CANDY-O

Candy-O is the second studio album by American new wave band The Cars, released in 1979. (It peaked #3 on Billboard chart.)

Drummer David Robinson, the band's artistic director and a collector of pin-ups, approached perhaps the greatest living pin-up artist, Alberto Vargas. Vargas name is synonymous with the style he helped propel to the status of American icon known for his paintings of pin-up girls that appeared in Esquire and Playboy magazines in the 1940s and 1960s. The 83-year-old Vargas had retired several years earlier but was persuaded to take the assignment by his niece, who was a fan of The Cars.

To get a photo that Vargas could use as a guide, Robinson set up a shoot at a Ferrari dealership in Beverly Hills and asked the Elektra art department to hire a blonde with "a nice figure." The model's name, ironically, was Candy. She briefly dated Robinson afterward.

Vargas came to see a Cars concert in L.A. "He just said it wasn't his kind of music," said Robinson, "but he was impressed because he could see that we worked really hard. And he said there were beautiful girls all over the place. He liked that very much."

A lot of other guys in the 80s liked it as well. I can't tell you how much that album cover and images like it become the look of our boyhood fantasies. My tastes may have evolved significantly since "hot chick on hot car." It's still a classic, nonetheless.