RIC OCASEK WORMS ON A STRING

RIC OCASEK WORMS ON A STRING

FEATURES

REVISTEP

Michael Goldberg

The office is dark and silent. Here, in one of the rooms where Elliot Roberts, creme de la creme of rock star managers, and his associates make deals for the elite of American rockers—legends like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, as well as younger blood like Devo and the Cars—all is elegant, reserved, formal. The tawdry glitter of the Sunset Strip may be just down a few flights of stairs and out a door, but here all is plush chocolate brown rugs, soft velvet couches, high backed VictOrian-style chairs' and medieval church pews.

The faint glow of a single light bulb in an antique chandelier barely illuminated the gaunt features of Ric Ocasek, leader of America’s most popular modern rock band, the Cars.

Ric is not humming “Just What I Needed.” He is not humming at all. He is hardly moving as he sits in one of the Victorian-style chairs, his' entire body so elongated one wonders if it .has been stretched for several months on a rack in a torture chamber hidden in fhe bowels of this building.

Ric stretched out legs longer than a person’s entire body and lights a Marlboro. We are talking about “the kids.” Ric is.. worried about “the kids.” I know this because of this oh-so-serious song on his debut sola album called “Jimmy,. Jimmy.” Set to a minimal, electro-beat, the song is a kind of message number; directly from Ric to all you .fucked up kids who think there’s npthing more to life than a bottle of booze, some ’ludes and an operable color TV.

Here in this somber office, Ric is not smiling. He’s too busy explaining what

inspired a man known for writing nothing more topical than twisted love songs like “My Best Friend’s Girl” and “.Since You’re Gonie,” to pen this piece of pointed social criticism, which leads off his superb new LP, Beatitude. “You know so many people are so goddamned bored and won’t even, like, get out of their chairs to go look for something to do,” he saySquietly. “The kids seem to. be hungup looking for some scene to belong to, stabbing at ‘scenes, you know, trying to get into them and feeling generally lifeless. You can’t rely on the rest of the world to take your hand, you know. You have to sort of get out and look for something to get involved in or just do it yourself.”

Though obviously an intelligent guy with a highly developed aesthetic sense, this towering rock star retains a certain awkwardness. Despite hundreds of interviews, he’s still a little nervous talking to the press, which is just fine by me. One of the most refreshing things about the Cars has been the fragile unsureness that comes through .in Ric’s brilliantly cracked vocals. Listening to this man sing, and talk, one knows that this is a real, thinking, feeling human being and not some wind ’em up pop star zombie mouthing cliches and preprogrammed raps.

He rubs his forehead with a long finger and looks over at me with gray-blue eyes.

“I was looking at the hardcore scene, in a way, and I was watching these guys dancing with themselves and slam dancing and beating each other up and I was thinking, ‘My god, how far do we have to go to get noticed?’ Jimmy, Jimmy is one of those guys. Maybe Jimmy, Jimmy is somebody who lives in L.A. and has too much money, too many drugs and no motivation. Or maybe he’s the son of a United Auto Worker. Maybe it’s anybody.”

There are other songs, such as “Time Bomb” and “Sneak Attack,” that also deal with subjects other than typical Cars fare. The production, too, is more minimal, adventurous, experimental. Beatitude has ^ more in common with the Suicide LP Ric produced than the four Cars LPs, though of course his familiar voice along with certain trademark rhythms instantly make the listener aware that this stuff has something to do with the Cars. It was the desire to make more personal, eccentric records that led to Ric signing a solo deal with Geffen Records (he’s contracted to make four more). “Just to try to get things at the point of inspiration and talk about -some different things, you know. I had a lot of songs I had done at home on an eight track and I figured some of those songs captured a feeling that I didn’t get when they were basically rearranged on Cars records. Sometimes maybe a vocal I would do at home on a one-take basis had much more feeling in it than one that was labored over in the studio.”

Does he intend to leave the Cars if this solo LP is a hit? No way. “I’m still going to make Cars records. I’m not doing this to get out of the Cars by any means. Because I, quite frankly, like everybody in the Cars and we get along fine and I like our playing and the way we sound as that band.”

In fact, Ric is proud that the Cars were able to become an extremely successful band without compromising lyrical or musical ideas. He’s glad that the Cars are classified with new wave bands like Devo, Talking Heads and the B-52’s, and not old wave dinosaurs like Journey, Styx and Foreigner. “I definitely think there is a different attitude [between the Cars and the mainstream rockers]. I think lyrically we’re miles apart. Musically we’re miles apart as well. If a lot of people like our music and we sell a lot of records, still our music doesn’t sound like that kind of music. To me, all those vocals sound the same and their approach, that heavy approach, it’s almost like an offshoot of Southern rock.

"You can't rely on the rest of the world to take your hand, you know."

“I’ve had short conversations [with members of mainstream bands] and there was a definite difference in tiie mental attitudes and just the intelligence of the people in the bands and the sense of humor of people in the bands, the whole thing. They felt that we were a bunch of fucked up kids who didn’t understand show business. And that was great because we don’t understand show business. They are different. But, you know, they’re real successful bands and that’s because that’s what America wants ’cause if they didn’t they wouldn’t accept it. It’s hard to force elitist music down the tin oats of America. It’s very difficult and even if there's stuff out there that’s great, most of them are going to be Jimmy, Jimmy and they aren’t going to go for it. They’re just going to wait around and heal what’s forced down their throats.”

As late afternoon becomes dusk, the conversation takes a darker turn, Hie talks about the problems he’s up against as a “celebrity.” He lights another cigarette. “I can’t feel anonymous anymore. I go out to the store to get a newspaper or something and have 10 people follow me arouaci It happens everywhere. I still insist on not walking around with bodyguards. I go out alone without even thinking, forgetting that I might be a celebrity, not even considering. Roaming around a club and find out that I’m really having a ridiculously tough time because there are 10 drunks over here that want to argue with me or want to talk to me or need my shirt or something.”

Yet Ric didn’t wish for the anonymity of his pre-Cars life. “No, I wouldn’t say that. I guess people get into this for some sort of attention in the first place, you know. Now I just get attention beyond my dreams of what it would have been. In a way, it’s great that people feel that way. But you know it’s not always the ones you wish would approach you. I mean... How do I explain. It’s usually giggling girls or ’luded out guys. It’s conversations you really don’t want to be part of. I’ve had it happen on the road where I’d leave the hall to just go to the car and just get dragged down to the ground. That happened in Detroit. I don’t know what they would want to grab me for. I mean, I’m sure my clothes wouldn’t fit them. And it’s happened where I’ve left clubs by myself and for some reason there would be this gang of kids who felt like having a party and wouldn’t take no for an answer and like if can be a little scary.”

What do you do?

He cracks a grin. “I show them my biceps and then they leave me alone. No, I don’t know. I basically try to ignore it. I try to talk them out of it.”

And there are the weirder, more warped things the “fans” do. “Oh I get letters from people who don’t understand why I don’t pay their rent. Who get mad at me because.. .‘I’ve been waiting for you to pay my rent. This is the last letter I’m going to send you.’ All kinds of ridiculous mail.”

He sighs and flashes a limp smile. “But it comes along with it, I guess.”