The Time Ric Ocasek Helped My Band Make Its First Record

I've been in the same band, Nada Surf, with the same core members, Daniel Lorca and Ira Elliot, since 1994, and amidst many events and adventures, making our first album with Ric Ocasek remains the most transformative and magical experience I've been lucky enough to have.

I have loved The Cars' songs and sound since my older sister started buying their records at the Sam Goody near our apartment on New York's Upper East Side, around the beginning of the '80s. The appeal was immediate, and almost automatic — here were huge hooks, wrapped in an extremely gratifying FM sheen. But there was something else going on that kept pulling me back in, though I wouldn't have known how to describe it at the time.

Dichotomies are often at the heart of rock and roll. The Beatles' "Every Little Thing" has sugary and contented lyrics about a young man in a happy relationship that is sure to last forever. But the melancholic strain in the melody gives the game away: He's worried that all may not be what it seems. The Cars' laser-guided New Wave precision and Ric's noir-cool impressionistic lyrics — , — were transformed by the ache in his melodies