John Oates

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

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.

I never finish a show without singing 'She's Gone.'

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

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.

Young people go to concerts.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

It's the music that brings us together.

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

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.

I have such a wide variety of tastes in things that I like musically.

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

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

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

The Katy Perry stuff, those are great songs.

Well, before we met I had heard and seen him sing so I knew he was good.

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

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

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!'

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

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.

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

I sense people respond more to the honest approach to making music instead of the manufactured approach.

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

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.

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

You don't wanna be around your family constantly.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Christmas genre is a field that's been well-ploughed.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Americana Music is about all sorts of different music. It's very free and open: a world where people just like authentic music.

'Maneater' is about N.Y.C. in the '80s. It's about greed, avarice, and spoiled riches.

I'm bad at math.

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.

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

If I had to drop everything and just be a songwriter, I would be OK with that because that's the real joy.

A good mustache makes a man for many reasons.

We should have an easier name to pronounce.

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

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

When albums gave way to CDs, people re-discovered their collection through their CDs.

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

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.

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.

My songwriting has evolved, just as I've evolved as a person.

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 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.

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

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

Personally, I've never really wanted to be a rock star. That wasn't my motivation in life. It kind of happened.