Ric Ocasek, frontman of the popular late 1970s and 1980s band the Cars, was found dead in his New York home on Sunday. He was 75.
The NYPD confirmed that he was found dead after they received a call for an unconscious male at his townhouse. Emergency services pronounced him dead at the scene.
The Cars and Ocasek were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018.
With a sound that melded 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.” Both during the band’s career and after their breakup in 1988, Ocasek produced numerous albums and songs for artists including Bad Brains, Weezer, Guided by Voices, Bad Religion and Nada Surf. He released seven solo albums, and although none had the impact or success of the Cars’ material, the influence of his songs with the band is vast: To cite just one example, in March of 1994 Nirvana opened their final concert with a jokey 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.”
Ocasek — born Richard Theodore Otcasek — was raised in Baltimore but moved to Cleveland at the age of 16. (There is some confusion about his year of birth, but 1944 is most frequently cited.) He briefly attended college but dropped out to pursue music, and in 1965 met future Cars bassist/singer Benjamin Orr. The two formed a succession of bands and operated in Ohio and Michigan before relocating to Boston in the early 1970s. There they formed a folk-rock band called Milkwood that released one album on Paramount Records that was not a commercial success; the pair also performed as an acoustic duo at the time. 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.
From there things moved quickly for the band: During the following year a nine-song demo, including their future breakout hit “Just What I Needed,” received heavy airplay on Boston stations and the group signed with Elektra. Their self-titled debut, released in June of 1978, featured an unusual but appealing mixture of styles that both capture the pop-rock sensibilities of the time as well as the burgeoning new wave sound, which was gradually making inroads in the U.S. In a review from that summer, New York Times critic Robert Palmer succinctly described their sound as a combination of “punk minimalism, the labyrinthine synthesizer and guitar textures of art rock, the ’50s rockabilly revival and the melodious terseness of power pop.” The album reached No. 18 on the Billboard 200 and spawned three hit singles in “Just What I Needed,” “Best Friend’s Girl” and “Good Times Roll.”
While Ocasek was the group’s primary songwriter and frontman — singing in a pouty drawl, like a cross between Lou Reed and Television’s Tom Verlaine — the Cars were very much a band, with Orr’s softer voice and rock-star swagger, Easton’s snarling guitar, Hawkes’ quirky keyboard flourishes and Robinson’s rock-solid, imaginative drumming creating a powerful and rare musical chemistry.
Their 1979 sophomore effort “Candy O” continued in a similar vein, spawning the hit single “Let’s Go,” but “Panorama” the following year was more synthesizer-heavy and experimental, and less commercially successful. The band took a break and Ocasek produced the “Rock for Light” album by hardcore legends the Bad Brains and also worked with synth-punk legends Suicide and San Francisco band Romeo Void, and released a solo album called “Beatitude.”
The Cars returned in force in 1982 with the “Shake It Up” album, which dovetailed with the rise of MTV and, driven by eye-catching videos — several of which starred models, including Ocasek’s future wife, Czech-born Paulina Porizkova — the group became more commercially successful than ever. The title track became their biggest hit single to date, reaching No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100, and spawned another hit song and video with “Since You’re Gone.”
The group’s commercial peak came with their next album, 1984’s “Heartbeat City,” which produced two Top 10 singles with “You Might Think” (driven by another eye-grabbing video, this one with Ocasek’s head on a fly’s body) and the ballad “Drive,” which came in for some criticism (that had nothing to do with the band) the following year when MTV aired behind footage of the famine in Ethiopia during Live Aid.
The group took another break, with Ocasek releasing a second solo album, “This Side of Paradise,” but by the time the Cars regrouped for 1987’s “Door to Door,” times had changed. The only reached No. 26 and the group split early the following year.
Ocasek’s solo career continued at an unhurried pace in the years after the group’s split and he became better known as a producer. His biggest success in that role was Weezer’s debut in 1994; he also produced that group’s “Green Album” as well as albums or songs by No Doubt, Hole, Nada Surf, Bad Religion, Guided by Voices and many others.
He released five solo albums between 1991 and 2005, with 1997’s “Troublizing” produced by Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan. The albums generally received positive reviews but Ocasek’s distaste for touring — The Cars had a reputation as a dull live act for their entire career — effected their visibility. After Orr’s death from cancer in 2000, Ocasek approved of a touring version of the band that featured Todd Rundgren essentially in his role, although he reunited with the Cars in 2011 for an album called “Move Like This” that found him writing and singing all of the songs. He told Rolling Stone at the time, “I was aware that on half of the new songs, Ben would have done better than I did. But we never wanted anybody from the outside.” The album’s liner notes include a tribute to Orr.
Ocasek was married three times and left his second wife, Suzanne, after meeting Porizkova in 1984.
He is also survived by six sons, two of whom he had with Porizkova; in 2018 she confirmed that the two had separated the previous year after 28 years of marriage.
