John Oates Quotes

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.

A good mustache makes a man for many reasons.

My mustache has become this weird iconic representation of a certain era.

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.

Swimming upstream in the music business is a hard thing to do.

I'd like to do something with the Avett Brothers.

I couldn't wait to grow a mustache. I stopped shaving my upper lip the day I graduated from high school.

I have a great family, I live an amazing life.

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.

There's a lot of craft in songwriting. The divine inspiration is when the idea comes. It may be a riff. It may be a word. It may be a phrase. It may be a title. Sometimes, in the best of both worlds, that divine inspiration extends through the whole song. I've literally sat down and written a song from beginning to end, almost complete lyrics and everything without ever stopping...in two minutes. The chorus of 'She's Gone' was like that.

Sometimes, it's just great to bring new people into the mix.

You have to know when to strike and when to retreat.

The first record I bought myself could have been 'Oh Lonesome Me' by Don Gibson or 'Wake Up Little Susie' by the Everly Brothers.

My guitar playing is a synthesis of traditional American acoustic style and Urban Pop and RB.

The thing is, we've changed our style but we've never changed the actual roots of what we've done.

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.

To me, when a great band is playing together, it's amazing for me.

If I stopped touring tomorrow, it wouldn't change my life.

There's all sorts of soul. There's Irish soul and Native American soul. If it touches you and moves you, it's soul.

If Daryl stopped touring it would be a big part of him missing.

We collaborate together. We work with other people. We work by ourselves.

I like playing on stage, don't get me wrong.

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.

The bricks and mortar of the music business, they don't exist any longer.

I didn't come to Nashville to put on a cowboy hat and pretend to be a country singer. My attraction to Nashville as Music City is the variety and flexibility: the fact that there's so many musicians at your disposal, so many amazing studios and talented people that you can draw from. ... I try to be myself, but at the same time I'm learning a lot, and I'm pulling from not only from the well of inspiration that I'm getting from Nashville, but I'm pulling from my roots.

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.