October 3, 2025 • 36 mins
Bill Janovitz is the frontman for the Alternative Rock band Buffalo Tom and he is the author of a number of music history books, including his new one "The Cars: Let the Stories Be Told." The Cars were one of Bill's favorite bands growing up and he digs deep into music history to tell the stories behind the music. The book features new interviews with surviving members of the band and covers the glory years for The Cars along with the tribulations of a band and their dysfunction.
Thanks to one of our listeners Rick Radzik from the Boston area for listening to our show and for suggesting this episode with Bill Janovitz
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Taking a Walk Rick was really Rick was getting back
into guitar after having done it as a kid, but
really more as a vehicle for his writing. He saw
himself as a writer and an artist, and he was
trying on.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Different sort of influences.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
He was influenced by everything from sort of the Beatniks,
pre Beatles, Buddy Holly, which is very evident in the Cars.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Picture this. It's nineteen seventy eight. You're driving down the road,
the radios on. Suddenly the sound you hear part rock,
part pop, part something from the future. You can't quite
name it. It's the Cars, that's right. The Cars a
mixture of rock and new wave. It's here. The Cars
didn't just bridge the cap between the classic rock of
(00:44):
the seventies and the synth driven sound of the eighties.
They basically built that bridge, and boy were they a
mainstay in the Boston area and nationally and globally. I'm Buzznight,
the host of the Take on a Walk podcast, and
we welcome back Bill Janovitz. Now you know Bill from
his band Buffalo Tom for sure. But Bill's just written
(01:05):
a book called The Cars. Let the Stories be Told.
And after these words, we're going to talk to Bill
next on Taking a Walk. Taking a Walk a returning
guest on the Taking a Walk podcast. Hello, Bill Janovitz, Hello,
buzz night. Nice to see you again. Nice to be
(01:26):
with you and you as well.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
We're going to talk about the new book The Cars
Let the Stories be told. But since you were last
time we started asking this question, Bill, so I'm not
going to let you get off the hook on the question.
I couldn't do that right. The question is if you
could take a walk with someone living or dead, who
would you take a walk with and where would you
take that walk with him?
Speaker 4 (01:50):
WHOA I hadn't been aware of this question, living or
did I don't know.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
The first person that comes to mind from me is
Keith Richards. I'm sure there are better choices, but first
of all, let's get the guy some exercise. He seems
to be doing fine without it, or whatever exercise he's doing.
But I would love to just talk music. Uh, now,
where would we do that.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
All about?
Speaker 1 (02:23):
He guides me around where his compound is or wherever
wherever he goes for vacation in Jamaica or something like that.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
I think we take it anywhere with Keith wouldn't we.
I think we would. Yeah. Yeah. I like the idea
of being in a compound with anybody, though, don't you.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
I don't know compounds.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Uh, it depends how how like I like like a
nice long walk. I guess if it's a gigantic compound
and you've got plenty of space to write, but with
any kind of conversation it would want to I'd want
it to be somewhere, you know, fairly private, so you're
not getting interrupted in the streets and New York Code.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Kuck Richards or something like that.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Right now, have you encountered Keith in your career?
Speaker 5 (03:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (03:07):
I met Keith once. So I wrote two Stones books.
And in between those two books, right as the first
one was going, I'm sorry, right as the second one
was getting getting started, it wasn't even really getting started.
Let's say, the publishing deal is just sort of coming
into place.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
I just happened to be.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
At this this ceremony at the JFK Museum here in
Boston for pen New England had I think three of
these ceremonies where they gave away an award of lyrics
of literary excellence, and the first one was to Chuck
Berry and Keith I'm sorry Chuck Berry and Leonard Cohen,
(03:48):
and I have these photos that are just insane from
the green room of me meeting Chuck Berry, of Leonard
Cohen sitting right in front of me, of Salmon Rushdie,
of Paul Simon, of you know, of course the Wool
of Good was there, Peter Wolf. But before the ceremony,
I I was just against a wall, trying not to
(04:13):
you know, bump into anybody or hurt anybody, or spill
anything some of the klutz. I just wanted to take
it all in and be the fly literally on the wall.
And right next to me was a little sort of
side table kind of thing up against the wall with
a lamp. And who should come and stand on the
other side of it but Keith Richards.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
And he was by himself at that moment.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
So I had a pep talk to myself for about
five seconds and said, all right, you got to go
talk to Keith Richards. This just like mine, one of
my you know, you know, he's the guy I picked
right off the top of my head when you asked
me that question. So I turned to him and I said, uh,
I didn't want to get into my books or anything,
you know, because I didn't want to scare him off,
but I wanted to start a conversation or just say hello.
(04:58):
And I said, Keith, I just wanted to say hello
to you. You know, obviously you get this all the time.
I'm just very honored to meet you. And I said,
I said, oh, man, I so well, you know, what
do you say to Keith Richards? And he says, well,
feel the same way about schruck Berry, mate.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
You know, he's he's he's just one of my he's
my hero. So I had to be here for him.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
And I said, yeah, and what a great event for
him to get an award for his lyrics, you know,
And he said, oh, absolutely, man. He goes he's written
some of the greatest lyrics of all time, and he said,
hurry home. Drops in her eyes. Man, He's like, oh,
you know, and he starts counting his chest. And I'm
sitting there going, what an amazing guy to take this nervous,
(05:42):
awkward guy that I am, and just like sort of
jiu jitsu it into this beautiful conversation. And I'm sitting
here having a conversation about rock and roll lyrics with
Keith Richards and my mind was just like a b
So that was kind of the extent of it.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Wow, thanks for sharing that. Other than maybe you smoking
another three packs of cigarettes a day, you sounded pretty
much like him. That's good. That's good. So congrats on
the cars. Let the stories be told. How did you
first intersect with the cars? At least before you know
(06:20):
we talk about the book specifically, what you know, you
obviously did intersect with them.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Yeah, I when I was twelve years old was when
I first heard that record. It came out in seventy eight,
as you know, and I talk about it in the
pro lob of this book, where I'm just sitting in
my friend's room and I was the old, oldest of
five and he had an older brother. I didn't have
any older siblings to bring me these records. And his
brother was the probably still the coolest person I know,
(06:47):
drove an orange Camaro, came back from college often bearing
cool records, and he brought back this record.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
You know, with Natalie Moldova on the cover.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
As we got to know later, this model at the
steering wheel and the lights are going and it's just
says the cars, and it's like, what is this?
Speaker 2 (07:03):
You know? And you put down that.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
We're on the shag carpeted shag carpet of a wood
panel bedroom in the seventies, you know, And we dropped
the needle and we're listening to Let the Good Times Rule,
and I talk about, Wow, what a revelation this is.
It's like, I mean, finally I found like, this is
one of my bands. This is like for me, this
is like not me going to catch up with the
Stones or the Beatles or Neil Young or whatever it
(07:27):
may be. This is something brand new and it sounds familiar,
but it also sounds extremely new and novel. So that
was the first time I'd heard them, and I was
just I just started the journey, my brother, my friends,
and I just got right into it with the with
the cars the first time I actually encountered them in person.
You know, I'm living around I just live a town
(07:48):
away from from from from from Greg as I think
you do as well.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
And I've seen him.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
I first actually met him very briefly at the Hot
ste of Cool Music music benefit, which I've been part
of for the better part of twenty something years.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
And I Dowdy remembered me.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
It was just, you know, in the backstage area of
all these other people going around, just me saying hello.
But in twenty eighteen, I was fortunate enough to play
music at another benefit out in Los Angeles. I was
an invited, honored guest to be there as part of
this Wild Honey Research autism research benefit. And you know, NLA,
(08:33):
it's like it's an embarrassment of riches of who comes
along to play for these things. I mean, for when
they did a tribute to the Beach Boys, they had
Brian Wasn't himself, show Off, Alex Childen, all these and
it's just crazy. So when I play and I played this,
it was a kink Steen We played stop Your Sobbing,
and I sang and I had Easton with me playing guitar,
(08:54):
and Dennis Dyken of the Smithereens and Brian Wilson's band
making New York.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
That's crazy.
Speaker 5 (09:00):
It's just great.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
So for rehearsals, I met Elliott the night before or
to nights before, whatever it may be, and he's just
a warm Elliott Easton, a warm and open and very
conversational person who kind of like my encounter with Keith Richards,
except this time I was going to be playing music
with this person, and again my mind is blown.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
I mean, here are these people off.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
My record collection and I'm talking to them and they
were such a.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Big part of my life.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
And anyway, long story short, Elliott and I just struck
up a little correspondence, stuck him. He already had one
of my Stones books, I think, and I sent him
more and we talked back and forth, and I said, hey,
you know, I wrote an article about this experience, and
I talked about how great and underappreciated Elliott Easton is
guitar player. And I said, what about doing a Car's book.
It's kind of a the suggestion of a friend of mine.
(09:52):
I said, that's a great idea, and Elliott thought it
was a great idea too, except that Rick Ocassick was
still around and he was very much in the shots
still for the band, and it didn't seem to take
root at that point. So in the meantime, I did
this Leon Russell biography and that seemed to get some
great traction and get the attention of the Cars guys
as well. And then sadly, Rico Cassa passed and I
(10:17):
struck up a relationship with these three guys and said
let's do a cars book, and they were all on
board with it.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
And do you remember the first time you saw them
play live?
Speaker 1 (10:28):
I never saw the Cars live. I mean, it's one
of my regrets. I mean, you know a lot of
people there did talk to you. I mean, I've seen
obviously many clips and I've got the videos, the home
videos and things, but.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
No, I never got to see them live. Why is that? Well,
I was fairly young when they were going.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
I wasn't able to really go to rock and roll
concerts for a few years until after that, and then
by that time I was moving to Massachusetts. I think
they broke up when I was, you know, soon after
I was in my freshman.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Year of college. So I never really got the chance.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
I have one of my band, my own bandmates, Tom McGinnis,
got to see them at the what is now the
Lang Center, but what was the what the Boston Music
Hall back then, the same weekend as the Pope was
in town. Everybody talks about that one. You know, there's
differing views on how the cars were alive. By all accounts,
(11:20):
you know, audio wised, they were amazing. A lot of
people were sort of let down by how their visual presentation.
Maybe how about you saw.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Them at the Yale Bowl, believe it or not, which
was not a fitting place to see them. I thought,
I didn't think it in the moment, and then after
the fact, I'm like that, I wish I saw them
at you know, the Wang or something like that, because it.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Was that cheap trick. I believe in a bunch of
other bands at the Yell Bowl, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
So that one. It was a great experience, but it
sort of didn't showcase them. I think like they should
have been showcased because obviously the catalog of music speaks
for itself. I mean, right, just just incredible. So walk
us through the ricklecastic Benjamin or partnership and how it
(12:10):
evolved over time with the cars.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Yeah, I mean they met in Ohio.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Ben was raised outside of Cleveland in Agora Heights and
I thinks anyway suburb of Cleveland, and he was a
teenage star in a band called the Grasshoppers on a
local and then syndicated show called Upbeat. It had two
different names, but Upbeat was.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
One of them. Sort of a sort of a shindig
type show.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
They were he was sort of in a house band
that they had various house bands that came and went,
but he was in the Grasshoppers. There were a certain
like I said, teen local teen stars. Rick's family. Rick
was raised in Baltimore until he was about high school somewhere,
you know, later high school year sixteen or so, his
father got rid of caated to I think he's working
for NASA, an assa lab in outside of Cleveland. So
(13:07):
he he started college and and and bumped around Ohio
a little bit, Bowling Green and then ended up in
Columbus and that's where they met, and they it was
sort of like uh. At this point, Rick was really uh.
Rick was getting back into guitar after having done it
as a as a kid, but really more as a
as a.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Vehicle for his writing.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
He saw himself as a writer and an artist, and
he was trying on different sort of influences. He was
influenced by everything from sort of the Beatniks pre Beatles,
very Buddy Holly, which is very evident in the cars
the Beatles of course, but then very much Bob Dylan
was revolutionary for him, as it was for so many
(13:49):
other writers, and then the Velvet Underground and and and onward.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
But he was still you know when he was writing,
he was writing.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Sort of almost pastor old, you know, probably still some
nashy type stuff and some psychedelia, you know.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
So they had these.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Different bands and when he met when he met Ben,
Ben joined this. They joined forces. They joined this band
id Nirvana. I think it was the first band. I
made a mistaken there. But they had so many different
little iterations, and but they he recognized and Ben this
he remembered having. I think he learned and then put
(14:26):
put it together that he had seen Ben on TV
as when Ben was you know, sixteen or so, and
just being really impressed by that. And and Ben was
just a naturally charismatic, quiet, cool, natural singer, could play
any instrument. And it was just sort of like a
(14:46):
match made in heaven for Rick, who was a bit
more angular and tall and gawky and a little awkward
and edgy, and here was this smooth guy, and they
were sort of they I think they recognized this in
each other, this me and Yang. Ben wasn't really writing
anything Rick was, so one thing led to another. They
eventually tried on you know, duos, trios, blah blah blah.
(15:09):
They ended up in coming to coming to Cambridge, Boston
and forming a trio called Milkwood with Jim Goodkin, and
they put out one record and it's very kind of
what I was saying more singer songwriter nineteen seventy one ish.
You know, it wasn't really rock and roll, it was.
(15:32):
It was kind of a weak record that Rick Forever
tried to distance himself, and then there were other bands.
I don't know how long you want me to go on,
but I think there were different iterations that led up,
like two other three other iterations that led up to
the Cars in nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 5 (15:45):
We'll be right back with more of the Taken a
Walk podcast. Welcome back to the Taking a Walk Podcast.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
It's interesting thinking about the Boston came scene and the
influence certainly that that you know, had to have had
on the band and their evolution and their acceptance over time,
but also the fact of the rich you know, radio
landscape as well that was going on here in town
(16:18):
in the Boston area, you know, specifically the WBCN side
of things. But as I was hearing you talk about
that history and I was wondering, Okay, could they have
catapulted to success if they were in filling the blank
market A or B. Even if you mentioned Ohio, the
answer is yes, because Ohio was rich in experimental sounds
(16:43):
as well, you know, just like Boston and Cambridge was,
and the radio side of things was also rich there
as well. So I think there's many markets that would have,
you know, helped fuel their success, not only Boston. Would
you agree with that long winded statement.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
It's it's it's a tough exercise to go through, and
I'm not sure if it really brings us much. I mean,
I will say that Boston was essential to them because
that's where, you know, so there's no native buff The
only native Massachusetts person in the band is David Robinson,
who had come from Modern Lovers and then was in
(17:24):
a garage punk band proto bant punk band called DMZ
with the They were basically the band that led to
being The Liars, who were a legendary garage rock band,
retro sort of thing. But the other guys, Greg Hawks
and Elliott Easton had come to Boston to go to
Berkeley College of Music, and like many who had come
(17:45):
to Berkeley, they dropped out at cerin Point and they
were kicking around in different bands themselves so you know,
I go into all of this lineage.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
So there was that. Then there was also, uh.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
You know, by the time the Cars started, because they
were really through these other bands, it was very difficult
to get a gig playing original music.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
You know.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
They had to sneak in original songs, you know, when
they were in this band called Richard and the Rabbits
and then Cap and Swing, they had to smuggle in
these new songs, these original songs, I should say.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
So.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
But by the time the Cars got going, let's say
what seventy six is when maybe the Rat started. Jim
Harold's here somewhere in there, and they were the Rat,
and maybe one or two other clubs in Boffin were
supportive of original bands, and it became a bit of
(18:40):
a circuit with CBGBs. So they would send each other
Hailly Crystal would send up bands to Jim, and Jim
would send I talked about this with Oedipus, a big
radio figure that you know here in part of BCN.
And so all of those things, plus the built in
gigantic college town, the spinal taps statement. To the contrary,
(19:03):
it was a big b and it remains a big
college town and the drinking age was not yet twenty
one here, So all of those things were very much encouraging.
And not to mention what you already mentioned, which is
Max Antsar Torri at WBCN Oedipus. Before he got to BCN,
he was at what is now WNBR at MIT, so
(19:28):
they had this built in support.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
They were playing their demos.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
I mean, max An started playing just what I needed
in demo form on BCN, and that really all of
a sudden, they had like not just one show at
the REP, but they have two shows a night, which
was sort of unheard of, like two separate doors entrances.
So they really got traction in Boston.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
It's hard to say.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
I don't know if all of those things could have
happened in Ohio. I think they felt like they had
to leave Ohio, Columbus, Cleveland, whatever it may be. LA
was more of a you know, sort of different thing
at that point. In fact, David and I'm giving you
a long, very even more long winded response, but David
had gone out to LA and and and was recruited
(20:10):
to play in this band called The Pop which was
a power pop band, and LA was kind of dead
at that time. You know, these A and R scenes
sort of move on to different places, and this kind
of went on at least through the grungeiars that I
that I was a little bit part of as well.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Roy Thomas Baker produced the debut album. What did his
involvement bring to the sound?
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Oh he he he. Well, to say he was the
sound would be overstating it. Because they had the songs,
they had the arrangements. He didn't fuss with those at all.
He was coming off of his Queen Years monumental success,
which Mike Sensar Tori, by the way, also had a
big role in helping promote and break in America as
(20:56):
just among a few artists, including Aerosmith's. She was very,
very instrumental in breaking these artists. But uh so, Roy
Thomas Baker had produced those Queen records and they were
gigetic sounding, and he was getting he thought, well, he's
sort of taken that as maybe as far as could
could go or or should go. And he was getting
(21:18):
he was getting grief from some of the punk rock bands,
including the Sex Pistols themselves, who said, ah, you guys
are oh, you're you know, a bunch of blah blah blah,
and your this is all bloated and YadA YadA YadA.
And he said, well, maybe they have a point, maybe
there's a part where I should start to feel it back.
And he found He comes to this gig in Boston
and he's one of maybe a dozen people at this
(21:39):
gymnasium somewhere lost to history, some high school or college gymnasium.
And it's the middle of a blizzard and Fred lewis there.
The cars manager drives him down there on a VW.
He loves them, he wants to sign them. He within
a year, their their record is out. They go to
they go to London. Uh and he he I mean
(22:02):
Roy Thomas S. Baker took them and said, instead of
having like these multi layers through everything, let's just have
it on. Let's start with the first song, good Times Roll.
It's this sparse, kind of sleek sounding wreck song, and
then all of a sudden, the big the chorus comes
in with these forty times vocals of shouting good Times Roll,
(22:22):
you know, in harmony and unison, and it just explodes
out of the speakers.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
And Roy had come up.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
As an engineer, so he really knew how to get
the best out of this peak analog equipment, tape, microphones,
tube equipment, and just sort of peek it to where
it was just a little distorted, really saturate the tape
and get this what he called perceived loudness. So when
it came on the radio, it just sounded punchy and big.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
It sounded unlike anything we had heard. And it did
fit so beautifully around everything that was being played at
that time as well, so there was nothing that was
you know, out of sync with the times. It was
a breath of fresh air. It still is a breath
of fresh air. Really when I think about the music.
(23:13):
How did the massive success of the first album affect
the band's dynamics.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
I think it was it solidified the first record. They
felt like a real a spree de corps. They they
they had this massive success. It just you know, there
were there were some there was some downside to it.
For example, Elliott was on all of twenty one maybe
(23:41):
at the time he was the youngest. Rick was nine
years older, though nobody knew that, including the band. He
kept his age, as did Ben. They kept it vague
at best, but you know, here's a guy, here's a
duo and Ben in Rick that had starved. They were
(24:01):
on the dole basically welfare. They were stealing things to
just try to survive. They were working, you know, periodically
at retail just to kind of scrounch together some some
food money, blah blah blah. And now they finally hit
it and it just it just verified it. It validated
(24:23):
everything for them for Rick. And you know, I think,
like I said, these guys were at different points in
their lives. I think Greg was had just gotten married
to Elaine, and you know, it was it's just like
they had they were a bit journeymen. They were a
bit of a journeyman group of guys that had sort
of been around a bit.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
So here they were.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
They finally made it, and it didn't happen immediately, but
it happened rather quickly. Over the course of that summer.
That record spread to and you could see it climbing
up the charts. And now they were no longer opening
for sticks, for example, they were headlining arenas. So they
went in and made that second record, and to me
and to most listeners, I think it was like one
(25:07):
A and one B. It's like I don't know which
choose your favorite, they're both. It's almost like a continuation
of the first record. It's just fantastic group of songs
that sounds amazing.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
MTV was just launching, and you know, the Car's Peak
was happening. And how did the visual aesthetic of the
band and the videos contribute to the success.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Well, David Robinson, the drummer, who had come up, as
I said, from the Modern Lovers and from a DMC.
He had a real eye and he's very very he
remains very visually oriented, and he's very into design and aesthetics,
and he kind of provided the band with their look,
(25:52):
which at that time was black and white, were a
little bit of red mixed in, you know, and it
kind of became the template of new wave bands. I mean,
look at the Pretenders, look at the new you know,
look at the Romantics or whatever it might be. At
that time. Things that came out of it was like
the Knack. Eventually they were taking kind of a bit
of what of what David provided for the cars. The
(26:13):
cars individually had their own taste, of course, but David
was sort of the guide in force and they were
on the cutting edge of video, I mean, the very
cutting edge of music. Video was really Devo at this
and this era, I mean music videos, films, promo clips
kind of go back at least to the sixties with
Motown going through you know, car factories and doing things
(26:36):
like that. But now this is before NTV actually launched.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
It was their third record.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
The Cars Panorama, where they hired Gerald Cassally from Divo,
who had been doing DeVos videos. I mean, Divo was
almost an art band to begin with, a film band
to begin with. They saw it as a whole as
the recent documentary Believe Netflix shows that just came out
in the last few weeks. So they hired Jerry to
(27:05):
do their to do two videos on that record, Panorama
itself and Touch and Go. And like I said, this
was before MTV was even around, so MTV didn't even
really come around until between that and their fourth record,
which was Shake It Up. And I remember seeing the
video for Shake it Up on MTV and I didn't
(27:27):
even have MTV, I as a friends, hassen, and it's
got that amazing guitar solo from Elliott, one of my
favorite guitar solos, if not my favorite guitar solo of
all time. But they were, you know, and I talked
to cassally about them and video in general, and he's like,
you know, a lot of rock bands didn't want to
do videos at all, but some saw it as a
way to sort of like give to these TV shows
(27:49):
as a you know, the MERV Briffin Show or something
where they didn't want to go and be on you know,
or like. So there were some shows that would use them,
but by the time MTV came around, it's like MDD
was starved for this kind of stuff, so they broke
a lot of acts that were sort of maybe even
mediocre acts because they have music videos and they played
them five, six, seven times a day, and the cars
(28:11):
are real beneficiaries of that, as we're devo.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
But like a lot of.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Bands, they were reluctant to sort of Rick We talked
about this with the guys. Rick himself was reluctant and
ambivalent and suspicious of video because, like a lot of writers,
you come up with imagery and you want the artists,
I'm sorry, you want the listener or the reader to
come up with their own imagery. You don't want to
sort of assign it to them and have them have
(28:37):
listeners have to overcome their first exposure being a music video, right,
we all remember this from this era, those of us
that lived through this. But at the end of the day,
the cars really benefited from it, and who knows how
long their career would have lasted without it, But they
became big time MTV presence, if not outright stars. They
(29:00):
won the first Video Music Award for you might think,
which was a you know, and this was by the way,
this video costs I think over four hundred thousand dollars
at that time, which was incredible, you know, nineteen eighty three,
nineteen eighty four, to spend this much money.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Ever on a video.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
But it really kind of changed budgets for bands and
record labels too, because by the time my band came around,
I remember, we were spending more on videos than we
were on the recordings themselves.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
What surprised you the most, well researched in the book.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Some of the stuff was I guess I didn't and
I can't say that, you.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Know, Rick's secret lives and compartmentalization. I can't say that
I was that surprised by that because he seemed like
a real enigma anyway, and he fostered that. But the
darkness of what ben Or went through as as after
(30:02):
the cars that say, or as the cars were starting
to wind down. That that kind of surprised me because
he came across as this easygoing guy for whom everything
came natural. Uh, and he should have been a giant
solo star himself. So to learn that was kind of
you know, tragic and sad, now beyond sad, really disheartening him.
(30:25):
You know, it's part of the story.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
I had to tell it. So that was a bit surprising,
I suppose.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
And were there any myths about the band that you
feel like you were able to debunk.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Yeah, I'm sure there are. Let me, I'll have to
come back to that when I think. But I mean,
you know, I think what's surprising to a lot of
people who don't know the cars really well might have
been more casual fans. Well, first of all, there are
two that they were even too vocalists, you know, to
lead vocalists.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
It's like John and Paul and the Beatle to some
people when they finally learned how oh wait, Paul is
singing that one and you start to discern the difference,
which is funny because once you hear it, you can't
unhear it as we say.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
But you know, people's.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
People in bands tend to sort of become the band
and their voices start to take on characteristics of the other.
So there's that, And I guess one of the myths, well,
I think I don't know if it's a myth, but I
think a lot of people assume that Ben wrote the
songs that he sang. But you know, like the who know,
it's one guy wrote all the songs. Basically there were
(31:32):
some co writes with Greg Hawks, but for the most part,
all of those songs were ric ocassick.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
In closing, you preside over your own band, and obviously
in doing the work researching about the cars, you delve
deep enough into the fragility of bands. You know, how
bands are just there's just a fragile nature there. Talk
about how you sort of view that now as you've
(32:01):
completed this book and you're out, you know, doing publicity
for it.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Yeah, I mean, Elliott gave me.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
I think I think it was for me, or at
least it gave a quote that's in the book that says,
you know, bands are such a knuckle ahead proposition. Anyway,
reflecting on the end of the band, and I understand
completely what he means. It's it's something that feels very
natural when you're twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old
(32:29):
and you're putting together band. It's almost like putting together
a gang or putting together a team, but to be
grown adults doing it as a sustained proposition. It's as
you say, it's so frop. You're dealing with people in
(32:49):
art and as a collaboration, and artists themselves tend to
be fragile and volatile, and when you put multiples of
them together in a collaborative effort, whether or not there's
a leader or not, or if with a democracy, which
is rare or not, you inevitably have to you have
(33:14):
to change out parts, right, it seems inevitable, But that's
not the case. Certainly with My Bad, which is beautiful,
we've had the same three. But for a successful band
like the Cars, it was the same five guys over
let's say five or six depending on what you want
to call it, the five six records before they broke up.
(33:37):
So that's a rarity, and it was a balance that
they were able to maintain until the end, and then
inevitably it starts to fall down. But what an amazing
collaborative effort for those for those years from nineteen seventy
eight to let's say nineteen eighty six, and before that
(33:59):
for Ben and you know, Ben and Ben and Rick
predated that by ten years. So it's a beautiful thing
to be able to keep that together.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
What's going on with Buffalo Tom these days.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
Not much.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
I mean, we're just a part time fun for fun
outfit now. I mean, we were supposed to play up
in Salisbury, Massachusetts, but the weather had other ideas.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
That was for w X or V.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
We are I'm leaving for Spain and in a few
days with playing a festival out there in Valencia, which
is so it's just like, you know, if we can,
if we can get on a plane and go play
a festival in Valencia in September and come home without
losing money, it's all, it's all.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
It's all gravy at this point.
Speaker 3 (34:46):
You know.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
We formed in eighty six as the Cards who were
breaking up, as suppose, So it's really it's I feel
very fortunate to be able to still do it.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
I feel fortunate talking to you, Bill, Thanks so much, Buzz,
Congrats on let the story be told. A great band,
part of music history without a question, and you always
just still deep into it and produce great work. So
thank you for everything.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
I appreciate you having the us.
Speaker 5 (35:14):
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Taking a
Walk podcast. Share this and other episodes with your friends
and follow us so you never miss an episode. Taking
a Walk is available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
and wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
The Leave
Taking a Walk Rick was really Rick was getting back
into guitar after having done it as a kid, but
really more as a vehicle for his writing. He saw
himself as a writer and an artist, and he was
trying on.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Different sort of influences.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
He was influenced by everything from sort of the Beatniks,
pre Beatles, Buddy Holly, which is very evident in the Cars.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Picture this. It's nineteen seventy eight. You're driving down the road,
the radios on. Suddenly the sound you hear part rock,
part pop, part something from the future. You can't quite
name it. It's the Cars, that's right. The Cars a
mixture of rock and new wave. It's here. The Cars
didn't just bridge the cap between the classic rock of
(00:44):
the seventies and the synth driven sound of the eighties.
They basically built that bridge, and boy were they a
mainstay in the Boston area and nationally and globally. I'm Buzznight,
the host of the Take on a Walk podcast, and
we welcome back Bill Janovitz. Now you know Bill from
his band Buffalo Tom for sure. But Bill's just written
(01:05):
a book called The Cars. Let the Stories be Told.
And after these words, we're going to talk to Bill
next on Taking a Walk. Taking a Walk a returning
guest on the Taking a Walk podcast. Hello, Bill Janovitz, Hello,
buzz night. Nice to see you again. Nice to be
(01:26):
with you and you as well.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
We're going to talk about the new book The Cars
Let the Stories be told. But since you were last
time we started asking this question, Bill, so I'm not
going to let you get off the hook on the question.
I couldn't do that right. The question is if you
could take a walk with someone living or dead, who
would you take a walk with and where would you
take that walk with him?
Speaker 4 (01:50):
WHOA I hadn't been aware of this question, living or
did I don't know.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
The first person that comes to mind from me is
Keith Richards. I'm sure there are better choices, but first
of all, let's get the guy some exercise. He seems
to be doing fine without it, or whatever exercise he's doing.
But I would love to just talk music. Uh, now,
where would we do that.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
All about?
Speaker 1 (02:23):
He guides me around where his compound is or wherever
wherever he goes for vacation in Jamaica or something like that.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
I think we take it anywhere with Keith wouldn't we.
I think we would. Yeah. Yeah. I like the idea
of being in a compound with anybody, though, don't you.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
I don't know compounds.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Uh, it depends how how like I like like a
nice long walk. I guess if it's a gigantic compound
and you've got plenty of space to write, but with
any kind of conversation it would want to I'd want
it to be somewhere, you know, fairly private, so you're
not getting interrupted in the streets and New York Code.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Kuck Richards or something like that.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Right now, have you encountered Keith in your career?
Speaker 5 (03:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (03:07):
I met Keith once. So I wrote two Stones books.
And in between those two books, right as the first
one was going, I'm sorry, right as the second one
was getting getting started, it wasn't even really getting started.
Let's say, the publishing deal is just sort of coming
into place.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
I just happened to be.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
At this this ceremony at the JFK Museum here in
Boston for pen New England had I think three of
these ceremonies where they gave away an award of lyrics
of literary excellence, and the first one was to Chuck
Berry and Keith I'm sorry Chuck Berry and Leonard Cohen,
(03:48):
and I have these photos that are just insane from
the green room of me meeting Chuck Berry, of Leonard
Cohen sitting right in front of me, of Salmon Rushdie,
of Paul Simon, of you know, of course the Wool
of Good was there, Peter Wolf. But before the ceremony,
I I was just against a wall, trying not to
(04:13):
you know, bump into anybody or hurt anybody, or spill
anything some of the klutz. I just wanted to take
it all in and be the fly literally on the wall.
And right next to me was a little sort of
side table kind of thing up against the wall with
a lamp. And who should come and stand on the
other side of it but Keith Richards.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
And he was by himself at that moment.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
So I had a pep talk to myself for about
five seconds and said, all right, you got to go
talk to Keith Richards. This just like mine, one of
my you know, you know, he's the guy I picked
right off the top of my head when you asked
me that question. So I turned to him and I said, uh,
I didn't want to get into my books or anything,
you know, because I didn't want to scare him off,
but I wanted to start a conversation or just say hello.
(04:58):
And I said, Keith, I just wanted to say hello
to you. You know, obviously you get this all the time.
I'm just very honored to meet you. And I said,
I said, oh, man, I so well, you know, what
do you say to Keith Richards? And he says, well,
feel the same way about schruck Berry, mate.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
You know, he's he's he's just one of my he's
my hero. So I had to be here for him.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
And I said, yeah, and what a great event for
him to get an award for his lyrics, you know,
And he said, oh, absolutely, man. He goes he's written
some of the greatest lyrics of all time, and he said,
hurry home. Drops in her eyes. Man, He's like, oh,
you know, and he starts counting his chest. And I'm
sitting there going, what an amazing guy to take this nervous,
(05:42):
awkward guy that I am, and just like sort of
jiu jitsu it into this beautiful conversation. And I'm sitting
here having a conversation about rock and roll lyrics with
Keith Richards and my mind was just like a b
So that was kind of the extent of it.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Wow, thanks for sharing that. Other than maybe you smoking
another three packs of cigarettes a day, you sounded pretty
much like him. That's good. That's good. So congrats on
the cars. Let the stories be told. How did you
first intersect with the cars? At least before you know
(06:20):
we talk about the book specifically, what you know, you
obviously did intersect with them.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Yeah, I when I was twelve years old was when
I first heard that record. It came out in seventy eight,
as you know, and I talk about it in the
pro lob of this book, where I'm just sitting in
my friend's room and I was the old, oldest of
five and he had an older brother. I didn't have
any older siblings to bring me these records. And his
brother was the probably still the coolest person I know,
(06:47):
drove an orange Camaro, came back from college often bearing
cool records, and he brought back this record.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
You know, with Natalie Moldova on the cover.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
As we got to know later, this model at the
steering wheel and the lights are going and it's just
says the cars, and it's like, what is this?
Speaker 2 (07:03):
You know? And you put down that.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
We're on the shag carpeted shag carpet of a wood
panel bedroom in the seventies, you know, And we dropped
the needle and we're listening to Let the Good Times Rule,
and I talk about, Wow, what a revelation this is.
It's like, I mean, finally I found like, this is
one of my bands. This is like for me, this
is like not me going to catch up with the
Stones or the Beatles or Neil Young or whatever it
(07:27):
may be. This is something brand new and it sounds familiar,
but it also sounds extremely new and novel. So that
was the first time I'd heard them, and I was
just I just started the journey, my brother, my friends,
and I just got right into it with the with
the cars the first time I actually encountered them in person.
You know, I'm living around I just live a town
(07:48):
away from from from from from Greg as I think
you do as well.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
And I've seen him.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
I first actually met him very briefly at the Hot
ste of Cool Music music benefit, which I've been part
of for the better part of twenty something years.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
And I Dowdy remembered me.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
It was just, you know, in the backstage area of
all these other people going around, just me saying hello.
But in twenty eighteen, I was fortunate enough to play
music at another benefit out in Los Angeles. I was
an invited, honored guest to be there as part of
this Wild Honey Research autism research benefit. And you know, NLA,
(08:33):
it's like it's an embarrassment of riches of who comes
along to play for these things. I mean, for when
they did a tribute to the Beach Boys, they had
Brian Wasn't himself, show Off, Alex Childen, all these and
it's just crazy. So when I play and I played this,
it was a kink Steen We played stop Your Sobbing,
and I sang and I had Easton with me playing guitar,
(08:54):
and Dennis Dyken of the Smithereens and Brian Wilson's band
making New York.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
That's crazy.
Speaker 5 (09:00):
It's just great.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
So for rehearsals, I met Elliott the night before or
to nights before, whatever it may be, and he's just
a warm Elliott Easton, a warm and open and very
conversational person who kind of like my encounter with Keith Richards,
except this time I was going to be playing music
with this person, and again my mind is blown.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
I mean, here are these people off.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
My record collection and I'm talking to them and they
were such a.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Big part of my life.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
And anyway, long story short, Elliott and I just struck
up a little correspondence, stuck him. He already had one
of my Stones books, I think, and I sent him
more and we talked back and forth, and I said, hey,
you know, I wrote an article about this experience, and
I talked about how great and underappreciated Elliott Easton is
guitar player. And I said, what about doing a Car's book.
It's kind of a the suggestion of a friend of mine.
(09:52):
I said, that's a great idea, and Elliott thought it
was a great idea too, except that Rick Ocassick was
still around and he was very much in the shots
still for the band, and it didn't seem to take
root at that point. So in the meantime, I did
this Leon Russell biography and that seemed to get some
great traction and get the attention of the Cars guys
as well. And then sadly, Rico Cassa passed and I
(10:17):
struck up a relationship with these three guys and said
let's do a cars book, and they were all on
board with it.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
And do you remember the first time you saw them
play live?
Speaker 1 (10:28):
I never saw the Cars live. I mean, it's one
of my regrets. I mean, you know a lot of
people there did talk to you. I mean, I've seen
obviously many clips and I've got the videos, the home
videos and things, but.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
No, I never got to see them live. Why is that? Well,
I was fairly young when they were going.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
I wasn't able to really go to rock and roll
concerts for a few years until after that, and then
by that time I was moving to Massachusetts. I think
they broke up when I was, you know, soon after
I was in my freshman.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Year of college. So I never really got the chance.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
I have one of my band, my own bandmates, Tom McGinnis,
got to see them at the what is now the
Lang Center, but what was the what the Boston Music
Hall back then, the same weekend as the Pope was
in town. Everybody talks about that one. You know, there's
differing views on how the cars were alive. By all accounts,
(11:20):
you know, audio wised, they were amazing. A lot of
people were sort of let down by how their visual presentation.
Maybe how about you saw.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Them at the Yale Bowl, believe it or not, which
was not a fitting place to see them. I thought,
I didn't think it in the moment, and then after
the fact, I'm like that, I wish I saw them
at you know, the Wang or something like that, because it.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Was that cheap trick. I believe in a bunch of
other bands at the Yell Bowl, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
So that one. It was a great experience, but it
sort of didn't showcase them. I think like they should
have been showcased because obviously the catalog of music speaks
for itself. I mean, right, just just incredible. So walk
us through the ricklecastic Benjamin or partnership and how it
(12:10):
evolved over time with the cars.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Yeah, I mean they met in Ohio.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Ben was raised outside of Cleveland in Agora Heights and
I thinks anyway suburb of Cleveland, and he was a
teenage star in a band called the Grasshoppers on a
local and then syndicated show called Upbeat. It had two
different names, but Upbeat was.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
One of them. Sort of a sort of a shindig
type show.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
They were he was sort of in a house band
that they had various house bands that came and went,
but he was in the Grasshoppers. There were a certain
like I said, teen local teen stars. Rick's family. Rick
was raised in Baltimore until he was about high school somewhere,
you know, later high school year sixteen or so, his
father got rid of caated to I think he's working
for NASA, an assa lab in outside of Cleveland. So
(13:07):
he he started college and and and bumped around Ohio
a little bit, Bowling Green and then ended up in
Columbus and that's where they met, and they it was
sort of like uh. At this point, Rick was really uh.
Rick was getting back into guitar after having done it
as a as a kid, but really more as a
as a.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Vehicle for his writing.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
He saw himself as a writer and an artist, and
he was trying on different sort of influences. He was
influenced by everything from sort of the Beatniks pre Beatles,
very Buddy Holly, which is very evident in the cars
the Beatles of course, but then very much Bob Dylan
was revolutionary for him, as it was for so many
(13:49):
other writers, and then the Velvet Underground and and and onward.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
But he was still you know when he was writing,
he was writing.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Sort of almost pastor old, you know, probably still some
nashy type stuff and some psychedelia, you know.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
So they had these.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Different bands and when he met when he met Ben,
Ben joined this. They joined forces. They joined this band
id Nirvana. I think it was the first band. I
made a mistaken there. But they had so many different
little iterations, and but they he recognized and Ben this
he remembered having. I think he learned and then put
(14:26):
put it together that he had seen Ben on TV
as when Ben was you know, sixteen or so, and
just being really impressed by that. And and Ben was
just a naturally charismatic, quiet, cool, natural singer, could play
any instrument. And it was just sort of like a
(14:46):
match made in heaven for Rick, who was a bit
more angular and tall and gawky and a little awkward
and edgy, and here was this smooth guy, and they
were sort of they I think they recognized this in
each other, this me and Yang. Ben wasn't really writing
anything Rick was, so one thing led to another. They
eventually tried on you know, duos, trios, blah blah blah.
(15:09):
They ended up in coming to coming to Cambridge, Boston
and forming a trio called Milkwood with Jim Goodkin, and
they put out one record and it's very kind of
what I was saying more singer songwriter nineteen seventy one ish.
You know, it wasn't really rock and roll, it was.
(15:32):
It was kind of a weak record that Rick Forever
tried to distance himself, and then there were other bands.
I don't know how long you want me to go on,
but I think there were different iterations that led up,
like two other three other iterations that led up to
the Cars in nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 5 (15:45):
We'll be right back with more of the Taken a
Walk podcast. Welcome back to the Taking a Walk Podcast.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
It's interesting thinking about the Boston came scene and the
influence certainly that that you know, had to have had
on the band and their evolution and their acceptance over time,
but also the fact of the rich you know, radio
landscape as well that was going on here in town
(16:18):
in the Boston area, you know, specifically the WBCN side
of things. But as I was hearing you talk about
that history and I was wondering, Okay, could they have
catapulted to success if they were in filling the blank
market A or B. Even if you mentioned Ohio, the
answer is yes, because Ohio was rich in experimental sounds
(16:43):
as well, you know, just like Boston and Cambridge was,
and the radio side of things was also rich there
as well. So I think there's many markets that would have,
you know, helped fuel their success, not only Boston. Would
you agree with that long winded statement.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
It's it's it's a tough exercise to go through, and
I'm not sure if it really brings us much. I mean,
I will say that Boston was essential to them because
that's where, you know, so there's no native buff The
only native Massachusetts person in the band is David Robinson,
who had come from Modern Lovers and then was in
(17:24):
a garage punk band proto bant punk band called DMZ
with the They were basically the band that led to
being The Liars, who were a legendary garage rock band,
retro sort of thing. But the other guys, Greg Hawks
and Elliott Easton had come to Boston to go to
Berkeley College of Music, and like many who had come
(17:45):
to Berkeley, they dropped out at cerin Point and they
were kicking around in different bands themselves so you know,
I go into all of this lineage.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
So there was that. Then there was also, uh.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
You know, by the time the Cars started, because they
were really through these other bands, it was very difficult
to get a gig playing original music.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
You know.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
They had to sneak in original songs, you know, when
they were in this band called Richard and the Rabbits
and then Cap and Swing, they had to smuggle in
these new songs, these original songs, I should say.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
So.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
But by the time the Cars got going, let's say
what seventy six is when maybe the Rat started. Jim
Harold's here somewhere in there, and they were the Rat,
and maybe one or two other clubs in Boffin were
supportive of original bands, and it became a bit of
(18:40):
a circuit with CBGBs. So they would send each other
Hailly Crystal would send up bands to Jim, and Jim
would send I talked about this with Oedipus, a big
radio figure that you know here in part of BCN.
And so all of those things, plus the built in
gigantic college town, the spinal taps statement. To the contrary,
(19:03):
it was a big b and it remains a big
college town and the drinking age was not yet twenty
one here, So all of those things were very much encouraging.
And not to mention what you already mentioned, which is
Max Antsar Torri at WBCN Oedipus. Before he got to BCN,
he was at what is now WNBR at MIT, so
(19:28):
they had this built in support.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
They were playing their demos.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
I mean, max An started playing just what I needed
in demo form on BCN, and that really all of
a sudden, they had like not just one show at
the REP, but they have two shows a night, which
was sort of unheard of, like two separate doors entrances.
So they really got traction in Boston.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
It's hard to say.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
I don't know if all of those things could have
happened in Ohio. I think they felt like they had
to leave Ohio, Columbus, Cleveland, whatever it may be. LA
was more of a you know, sort of different thing
at that point. In fact, David and I'm giving you
a long, very even more long winded response, but David
had gone out to LA and and and was recruited
(20:10):
to play in this band called The Pop which was
a power pop band, and LA was kind of dead
at that time. You know, these A and R scenes
sort of move on to different places, and this kind
of went on at least through the grungeiars that I
that I was a little bit part of as well.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Roy Thomas Baker produced the debut album. What did his
involvement bring to the sound?
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Oh he he he. Well, to say he was the
sound would be overstating it. Because they had the songs,
they had the arrangements. He didn't fuss with those at all.
He was coming off of his Queen Years monumental success,
which Mike Sensar Tori, by the way, also had a
big role in helping promote and break in America as
(20:56):
just among a few artists, including Aerosmith's. She was very,
very instrumental in breaking these artists. But uh so, Roy
Thomas Baker had produced those Queen records and they were
gigetic sounding, and he was getting he thought, well, he's
sort of taken that as maybe as far as could
could go or or should go. And he was getting
(21:18):
he was getting grief from some of the punk rock bands,
including the Sex Pistols themselves, who said, ah, you guys
are oh, you're you know, a bunch of blah blah blah,
and your this is all bloated and YadA YadA YadA.
And he said, well, maybe they have a point, maybe
there's a part where I should start to feel it back.
And he found He comes to this gig in Boston
and he's one of maybe a dozen people at this
(21:39):
gymnasium somewhere lost to history, some high school or college gymnasium.
And it's the middle of a blizzard and Fred lewis there.
The cars manager drives him down there on a VW.
He loves them, he wants to sign them. He within
a year, their their record is out. They go to
they go to London. Uh and he he I mean
(22:02):
Roy Thomas S. Baker took them and said, instead of
having like these multi layers through everything, let's just have
it on. Let's start with the first song, good Times Roll.
It's this sparse, kind of sleek sounding wreck song, and
then all of a sudden, the big the chorus comes
in with these forty times vocals of shouting good Times Roll,
(22:22):
you know, in harmony and unison, and it just explodes
out of the speakers.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
And Roy had come up.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
As an engineer, so he really knew how to get
the best out of this peak analog equipment, tape, microphones,
tube equipment, and just sort of peek it to where
it was just a little distorted, really saturate the tape
and get this what he called perceived loudness. So when
it came on the radio, it just sounded punchy and big.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
It sounded unlike anything we had heard. And it did
fit so beautifully around everything that was being played at
that time as well, so there was nothing that was
you know, out of sync with the times. It was
a breath of fresh air. It still is a breath
of fresh air. Really when I think about the music.
(23:13):
How did the massive success of the first album affect
the band's dynamics.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
I think it was it solidified the first record. They
felt like a real a spree de corps. They they
they had this massive success. It just you know, there
were there were some there was some downside to it.
For example, Elliott was on all of twenty one maybe
(23:41):
at the time he was the youngest. Rick was nine
years older, though nobody knew that, including the band. He
kept his age, as did Ben. They kept it vague
at best, but you know, here's a guy, here's a
duo and Ben in Rick that had starved. They were
(24:01):
on the dole basically welfare. They were stealing things to
just try to survive. They were working, you know, periodically
at retail just to kind of scrounch together some some
food money, blah blah blah. And now they finally hit
it and it just it just verified it. It validated
(24:23):
everything for them for Rick. And you know, I think,
like I said, these guys were at different points in
their lives. I think Greg was had just gotten married
to Elaine, and you know, it was it's just like
they had they were a bit journeymen. They were a
bit of a journeyman group of guys that had sort
of been around a bit.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
So here they were.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
They finally made it, and it didn't happen immediately, but
it happened rather quickly. Over the course of that summer.
That record spread to and you could see it climbing
up the charts. And now they were no longer opening
for sticks, for example, they were headlining arenas. So they
went in and made that second record, and to me
and to most listeners, I think it was like one
(25:07):
A and one B. It's like I don't know which
choose your favorite, they're both. It's almost like a continuation
of the first record. It's just fantastic group of songs
that sounds amazing.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
MTV was just launching, and you know, the Car's Peak
was happening. And how did the visual aesthetic of the
band and the videos contribute to the success.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Well, David Robinson, the drummer, who had come up, as
I said, from the Modern Lovers and from a DMC.
He had a real eye and he's very very he
remains very visually oriented, and he's very into design and aesthetics,
and he kind of provided the band with their look,
(25:52):
which at that time was black and white, were a
little bit of red mixed in, you know, and it
kind of became the template of new wave bands. I mean,
look at the Pretenders, look at the new you know,
look at the Romantics or whatever it might be. At
that time. Things that came out of it was like
the Knack. Eventually they were taking kind of a bit
of what of what David provided for the cars. The
(26:13):
cars individually had their own taste, of course, but David
was sort of the guide in force and they were
on the cutting edge of video, I mean, the very
cutting edge of music. Video was really Devo at this
and this era, I mean music videos, films, promo clips
kind of go back at least to the sixties with
Motown going through you know, car factories and doing things
(26:36):
like that. But now this is before NTV actually launched.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
It was their third record.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
The Cars Panorama, where they hired Gerald Cassally from Divo,
who had been doing DeVos videos. I mean, Divo was
almost an art band to begin with, a film band
to begin with. They saw it as a whole as
the recent documentary Believe Netflix shows that just came out
in the last few weeks. So they hired Jerry to
(27:05):
do their to do two videos on that record, Panorama
itself and Touch and Go. And like I said, this
was before MTV was even around, so MTV didn't even
really come around until between that and their fourth record,
which was Shake It Up. And I remember seeing the
video for Shake it Up on MTV and I didn't
(27:27):
even have MTV, I as a friends, hassen, and it's
got that amazing guitar solo from Elliott, one of my
favorite guitar solos, if not my favorite guitar solo of
all time. But they were, you know, and I talked
to cassally about them and video in general, and he's like,
you know, a lot of rock bands didn't want to
do videos at all, but some saw it as a
way to sort of like give to these TV shows
(27:49):
as a you know, the MERV Briffin Show or something
where they didn't want to go and be on you know,
or like. So there were some shows that would use them,
but by the time MTV came around, it's like MDD
was starved for this kind of stuff, so they broke
a lot of acts that were sort of maybe even
mediocre acts because they have music videos and they played
them five, six, seven times a day, and the cars
(28:11):
are real beneficiaries of that, as we're devo.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
But like a lot of.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Bands, they were reluctant to sort of Rick We talked
about this with the guys. Rick himself was reluctant and
ambivalent and suspicious of video because, like a lot of writers,
you come up with imagery and you want the artists,
I'm sorry, you want the listener or the reader to
come up with their own imagery. You don't want to
sort of assign it to them and have them have
(28:37):
listeners have to overcome their first exposure being a music video, right,
we all remember this from this era, those of us
that lived through this. But at the end of the day,
the cars really benefited from it, and who knows how
long their career would have lasted without it, But they
became big time MTV presence, if not outright stars. They
(29:00):
won the first Video Music Award for you might think,
which was a you know, and this was by the way,
this video costs I think over four hundred thousand dollars
at that time, which was incredible, you know, nineteen eighty three,
nineteen eighty four, to spend this much money.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Ever on a video.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
But it really kind of changed budgets for bands and
record labels too, because by the time my band came around,
I remember, we were spending more on videos than we
were on the recordings themselves.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
What surprised you the most, well researched in the book.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Some of the stuff was I guess I didn't and
I can't say that, you.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Know, Rick's secret lives and compartmentalization. I can't say that
I was that surprised by that because he seemed like
a real enigma anyway, and he fostered that. But the
darkness of what ben Or went through as as after
(30:02):
the cars that say, or as the cars were starting
to wind down. That that kind of surprised me because
he came across as this easygoing guy for whom everything
came natural. Uh, and he should have been a giant
solo star himself. So to learn that was kind of
you know, tragic and sad, now beyond sad, really disheartening him.
(30:25):
You know, it's part of the story.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
I had to tell it. So that was a bit surprising,
I suppose.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
And were there any myths about the band that you
feel like you were able to debunk.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Yeah, I'm sure there are. Let me, I'll have to
come back to that when I think. But I mean,
you know, I think what's surprising to a lot of
people who don't know the cars really well might have
been more casual fans. Well, first of all, there are
two that they were even too vocalists, you know, to
lead vocalists.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
It's like John and Paul and the Beatle to some
people when they finally learned how oh wait, Paul is
singing that one and you start to discern the difference,
which is funny because once you hear it, you can't
unhear it as we say.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
But you know, people's.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
People in bands tend to sort of become the band
and their voices start to take on characteristics of the other.
So there's that, And I guess one of the myths, well,
I think I don't know if it's a myth, but I
think a lot of people assume that Ben wrote the
songs that he sang. But you know, like the who know,
it's one guy wrote all the songs. Basically there were
(31:32):
some co writes with Greg Hawks, but for the most part,
all of those songs were ric ocassick.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
In closing, you preside over your own band, and obviously
in doing the work researching about the cars, you delve
deep enough into the fragility of bands. You know, how
bands are just there's just a fragile nature there. Talk
about how you sort of view that now as you've
(32:01):
completed this book and you're out, you know, doing publicity
for it.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Yeah, I mean, Elliott gave me.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
I think I think it was for me, or at
least it gave a quote that's in the book that says,
you know, bands are such a knuckle ahead proposition. Anyway,
reflecting on the end of the band, and I understand
completely what he means. It's it's something that feels very
natural when you're twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old
(32:29):
and you're putting together band. It's almost like putting together
a gang or putting together a team, but to be
grown adults doing it as a sustained proposition. It's as
you say, it's so frop. You're dealing with people in
(32:49):
art and as a collaboration, and artists themselves tend to
be fragile and volatile, and when you put multiples of
them together in a collaborative effort, whether or not there's
a leader or not, or if with a democracy, which
is rare or not, you inevitably have to you have
(33:14):
to change out parts, right, it seems inevitable, But that's
not the case. Certainly with My Bad, which is beautiful,
we've had the same three. But for a successful band
like the Cars, it was the same five guys over
let's say five or six depending on what you want
to call it, the five six records before they broke up.
(33:37):
So that's a rarity, and it was a balance that
they were able to maintain until the end, and then
inevitably it starts to fall down. But what an amazing
collaborative effort for those for those years from nineteen seventy
eight to let's say nineteen eighty six, and before that
(33:59):
for Ben and you know, Ben and Ben and Rick
predated that by ten years. So it's a beautiful thing
to be able to keep that together.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
What's going on with Buffalo Tom these days.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
Not much.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
I mean, we're just a part time fun for fun
outfit now. I mean, we were supposed to play up
in Salisbury, Massachusetts, but the weather had other ideas.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
That was for w X or V.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
We are I'm leaving for Spain and in a few
days with playing a festival out there in Valencia, which
is so it's just like, you know, if we can,
if we can get on a plane and go play
a festival in Valencia in September and come home without
losing money, it's all, it's all.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
It's all gravy at this point.
Speaker 3 (34:46):
You know.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
We formed in eighty six as the Cards who were
breaking up, as suppose, So it's really it's I feel
very fortunate to be able to still do it.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
I feel fortunate talking to you, Bill, Thanks so much, Buzz,
Congrats on let the story be told. A great band,
part of music history without a question, and you always
just still deep into it and produce great work. So
thank you for everything.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
I appreciate you having the us.
Speaker 5 (35:14):
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Taking a
Walk podcast. Share this and other episodes with your friends
and follow us so you never miss an episode. Taking
a Walk is available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
and wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
The Leave
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