Richard Theodore Otcasek[1] (March 23, 1944 – September 15, 2019), known as Ric Ocasek (/oʊˈkæsɪk/oh-CASS-ik[2]), was an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He was the primary vocalist, rhythm guitarist, songwriter, and frontman for the American new wave band the Cars. In addition to his work with the Cars, Ocasek recorded seven solo albums, and his song "Emotion in Motion" was a top 20 hit in the United States in 1986.
Ocasek met future Cars bassist Benjamin Orr in Cleveland in 1965 after Ocasek saw Orr performing with his band the Grasshoppers on the Big 5 Show, a local musical variety program.[22] He reconnected with Orr a few years later in Columbus, Ohio, and the two began performing in and booking bands together. They formed a band called ID Nirvana in 1968 and performed in and around Ohio State University.[23]
After performing in various bands in Columbus and Ann Arbor, Michigan, Ocasek and Orr relocated to Boston in the early 1970s. There they formed a Crosby, Stills and Nash-style folk rock band called Milkwood. They released one album, How's the Weather, on Paramount Records in early 1973 but it failed to chart. Future Cars keyboardist Greg Hawkes played on Milkwood's album. After Milkwood, Ocasek formed the group Richard and the Rabbits, which included Orr and Hawkes. Ocasek and Orr also performed as an acoustic duo during this period. Some of the songs they played became the early Cars songs. Later, Ocasek and Orr teamed up with guitarist Elliot Easton in the band Cap'n Swing. Cap'n Swing soon came to the attention of WBCN disc jockey Maxanne Sartori, who began playing songs from their demo tape on her show. After Cap'n Swing was rejected by several record labels, Ocasek got rid of the bass player and drummer and decided to form a band that better fit his style of writing. Orr took over on bass and David Robinson, best known for his career with the Modern Lovers, became the drummer. Hawkes returned to play keyboards and the band became "the Cars" in late 1976.[24]
Ocasek was a founding member of the Cars, recording numerous hit songs from 1978 to 1988. He played rhythm guitar and sang lead vocals for a majority of songs (bassist Benjamin Orr was lead vocalist on the remaining tracks). Ocasek was the oldest member of the band. After splitting writing duty with Orr in the 1970s, Ocasek became the principal songwriter of the band, and wrote nearly all of the Cars' material, sharing credit on only a few songs with bandmate Greg Hawkes as co-writer. In 2010, Ocasek reunited with the surviving original members of the Cars to record their first album in 24 years. The album, entitled Move Like This, was released on May 10, 2011.[25] Not long after the album's release and its supporting tour, however, the Cars resumed their hiatus, and reunited once again in April 2018 for a performance at the ceremony of their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.[26]
Ocasek released his first solo album in January 1983, Beatitude, which features a more minimal and sparse interpretation of the Cars' new wave rock sound. On some tracks Ocasek played all of the instruments.[29]Greg Hawkes also played on the album, as did Fuzzbee Morse from Richard and the Rabbits.[30] A more synthesizer-heavy follow-up, This Side of Paradise, was released in 1986; this featured Greg Hawkes, Elliot Easton and Benjamin Orr.[29] A No. 15 hit single, "Emotion in Motion", accompanied the album.[31] In a 1986 interview with the Chicago Tribune, Ocasek said he did not write songs deliberately with the Cars in mind, and he chose to save his "moodier" material for his solo albums: "I slant my solo albums so that they have a few songs that the Cars really couldn`t do. Weirder songs. More poetic."[29]
The Cars disbanded in 1988, and Ocasek disappeared from the public eye for a couple of years. He resurfaced in 1990 with his own album, Fireball Zone. One track, "Rockaway", enjoyed a brief stay on the charts, but his solo albums realized disappointing sales, especially compared to his success with the Cars. He subsequently released other solo works during the decade, including 1993's Quick Change World, 1996's Getchertiktz (a collaboration with Suicide's Alan Vega and Canadian poet Gillian McCain comprising only Beat poetry set to music, sound effects, etc.), and 1997's Billy Corgan-produced Troublizing (which Ocasek supported with a very brief tour, his first since leaving the Cars). In 2005, Ocasek released another album, Nexterday, to little fanfare, but it received positive reviews.[32]
In other media
Ocasek wrote a book of poetry in 1993 titled Negative Theatre. It was at one time expected to be incorporated into an album and multimedia incarnation of the same name, but those plans were dropped abruptly. For many years Ocasek had a hobby of making drawings, photo collages, and mixed-media art works which, in 2009, were shown at a gallery in Columbus, Ohio, as an exhibition called "Teahead Scraps".[33]
Ocasek stated in a 2005 interview in Rockline that he hated touring and was unlikely to do so again. He also stated he would not be reuniting with the Cars again, but gave the okay to his former bandmates to do so, with Todd Rundgren replacing him on vocals, using the name the New Cars.[36][37]
On April 17, 2006, Ocasek appeared on The Colbert Report and volunteered to put Todd Rundgren "on notice". He appeared again on the July 26, 2006, episode to cheers from the audience as he volunteered to lead a commando mission to "rescue" Stephen Jr., the baby eagle at the San Francisco Zoo named after Stephen Colbert. He also appeared again on April 18, 2007, in order to support his wife during her appearance on the show, after remarks that she found Colbert "extremely attractive". He has been mentioned many times in other episodes as well. The Cars, with Ocasek, appeared on The Colbert Report on August 9, 2011, to promote their new album, Move Like This.[38]
In 2012, Ocasek released Lyrics and Prose, a complete collection of lyrics from his solo and Cars' albums. The book also contains prose and poetry never set to music, as well as previously unpublished photographs and artwork.[39]
Personal life
Ocasek and Cars co-founder Benjamin Orr were close friends who became estranged when the band broke up. The two reconciled prior to Orr's death in 2000. Their friendship was commemorated in the song "Silver", which Ocasek wrote in memory of Orr.[12][40][41]
Ocasek was married three times. His first wife Constance divorced him in Ohio in 1971. In the same year he married Suzanne Otcasek, who uses the original spelling of Ocasek's name. They were married for 17 years.[42] During filming of the music video for the Cars' song "Drive" in 1984, Ocasek met 19-year-old Czech-born[43]supermodel[44]Paulina Porizkova, while he was still married to Suzanne. Ocasek and Suzanne divorced in 1988. He and Porizkova were married on August 23, 1989[45] on Saint-Barthélemy island. In May 2018, Porizkova announced she and Ocasek had separated a year earlier.[46]
Ocasek had six sons, two from each of his three marriages. His eldest son, Christopher (b. 1964), is a singer who formed the rock group Glamour Camp, which released one album in 1989, and appeared as a solo artist on the soundtrack to the film Pretty Woman (1990).[47] His other children include Adam (b. 1970),[47] Eron (b. 1973),[47] Derek (b. 1981),[42][47][48] Jonathan Raven (b. 1993),[49] and Oliver (b. 1998).[50]
Death
Ocasek was found dead on September 15, 2019, by his estranged wife, Paulina Porizkova, at his New York City townhouse, which they still shared[51] following their separation in 2017.[46] He had been recovering from surgery.[51][52][53] The Chief Medical Examiner office reported that Ocasek died from natural causes. He suffered from both hypertensive heart and coronary artery disease.[54]
Porizkova and Ocasek were still in the process of their divorce at the time of his death, but he had disinherited her in a new will, alleging that before his recent surgery she had abandoned him. This required a surrogate court judge rule on the veracity of the abandonment claims before the remaining estate could be divided. He also disinherited two of his six sons (Chris and Adam).[56]
In 2021, the dispute between Ocasek's estate and Porizkova was settled; Porizkova said she was granted a third of his estate, commenting "They gave me what is mine under New York state law, and we're done." Porizkova would not tell Vanity Fair the precise terms of the settlement, but said that the estate was not worth $5 million as was widely reported soon after Ocasek's death.[57]
Misrepresentation of age
Upon Ocasek's death, his age was widely misreported as 70, not 75. In a 1979 interview with Rolling Stone soon after the Cars became popular, he claimed to be 29 rather than his true age of 34, and a false birth year of 1949 was subsequently listed in artist biographies from sources including the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Spotify. His New York City voter registration—which was available as public records but was based on voter-provided information that the New York City Board of Elections did not routinely verify—also listed a March 23, 1949, birth date. According to The New York Times, Ocasek never corrected his age and birth year in later interviews or press releases, but a preponderance of other government records and his self-acknowledged 1963 high school graduation date indicate that he was born in 1944.[58] Additionally, the 1950 United States census indicates that a six-year-old Richard T Otcasek was living in Baltimore, Maryland, with his parents.[59]
^Upon Ocasek's death, his age was widely misreported as 70, not 75. In a 1979 interview with Rolling Stone soon after the Cars became popular, he claimed to be 29 rather than his true age of 34, and a false birth year of 1949 was subsequently listed in artist biographies from sources including the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Spotify. His New York City voter registration—which was available as public records but was based on voter-provided information that the New York City Board of Elections did not routinely verify—also listed a March 23, 1949, birth date. According to The New York Times, Ocasek never corrected his age and birth year in later interviews or press releases; however, the Times found he had stated his true high school graduation date of 1963, when he would have been unusually young at 14, but no indication was found that this had been the case. The 1950 Census also mentions he was 6 years old at the time. This together with a preponderance of other government records indicate that his true birth year was 1944.[11]
^Harazim, Aleš (September 21, 2019). "Ric Ocasek - Frontman The Cars, kteří v osmdesátých letech zářili na MTV, měl české kořeny i manželku". iReport.cz. Retrieved September 23, 2023. Ric Ocasek ... měl české kořeny. ... prarodiče pocházeli z Československa. Ric Ocasek ovšem své české kořeny nikdy moc nezkoumal a nezajímaly ho. (Ric Ocasek ... had Czech roots. ... his grandparents came from Czechoslovakia. However, Ric Ocasek never really researched his Czech roots and was not interested in them.)
^Fricke, David (March 21, 1982). "Workaholic Ric Ocasek Freaks Out at Vacationtime". Omaha World-Herald. Nebraska. p. E8.
^Pareles, Jon (January 25, 1979). "Power Steering". Rolling Stone. New York: Straight Arrow Publishers Inc. Archived from the original on May 5, 2016. Retrieved May 3, 2018.
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