Top 55 John Oates Quotes

With his passing, Dick Clark deserves to take his place at the top in the pantheon of popular culture icons.

I’m always reading something.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

With Hall & Oates, honestly, after years and years of playing the same material, it’s easy to coast. I can coast through a show.

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.

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 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.

Young people go to concerts.

I do a lot of things behind the scenes. I do a lot of things that don’t hit the headlines.

I think social media is so important; the young bands have certainly embraced that and used that to their advantage.

I never finish a show without singing ‘She’s Gone.’

You don’t wanna be around your family constantly.

I’m bad at math.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

If it wasn’t for music, I doubt whether we’d be friends.

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

I didn’t make a solo album until the year 2000.

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

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.

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.

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.

I was singing when I was two years old, and my parents were very supportive, but they weren’t musicians themselves.

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.

I just like playing with the band and doing what I do.

I’ve been asked to do various types of cruises.

If anyone looks back to the ’70s, ’80s with nostalgic rosy colored glasses and goes, ‘Well, everything was awesome.’ No, everything was not awesome!

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

When my song came on the radio for the first time, that was one of the heaviest things I remember.

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.

Having a mustache and never smiling became a permanent component of my persona through the quaintly self-important decade of the seventies.

When you really can’t affect something, you almost don’t wanna wish too hard, because it’s just frustrating.

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.

I used to love assemblies because it got me out of class.

My guitar playing is a synthesis of traditional American acoustic style and Urban Pop and R&B.

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

If something that needs to be done that we don’t feel confronting, we do it through the manager.

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.

I wish I could see over crowds and small groups of people.

I think people were just starving for good material because they just weren’t getting it on the radio.

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

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.

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

The Katy Perry stuff, those are great songs.

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.