Elliot Easton tells a dinnertime story to entertain his tablemates in Madison, Wisconsin—most of Nick Lowe’s band and a reporter. Seems that one place the Cars played on the 1980 Panorama tour was an open-air venue, had been constructed on the site of the Leopold-Loeb murders, in which the unlucky victims had been carved, spindled, mutilated and scattered. Aware of this historical quirk, the Cars’ set designer, Steve Bickford, walked around the grounds randomly drawing white-line bodies, police style. Cars humor. The tableful quietly returns to its rapidly cooling stuffed pork chops.

Ric Ocasek: “I was an altar boy, and every Saturday, I’d serve at a funeral. I was five, six, seven years old, and I’d sit there with the whole grief thing around me, watching people get dropped into the ground and thinking nothing of it except how afterwards I’d get two bucks. Then they’d throw in a couple of weddings for optimism.”

“Through Vaughan I discovered the true significance of the automobile crash, the meaning of whiplash injuries and rollover, the ecstasies of head-on collisions.”— Crash, by J.G. Ballard.

It is the meanest part of winter, where the squares of farmland fertilizing the Midwest are covered in smothering, eyeblinding blankets of snow and ice. Temperatures in Chicago, where for a week, the Cars are temporarily based, have only just nudged above freezing. The fans who, in this Depression of ’82, have bought out some 20,000 seats at the Rosemont Horizon are bundles in layers. Some are also well-lubricated enough to endure a one-hour wait until the Cars leave backstage and head for their limos. The faithful, oblivious to either elements or obvious security, go straight for Ocasek, a darkly towering target, and nearly succeed in their Dionysian ritual—tearing the idol limb from limb. “Shake It Up,” no kidding. We are traveling deep into the Heart of Car-ness.

Anxiety attack, it's a funny word; I think i actually enjoy em. —Ric Ocasek

For almost the whole length of their five-year existence, the Cars have lived as an esthetic contradiction. A genuine issue of Boston’s late-70’s punk scene, the group got its record contract with the help of a local radio station and almost immediately earned gold, then platinum status with its first album. The critical consensus was that these Cars, whose home ground was dingy cellars like the Rat, were America’s new-wave white hope. The band won both writers and readers polls.

But they also had two hit singles, “Just What I Needed” and "My Best Friend’s Girl,” which made them, uh-oh, successful, even if lyrics typefied by “when you bite your lip, that’s some reaction to love” would keep them inaccessible. The release and immediate lift-off of Candy-O in 1979 consolidated the Cars’ kingpin stature even as it pushed many of the band’s original supporters further away. By the time the highly experimental, black-mooded Panorama was released in 1980, alienation from the Cars had become the craze. Stories were cut and dry: Cars set out on the road, Cars overheat, Cars stall out, Cars get a flat, ad nauseum. “I’m going to get what’s coming to me,” warned Ocasek knowingly in the first line of Panorama’s title track. “We frown all the way to the bank,” says Elliot Easton.

■ ■ We spend a lot of extra time being democratic but it*s worth it. —Dave Robinson

As they teetered precariously between the public’s acclaim and the critical rejections, the Cars grew further self-contained. Always somewhat isolated from the music industry’s coastal headquarters by their Boston residency, in 1981 the group built its own studio, Synchro, to serve as a center for creativity and business affairs, a “clubhouse,” says David Robinson, for five grown-up Tom Sawyers of the 21st century. Shake It Up, the first Cars project emanating from Synchro, reflected the band’s relief at having its own control center. The album’s mood is far less somber than Panorama, having as its best moments the wistful reflections of “Since You’re Gone” and “A Dream Away,” yet strongly connecting with popular taste in the Top 5 single of “Shake It Up.”

Where a year ago, Ocasek tended to be venomous about outsiders’ opinions of the Cars, today he’s far less steamy. “In the beginning, it might’ve hurt more than it does now. I think we’re used to it. Most press are elite who’d like to feel that they’ve discovered something and we’re no longer a discovery. I don’t get too shook by it, mostly because I believe in what we do a lot, and believe in people in this band, and I like the Cars better than any other band personally.

“I think we’ve almost begun to enjoy the criticism. I figure, they really have all our records and play ’em a lot.”

Being cooped up in a bus for over two hours each way between Chicago and Madison forces Ric Ocasek to do something unnatural—sit down. Allowed the freedom to wander, the Cars’ songwriter readily demonstrates why he is constantly forcing writers to search for synonyms of “thin.” He eats a 2 a.m. dinner on the prowl, moving from window to window, observing the quiet beauty of Michigan Avenue. He wanders through the band’s dayroom at a Madison hotel, silently tilting lampshades and setting mirrors askew. Someone once told me that creating peculiar angles was the Cars’ version of hotel trashing, but until I saw it, I didn’t believe that anyone could be so subtly destructive. When Ric must park himself for a short while, he is likely to fold himself on top of the seat like a human lawnchair. His externally visible motions indicate the inner man at work, pushing songs, stories and ideas out of his head at an awesomely draining rate. Instead of sitting on a bus, Ric might have been writing, he muses.

As four of the five Cars (Ben Orr being in a reticent mood) dig deep into themselves to preview some pet projects and reaffirm their group identity, a home-made video airing on the bus’s two TV screens unites the entourage. It’s a casually edited hourlong history of the Cars, put together by Ric at home on a couple of Betamaxes. Like a silent accompanist, it charts a path from the band’s earliest shows, when Ric and Elliot’s hair tumbled past their shoulders and Greg Hawkes wore a mustache, through the first and only European tour, found a set of torturous on-air interviews, past the historic Midnight Special show in which the Cars brought Suicide, Iggy Pop and Lene Lovich to several million unsuspecting households, right through the high-tech stadium tour for Panorama and the launch of Shake It Up. Comprehensive in Cars history as it is, the tape still only touches the surface of the Cars’ output.

Diminutive Greg Hawkes, whose keyboards are several times his size, is the quiet jokester of the Cars. “Actually, I think the Cars are a pretty funny band,” he insists, modestly taking credit for a least one stunt that involved putting a lifesize cardboard mock-up of the Knack into a band member’s bed on an early tour. “Nobody’s ever called us a funny band, but people have called us deadpan and maybe that’s what I’m getting at. Our idea of something funny is to say the opposite of what we really mean.” Well, I have maintained all along that the Cars are subtle. Hawkes probably obtained some of his training in absurdist humor from his residency with Martin Mull’s Fabulous Furniture, back when that humorist couldn’t get arrested.

Actually, / think the Cars are a pretty funny hand. -Greg Hawkes

Greg, I am sure, would rather be back home amongst his robots, of which he has a sizable collection, or composing his own rhythmic electronic tracks. A sample tune called “Jet Lag” contains the kind of filtered vocals and Europop dance beat which positively infest the New York club scene. Together with other assorted Cars, Hawkes has written music for a new film called Chapter X, which almost cast David Robinson in a featured role.

Drummer Robinson, who has art directed every Cars album cover, logo and T-shirt, regrets his over-busy schedule having kept him from making his own visual debut. David Robinson is a studiedly elegant man who would’ve made a firstclass 18th century dandy. He’s the only member of the Cars who admits to a love for being on tour, and speaks with relief of how the Cars were to have been his last chance band after too many years of nonstarters. “I almost hoped it would fail, so I would have to get a regular job. I figured I was getting old, better learn how to do something else.”

Robinson is most at ease meeting fans (especially ladies) and is genuinely interested in taking care of business, even if it forces him to play devil’s advocate among the rest of the group. Greg diplomatically confides, “David’s nickname for a while was ‘Opposite man,’ because you can always count on him for the other opinion.” And Robinson agrees, “we spend a lot of extra time being democratic but it’s worth it.”

The only band member who had a national reputation before joining the Gars, Robinson typifies the do-it-yourself philosophy that had always underscored the Cars, making those accusations of “sellout” especially ironic. Having no formal art training, David designed the earliest sets by combing Boston area car dealerships and covering the best free posters in plastic. Instant backdrop. Why does Robinson keep testing the fire of each artistic vision before the other members, certain beyond a doubt that the Cars must always appear as spiffy/reckless machines? Just possibly because one day in 1977, he came up with the name of the group.

Elliot Easton is caressing a honey-toned vintage left-handed Les Paul, which he acquired from his friend, Cheap Trick drummer Bun E. Carlos, in Madison. The four-figure valued instrument taking its place in Easton’s collection is a far cry from the “$60 Jap guitar” he first owned, or from his first Fender, which he paid for by washing dishes in Massapequa, Long Island restaurant.

Easton arrived in Boston in 1972 with the best of intentions—attending the Berklee School of Music was prestigious, but more important, it was the only chance for a 17-year-old to get out of his house. Once Elliot plugged into the Boston club scene, in which it was at least possible to scratch out a living playing originals, he was hooked. He remains close to the ground, an approachable figure who felt confident enough to play three-quarters of a surprise club set with tour opener Nick Lowe after the Cars’ Cleveland date was cancelled when their equipment truck hit bad weather.

“I don’t really identify with the whole guitar hero thing anyway,” he has frequently stated. “I would prefer to think of myself as the equivalent of what Greg does on keyboards. The guitar has had the whole ego thing latched onto it, as phallic extensions—I just like to play! The creative process is getting it on tape. Going onstage is just repeating it again and again. That’s fine, and it’s exciting to see the faces out there but that’s not why I took up music and not why we formed the band.

“At the same time, these little short tours are great. Being at home all the time isn’t the best thing for everybody either, I think the whole idea of hating to tour has been overemphasized in our band. We love to play as long as it stays fun. When you’re in Bumfuck, Mississippi, and people are throwing beer bottles at you, it’s not fun. But when it’s short and sweet like this and every night; is special then it’s great and I think everybody’s happy.”

"All any of us can ever do as a band is try to retain some dignity and not become a Joke. —Elliot Easton"

Apart from Ocasek, Easton was the first of the Cars to branch into independent production, working with a local straightout-of-the-bar band called the Dawgs, with singer Robin Lane, and with David and Greg on a novelty Beach Boys-style single called “Jacques Cousteau” for the perennially underrated Andy Paley. He is set to work with Jules Shear, late of Jules and the Polar Bears, sometime in the near future. Robinson has also been working with two local bands on production, Boys’ Life and Vinny. Ocasek’s board choices, from Bebe Buell to Romeo Void, may be a bit better known on the marketplace, but hardly reflect mainstream taste. Yet Elliot maintains that the Cars’ dedication to artists with fewer resources than the group doesn’t make them saints.

“We’re not trying to make a big deal over it—we just think a band like Suicide is great. Other bands have done similar things. Some of the English r & b bands in the mid-60’s tried to insist on having a black act open for them, or in some way try to repay the debt of their roots. And Bo Diddley opened for the Clash . I don’t think we’re any fuckin’ angels or martyrs or trying to be goodness personified. We’re real music fans ourselves.

“All any of us can ever do as a band is try to retain some dignity and not become a joke. Keep the fact that we’re musicians real. Because if it ceases to be real, then you’re in trouble. There’s nothing than can make you happy and the more adulation you get, the more the pain will grow because you’re so out of touch.”

“I’m the American misfit kid/still wondering, what I did.”—Ric Ocasek, from Misfit Kid

Ric Ocasek tries not to spend too much time and energy analyzing the Cars’ esthetic. It is enough for him to know that the songs have hit some responsive chord in people who think about them, believe them, and personalize them. “Things like, as you say, what’s illusion and what’s real, must be important to me, because I write about it. I’m sure there’s a lot of things I say over and over again, there’s a lot of words I re-use, so they must mean something. Really, the pictures in the songs are just like set-ups for people to look at or feel part of.”

Ric, who recently described himself in a radio interview as a “test pilot for mass hysteria,” measures the power of the slightly abnormal rock event whenever the Cars go onstage. He’s out to give the crowd a “show anti-show,” and see how the audience responds. The Panorama tour, with its oppressively massive stage set, might have been redefined as the paranoia tour, to match the pressurecooker mood of that album.

To match this album’s more upbeat mood, the Shake It Up set is airy, leaving a clear stage and emphasizing the Cars’ blending of angularity with emotion by a series of geometric backdrops that add touches of pink to the patterns of black, white and grey. It is an easier show in its attitude for an audience to intuitively understand, as does the 10,000 strong crowd in Madison’s Dane County coliseum. Even before the band begins, a pulse rises from the floor, a yearning for the music whose steady rhythms and breathy pauses are, this time anyway, reassuring.

“It’s not that hard to get, really,” Ric insists. “Sometimes, they’re estranged by it, but I think they still get it and like it. They’re getting people who are up there, like what they do, get nervous, all that stuff. Not much showbiz.”

11 Shake It Up is a little more optimistic, and 1 guess it' was because some of the problems, all kinds of environmental and personal problems that were happening during Panorama weren’t so prominent around Shake It Up time. We had built our studio, and were looking forward to messing around in it a lot. The mood was better, and it’s always gonna involve the mood.”

Though he brands the word “workaholic” stupid, Ocasek admits to being one—driven, if you will, to perpetually increase his output. After having a notebook of prose writing stolen in London about three years ago, Ric has accumulated over 100 new selections, which he’s presently weeding through. His songwriting ease has long been documented, with Greg Hawkes again commenting that for the 10 songs appearing on a Cars album, Ric will originally turn up with at least 16. He is capable, if the Cars were ever to stop their own work, of keeping himself busy with production, often getting praise for his work with a Suicide or Romeo Void vinyl from the same critics who are ready to scrap the band.

work a lot because I love what l do...and it keeps me from flippin’ out. —Ric Ocasek

At present, Ric is awaiting the completion of the Chapter X film, which he also produced. Its director, a 22-year-old South American student of Fellini named Luis Aira, shot the remarkable “girl in the pool” Chanel television commercial when he was 17. They plan to exhibit the hour-long film, which the band will only describe as “strange,” at festivals and the underground circuit.

And by the summer, there will be Ocasek’s solo album, which he is recording in April. Still vague about its nature, Ric agrees to play a few work tapes which may evolve into solo tracks, new Cars songs or simply get dumped. They share the Cars’ steady beat but have a bit more of a cut and at the same time are close to epic length. One does not forget their author is a living fusion of the 1960’s and the 1980’s.

“The only things I’m sure of on my record are these—that on half of it I’m going to do all the instruments, and thematically, I’m going to look for something different. Thematically it will be different, because the Cars are a group of five people. The only person I have to agree with on my own record is me, right?

“I work a lot because I love what I do and it’s the only thing I’m interested in and it keeps me from flippin’ out. Or it keeps me flippin’ out, I don’t know which. But it keeps me somewhere. It keeps me at a very confused place.

“Last year I did the Cars’ album and at least four or five other records and this film, plus I moved. It was a weird year. On New Year’s Eve, I had a great time—an amazing anxiety attack, thinking about what was coming. Anxiety attack, it’s a funny word; I think I actually enjoy ’em. They’re different. It’s some other place to go. It’s almost like going through the black door, and what’s gonna happen, am I gonna blow apart? Getting close to the edge like that is fun. It would be boring otherwise. There have to be the extremes.”

If the Cars were to ever become truly predictable, it would be time for them to give it up and move on to the next dimension. Essential to their nature is that ability to pull the attitude of next month or next year out of the atmosphere and somehow prepare their audiences for what’s on the way. Just as the music Ric programs for the break before their set—the Velvets’ “Waiting For The Man,” Presley’s “That’s All Right,” Iggy’s “Raw Power,” does, the Cars at their best rule chaos with a brilliantly shaky hand. &