Cars Frontman Ric Ocasec Dead at 75

The Cars were a huge group in the 80s right at the beginning of the Age of Video. They wrote great catchy songs that could break your heart and this one is a great example of the Cars at their best. 1984 Heartbreak City. We all had that cassette in our cars. The Cars had 13 top 40 hits and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018.

I had a lot of respect for Ric Ocasek. Ocasek was not the most attractive frontman for a top band especially during an age when image was everything but Ric made it work. Even singing next to Benjamin Orr, arguably one of the best looking lead singers in Rock history, Ric played to his strengths as a frontman who didn't mind sharing the attention with the others in the band, especially Benjamin Orr who could have easily fronted his own band but he and Ric tied their stars to each other and popular music was better for it.

 

Ric was married to supermodel Paulina Porizkova for 30 years. Paulina, herself, is one of the most beautiful people planet Earth ever produced. So Ric must have been an interesting guy as well as a good performer. All that pressure and he left behind a great catalogue of music that defined a time and place in many people's lives, including my own. If you can live long and leave behind something memorable then that is all one can ask from life. Thanks for the music, Ric.

 

 

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 during the Live Aid broadcast when MTV awkwardly aired the song while showing footage of the famine in Ethiopia; the group also performed at the Philadelphia segment of the concert.

https://variety.com/2019/music/news/ric-ocasek-dead-dies-the-cars-1203336527/