The Cars were one of the most popular, successful rock groups of the 1970s and 80s, winning over audiences and critics with hits that stick in your head, like “Just What I Needed” and “Drive.” In The Cars: Let the Stories Be Told, writer and musician Bill Janovitz charts the group’s journey, from childhoods across the country, to the band’s early days in Boston, making MTV megahits, performing at Live Aid, and finally to the conflicts that helped lead to their breakup.
Janovitz — a Lexington resident known locally as a real estate broker specializing in midcentury modern houses — spoke with all three surviving members of the band about their both triumphs and interpersonal dramas. The subtitle, a line from their 1978 hit “Let the Good Times Roll,” was suggested by keyboardist Greg Hawkes, who also wrote the book’s forward. The band’s heartthrob, Benjamin Orr passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2000 at age 53; frontman Rick Ocasek died 2019 at age 75.
Janovitz shows how The Cars evolved from several previous bands. Orr and Ocasek met on the music scene in Cleveland before coming to Boston and connecting with Greg Hawkes and Elliot Easton, who both studied at Berklee. After performing in different iterations, the lineup finally settled into the group we know in 1976: Ocasek on rhythm guitar, Orr on bass guitar, Easton on lead guitar, Hawkes on keyboards, and David Robinson on drums.
All their experiences and disparate musical influences made their way into this new band, a strange fusion of punk, rockabilly, and popular rock. Their songs were unusual enough to appeal to people dismissive of pop music, but catchy and danceable; early gigs had audiences dancing and barely paying attention to the band. Janovitz suggests they would now be classified as “alternative,” a label not available at the time. He also looks at the musical atmosphere of the times, which was filled with different forms of rock, from Aerosmith to Talking Heads and the punk minimalist duo Suicide. The Cars loved Suicide, mentioning them in interviews and even having them as an opening act—a wildly dramatic clash of music and fans.
The Cars owed their success in a big way to Boston, from playing in clubs like The Rat to having local DJ Maxanne Sartori play their demo “Just What I Needed” on repeat, which helped it become popular and led to a record deal. Even after becoming famous, they stayed in the city and the surrounding area for years, opening up a recording studio, Syncro Sound, which for a brief time was a home base for the band and other musicians wanting to play and record. Ocasek produced other bands’ albums and served as a mentor to them.
Another part of their success came from their frequent producer, Roy Thomas Baker, who recorded all but their last two albums. Janovitz goes into great technical detail about the process. The making of Heartbeat City with another producer, Robert John “Mutt” Lange, makes for a particularly compelling anecdote. Lange was controlling and obsessive, spending weeks on “fractions of notes.” He frustrated the band by moving instruments and speakers back and forth, even at one point trying to sing. The album became their most successful, containing hits like “Drive” and “You Might Think,” which the group performed at Live Aid.
Other drama came from within the band. Ocasek became more controlling, making secret touring and recording decisions. Only after his death did the other members discover they each had a vote in the band’s decisions; Ocasek had never told them. Their manager mainly sided with Ocasek. Though he was the songwriter, Janovitz argues the other members fleshed out his demos, bringing their talents and interests to bear on most songs. Despite their major contributions, he refused to share royalties.
Ocasek had other secrets as well, such as being older than he claimed. He had married at 18 and left his wife and two kids behind when he moved to Boston, and later ended his second marriage to be with the much-younger model Paulina Porizkova, who he eventually cut out of his will. Compulsively readable, The Cars makes a nice gift for both hardcore and casual fans. The book is available locally at Maxima Books.
This post is a partnership with Viva la Book Review.