Ric Ocasek des Cars dies at the age of 75: obituary

The musician and producer Ric Ocasek, whose singing, writing, style and behavior of the Boston rock band Cars helped to define the American new wave movement of the late 70's and early 80's died. He was 75 years old.

Ocasek's death was confirmed by the New York Police Department, who said officers responding to a 911 call on Sunday afternoon found him unresponsive at around 4pm. According to the Associated Press, there was no sign of foul play.

Starting with Cars' eponymous debut album in 1978, the cool, lanky singer and his fellow bandmates rushed to the charts – and the burgeoning MTV music video channel – with a series of ultra-modern and ultra-modern power-pop hits. catchy, including "My Best Friend," Let's Go, "" Goodbye, Love "and" Shake It Up. "

"Cars had everything: looks, hooks, romantic lyrics, killer choruses, guitar solos that annoyed your parents, dazzling music videos," Brandon Flowers told Killers last year when the Cars have been inducted into the Rock. and Roll Hall of Fame.

The honor has crowned a creative life known not only for his work with the Cars and as a solo artist, but also as a golden-eared artist who has made leading recordings for the punk-synth pioneers New York, the Afro-punk band Bad Brains and New York. Weezer, pop-punk band from Los Angeles.

Ocasek's unobtrusive and clumsy charisma was such that he had married supermodel Paulina Porizkova at the height of their fame and offered a way forward for unpretentious singers who were less interested in Mick Jagger or Freddie's paean antics. Mercury. There was no need to poke around like crazy when an arched eyebrow and a minimalist hip shake could do the trick.

The approach was successful. "I'm recognizable," he said with typical euphemism when asked about his omnipresence in the 1980s on MTV.

Ric Ocasek and Paulina Porizkova were together for 28 years before announcing their separation in 2018.

This presence was hard won. By the time the born artist Richard Theodore Otcasek trained the Cars with Benjamin Orr, Greg Hawkes, David Robinson and Elliot Easton, he had been working in the Northeast circuit for years. Ocasek and the late bassist of Cars, Orr, opened for the proto-punk bands Stooges and MC5 in the early 70's and recorded an album as part of a folk-rock band called Milkwood.

The Cars, created in 1976, and after winning the Boston radio broadcast for an early recording of "Just What I Needed", soon signed with the respected label Elektra, where they joined a list that included the Queen, Carly Simon, Harry Chapin and dozens of others. The rockers of the 70s.

In the midst of the long hair that was still buzzing over the hippie scene, Ocasek gave up his speech with ambiguous ambiguity and ambiguity and suggested its proven inspiration, Lou Reed, as channeled by a rockabilly crooner. Ocasek loved the "nuclear boots" and the "blue deer eyes" of an old flame on "My best friend's daughter". For "Bye Bye Love", Ocasek has highlighted a "wavy midnight" rich in "hidden insinuations" and "substitution, mass confusion, clouds in your head."

The work propelled the so-called "new wave" of musicians inspired by the British and American punk movement into the mainstream. "The Cars" became multi-platinum, and helped pave the way for groups such as the B-52, Devo and later R.E.M to switch to big labels. After the dissolution of the Cars in 1988, Ocasek released several solo albums with modest success. When his long-time friend, Orr – who sang at the band's "Drive" ballad died in 2000 – all hopes for a full-fledged meeting are over.

The devotion of their fans, however, remained. When the four surviving members came together for "Move Like This" in 2010, the album debuted on the Billboard chart at number 7. Eight years later, the Cars recorded a mix of their successes at of the induction ceremony of Rock Hall 2018.

The Cars in 1978, from left to right, Ben Orr, drummer David Robinson and Ric Ocasek, at Roxy in L.A.

(Handout)

From the scene, Ocasek first thanked his grandmother, he tells him, for "forcing me to sing for his friends in the living room at the age of five." She had also bought him a Sears & Roebuck guitar when he was a teenager. "Then one day, I heard on the radio a Buddy Holly song called" That'll Be The Day ". So I started playing guitar then. "

Inspired in this way, the artist's creativity ignited like a candle.

"So many people are so bored and do not even … get up from their chairs to get something to do," he told Creem magazine in 1983, motivated by his desire for success musical. "You can not count on the rest of the world to take your hand. You have to sort of go out and look for something to involve or just do it yourself. "