"We used to joke that the first album should be called The Cars' Greatest Hits," guitarist Elliot Easton has often said, including in the liner notes for Just What I Needed: The Cars Anthology in 1995.
Their self-titled debut came out on June 6, 1978, as a near-perfect amalgam for the times: It had new-wave cool and album-rock oomph. There were icy synths and overdriven guitar power chords. Technology and passion. The late Ric Ocasek's lyrics flitted from ironic detachment to passionate angst, sometimes within the same song.
The Cars had the sound of the future but an embrace of the past, which is why its compositions and sonics are timeless. The LP sounds like a work of today no matter when you hear it. Two of the songs, "Just What I Needed" and My Best Friend's Girl," were bona fide Top 40 hits, and "Good Times Roll" just missed. They joined four other album tracks as enduring radio staples, putting The Cars in the league of debuts by Boston and Foreigner as sprints straight off the starting block.
"The Cars had it all – the looks, the hoots, beat-romance lyrics, killer choruses, guitar solos that pissed off your parents," the Killers' Brandon Flowers said during his spot-on induction speech for the Cars in 2018 at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland – their late bassist Benjamin Orr's home town. "They were able to exist in that highly coveted sweet spot where credibility and acclaim meet huge commercial success."
However, it was a long drive to The Cars. Ocasek and Orr were longtime friends who met in Cleveland, moved to Columbus, Ohio, and Ann Arbor, Mich., before settling in Boston during the early '70s. Their first gambit there was a folk-rock group called Milkwood that released one album. Future Cars keyboardist Greg Hawkes played saxophone, then joined their next band, Richard and the Rabbits.
Ocasek and Orr later formed an acoustic coffeehouse duo whose repertoire included songs that would eventually become the Cars'. Like Hawkes, guitarist Elliot Easton was a Berklee School of Music student. He came on board for the more rock-oriented Cap'n Swing, which would become the Cars once drummer David Robinson of the Modern Lovers signed on.
"It took a minute," Easton told this writer in 2020. "A lot happened before we made that [debut] album" – not least of which was the kind of old-school break that certainly doesn't happen anymore: Maxanne Sartori, an air personality at WBCN who was also an advocate for Cap'n Swing, played songs from the Cars' demo tape on her show nearly a year before the album would come out. Another station, WCOZ, followed suit and record companies took notice.
The new group chose Elektra over Arista, primarily because Elektra was a longtime haven for singer-songwriters and so had a greater need for a new wave band. The Cars was recorded in London with producer Roy Thomas Baker, famed at the time for his work with Queen. Demos included on the 1999 deluxe edition of The Cars show a band with its creative affairs in order, but Baker added a spit-polish sheen that would make the songs even more radio-friendly.
"We never tried to make hits – ever," Robinson said in anthology liner notes. "We just knew we had something different that sounded good. I probably thought that none of them were hits at the time." Easton describes Baker's approach as "get real balls but with clarity," which led to some tension during the sessions. "It was very intense," Easton recalled. "He's absolutely brilliant, you can't argue with any of that. I will say he wore out several engineers who just ended up asleep under the board. They just couldn't do it anymore. But he was up for everybody." From: https://ultimateclassicrock.com/the-cars-debut-track-by-track/
