In the Cars, he and bassist Ben Orr, his Milkwood bandmate, remade themselves as cool new wave rockers. He’d toiled away in several bands, in Cleveland and then Boston, including a Crosby, Stills & Nash–ish folk trio called Milkwood, learning from each commercial disappointment. Ocasek was evasive about his exact age, probably because he was older than most of his peers.
Prime examples include Huey Lewis, Phil Collins, Men at Work, and Ric Ocasek, the Cars’ singer, songwriter, and dominant force. Men, in particular, could thrive on MTV if they didn’t look like models but carried off a kind of comic affability.
One of the most persistent misconceptions about MTV is that the network, in its 1980s heyday as Americans’ universal radio station, rewarded musicians for their great looks, rather than their musical abilities.