{"id":799484,"date":"2019-09-15T18:47:34","date_gmt":"2019-09-16T00:47:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=884792"},"modified":"2019-09-15T18:47:34","modified_gmt":"2019-09-16T00:47:34","slug":"ric-ocasek-cars-singer-who-fused-pop-and-new-wave-dead-at-75","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/ric-ocasek-cars-singer-who-fused-pop-and-new-wave-dead-at-75\/","title":{"rendered":"Ric Ocasek, Cars Singer Who Fused Pop and New Wave, Dead at 75"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Ric Ocasek<\/a>, the idiosyncratic singer and guitarist for the Cars<\/a> and hit-making album producer, has died. He was 75.<\/p>\n

At approximately 3 p.m. ET, police officers responded to a 911 call at Ocasek\u2019s home, 140 E. 19th Street, a rep for the New York Police Department told Rolling Stone<\/em>. Officers discovered Ocasek unconscious and unresponsive. He was later pronounced dead at the scene. No cause of death has been revealed. A rep for the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner did not immediately reply to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

Beginning with the Cars self-titled debut in 1978, Ocasek established himself as a stoic frontman with a sense of humor and melodrama on songs like \u201cMy Best Friend\u2019s Girl,\u201d \u201cYou\u2019re All I\u2019ve Got Tonight,\u201d and \u201cGood Times Roll.\u201d As a member of the Cars, Ocasek helped kickstart the new-wave movement by pinning his disaffected vocals against herky-jerky rhythm guitar, dense keyboards and dancefloor-ready beats, and as one of the group\u2019s lead vocalists, alongside bassist Benjamin Orr, he sang the hits \u201cShake It Up\u201d and \u201cYou Might Think.\u201d With the exception of only a couple of songs, Ocasek wrote every tune the Cars recorded. After the band broke up in 1988, Ocasek recorded as a solo artist and worked as a producer, helping sculpt blockbuster hits like Weezer\u2019s Blue Album<\/em> and Green Album<\/em> and cult favorites like Bad Brains\u2019 Rock for Light<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Ocasek was born to a Polish Catholic family in Baltimore. His father was a computer systems analyst, and he was sent to a parochial elementary school, where he was kicked out in the fifth grade. He told Rolling Stone<\/a><\/em> in a 1979 profile that he couldn\u2019t remember why he\u2019d been expelled, though he said he aspired to be what he called a \u201cdrake,\u201d a tough kid. He fell in love with the Crickets\u2019 \u201cThat\u2019ll Be the Day\u201d when he was 10, prompting his grandmother to give him a guitar, though he didn\u2019t take to it immediately. He became a rebel in his teen years, running away for weeks at a time to the beach town of Ocean City, Maryland. His family relocated to Cleveland when he was 16, and he decided to shape up and get good grades so he could attend a good college.<\/p>\n

This story is developing.<\/em><\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ric Ocasek, the idiosyncratic singer and guitarist for the Cars and hit-making album producer, has died. He was 75. At approximately 3 p.m. ET, police officers responded to a 911 call at Ocasek\u2019s home, 140 E. 19th Street, a rep for the New York Police Department told Rolling Stone. Officers discovered Ocasek unconscious and unresponsive. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-799484","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-24 03:40:23","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=799484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799484\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=799484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=799484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=799484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}