“If you look over the years, the styles have changed – the clothes, the hair, the production, the approach to the songs. The icing to the cake has changed flavors. But if you really look at the cake itself, it’s really the same.”
― John Oates
“Sometimes, it’s just great to bring new people into the mix.”
― John Oates
“My mustache has become this weird iconic representation of a certain era.”
― John Oates
“A good mustache makes a man for many reasons.”
― John Oates
“Dick Clark’s ‘American Bandstand’ spread the gospel of American pop music and teenage style that transcended the regional boundaries of our country and united a youth culture that eventually spread its message throughout the entire world.”
― John Oates
“I couldn’t wait to grow a mustache. I stopped shaving my upper lip the day I graduated from high school.”
― John Oates
“When I graduated from college in the spring of 1970, I decided to hitchhike around Europe with my guitar and my backpack. I was gone for about four months.”
― John Oates
“I have such a wide variety of tastes in things that I like musically.”
― John Oates
“I have a great family, I live an amazing life.”
― John Oates
“You may be embarrassed about the way you looked and the wacky clothes you wore when you were young, but normally, at least it’s hidden in a box in the attic.”
― John Oates
“The mustache represented the old John; I didn’t want to be that guy anymore, so I shaved it off. It was ritualistic in a way.”
― John Oates
“I think social media is so important; the young bands have certainly embraced that and used that to their advantage.”
― John Oates
“I love what Alabama Shakes is doing – it’s kind of like what grunge did to rock ‘n’ roll, they’re doing to R&B.”
― John Oates
“If something that needs to be done that we don’t feel confronting, we do it through the manager.”
― John Oates
“We’ve been together since we’ve been teenagers. I can go away and disappear for two years, and when we get back together, it’s like nothing ever has changed.”
― John Oates
“It’s the music that brings us together.”
― John Oates
“If it wasn’t for music, I doubt whether we’d be friends.”
― John Oates
“Well, because we’re so different as people. And it’s that difference that probably also makes it easy to stay together, because we don’t get in each others way.”
― John Oates
“If I stopped touring tomorrow, it wouldn’t change my life.”
― John Oates
“If Daryl stopped touring it would be a big part of him missing.”
― John Oates
“I just like playing with the band and doing what I do.”
― John Oates
“I do a lot of things behind the scenes. I do a lot of things that don’t hit the headlines.”
― John Oates
“In our relationship, we don’t have that situation. I don’t require what he needs, and he doesn’t require what I need. I know what I do; I have an amazing life that nobody knows about.”
― John Oates
“I like playing on stage, don’t get me wrong.”
― John Oates
“To me, when a great band is playing together, it’s amazing for me.”
― John Oates
“We collaborate together. We work with other people. We work by ourselves.”
― John Oates
“Swimming upstream in the music business is a hard thing to do.”
― John Oates
“You have to know when to strike and when to retreat.”
― John Oates
“I think people were just starving for good material because they just weren’t getting it on the radio.”
― John Oates
“The thing is, we’ve changed our style but we’ve never changed the actual roots of what we’ve done.”
― John Oates
“I wish I could see over crowds and small groups of people.”
― John Oates
“Well, before we met I had heard and seen him sing so I knew he was good.”
― John Oates
“I was just glad to meet somebody outside of my group of small town friends who was into music. Somebody else who had aspirations to do something more than sing at a record hop.”
― John Oates
“We should have an easier name to pronounce.”
― John Oates
“I couldn’t begin to name names… in general I have found racers to be some of the most competitive people on the planet… and some of the nicest as well.”
― John Oates
“With his passing, Dick Clark deserves to take his place at the top in the pantheon of popular culture icons.”
― John Oates
“You don’t wanna be around your family constantly.”
― John Oates
“I’m bad at math.”
― John Oates
“I think it’s kind of difficult to write a good Christmas song because you have a narrow framework of references that you have to work within, and at the same time you want to do something that’s personally original and hopefully somewhat unique.”
― John Oates
“The Christmas genre is a field that’s been well-ploughed.”
― John Oates
“In the days when regional music was very clearly defined and had a clear personality – Memphis, Detroit, Chicago, whatever – Philadelphia had a tradition that was very distinct and unique.”
― John Oates
“I get to play with all these different players who don’t necessarily approach music always the same way that I might. So I learn a lot.”
― John Oates
“I sense people respond more to the honest approach to making music instead of the manufactured approach.”
― John Oates
“There’s all sorts of soul. There’s Irish soul and Native American soul. If it touches you and moves you, it’s soul.”
― John Oates
“When my song came on the radio for the first time, that was one of the heaviest things I remember.”
― John Oates
“There isn’t one album that says ‘Hall & Oates.’ It’s always ‘Daryl Hall and John Oates.’ From the very beginning. People never note that. The idea of ‘Hall & Oates,’ this two-headed monster, this thing, is not anything we’ve ever wanted or liked.”
― John Oates
“’Maneater’ is about N.Y.C. in the ’80s. It’s about greed, avarice, and spoiled riches.”
― John Oates
“When the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame decided to open up the voting beyond their inner circle, to the actual fans, that’s when I think everything changed.”
― John Oates
“When you really can’t affect something, you almost don’t wanna wish too hard, because it’s just frustrating.”
― John Oates
“You don’t want to pitch a tent and live inside the Louvre. You want to check it out, appreciate it, and move somewhere else.”
― John Oates
“I never finish a show without singing ‘She’s Gone.’”
― John Oates
“I’m really in such a fortunate position to have that foundation with Hall and Oates that lets me do whatever I want. That’s the dream of a lot of creative people, and I don’t take it for granted. I try to make the most of it.”
― John Oates
“Young people go to concerts.”
― John Oates
“The decline of the major labels has changed the audience. They aren’t force-fed by a system any more. They can make their own decisions.”
― John Oates
“The bricks and mortar of the music business, they don’t exist any longer.”
― John Oates
“Jam Cruise is actually a comfortable place for me. My jamming skills and my improvisational skills have improved immensely as I’ve gone more solo, because I’ve had this opportunity.”
― John Oates
“I’ve been asked to do various types of cruises.”
― John Oates
“I used to love assemblies because it got me out of class.”
― John Oates
“I didn’t make a solo album until the year 2000.”
― John Oates
“The world has accelerated to the point that, as far as the album as a form, I don’t know if it’s going to last that much longer.”
― John Oates
“I’m an indie artist with major distribution, so one foot in the extreme major music business and one foot in the abyss of indie artists.”
― John Oates
“I realized if I’m not really making an album, I don’t have to be concerned about things like stylistic consistency, pacing, a coherent mood. All that stuff goes out the window.”
― John Oates
“I may just keep releasing singles ’til I run out of music, which is kind of cool in a way – as long as people don’t go, ‘Oh my God, not another one!’”
― John Oates
“If I had to drop everything and just be a songwriter, I would be OK with that because that’s the real joy.”
― John Oates
“Having a mustache and never smiling became a permanent component of my persona through the quaintly self-important decade of the seventies.”
― John Oates
“Americana Music is about all sorts of different music. It’s very free and open: a world where people just like authentic music.”
― John Oates
“When albums gave way to CDs, people re-discovered their collection through their CDs.”
― John Oates
“Personally, I’ve never really wanted to be a rock star. That wasn’t my motivation in life. It kind of happened.”
― John Oates
“The Katy Perry stuff, those are great songs.”
― John Oates
“Back in the early ’90s, I started going to Nashville to do a lot of co-writes. One of the first people I met there was Keith Follese. Keith and his wife Adrienne are both songwriters, and we wrote some songs together.”
― John Oates
“There’s always a personal satisfaction in writing a song by yourself. You get the inspiration, and see it through, and you’re done. It’s focused and very personal.”
― John Oates
“If anyone looks back to the ’70s, ’80s with nostalgic rosy colored glasses and goes, ‘Well, everything was awesome.’ No, everything was not awesome!”
― John Oates
“I was born at the beginning of rock and roll. I got to experience the entire evolution of popular rock and roll music even before it started.”
― John Oates
“Once you’ve made a record, you don’t need to make it again. It’s done, and it’s out there forever, a moment in time that encapsulates whatever was happening in that moment.”
― John Oates
“The only job I’d ever had that might be considered not playing music was teaching guitar, which I did in college for a while, but that still falls in the same category.”
― John Oates
“I don’t care if it’s a Cole Porter song, or George Gershwin, or Lennon/McCartney, or Elton John, or you know, whoever, Bob Dylan. Great songs are great songs, and they stand the test of time, and they can be interpreted and recorded with many points of view, but yet still retain the essence of what makes them good songs.”
― John Oates
“I think the key to making records generally is to make ’em for yourself, regardless of the climate in the business.”
― John Oates
“The key, I think, from a business point of view, is to learn how to be efficient in making a record that’s not too expensive, so that you’re not going crazy spending tons of money making a product that might not ever return that money.”
― John Oates
“I think in music and a lot of creative fields, people’s egos get in the way of their ability of seeing the big picture.”
― John Oates
“With Hall & Oates, honestly, after years and years of playing the same material, it’s easy to coast. I can coast through a show.”
― John Oates
“I have a lot of friends who are involved in everything from Americana to blues to R&B to pop to country.”
― John Oates
“I’d like to do something with the Avett Brothers.”
― John Oates
“My guitar playing is a synthesis of traditional American acoustic style and Urban Pop and R&B.”
― John Oates
“I’m always reading something.”
― John Oates
“My songwriting has evolved, just as I’ve evolved as a person.”
― John Oates
“I was singing when I was two years old, and my parents were very supportive, but they weren’t musicians themselves.”
― John Oates
“The first record I bought myself could have been ‘Oh Lonesome Me’ by Don Gibson or ‘Wake Up Little Susie’ by the Everly Brothers.”
― John Oates
“You’ve got to pay me to leave my house, spend the night in hotels and fly in airplanes. That’s what I get paid for. Playing I actually do for free.”
― John Oates
“I don’t listen to music. I very rarely listen to music. I only listen for information. I listen when a friend sends me a song or a new record.”
― John Oates
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