Elliot Easton: Legendary Guitarist of The Cars
Interview by Kim Crain I had the great opportunity to sit down and “Shake it up” with Elliot Easton of The Cars, the left handed guitar player who’s melodic solo compositions were part of the history of Classic Pop-Rock that led to develop The Cars signature sound. The Cars had 13 top-40 singles. The band was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of fame in 2018, where they reunited to perform at the ceremony. Kim: As one of the original members of an internationally renowned band, how did The Cars come about, and what are some of your early memories of the group? Elliot: The Cars came about as an outgrowth of a band with Ric Ocasek, Benjamin Orr and Greg Hawkes, that were previously called “Richard and the Rabbits,” which Johnathan Richman of The Modern Lovers named! They had a different guitar player, different drummer. My roommate who was a sound engineer and mixed sound for bands, answered an add in a local Boston paper, I think the Boston Phoenix, for a sound man for Richard and the Rabbits. He was my roommate and I had nothing going on that night and he was going to go see the band and talk to them about maybe working for them. So we went, and it turned out to be this Warner Brothers Party for Foghat, at a Roller Skating Rink. (outside Boston ) So I went along with my roommate Alan. I ended up really liking the band, particularly Ric’s songs! It was the first local band around Boston that was doing original material that I thought could be hits and recordable. The guitar player, who is a friend of mine, he had a different approach, kind of a fusion approach to it. The drummer was a little more technical.. That band broke up and Ric and Ben started playing as a duo, they called it Ocasek and Orr. Just with acoustic guitar and bass in Harvard Square in a little pub called The Idler. Alan my roommate kept mixing sound for them. After he would set the sound, cause it was just two mics, an acoustic guitar, and a bass, he would jump up onstage with them and play percussion. And all this time he was hyping me, you gotta hear my roommate, you gotta hear my roommate play guitar, over hyping me! 34
Courtesy of the Elliot Easton Collection During that time Greg was off playing with Martin Mull and the Fabulous Furniture and Ric was playing in that duo thing. Ric decided he wanted to have a band again! I got invited over to Ben’s apartment to try out after my roommate was telling them how great I am. I was so nervous almost paralyzed; he boosted me up so much! So I go over to Ben’s house, Ben sits apart from me with his arms crossed looking at me and he said; alright, so play something amazing! Eventually we just relaxed and we started jamming and playing and we liked each other and it sounded good. That grew into a band (Greg hadn’t come back yet) called Captain Swing, which consisted of Ric, Ben Orr, myself, a different keyboard player, Danny Louis, who now play’s with Gov’t Mule, a different drummer, and Ben wasn’t playing bass at the time, he was singing lead. We had a different bass player. We made some demo tapes and Maxanne Sartori from WBCN in Boston was playing them. We were getting some local notoriety, getting a lot of gigs around New England. Then we went to New York to play a place called, Maxes Kansas City, one of the places in the 60’s and 70’s that the Velvet Underground, Iggy Pop, Andy Warhol and his October/November 2021
HIGHWIRE DAZE
