“After every take, Mutt would say, ‘Check the tuning, man!’ This went on and on for almost a year. One day, I just gave him the guitar and said, ‘You tune it. I can’t take this anymore!’”: How legendary producer Mutt Lange drove the Cars half-mad

PRODUCER WEEK 2025: When Elliot Easton, former guitarist for the Cars, looks back on the album the band made with producer Mutt Lange in the early ’80s, he says with a wry smile: “There was some friction there.”

The album was Heartbeat City, released in 1984, and featuring the band’s biggest hit, Drive.

The Cars’ first four albums had all been produced by Roy Thomas Baker, famed for his work with Queen on classics such as A Night At The Opera and Sheer Heart Attack.

Lange had an equally impressive track record, having worked on some of the biggest rock albums of the early ’80s, AC/DC’s Back In Black and For Those About To Rock, Foreigner’s 4 and Def Leppard’s Pyromania.

But Lange had a habit of impressing hyper-controlled recording environments upon the bands that he worked with.

And when he put those methods into practice with the Cars, that’s what led to the friction that Elliot Easton speaks of.

“Some of the things Mutt was used to doing with Def Leppard and AC/DC didn’t really wash with the Cars,” Easton tells MusicRadar. “We were a self-contained thing. We were just looking for his sonic touch to give us a great-sounding record.”

Despite Lange’s unwelcome suggestions on arrangements and songwriting, along with an insistence on micro-managing Easton’s tuning, Lange did deliver the great-sounding record the Cars were after with Heartbeat City.

The album hit No.3 in the US, and both Drive and another single, You Might Think, made the top 10.

“Boy, I think it’s one of our best records,” Easton says. “It’s possibly next to the first record [the self-titled debut from 1978]. Those are the best two records.”

But Easton freely admits that working with Lange was a struggle.

“Mutt was a lot like his audience,” Easton says. “He loved the music he worked on. He loved Def Leppard. He loved AC/DC. And I’d like to think he loved the Cars.

“We did great work with him. It was just different than the way we did it with Roy Thomas Baker.

“Roy never really interfered or got involved with the musical content. He was focused on making it sound huge.

“He might have some arrangement ideas, but Mutt got more involved in musical aspects.

“Mutt had arrangement ideas for parts that he would suggest, not all of which we accepted.

Like, with Def Leppard, he wrote with them, but we didn’t need anybody writing with us.”

This led to some difficulties with the Cars’ lead singer and principal songwriter, Ric Ocasek.

As Easton recalls: “If I’m not mistaken, Mutt wanted to ‘help’ Ric with writing a part, and Ric did not want any help.

“Ric did not want to write with Mutt. But he would push, man.

“Mutt went through a couple of engineers — he just wore them out. He was an interesting guy!”

Easton also had issues with Lange.

“Mutt was exacting,” he says. “Roy was meticulous, but he was also just going for a great feel and had fun with it. And those were clean recordings. There wasn’t anything that shouldn’t be on there. But Mutt had things under a microscope in a different way.

“I remember tuning up after every take on guitar. He’d say, ‘Check the tuning, man!’ It could be a three-note punch-in, and he’d have me check the tuning.

“This went on and on. We were there [at Battery Studios in London] for almost a year, and by the end of it, I got frustrated. One day, I just gave him the guitar and said, ‘You tune it. I can’t take this anymore!’”

Heartbeat City begins with the song Hello Again. It’s an extraordinary track. You can’t hear the band in it - only Ric Ocasek’s lead vocal, Lange’s backing vocals and all manner of production trickery.

The Cars - Hello Again (Official Music Video) - YouTube

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“I had a Roland GR300 guitar synthesizer,” Easton says, “and it’s on Hello Again for certain effects. There were all these little samples and babbling voices on there, and I added some little stabs guitar synths to it.”

Drive was to the ’80s what 10cc’s I’m Not In Love was to the ’70s, a beautiful ballad filled with atmospheric sighing voices.

The Cars - Drive (Official Music Video) - YouTube

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The lead vocal in Drive was by bassist Benjamin Orr, but Easton played no part in the song — a decision made not by Lange but by Ocasek and the band’s keyboard player Greg Hawkes.

“I laid down some things for Drive, which I played live, like, some low parts,” Easton says. “But in the end, Greg and Ric wanted to do an all-synth song.

“People like Trevor Horn were hanging around the studio then, and they [Ocasek and Hawkes] ended up wanting to do that type of song.”

It was on Magic, another single, that Easton got to shine with a great solo.

“Magic is a good, rocking song!” he says. “We were spending a bit of time doing the solo, which I used a Stratocaster Elite for.

“It’s a rare, kind of unusual model, and they didn’t make it for very long. They have three buttons, and the pickups have no pole pieces, so I guess they’re noiseless, and it has a whammy bar.

“So I was doing the solo, and at one point, after trying different approaches, I was getting frustrated. That was the time I gave Mutt the guitar and said, ‘You tune the damn thing!’

“He said, ‘Can you try like a David Gilmour approach?’ I got really mad and said, ‘How about if I try an Elliot Easton approach?’

Mutt was like, ‘Oh, well, okay…’ And the next take was the take!

“I don’t know if it was psychology on his part or if he just wanted to tick me off, but it kind of fired me up. After that, I just ripped off a good one! And that’s the solo that you hear on the record.”

The Cars - Magic (Official Music Video) - YouTube

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Ultimately, Easton remains proud of what the Cars achieved with Mutt Lange on Heartbeat City.

“There’s a bunch of singles and strong songs from that album,” he says. “I think it’s a beautiful record.

“Mutt's approach is very cinematic, widescreen, like if you see a movie, you’d see it that way — but he also wanted balls and clarity. It’s almost contradictory, but he wanted spontaneity and perfection.

“He wanted the perfect take — but he also wanted me to just grab the guitar off the stand and rip through things.

“It took a long time. It was almost like an acting gig.

“He wanted it to sound like you just ripped into something, even though you actually were just working on it for an hour and a half to hone every right note.

“Like I said - he was an interesting guy!”