‘Let the Stories Be Told’ is a Dazzling Drive Through The Cars’ Career

There’s simultaneously more and less than you’d expect to the story behind The Cars. And Bill Janowitz is perfectly positioned to tell the difference and pull back the veil on both.

The Cars: Let the Stories Be Told  
By Bill Janowitz
Da Capo Press; 512 pages

In the late ‘70s, The Cars were pretty much the first New Wave band to really bust through to the big time, their milestone debut arriving ahead of the mainstream breakthroughs of The Police, Talking Heads, Blondie, et al. And in some ways, the band who rose up from the Boston rock underground to conquer America were the most subversive of the crossover pack, sneaking some of the most overtly forward-looking ideas into heavy AOR rotation. But for all the band’s futurism, the tale of The Cars contains a lot of the same dramatic mile markers as those classic rock heroes who preceded them: a rags-to-riches climb, problematic business deals, and internal group friction that continued until their 1988 breakup.

At the same time, the men who emerged as the bringers of a fresh new way to rock had way more history behind them than most folks knew, both together and separately. And behind the stoic, sub-zero cool front they presented to the public was a churning stew of emotions and experiences that ran the gamut from downright admirable to desperately dysfunctional.

Janowitz was an impressionable, music-obsessed teen when The Cars broke out. And he was getting his own alt-rock crew, Buffalo Tom, off the ground in Boston when The Cars were still — at least ostensibly — on top of the world. Between his Boston location, musician’s perspective, and pure, unadulterated fandom, he’s the man to tell the tale. It doesn’t hurt that, as his bestselling 2023 biography of Leon Russell makes clear, he’s got a knack for documenting the careers of his heroes.

The tight musical and personal bond between The Cars’ frontmen, Ric Ocasek and Ben Orr, went back way before The Cars, taking them through everything from psychedelic folk rock to a sort of street-level Steely Dan vibe in various bands before hitting the magic combination with Greg Hawkes, Elliott Easton, and David Robinson. And Janowitz digs deeply into the nitty gritty of the pair’s history, as well as the other Cars’ backgrounds, be it Greg Hawkes’s gig as keyboardist for musician and comic actor Martin Mull or David Robinson’s historic stint with Jonathan Richman in proto-punk cult heroes The Modern Lovers.

Janowitz gets the straight skinny from all the surviving members (Orr passed in 2000 and Ocasek in 2019). But he also did some epic detective working tracking down tons of folks who played big and small parts in every aspect of the band’s lives, including significant others, friends, management, and more. Janowitz uses all these accounts to create balanced portraits of the five complicated characters who made up the Cars, detailing what kept them together (camaraderie, musical frisson) and what threatened to pull them apart (egos, control issues).

We get as clear a picture as any outsider is ever likely to have of the most mysterious Car, the pathologically secretive Ocasek, whose emotional distance was both a defining personality trait and part of what made his work so compellingly idiosyncratic. And, with Janowitz leading, we take a rollercoaster ride through Ocasek’s ups and downs with his bandmates and others, cringing at the harshest interactions and getting misty at the most touching moments.

Janowitz gives us a front-row seat for the extremes of the band’s journey. His passion for the bygone days of the Boston rock scene helps him paint a vivid picture of The Cars’ poverty-stricken struggles at the beginning. Later, as they reach the limos-and-groupies level, the thrills and pitfalls inherent in rock-star status are writ large, like the band building their own full-service recording studio, Syncro Sound, or Ocasek effectively quashing a documentary focused on Easton, seemingly out of jealousy. Along the way, the band’s alternately sublime and ridiculous encounters with their contemporaries flesh out the story in full color, whether its The Cars mercilessly mocking an unfriendly Styx when opening for them, or Ocasek overseeing Iggy Pop’s recordings at Syncro.

Janowitz’s musical acumen (Buffalo Tom was a mainstay of the ‘80s/’90s alt-rock realm and they remain active to this day) lends gravitas to his analysis of the classics and hidden gems on each of The Cars’ albums. His research and interviews inform a trove of background details, including on-the-ground reports of their earliest gigs and behind-the-scenes details of the bidding war that got The Cars onto Elektra, and his obvious emotional attachment to the music adds an infectious enthusiasm.

If anything, the author’s ardor occasionally drives him to dive in perhaps a touch too deeply—at one point, for a few pages it starts to feel like you’re reading an entire book about the band’s 1978 hit “Just What I Needed,” for example. But most of the time, it’s a pleasure to have Janowitz as your tour guide through the band’s esteemed discography.

For anybody who’s ever been even casually captivated by the New Wave locomotion of “Let’s Go,” the frothy pop perfection of “Shake It Up,” or the melancholic beauty of “Drive,” Let the Stories Be Told (the title is a line from the debut album’s “Good Times Roll”) will fill out the story of one of the 1980s’ most influential bands in engrossing detail. For those who’ve held The Cars’ catalog close to their hearts throughout their lives, the book arrives like an answered prayer. But anyone with a fascination for rock history will be drawn in. Books have been written before focusing on Orr and Ocasek individually. But this is the first major book to comprehensively cover the whole saga of the band, especially with the crucial cooperation of the men behind the music.

If you wonder why it took so long for a book like this to appear, keep in mind that The Cars somehow weren’t even inducted into the Rock Hall of Fame until 30 years after they split up. So, the latter-day cementing of the band’s legend has been a process of fits and starts. Just be glad it’s here and dig in.