“Ben. What a goddamn great singer and total rockstar! I really miss him, his great sense of humor, his deep musicality and above all, his friendship.” — Elliot Easton, public Facebook post, September 4, 2018
In other words:
“Ben. What a goddamn great singer and total rockstar! I really miss him, his great sense of humor, his deep musicality and above all, his friendship.” — Elliot Easton, public Facebook post, September 4, 2018
sweetpurplejune 
Thanks for sharing. Good to know. I respect his Great guitar playing and sincerity.
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❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤
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Ben and Elliot were great buddies, easy to see that in so many pics of the two of them. I love the one you put at the top of this page with Ben leaning into Elliot as they both jam! I also love watching the videos and see them both smiling at each other, so cute 🙂 The best, for me, will always be at the end of Bye Bye, Love. Ben and Elliot in that little jam and that beautiful Ben smile, just melts your heart!
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Yes! I always think of that as their little ‘flirt’ with each other! It drives me crazy with adoration. Ben’s smile illuminates my world.
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Ben was fortunate to have such a good friend in Elliott. These guys were and still are the epitome of class.
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That is a great moment in time capturing how much love playing together brought them both. The connection they had.
I read a quote from rolling stone regarding critics saying there was a lack of emotion on stage. The author went into the concert not expecting much & came away with an admiration and appreciation for the music and the performance.
She said the band did not “connect”with each other, it was more like they “interlocked”.
I thought that was amazingly astute.
I am also beginning to believe (the MTV interview at private eyes where benjamin said, “if the audience is into it it doesn’t matter what we play, as long as they’re having a good time”)
that what Benjamin loved most of all was making other people happy. What a guy!
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Yes, ‘interlock’ is such a great term to describe them! And I agree; I believe it brought Benjamin great joy to please people, and I think he loved sharing his gifts and talents with his audience. If only he could see how many lives he’s touched, and how much happiness he has given us!
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After just watching a couple live performances, I started watching for the Elliot and Ben interactions on stage, they’re so cute, particularly what I call their Bye Bye Love schtick at the end, they really do look like they are flirting. 😀
I don’t understand the cries of “BORING!” and “Dime Store Indians” and things like that. They played well, they sounded great, what more do you need? Can you imagine people going to the symphony and complaining that the horns didn’t interact with the woodwinds enough? “It was note for note perfect but It was SO boring, everyone just sat their playing their instruments! The flutes didn’t look at the tubas ONCE. And I don’t think the violins said hello to the audience at all!”.
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Hahaha! Great analogy!
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I wrote my thoughts about seeing them live in this post, if you’re interested: https://sweetpurplejune.wordpress.com/2016/06/07/stand-there-and-perform-your-heart-out/
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Just saw this, I really enjoyed that blog post and think it really gets to the heart of why they performed the way they did. In some ways I almost think it’s one of those things that becomes the “thing to say”, people just repeat it because they’ve heard other people say it or they went it almost expecting it and so got what they expected because they didn’t look at it with the right mind set.
I kind of equate it to the whole “Ric and Ben sound alike” thing, which I’m not saying there are never similarities, but I really don’t think they sound THAT much alike, esp when you get to the extremes, the highs and lows, I mean Ben could really belt it out in that higher range(and damn could he sound sexy in his low range:)). I saw someone explain a psychological idea behind why that happens(can’t remember what it’s called now) and I think it’s the real reason why, basically for the most part people expect a group is going to have one lead singer(even though there are certainly famous bands where that is not the case) and so because of that expectation they just fill in that lead singer. I think if more people had actually seen Benjamin singing on a regular basis, that wouldn’t have been as much of a problem. Because then their minds wouldn’t automatically fill in “Ric Ocasek, lead singer of the Cars” when they heard a song and the differences in their voices would become more immediately apparent.
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