Ric Ocasek, founder and driving force behind seventies new-wave/pop earth-movers the Cars, died yesterday. He was…
…75? Yep. Apparently he spent the better part of 45 years lying about his age. He was well apparently a member of the Class of 1963, and halfway through his thirties and a veteran of years and years of playing in bars in Cleveland, Columbus, Ann Arbor and finally Boston by the time The Cars, their incandescent first album, landed in 1978.
It’d apparently been a rollercoaster year for Ocasek – inducted into the Rock and Roll Halll of Fame in 2018, in the middle of being separated from his wife of nearly 30 years, onetime supermodel Paulina Porizhkova – a marriage that was the subject of myriad “Beauty and the Beast” jokes when the 45 year old Ocasek and the then-23 year old Porizhkova married in ’89.
Oh, well. We’ll always have the good times.
Candy-O, Moving in Stereo —I listened to the Cars music and now, many years later, it still sounds futuristic
I still remember blasting Just What I Needed before going to school in the morning just loving the hyper cool deadpan sexy sound.
Damn! Why are all these people from my youthful enjoyments getting old and dying?
First Eddie Money, now Ric Ocasek, who’s next?
Its always in threes.
One of the bloggers over at the professor’s place wrote a post listing the ages of a bunch of rockers, and it makes me sad.
Keith Richards will always be around of course.