In 1984, at the peak of the Cars’ power as a hit-making band, drummer David Robinson was the one who always made the greatest effort to meet and greet their fans. In several telling encounters, however, things went quickly south after it became clear many of those fans didn’t have the slightest idea who he was. “What makes you think I’m not in the band?” he would ask them, with increasing frustration. “If you’re in the Cars, then why aren’t you in the videos?” they’d say.
Even ardent followers of the Cars could be forgiven for not noticing that he actually was. In the clip for their 1984 smash single Magic, for instance, Robinson, as well as most of the other band members, appear for just 30 seconds, squeezed into a small corner of the screen. In the video for the Cars’ biggest hit, the worldwide smash Drive, Robinson and most of the others, only appear towards the end – as lifeless mannequins. Meanwhile, in the Magic clip the camera dotes on leader Ric Ocasek obsessively, while in Drive, Ocasek gets a whole backstory despite the fact that bassist/vocalist Ben Orr is the guy who actually sings the song.
“With the Cars, Ric always had to be the one out front, calling the shots,” said Bill Janovitz, who has written the first authoritative book on the band, aptly titled Let the Stories Be Told. “One reason I wrote the book was so people could understand everything the other guys did to make the Cars the great band that it was.”
In the process, Janovitz not only revealed the imbalanced dynamics that mar many major bands, but also the troubling mix of fear and insecurity that defined Ocasek’s darker side. Janovitz did so with the full cooperation of the surviving three members, including guitarist Elliot Easton, keyboardist Greg Hawkes and Robinson who, besides playing drums, also designed much of the band’s visual presentation. Janovitz never had the chance to speak to the two members who have died, one under tragic circumstances, the other under a cloud of bitterness. Orr, the group’s sex symbol and most flexible singer, died of pancreatic cancer at 53 in 2000. Ocasek, who wrote and sang the vast majority of the band’s songs, died in 2019 at 75 from heart-related issues. The latter’s death made tabloid headlines when it came to light that he had cut out of his will some of his children as well as his famous wife, the model Paulina Porizkova. Though the division of funds in Ocasek’s will was actually a bit more nuanced than that, the last-minute changes he made to his estate had a vindictive edge that left a rancid taste in the mouths of some key survivors.
In his book, Janovitz worked hard to balance the brilliance of the band’s music with the issues that sparked rancor in their ranks. Easton and Robinson think he achieved that. “There are some rough parts to it,” Easton admitted, “but I think he told a true story.”
“Let’s just say that nobody is painted any worse they actually were,” Robinson said with a laugh.
The most positive legacy of the band is the music itself. During their imperial years, between 1978 and 84, the Cars sold nearly 25m albums in the US alone, driven by eight top 20 hits, including top five smashes like Shake It Up and Drive. Their debut single, My Best Friend’s Girl, broke the British top five with a fresh and clever style that presaged what would become a signature electro-pop sound of the 80s. To Janovitz, “it was a sound that seemed both old and new at the same time.”
Key parts of the older aspects came from Easton’s guitar. “I added a lot of the rock’n’roll elements,” Easton said. “Every song had a hook, a little solo break and an interesting intro and outro.”
At the same time, the Cars’ records drew on the arty drones of the Velvet Underground and the sinister sputter of the art-synth band Suicide. Other parts of the Cars’ music had an incredibly specific influence – namely, the mid-section breakdown in Roxy Music’s debut single from 1971, Virginia Plain. Even so, they updated it with their own quirky hooks and the unique sheen of Roy Thomas Baker’s production. “Roy didn’t mess with the music or add parts to the songs,” Easton said. “He was more into the sonics, which made us sound great in the studio and gave us that massive background vocal sound.”
Janovitz provides forensic detail on the construction of those songs, but he’s just as thorough in covering the personal demons the members faced, especially their controlling, self-involved and secretive leader. Many of Ocasek’s issues can be traced to his troubled childhood in Cleveland. His mother was an alcoholic, and his father would beat him. A gawky kid, he was also taunted and often excluded by his peers. “Ric himself often said in interviews that he needed to be in such control because he was bullied not only by his parents but by other kids,” Janovitz said. “In every band he was in, you see him taking control as opposed to letting things happen with the other members.”
“A large component of Ric’s personality was insecurity,” Easton said. “It was like he believed someone was trying to take something from him.”
Ocasek also had a troubled romantic relationship early on, having married when he was 18 to a high-school girlfriend mainly because she had gotten pregnant. They had two children before Ocasek abandoned them to pursue a career in music. An expert compartmentalizer, Ocasek told few people about his first wife and kids. Even the other band members didn’t know until years later. “Ric would dole out information on a need-to-know basis,” Janovitz said.
His ambition to ditch domestic life for stardom ramped up after he met Orr, whose smoldering good looks and sweet voice offered a useful contrast to Ocasek’s awkward appearance and rangier singing. “He knew they could form a great partnership, balancing the dark and the light, the edgy and the smooth,” Janovitz said.
In the early 70s, the two moved their nascent band to Boston, drawn by both its large student population and the fact that its music venues had the distinction of encouraging original material from new acts. They formed the Cars in 1976 with members who each had a healthy amount of prior experience in bands as well as distinct musical tastes. “Unlike a lot of bands who met in high school as friends and who all had the same record collection, we were five very different people,” said Easton. “I think that’s a big part of what made the Cars unique.”
Not only did they have a notable disparity in their tastes but also in their ages; Ocasek was nine years older than Easton, something the band leader worked hard to hide from the press – for good reason. When the Cars’ debut album came out in 1978, Ocasek was already 34, putting him in the age range of 1960s rockers such as Mick Jagger who were, by then, considered the old guard. That could be a major problem for a group being marketed as part of a new wave. By that point, Ocasek had also begun losing his hair and wore a wig, something he barely mentioned to anyone. To Janovitz, that was part of a cycle of denial. “The lying begets the insecurity, which begets more lies,” he said.
Regardless, the Cars broke big almost immediately, selling over 6m copies of their self-titled debut while earning the title of best new artist in a Rolling Stone readers’ poll over emerging stars as vaunted as Elvis Costello and the Clash. Unfortunately, their success only seemed to fuel Ocasek’s need to claim all the credit. He was abetted by Elliot Roberts, the band’s powerful manager, who treated most of the other members as expendable. “Elliot separated Ric from us,” Robinson said. “If there was important information to be shared, he would only tell Ric.”
Roberts’ choice to focus solely on Ocasek enabled the band leader to try to replace Robinson at one point, a move staved off only after the drummer made a pleading case for himself. Over time, Ocasek became just as disillusioned with Easton, whose playing he considered too rooted in the past. His critiques could prove wounding. “It was kind of a ‘hot and cold’ thing,” Easton said. “I thought we were really tight, then something would happen, and he would shine me on.”
Roberts put no muscle behind any of the other members’ solo projects, and, in some cases, prevented them from taking outside session projects that would have boosted their personal profile. The result limited their income, as did Ocasek’s reluctance to tour as the years went on, something only he could fully afford to do since he had nearly all the publishing credits and, so, the big royalty checks. The fact Ocasek rarely shared any portion of the credits with the other members frustrated some of them. Though he did write the core of most every song, “the demos he brought to us were extremely skeletal,” Easton said. “What the band brought to them – the different motifs and grooves and hooks – was the meat that hung on those bones.”
“Ric brought us a ‘Ric song’,” Robinson said. “But we made it a ‘Cars song’.”
Though Ocasek felt closest to Orr, the member he knew the longest, eventually he became jealous of his sex appeal and began to put him down and severely limit his input in the recordings. That exacerbated Orr’s growing alcoholism, which progressed to such an alarming degree that at one point he allegedly threatened to kill himself and his then girlfriend, saying, “This ship’s going down, and I’m taking you with me,” according to Janovitz’s reporting.
Over time, Ocasek’s personal life became problematic as well. He dumped his second wife, with whom he had two children, nearly as abruptly as he had his first spouse and their kids. He did so to be with Porizkova, who was less than half his age: she was then 19 to his 40. At the time, one of his kids was older than she was. As obsessed as he initially was with her beauty, he grew tired of her, leading to sexual affairs. Porizkova told Janovitz that Ocasek withdrew from her sexually years before his death, but he still wanted her to remain devoted. She remained so, nursing him when he became sick in his later years. Regardless, he accused her of abandoning him – his greatest fear.
Even so, Porizkova was surprised when Ocasek left the grand majority of his estate to his two youngest sons, minus 20% for the middle two kids. Not a cent was given to his first two. An earlier version of the will had given all the kids equal amounts, with plenty left over for Porizkova. Though she did inherit the Gramercy Park townhouse they shared, which later sold for $9m, Ocasek’s catalogue was the real prize. After his death, it sold for $45m.
Despite the more troubling issues the band faced, Easton said he’s anything but bitter, stressing, too, that he retains great love and respect for their leader. For that reason, he hopes the more difficult parts of the Cars’ story won’t taint their legacy. Certainly it didn’t dampen Janovitz’s respect for them. Still, the author admits that, for all his exhaustive reporting of the Cars’ story, Ocasek remained elusive to him. “I’m sure I didn’t get the whole of him,” Janovitz said. “Ric always wanted to be an enigma. In the end, that’s just what he was.”
Let the Stories by Told is out on 30 September
