BILL JANOVITZ CARS BOOK

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Bill. You're on with Queenland Cantera.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Bill Janovitz, Hi, such a big deal for me.

Speaker 3 (00:05):
I know that you're in Buffalo Tom, and I know
you've got this car's book let, The Stories Be Told.
But your two thousand and one album up here was
one of my one of my all time favorite albums.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
How about that. Super excited to get to talk to you,
mister Jenny. Wow, love that album.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
Thanks so much.

Speaker 4 (00:20):
Yeah, you got it.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
You're one of maybe five hundred people that happened.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
I know it didn't get play, but I mean every album,
all ten tracks, all eleven tracks.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
I love it.

Speaker 4 (00:32):
You know, you got the Buffalo Tom history, but then
you turn it into this biographer, this this award winning
New York Times writer. You've really done some amazing stuff.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
Thank you so much. I appreciate it. You got to
keep busy in life, so.

Speaker 3 (00:46):
I mean, we'll get to the book. But are you
done with music and you're just a writer and critic
now or do you still make music?

Speaker 1 (00:51):
No? I just Buffalo Toom was just in Valencia, Spain
this past week. I flew back on Saturday. Yeah, we're
like we're like in the stage of like Dad Gone Wild,
you know, like go go away for a weekend or
go away for a week and you know, it's like
a long tour for us would be would be ten

(01:12):
days to fourteen days at this point. But now we
had a record come out in two thousand, like I
don't know, eighteen or so was our last record.

Speaker 3 (01:19):
All right, Bill Janovitz form or I've Buffalo Tom and
author of this book The Cars, Let the Stories be Told.
It seems to me like the band's The Cars made
great music. But were they a likable bunch?

Speaker 1 (01:33):
Yeah? Well, I mean, like any any group of five people,
it depends who you ask, you know, I mean, you
can't generalize about all five guts because they were you know,
it was Rick a likable guy, ric Ocatholic, the leader. No, no, no,
it depends again, it depends who you ask. Like his
bandmates have some things to say about him, both good
and bad. I mean, he was clearly a brilliant artist,

(01:57):
but he didn't end up treating people at the end
of his life at the bat, you know, who am
I to judge. But at the end of his life, Uh,
he went out sort of kind of with a little
bit of rancor and bitterness, leaving some stuff, you know,
but he was also beloved by by many people, including
his you know, his family, and young bands who he produced,
like you know, like like Weezer for example. There's nothing

(02:20):
but the things to say.

Speaker 3 (02:21):
To them, the book, Let the stories be told, the cars,
Let the stories be told? Is this the definitive book
on the cars? Are you the first?

Speaker 1 (02:28):
Yeah? Yeah, I have the first? Well, I mean I
think there were a couple of books back in their day,
you know, like photo books and and kind of early
biography of them called Frozen Fire, but they're out of print.
But this is the first real book about them. Uh uh.
And and it is authoritative and definitive because I mean
I had the participation, the full participation of the three

(02:51):
surviving members.

Speaker 4 (02:52):
Like enthusiastic participation.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
Yeah, I mean Greg Hoffs wrote wrote the forward for it.
You know, I'm a real beneficiary of their generosity. I
mean they told me everything, nothing was off limits. Really.
Uh you know, I went into some of the personal
background only inasmuch as it kind of affected the band,
But really it's about like this rocket ship ride these

(03:14):
guys had. I mean, their first album came out and
sold six million records. So how do you follow that
up well with a record that's almost the same. You know,
there's one A and one B as far as I'm concerned,
Candy O. You know, they finished their sort of peak
career with with you know, a video the first you know,
a video driven album, but really kind of an amazing

(03:36):
record called Heartbeat City that was that sold four or
five million copies, had won the first Video Music Award
with with You might think so, I mean, quite a
remarkable career and quite quite a bunch of talent. It does.

Speaker 4 (03:47):
Did you take a whole chapter on Paulina?

Speaker 1 (03:50):
Paulina is in it a lot? Of course, there's not
a chapter called Pauline, But I got to say my
zoom call was was fantastic. She's she's an absolute delight,
and she was really open about about, you know, her
own relationship with Rick, but also about how Rick talked

(04:10):
about the band.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
How did he talk about the band?

Speaker 1 (04:13):
Well, I mean, by the time she came in, it
was the you know they met on they met on
the Timothy Hutton directed video for the song drive Artbeat City,
and he had already had had left one wife and child,
two children in fact, behind in Ohio before he even
came to Boston in the early seventies. He had another

(04:35):
wife and two kids. From the beginning of before the
Cars and through the Cars until he.

Speaker 4 (04:40):
Met Paulina, he was with his wife at the time
they met. Paulina was like when they started, oh.

Speaker 1 (04:45):
For sure, yeah, and he was pushing forty and she
was nineteen and you know, look into that what however
you like? And of course you know I remember second
well say they were sort of a couple of a
couple of the of eighties.

Speaker 3 (05:00):
Really, So Bill Janevitz, a New York Times best selling author.
We're talking about his book The Cars, Let the Stories
Be Told, available on Amazon or wherever you buy books.
I don't think that The Cars needed videos to be successful.
So and I'm going to ask you is that do
you agree with me? And where do the Cars? Where
do you put the Cars in musical history? Where do
they fall?

Speaker 1 (05:20):
Well, I mean the Cars were one of those bands
along with Talking He has DeVos that ushered the seventies
into the eighties, and they were making videos. In fact,
with Jerry Cassally of Devo made a couple of videos
for them on their third album before MTV even existed.
So no, they had sold many millions of records before
the advent of MTV. But you know, to have success

(05:43):
during MTV, which kind of became hugely successful very quickly,
you had to keep churning out videos, which meant increased
increasingly high budgets. I mean the budget, for you might
think was in nineteen eighty what four it was like
half a million dollars, which is just insane.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
How was this song?

Speaker 4 (06:03):
The video? Was the song back then? It's like so
hard to like look at him as separate entities, but
the music alone, if you separate yourself from the video,
I can't tear say he was fabulous for sure, No.

Speaker 1 (06:15):
I mean, great music has to exist without the images totally.
Like Rick Rickle Kassik and the guys in the band,
like a lot of guys in bands that predated MTV,
were like, well, you went into it very skeptical. It's like, well,
if we're making these these images for the song, then
are people going to imagine their own images? And to
your point, you know, no.

Speaker 3 (06:36):
We can't.

Speaker 1 (06:36):
We can't. It's hard for us to escape that image.

Speaker 4 (06:39):
Right.

Speaker 3 (06:40):
Well, we look forward to reading the book The Cars
That The Stories Be Told, available on Amazon or rev
You buy your books, and it's.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
A great pleasure to talk to you, sir.

Speaker 3 (06:47):
You want to finish this line if I say he
got up and disappeared.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
Lately, no one's seen him around here, yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
Suburban streets at night of dark.

Speaker 1 (06:57):
I love it.

Speaker 2 (06:58):
I love that album, and I appreciate you coming on
the show, sir.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
Thank you, sir, Thanks so much.

Speaker 4 (07:01):
Guys, it's our play. Just picks one out six