(TV) Ric Ocasek Head of A&R at Elektra

["Casey, Leo J" <CaseyL@VOLPE.DOT.GOV>]

In the driver's seat 
Cars leader, now an executive, is set to turn 
record label on its ear 
By Joan Anderman, Globe Staff, 6/29/2003 
NEW YORK -- There's no mistaking Ric Ocasek as he rounds a 
street corner in Manhattan. 
Here comes the inky shag. The dark shades. The impossibly lanky body draped 
in a jumble of clothes that mysteriously make sense: an embroidered Mexican 
blouse, a pullover sweater, velour sweatpants, and a tailored black jacket. 
A diamond pyramid earring dangles from Ocasek's right ear. He wears carved 
gold rings, an exquisite bracelet, and a tinted-green version of the signature eyewear 
that's been lodged in place since Ocasek became the icy face and deadpan voice of 
new wave 25 years ago as leader of the Boston band the Cars. 
Ocasek has traveled to his favorite restaurant on the Lower East Side to talk about 
the newest chapter in his musical life. After a wildly successful run as a recording 
artist and a quarter-century as an A-list album producer -- he's helmed projects for

Hole, No Doubt, Weezer, and Iggy Pop, among many others -- Ocasek is going 
where few musicians have dared venture: the executive branch. In April, Ocasek, 54, 
was named senior vice president of A&R (Artists and Repertoire) at Elektra Records. 
Technically his job is to scout and sign new bands. But Elektra is investing in more than 
a fresh pair of ears. 
''His recent track record as a producer and a keen developer of new talent adheres 
to what has always been priority number one at the label: breaking new artists,'' 
says Sylvia Rhone, chairman and CEO of Elektra Entertainment, who offered Ocasek the job. 
In recent years, however, that priority has been subsumed by the rather less artistic 
concerns of corporate shareholders. Enter Ocasek, whose enthusiasm for cutting-edge
 music is matched by his feel for a great pop hook. He's credible to fringe dwellers and 
marketing departments alike. 
The company, Ocasek concedes, is betting that he will help facilitate nothing short of a 
creative renaissance at Elektra Records. 
''Maybe I can kind of help reshape the label into something more adventurous,'' 
says Ocasek, who is soft-spoken, mild-mannered, and exceedingly confident in his 
qualifications. ''It's something that has to happen, at a lot of labels. But I wouldn't
 have taken this position if I didn't think it would be fun. I don't actually need a job.'' 
Ocasek hasn't had one -- at least not one that comes with a desk -- in a long time. 
He worked the night shift at US Steel in Cleveland when he was 20 and did a stint as 
art director for a wallpaper company. 
Then he was a rock star. 
Now gainfully employed once more, Ocasek's typical workday includes dropping 
by Elektra to pick up mail and take a meeting. He is, for obvious reasons, a bit of
 a celebrity down at the office, a condition that's exacerbated by his virtual invisibility. 
He spends most of his time listening to recordings of songs by bands he's never heard of. 
Lots and lots of them. In fact, Ocasek listens to every demo sent his way, and then some, 
usually while driving aimlessly around Manhattan in the SUV he grudgingly admits to owning. 
Ocasek doesn't rise before noon and rarely sets foot in a nightclub. When he tells a 
photographer he's never heard of Arlene's Grocery, a hot music spot around the 
corner where she'd like to shoot some pictures, the photographer asks Ocasek 
point-blank if he's really the new A&R guy at Elektra. Ocasek smiles sweetly. 
He has his own way of doing things. Unlike most of his colleagues, Ocasek has
 no screener to weed out the musical chaff. While most of his peers rely on industry 
insiders -- lawyers, managers, and regional scouts -- to bring promising new bands 
to their attention, Ocasek has posted his Rockefeller Plaza mailing address in the 
demo room on his website, www.ricocasek.com, warmly inviting everyone in the 
world to send him a tape. 
''Be hearing you soon, Ric'' is the sign-off at the bottom of the webpage. 
''When I first got to the label I said, `What do you do with all this unsolicited stuff?' 
They said `Oh, we've never found anything in there so we don't really even listen to it.' 
I said `OK, put it all in my office.' I once produced an album for a guy who threw his 
tape up on stage. I'll check them all.'' 
Ocasek's equal-opportunity approach to A&R doesn't mean he's an easy sell. 
On the contrary. He would like to eradicate the music business of waste, which he believes 
is at the root of the industry's troubles -- mainly in the form of labels investing in 
underdeveloped bands that underperform and are eventually dropped. 
As a producer (which he will continue to do) Ocasek has always allied himself 
with the bands, he says, never the record companies, and he doesn't expect that 
dynamic to change. It will be fascinating to watch the relationship unfold between the 
artist-turned-executive and his corporate superiors, in part because Ocasek feels 
absolutely no compunction to report to anyone. 
''Sylvia says `Do what you want,' '' says Ocasek, who harks back to the label's 
famed 1970s' artist roster for inspiration. Bands such as the Doors and Love, the MC5 
and the Stooges, folk-rockers Joni Mitchell and the Eagles, helped give the label its 
image as an artisan-friendly haven; it was one of the most admired of the era. 
Under Rhone, who was appointed chairman of Elektra Entertainment in 1994, the label has 
produced such superstars as Metallica, Missy Elliott, and Third Eye Blind -- multiplatinum 
acts all, if not as groundbreaking as some of the label's earlier marquee acts. Ocasek's 
mission, by all accounts, is to help guide the label toward emerging talent that will help the label 
regain some of its former cachet. 
"But I won't be signing old-fart-bands like Television",  snorts Ocasek.  ''I have a free 
hand,'' says Ocasek, ''which is good because I really couldn't work for anybody.'' 
Bandmates skeptical It's no secret Ocasek's a control freak. 
His firm grip on every aspect of the Cars' songwriting and sound is 
part of the reason the band broke up. Here's how Ocasek describes the creative
 process involved in producing the band Weezer: 
''Rivers [Cuomo, the band's singer and songwriter] gives me 60 songs 
and I go, `I like these 10,' and he goes, `I won't do any of those,' and
 I say, `You must,' and he does them.'' 
The thread that connects the 50-plus bands he's produced, Ocasek says, 
is that they were all developed in their own style --a prerequisite that has 
even more significant implications in his role as A&R executive. He has no 
use for glimmers of talent. ''I don't want to deal with bands you have
 to make over,'' says Ocasek, who can't be persuaded to discuss the 
several acts that are already on his radar screen. But his tastes are broad. 
He says he likes everything from the crude surrealist songwriter
Devendra Banhart to the heaviest thrash -- neither of which, it should be 
pointed out, is the stuff of platinum sales. 
What he scoffs at are the proliferation of what he calls reactionary pop bands, 
''the million Sum 41s'' riddling the airwaves with the latest sonic fashions. 
Ocasek has a particular gift for endowing outsider bands such as 
Rastafarian hardcore punks Bad Brains with the sort of tight, 
focused production that leads to broader exposure without 
sacrificing integrity. But the notion of broad exposure becomes 
acutely relative when talking about the bottom-line requirements of a 
major record company, and Ocasek's former bandmates aren't convinced
 he's the man for the job. 
''Ric's idea of a commercial group is Suicide,'' says Cars drummer 
David Robinson, referring to the radical '70s synth-pop duo Ocasek produced. 
''I can only assume he misunderstands the job description.'' 
''I'm surprised and not surprised,'' says Greg Hawkes, the Cars' keyboardist. 
''He always gravitated toward unknown artists and was always recommending
 promising new bands. But every business meeting the Cars ever had he was 
late to. He's not really a business type. Maybe they'll give him a lot of leeway.'' 
Indeed they might. It would in fact fit right in to a strategy that's becoming
 increasingly popular at major labels that are struggling to regain financial 
and artistic ground, according to Ocasek's friend Todd Sullivan, a former 
A&R executive at Geffen Records who signed and now manages Weezer. 
''They've gotten away from the acts with credibility and that's what Ric is 
really in tune with,'' Sullivan says. ''Elektra and other labels are going back 
to an older way of doing things, which is putting people on the inside of the 
record company who can write songs and produce records and know what's 
good and what isn't.'' 
`Creatively restless' 
Ocasek doesn't expect the new job to change his life. He's raising two 
sons, 5-year-old Oliver and 9-year-old Jonathan, with his wife of 13 years, 
actress/model and fellow Czech Paulina Porizkova. He travels with her to every 
photo shoot and movie set; she accompanies him to recording studios and concert 
stages around the world. Ocasek learned from two previous marriages 
(which produced four sons, now grown) that phone calls don't keep a 
relationship intact. ''It takes two people who want to keep their feet right 
on the ground,'' he says. ''You can't live in your stardom. We go everywhere
 together, and it's been really, really great.'' 
Working for Elektra marks something of a homecoming for Ocasek. Years before 
the Cars signed to the label in 1977, a skinny 21-year-old songwriter from Baltimore 
via Cleveland showed up in New York City with what he realizes in retrospect was a 
terrible cassette of terrible songs. Elektra was the only company to actually invite the 
musician then called Ric Otcasek in to play his tape -- for the benevolent Shelly Snow, 
a name Ocasek will never forget. 
He didn't get a deal and lived for a while in a friend's car parked in an underground 
garage at Houston and Broadway. Following a period of intense drug use, the 
aspiring musician -- then an acoustic singer-songwriter -- moved to Boston to 
work the city's thriving folk clubs. 
So did his old buddy, bassist and singer Ben Orzechowski. Harboring a 
vague notion of someday becoming household names, Otcasek lost the silent 
T and Orzechowski shortened his name to Orr before forming several local bands, 
the last of which was the Cars. In his spare time these days, Ocasek is sifting 
through 400 hours of footage shot in hotels, tour buses, airports, bathrooms, and 
onstage for a documentary he's making about the Cars on the road. He paints, 
writes poetry, and takes photographs. He'd like to start his own record label 
someday, and although the pop scene holds little interest for him personally, he'll 
continue to make solo albums. The forthcoming ''Nexterday'' is Ocasek's seventh. 
''I write songs and I can't stop and that's my main love and I don't want it to dwindle a
way into the wind. I'll do it forever. But I'm not trying to be cooler than
 [the hot alt-pop fusionists] Stratford Four,'' he says, flashing the knowing grin of someone 
who's been there. And moved on. ''I don't think it would be fitting.'' 
Plus, he's supposed to hand out contracts to the bands who are cooler than 
Stratford Four, not be them. Complicated as the artist-producer-executive 
axis might seem, Ocasek sees his career arc in simple terms: as interesting stops
 in the ongoing effort to live an artful life. 
''I'm creatively restless. I'm flitty. So this is a good adventure for me. A little side 
adventure. That's what it comes down to, you know?'' 
Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com. 
This story ran on page N1 of the Boston Globe on 6/29/2003. 
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