Just What I Needed - Discovering the Cars

by editor Michele Catalano

I wasn’t always looking for the next best thing with music; most of the time I was just content to listen to what was put in front of me by radio DJs and record store clerks, the two groups of people I trusted with my life when I was sixteen. When they told me to listen to something, I listened. 

And so it was that, in 1978, I found myself confronted with a DJ who was imploring me to listen to a new song. My memory of the station is fuzzy. At that time, it probably would have been WNEW or WPLJ. Maybe it was Dennis Elsas. The point is that this DJ was going to play a new song, and I was going to listen dutifully. I would probably hate it but pretend to like it because everyone else did. That’s just the way it went. I turned the radio up a bit and waited for him to get done talking, so we could hear this new song. 

And then he played “Just What I Needed” by an unknown band, the Cars. 

At this time in history, we were being inundated with good music. Darkness on the Edge of Town. This Year’s Model. We had Van Halen and Warren Zevon and Talking Heads. And here comes a new band trying to break into all of that. The minute I heard “Just What I Needed,” I knew what it was; a disruption. 

There was something so different about this sound. It was polished and well produced, but it was also like nothing I’d ever heard before. This was a sound that might emanate from a dank nightclub, where the girls wore platform heels and the guys watched incredulously as the girls danced with each other. The song itself—the words, the meaning—was a fine little ditty. But it was the tone, the staccato beat, the entirety of the music, that made it feel a little dark and decadent in contrast to what I had been listening to. For someone who was drawn to the Grateful Dead and the Doors on a daily basis, the Cars were a revelation. 

I became a Cars evangelist. I recorded the song off the radio and made everyone listen to it. I didn’t care that almost all of them had heard it. I wanted to play “Just What I Needed” all the time. I imagined what else this band had in store for us. Just as I was lamenting that there was no way a full album could sustain this song’s power, they released their debut album, The Cars.

I bought it without hesitation. Even if the other songs didn’t measure up to “Just What I Needed,” I would have that one song to sustain me. 

I thought that song would lead off, but what do I know about making a track listing? Instead, it started out with “Let the Good Times Roll.” Ten seconds in, I breathed a sigh of relief. This was going to be good. No, it was going to be  great. There was that decadence of sound. There was that beat I was looking for. And then we got to “My Best Friend’s Girl,” and my mind was blown. I didn’t know music could sound this clean and this good at the same time. Ric Ocasek could write a song, man. Punchy, acerbic lyrics, incredible riffs, an almost off-putting way of singing that would endear itself to me. I was in heaven.

I sat through the rest of this 35-minute album in absolute awe. Every song was good. This was not a one-hit-wonder record. The debut album of the Cars sounded as if I was listening to a greatest hits record from the future. How can there be this many bangers on one debut record?

I wanted to share the album with everyone who had only heard “Just What I Needed.” And I did my part: making my friends sit through the whole thing, plying them with beer or a joint, all but tying them to a chair. And every one of them liked it, from deadhead Maryanne to prog rock Kevin, including one friend who listened solely to disco at the time. They were all infatuated with this album. 

It was glorious, how we all rallied around the Cars, proselytizing to anyone within earshot. Most of the people we told about the album already knew, so we were preaching to the choir. I’ve written so many stories about having to hide some of my musical loves (Elton John, for instance) from friends for fear of mockery. So it was a pleasure to be able to talk about and love a record openly and with gusto. The Cars’ debut album became the most talked about music in school for a month or so. Everyone wanted in on the “cool new sound,” and we reveled in it. 

I still have the same copy I bought that day when I was sixteen. I listen to it at least once a week and always have the same revelation: This is one hell of a debut album. Probably the best. 

RIP Ric Ocasek. RIP Benjamin Orr. Long may you run on my turntable.

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