By Elysa Gardner, USA TODAY
NEW YORK � Ask the musicians in The Cars a question about the band, and you'll likely get more than one answer.
By Todd Plitt, USA TODAY
Back on the pavement:David Robinson, left, Ric Ocasek, Greg Hawkes and Elliot Easton of The Cars have a new album, Move Like This, and will be playing a select number of live shows this month.
By Todd Plitt, USA TODAY
Back on the pavement:David Robinson, left, Ric Ocasek, Greg Hawkes and Elliot Easton of The Cars have a new album, Move Like This, and will be playing a select number of live shows this month.
Take the process behind Move Like This, the group's first album since 1987's Door to Door. Greg Hawkes recalls Ric Ocasek calling him with the news that "he had this backlog of songs and was interested in doing some of them in the context of a Cars album."
Elliot Easton remembers phoning Ocasek himself. "We had a nice conversation, and he said that he'd been writing songs, and that they were a little different. I asked what he was going to do with them, and he said he'd make a solo record. And I said, 'Why don't we make a Cars record?' "
All members are in agreement that once they got together in Ocasek's studio in Millbrook, N.Y., things fell into place immediately.
"All the humor and the friendship came right back," says Easton. "And I found it was very easy to play with these guys."
The four had kept in touch periodically since breaking up. They pursued separate musical projects, except for David Robinson: "I have an art gallery now, and I make jewelry. My only playing had been loose jamming on conga drums."
Easton and Hawkes joined forces with Todd Rundgren in 2005 to form the New Cars, who did shows mixing Cars and Rundgren songs with new material. "That's something I'd rather not discuss now," Easton says.
"You'll get four different perspectives," Hawkes quips.
Ocasek's efforts in the intervening years had included producing albums for other acts, among them Guided By Voices and Weezer, while living in Manhattan with his model/actress wife, Paulina Porizkova (he calls her "P"), and their two sons. Initially, he wanted the new Cars album to be self-produced.
"I figured it would be easiest to just do it ourselves and release it on the Internet ? the heck with the fanfare and all that," Ocasek says. "Then the reality of actually doing the record set in, and I thought it might be good to bring someone else in. It's hard to perform and critique the band at the same time."
Ocasek enlisted Garret "Jacknife" Lee, whose work with contemporary bands such as Snow Patrol he admired, to produce a number of tracks. "I totally left things up to him. For me to co-produce the songs with him would have been the same as producing them myself. I wouldn't have hired someone I had to help, you know?"
Though a press release describes the new songs as "more topical, a bit more poetic," he concedes that The Cars' tunes "all have a similar quality. I broke it down once to be about six different songs that we do, and they're all variations on a theme."
The Cars are similarly hard-pressed to identify latter-day artists the band has inspired. "I'll read in music magazines that people name us as an influence, but I don't always hear it," says Easton. "I don't know ? the Jonas Brothers, maybe?"
Though the four are looking forward to getting back onstage together, no larger tour is in the works after their series of dates this month.
"We all love being in the studio, the creative aspect of it," Easton says. "But some of us enjoy performing more than others do.
"What makes this thing valid is that we miraculously got together again after all these years and made a really nice record. Anything after that is just gravy."
Jennifer ODell Vanessa Minnillo Marika Dominczyk Sara Spraker Summer Altice
No comments:
Post a Comment