How The Cars Upgraded Rock and Roll
The late singer Ric Ocasek conquered the mainstream with oddball energy and an understanding of how machines can amp emotions.
A 1979 on The Cars opened with an image from Ric Ocasek’s Ohio adolescence that seemed out of or some other idealization of post–World War II suburbia: a teenager souping up his dad’s car to race against his friends. In secret, Ocasek had tweaked the exhaust pipe of his family’s Mercury Comet so as to at least make a louder , if not a faster ride. When his dad eventually found understood why I did it.”
