A few days ago, September 1st to be exact, I wrote about an article by Damon Linker over at week.com regarding The Coming Death of Every Rock Legend. You can read my original article here.
The gist of Mr. Linker’s article was that many Rock legends, musicians who rose up and became popular during the1960’s and into the early 1980’s, are getting quite old now. They were part of a certain generation that, today, are in their 70’s.
In my writing, I pointed out some of the other artists who are not mentioned in Mr. Linker’s article. I pointed out the members of The Cars and, very sadly, yesterday it was reported that lead singer/songwriter Ric Ocasek had passed away…
CNN: Ric Ocasek, lead singer of The Cars passes away at 75
Mr. Ocasek was often the face of The Cars and wrote most of their songs. Benjamin Orr, the band’s other lead singer, sang many of the most popular songs. Reportedly Mr. Ocasek knew Mr. Orr was a better singer and stated something along the lines of “When I write a good song I sing it. When I write a great song I get Benjamin to sing it.” Mr. Orr passed away from cancer in 2000.
It’s so sad to read about Mr. Ocasek’s passing and, like Mr. Linker’s article points out, we’re at a point where reading about very popular musical stars passing is going to become something of a regular thing.
Case in point: Three days ago, on September 13th, news came of the passing of singer Eddie Money, whose death was related to esophageal cancer, which he revealed to the press a month or so before his passing.
In honor of both, I present a favorite Eddie Money song followed by one of my favorite The Cars tunes…
Loved that tune!
Now for The Cars. This song, and video, were heavily played on MTV back in the day…
Great stuff. May they both rest in peace.
The answer? He was 34 years old at that time. He was 40 years old when he met Ms. Porizkova in 1984.