedipus. The former would spin the unsigned band’s demos religiously, while the latter would turn Ric on to the emerging punk and New Wave sounds coming from CBGBs and across the pond. Satori would play a supporting role in getting them signed to Elektra Records, a contract drafted on a napkin after an A&R man witnessed a live show.
As a musician himself, Aaron provides an expert analysis of The Cars’ many successful singles and albums, charting the influence of artists like Suicide, Kraftwerk, the Modern Lovers, the Velvets, and even Giorgio Moroder on their ever-evolving “familiar and futurist” sound.” The author also doesn’t shy away from airing criticisms of the band. The Cars were perceived as a very dull live act, which led Ric to withdraw from the road and concentrate on producing outside artists, something that would play a role in the band’s eventual breakup, along with his insistence on being The Cars’ sole songwriter. He also discusses the trashing they received with their debut from the British press, with one critic labeling them “a pre-fab New Wave cash-in.” In another music weekly, Jam/Style Council frontman Paul Weller said of their hit, “My Best Friend’s Girl,” that readers should “melt their copies and use them as ashtrays.” Even with Ric’s oddball looks, the band greatly benefited from the launch of MTV, winning the first “Video of the Year” award for “You Might Think” from their most successful album, Heartbeat City.
Like many driven careerists, Ric’s family would take the backseat to his rock ‘n roll dreams. He had two broken marriages and two sets of sons whose growing years he largely missed before starting another family with Porizkova. And even that marriage would fail mainly because of his workaholic ways and the endless hours he spent in his home studios in New York City and the Hudson Valley.
Aaron provides a blow-by-blow account of the band’s dissolution, their brief reunion, the short-lived Ocasek-less New Cars with Todd Rundgren and Ric’s seven solo albums, as well as his many outside productions. In his solo career, Ric indulged many of his less-than-commercial influences and, therefore, rarely threatened to reach the top of the pop charts. At the same time, his production work would span from the obscure, including solo albums by his good friends and influences Alan Vega of Suicide and Jonathan Richmond, to Weezer’s multiplatinum commercial debut. A central focus of Aaron’s book is Ocasek’s complicated relationship with his longtime collaborator Ben Orr. It was Orr’s rare lead vocal on a single that would lead to their biggest chart and streaming success, the ballad “Drive” from Heartbeat City.
At the end of his life, Ocasek’s retreat from the public eye deepened. He secretly battled heart issues, emphysema, and, ultimately, lung cancer. Being true to his beatnik self, he would publish a book of poetry and turn to painting, exhibiting his work at his son’s gallery in Ohio in 2009. When he passed in September 2019, his age was initially reported as 70, before it was later corrected to 75.
As someone who really only knew Ocasek and The Cars from their radio hits, I found Aaron’s book a true eye-opener, an indispensable doorway into the mind of a musician with a far deeper well of influences and artistic expressions than I realized. It is a story told with a musician’s eye for the details that matter most about his sonic art, and with a sympathetic understanding of the true nature of, and the many complications that come with, leading a driven creative life.
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