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Ric Ocasek was one of the greatest American songwriters of all time: the spirit of Buddy Holly in the body and spirit of Mr. Spock, an eccentric new wave who always wanted to brush his rock hair & roll. That's why the whole world is mourning the news of his death yesterday, at the age of 75 years. With the Cars, the Boston legend struck after success, but he also wrote vulnerable ballads on teenage anxieties with his own blend of compassion and humor, plus his authentic geek-gulp in a voice. Who else could sing the line "Alienation, that 's the craze" and still have the cool look? Nobody. "My taste was always looking for that mix, even in the sixties," Ocasek said. "I was obviously a big fan of Dylan, but my other favorite band was the Velvet Underground. I've always chosen the left side of the brain of music too. I loved the Velvet Underground and the carpenters. "
Only Ric Ocasek could have written lamentations like "I'm not this one", "Bye Bye Love", "Jimmy Jimmy" or "Double Life". But only Ocasek could have written "Lust for Kicks", a totally unironic synth. popular celebration of a couple of new wave geeks, the most perfect of Cars albums, Candy-O. The lovers in this song are oblivious to the world of rights, as if to suggest that Buddy Holly romance was possible if you found someone as crooked as you. "They are crazy one over the other / As a misplaced solution / They are crazy one over the other / And they attribute all this to the thirst for kicking" – relational goals of course, and a very strange feeling to hear on rock radio Seventies. Only Ric could have made it sound as if nothing had happened, humming in a boy-robot voice.
In case you could not guess from his songs, Ocasek was a bit unsuitable as a teenager. As he said Rolling stone In a 1979 cover article, "I remember staying in a basement of Ohio for four months, passing three piano chord notes at a time to see if they were working. He spent most of his teenage years in the basement of his parents' house, a lonely, gloomy loner tinkering with electronic components, building emitters and amplifiers, hiding from the world. "I had to live half of my life in basements! You know, a dark room in the basement, electronics in the basement, songs in the basement, basements – I must love basements! His original musical inspiration was – of course – Buddy Holly, after hearing "It's going to be the day" on the radio.
"Everything is totally sincere, but there is a lot of sarcasm and comedy in the lyrics," Ocasek said. Vanity FairMarc Spitz. "I've always been a fan of poetry. I grew up with Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Beat Poets. I've really been following this stuff for a while. I love the way people formed words as they painted. Ric followed this ideal with fidelity. He did not even think that "let them brush your hair rock & roll" was a throwaway. "Not in my opinion. It's like "let them do what they want". I probably wrote shitty lyrics. I'm not proud of the words of "Shake It Up". "(It should have been it though." Dance all night, turn your hair, make the night cats stop and staring "- Genius.)
He was the ultimate rock hero in his hometown of Boston. All the children of the 80's from Boston had a story about Ocasek's discovery in the wild. I saw him on the street once in downtown Boston, on Newbury Street, in the fall of 1983, right in front of the store where I had just bought an album. (That was X's More fun in the new world.) Ric had also bought records, and now he was getting into his little white Mercedes, which looked like eight feet. He peeked around him with his hair and rock and roll shades. Nobody could look more like a star. (And he landed the rock star parking spot right in front of the record store.) He always made that impression – I'll never forget to have seen him at MTV's 20th anniversary party at Summer 2001 – "Live and Almost Legal" – at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York. Ric was sitting alone in a room full of celebrities, perched on a couch and looking so cool that no one dared to approach.
He cultivated an underground mystique, producing artists like Bad Brains (their classic Rock for Light), Suicide ("Dream Baby Dream") and Romeo Void. (If Ric had done nothing in his life besides coproducing "Never Say Never," that would have been enough.) He saw no contradiction between the production of these records and the creation of high-tech radio hits. Three of Cars' best singles had the distinction of being number 41 on Billboard Hot 100 – "Good Times Roll", "it's all I can do" and "since you left". the chance to miss the Top 40? Yet, that sums up their strange love affair with pop.
The Cars were former rock pros who had spent years on the Boston stage before moving to the new wave with their first 1978 album. Their first hit, "Just What I Needed", was built around an oblique reference to "Sister Ray" of the Velvet Underground ("Spoil all my time!"). But it worked – every song stays in rock-radio rotation in perpetuity. Ric made a perfect vocal combo with Ben Orr, getting the same "nice boy against dork" contrast as Cheap Trick. Orr was a blonde and smooth idol, while Ric seemed as gloomy as he looked. "My Best Friend's Girl" unveiled her two vocal styles, an ode to nuclear boots and waterproof gloves. Ric has already stated that he has never been part of a group without Ben. Before the Cars, they traveled the country playing Buddy Holly's songs. During his acceptance speech at the Hall of Fame, he joked: "When we created the band, Ben was supposed to be the lead singer and I, the handsome guy in the band. But after the first concert, it changed. I've been demoted to the composer. "
Candy-O was Cars' ultimate album – a conceptual album on the favorite topic of Ric, who was the girls. Her songs evoke the kind of girl who is the "Dangerous Type", dancing happily out of the clutches of any boy crazy enough to think he might impress her. No one has made songs like these as brilliantly as Ocasek – the doomed romance between a clumsy little boy and a hard, worldly and daring muse. "Let's Go" was so irresistible with his wrist hooks, so it's no wonder Prince liked to cover it. As a critic Abbey Bender supposed"Let's Go" sums up the eternal attraction of the Cars because "most of their songs sound like the soundtrack of a wet t-shirt contest in which the girls support each other and have fun."
Panorama was the group's first flop – so bland, most fans did not even notice it. But Shake it was at the same level as Candy-O. They enter the Top Ten with the title's melody, which is actually a remake of Brian Eno's "King's Lead Hat", with the exception of improved lyrics about carefree girls performing their quirky dance moves, a topic that still worries Ocasek as much. (Not to mention Eno's.) He appeared just above J. Geils's band. Pause – A strange moment when the new post-bar-band wave of Boston was the sound of American rock radio. "I'm not the one who was" was a deep cut of Shake itbut this is one of his most touching songs, a tenderly vulnerable synth-pop ball worthy of O.M.D. or start of Depeche Mode. Ocasek talks about juvenile misery with his Bowie-esque chorus: "Go back and forth / never spoil."
He also explored his more personal side on the 1983 Beatitude, his first solo album and his best by a thousand. "Jimmy Jimmy" made a small wave on MTV, but it's the best moment of his solo work. This is Suicide's dark electro vibe with vocoder vocals and robot-based drones, as a scariest update of 'Shake It Up'. Ocasek tells the story of a troubled teenager who does not want to go home and take out the trash: "You're not very handsome tonight. Are you depressed or something? You seem spaced. When he asks what is wrong with the children today, you can hear his compassion for both the sincerely confused parents and their son.
City of heartbeat they turned to producer Roy Thomas Baker for Mutt Lange, who solved their problems and tried pop movements that worked much better for Def Leppard. Lange, perfected ten years later with Shania Twain, is a difficult series. ("You Might Think" looks like the prototype of "You Win My Love" by Shania). But it contains one of Ocasek's most beautiful ballads, "Drive," a serious ballad that he wrote for Ben Orr to sing, giving his co-lucky chance to play it totally straight for a times. The Cars came back a few years later with the shy ones Door to door, but "Drive" was really the perfect way to disconnect.
After the band closed, Ocasek became one of the most sought-after rock producers, taking over albums from around the world, from Weezer to Le Tigre to Guided By Voices. He had a brilliant scene in John Waters & # 39; Hairspray as a beatnik painter of the early sixties, dressed in black and refined to reefer, while Pia Zadora plays the bongos. Paulina Porizkova and he 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 video "Drive." He and the rest of the Cars (less Orr, who died in 2000) played their last gig in 2018, the night they were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Despite his fame as a producer, it was as a singer and songwriter that he had his greatest impact. Until the end, Ric Ocasek kept the true tone as the true voice of teenagers' geek anxiety – that's why he continued to give us what we needed. Rest in peace, Ric Ocasek.
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