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The surviving members of The Cars are working on new music based on demo recordings left behind by late frontman Ric Ocasek.
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Guitarist Elliot Easton, drummer David Robinson and keyboardist Greg Hawkes have been revisiting dozens of unreleased tracks, with the goal of shaping them into finished songs. The news was revealed in a new book by Buffalo Tom frontman Bill Janovitz, The Cars: Let the Stories Be Told.
Hawkes received more than 20 demos curated by one of Ocasek’s longtime confidants. Among them was I Just Can’t Stay, a track that includes vocals from both Ocasek and bassist Benjamin Orr, who died in 2000. The song is believed to date back to the pair’s work together before The Cars officially formed.
Initial production work began with Ed Valauskas and engineer Joel Edinberg, before Robinson and Easton joined the project. Easton started contributing guitar parts in August 2024, beginning with I Just Can’t Stay and Can’t Stop the Rain. Janovitz notes in the book that Easton’s 25-second solo on Can’t Stop the Rain and Hawkes’ synthesizer additions transformed the demo into what fans would recognize as a Cars track.
The collection also includes “The Factory” and “One by One,” which is believed to be the last song Ocasek was working on before his death. Other tracks, including Crossing the Line and Crazy Over You, point toward a jazz-influenced direction Ocasek was exploring later in his career.
There is no confirmed release date for the project. According to Janovitz, the estates of Ocasek and Orr are optimistic that business disagreements will not prevent the release of the unheard music.
Ocasek died in 2019 at age 75 from hypertensive and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. His final solo album, Nexterday, was released in 2005. Orr died in 2000 from pancreatic cancer at age 53.
The Cars formed in Boston in 1976 and became one of the defining new wave bands of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Their 1978 debut included hits such as Just What I Needed and My Best Friend’s Girl. The group released six albums before disbanding in 1988. They reunited in 2010, releasing Move Like This in 2011, and performed again at their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2018.
With files from Bang Showbiz
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