The vocalist, guitarist and producer were found at his Manhattan home on Sunday afternoon by Rick Oksic

The vocalist, guitarist and producer were found at his Manhattan home on Sunday afternoon by Rick Oksic

Ric Ocasek, the vocalist and guitarist at The Cars, died at the age of 75

He was found dead at his Manhattan home after New York police officers responded to an emergency call at around 4 pm (9 pm British time) on Sunday.

Police said there were no signs of corrupt play and no cause

of death had been reporte

Born in Baltimore in 1944, he co-authored The Cars with guitarist Benjamin Orr in Boston in the mid-1970s. The group released their first self-titled album in 1978, joined by guitarist Elliott Easton, guitarist Greg Hawkes and drummer David Robinson.

Ocasek was the backbone of the band, writing most of the group's songs, and helping lead the new wave movement with songs including My My Friend's Girl, Just What I Needed, Good Times Roll, Drive and You Might Think.

Ocasek released solo albums Beatitude in 1982 and The Side Of Paradise in 1986, and after the band split in 1988, he continued to release five more albums before the 2011 reunification of The Cars Move Like This.

He was a renowned producer, working with artists including Bad Prinz, Nada Cerf, Puddy Denny, and guiding voices. He was also behind the Weezer Blue and Green album office, along with everything that will be fine in the end in 2014.

The cars were introduced in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018 alongside Bon Jovi, Moody Blues, Abbey Straits, and Nina Simon.

They were sold well, and for a long time - spending two and a half years on the US chart - until the cars became embroiled in an argument about curbing their follow-up version with their poster, which was concerned that the band would be effectively competing with themselves.

Your forgiveness may have been to imagine that cars were a calculated offer to bring a new wave to American audiences, but the way it looked was just an accurate representation of the inside from Ric Ocasek's head. By the time cars were formed, he was around the block: already in his mid-thirties and father of four children, he had spent the early 1970s in Crosby Stiles and three acoustic Nash called Milkwood. He liked explicit pop music, but he liked what he called "the left side of the music mind", too: "My taste was always going to this mix, even in the 1960s," he said. "I love underground velvet and carpenters."

He did enough to remember rock 'n' roll in his fifties, valued the simplicity and devotion to the rocks and knew the commercial value of an eye-catching image - by all accounts, a completely charming man, who was always hiding behind a pair of sunglasses on stage, exposing the air of mystery in isolation - But he has a constant passion for experimental.

He left on his own devices, and released a solo album titled Beatitude that looked noticeably stranger than cars, where he had an audible influence in the early Roxy and Bowie music of Berlin. When branched out into production, he worked with the hardcore punk squad Bad Brains and Suicide. He gently tried to show the latter a car audience, taking them on a tour as support, with predictable results: "He started booing before they got to their second song," Ocasek recalls with pleasure.

Weezer was one of the first to praise Okask, saying: "The entire Weezer family was destroyed by the loss of our friend and teacher Ric Ocasek, who died on Sunday.

"Rick meant a lot to us and we all learned a lot about music, recording and songs. But more importantly, we learned that one could be in a respectable position with great power, be very humble and have the biggest heart in the industry."

Another tribute was posted on social media by other artists including Slash, Billy Idol, Bryan Adams and Richard Marx