In memoriam

Ben Orr, 1947-2000

by Brett Milano

You can't imagine Boston rock history without the Cars, and you can't imagine the Cars without Ben Orr. The singer on "Drive" and "Just What I Needed," among other hits, Orr had the most recognizable voice in a band that came to define its era. So the singer/bassist's death from pancreatic cancer last week puts the unofficial capper on a period of local history that never seemed all that long ago.

Orr, who was 53, grew up in Cleveland and began performing as a teenager, fronting the house band in a local American Bandstand spinoff. By 1973, he'd teamed up with singer/songwriter Ric Ocasek to form Milkwood, a hippie-ish acoustic duo that made one long album. The pair soon moved to Boston and formed a couple of prototype bands, Cap'n Swing and Richard & the Rabbits (whose name was provided by Jonathan Richman), before the familiar Cars line-up emerged in 1978.

Nobody needs reminding how big the Cars were: there are still enough bands in town who'll liven up a set by sneaking in a Cars cover. But the band pulled a small coup by uniting the visual style and cool cynicism of underground rock with a mainstream act's mastery of hooks and arrangements. They made a splash on commercial radio within a year of headlining the Rat and the Paradise. And they couldn't have pulled off the mix without a charismatic figure like Orr. Ocasek may have written the songs and given the band its intrigue, but Orr was the natural rock star who gave the band its sexiness. And it's worth noting that, while Ocasek maintains a solo and production career, Orr was the one ex-Car to score a major solo hit, with "Stay the Night."

Orr stayed in Boston for a few years after the Cars' break-up in 1987, playing the clubs with his own band (whose keyboardist, Igor Khoroshev, went on to join Yes). His last local show was a Children's Hospital benefit at the Paradise just last year. But it's no secret that there was bad blood between Orr and Ocasek toward the end of the Cars, and it endured long enough to keep them from ever performing together again.

The Cars' only reunion happened in secret two months ago, when they came together in Orr's adopted home of Atlanta to be interviewed for a Rhino DVD scheduled for release next month. (Taken mainly from a 1979 German TV concert, the disc should trash the myth that the Cars weren't a good live band.) Thanks to an association with the band and with Rhino, I was called in to conduct that interview; the seriousness of the occasion soon became evident. Accompanied by his girlfriend, Orr was distressingly thin and confined to a wheelchair. Regrets were expressed by all Orr's bandmates that it took an imminent loss to bring them back together.

But when the cameras rolled, the band members were back in their old roles again -- Ocasek as the sly and cynical one; keyboardist Greg Hawkes as the brainy one; drummer David Robinson as the quiet one; guitarist Elliot Easton as the inveterate rocker. And despite his compromised health, Orr again exuded the cool of a natural rock star. He good-naturedly brushed off a question about his standing as the group's sexy one -- "Everybody looks three times more attractive on stage," he noted -- but his pride in the band's accomplishments was evident at every turn.

It was especially good to see that the old hatchets had finally been buried. At one point, Ocasek, who sang about half the songs he wrote for the Cars, was asked how vocals were divided between the two lead singers. "That's easy," he replied. "Whenever I wrote something that called for a real singer, we just gave it to Ben."