John Oates talks music, fame and why he and Daryl Hall tour but don’t record
What is John Oates most proud of ?
His answer might surprise you.
It’s not the fact he and Daryl Hall — his musical partner since 1970 — have been the top-selling duo in pop and rock music history for the past 30 years.
It’s not their 2014 induction in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or their dozens of Top 40 hits, which include such chart-toppers as “Rich Girl,” “Maneater” and “Kiss On My List.”
It’s not his long friendship with the late George Harrison, or Hall & Oates having backed Mick Jagger and Tina Turner to close the 1985 Live Aid benefit concert.
And it’s not the duo’s status as one of the progenitors of the trendy “Yacht Rock” phenomenon, or their nearly sold-out summer arena tour, which includes a Friday show at T-mobile Arena.
“What I’m most proud of, and most appreciative of, is the fact I’m still here,” Oates, 69, said, speaking by phone from his Nashville home.
“After all the ups and downs, the positives and the negatives, I’m still mentally solid and, to a large extent, physically good. I can still perform. I can still enjoy my life, both on and off stage, in private and in public. I like the fact I’m famous enough to be able to do what I want — and not so famous that I’m restricted. I like being part of the world.”
Oates candidly explores the ups and downs of his life in his 2017 book, “Change of Seasons: A Memoir.”
In it, he recounts how he felt like he was dying from a heart attack upon learning — in 1987 — that he and Hall were broke, despite sold-out tours and worldwide record sales of 80 million.
Faster than you can say “I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do),” Oates went from owning four homes, a plane and a collection of antique cars to having just the $50 in his pocket.
“In a sense, the situation was not dissimilar to that of a dysfunctional family,” he writes.
“We were the kids, encouraged to enjoy the wild, crazy, protracted-adolescence life of a rock star ... run around the world, get laid, bask in the spotlight, and buy a lot of s---. Let ‘Daddy’ take care of the important stuff.”
The “Daddy” was Sigmund Balaban, the accountant and financial adviser to whom Hall
When: Where: Tickets:
7 p.m. Friday
T-mobile Arena
$49.50$149.50 plus service charges at axs.com, 888929-7849 or T-mobile Arena box office and Oates had entrusted its suddenly evaporated fortune.
The duo was able to recoup some of its losses by obtaining previously unpaid record royalties. “But true to form,” Oates writes, “once we reclaimed what was ours, rather than rest on any kind of laurels, rather than take any victory laps, we did what we always did: buckled down, hit the road, and worked as hard as we ever had.”
Famous friends
Less dramatic than going broke, but no less colorful, were Oates’ relationships with Andy Warhol and Hunter S. Thompson. Both are now deceased.
“Andy was a total enigma to me,” Oates said, chuckling. “It was like ships passing in the night. We had a lot of mutual friends and saw each other at social events in New York, but always under curtains of lights and ‘fabulous-ity’.”
And what of Thompson, the legendary writer and creator of “gonzo journalism?” How was it being neighbors with a man who liked to fire his shotgun outside (mostly) his rural Colorado mountain home, which adjoined Oates’ property?
“It was an experience to be in his proximity and to be his neighbor,” the veteran musician replied. “We weren’t the best of friends, by any means, but we did live less than 200 yards apart. So we had a nice social thing.
“He was deferential to artists. If he liked you, he could be a Southern gentleman and he could drop the veil of the Hunter character. But he liked being ‘Hunter S. Thompson,’ that character he created and that people expected him to be.”
Oates also recounts in his book going to Europe in 1970 to busk, fresh out of college.
The image of a young man singing and playing his guitar for tips in foreign locales is romantic. The reality made Oates far more open to teaming up with Hall.
“I learned it is not easy to busk,” he said. “I learned I did not have the charisma to be out there by myself — it’s just not me. I was into performing my original songs, not covers, and performing songs people don’t know is hard.”
‘Regressive therapy’
Before it was published, Oates had Hall read each part of the book that was about both of them. Hall confirmed the accuracy of his musical partner’s depictions, a good number of which were based on the journals Oates began keeping in 1970.
Was writing the memoir — especially the parts about his lost fortune and failed first marriage — cathartic for Oates?
“It was like regressive therapy,” he said. “It was an opportunity for me to ‘re-remember,’ if that’s a word — I think remember is good enough — to actually re-experience memories that, if I had not done the book, perhaps I would not have remembered or considered. It was a gift.”
A Brooklyn native, Oates had met Hall in 1967, when they played in the rival Philadelphia bands The Masters and The Temptones, respectively. Both were students at the time at Temple University, where Hall was studying music and Oates was studying journalism.
Their debut album, “Whole Oats,” came out in 1972. Like their two, stylistically disparate, follow-ups — 1973’s “Abandoned Luncheonette: and 1974’s “War Babies” — it did not make much of a dent, commercially or artistically speaking.
Given the benefit of hindsight, though, that failure proved to be a blessing.
“If ‘Whole Oats’ had done well, there would have been pressure from the record company, and the world at large, on us to repeat its success. Fortunately, that didn’t happen,” Oates noted.
“‘Whole Oats’ wasn’t a coherent album. It was mostly songs we’d written separately and only a few together. It was really a ‘Let’s get it out of our system’ move. Immediately upon making that record, we were in a different place. ‘Abandoned Luncheonette’ was really more of the first album, because it was written during a compressed period of time with a point of view and more of a focus.
“If you look at our first three albums, each one was distinctly different. But if you synthesize the stylings of all three, you hear it coalesce into what became our fourth album — and what we would do in the rest of the 1970s and ‘80s.”
Oates laughed when asked if he could sing and play “Thank You For...” and “Southeast City Window” — both from “Whole Oats” — by memory.
“I could not play ‘Thank You For...’ But I could play ‘Southeast,’ because I had a request for it during my book promo tour,” he replied. “And it shocked me, because I thought people had forgotten about it. So I re-learned it and came up with a better arrangement for it.”
Oates spoke enthusiastically about his upcoming fourth solo album, which he is completing in Nashville. It will pay tribute to the late blues great Mississippi John Hurt, one of his earliest and most enduring influences as a guitarist, singer and songwriter.
Recording solo
“I had an encounter with (Hurt) when I was very young and had the opportunity to learn his music first hand, and to watch him perform many times. And Jerry Ricks, my guitar teacher and mentor, traveled with him and was kind of his road manager,” Oates said.
“I think my interest in making music and being creative has been rekindled by my move to Nashville over the past eight years. So my enthusiasm and inspiration is more closely aligned with how I felt in the early ‘70s, when I was embarking on a career with Daryl and we were trying to make our mark. I feel the same energy now with my solo work, mostly due to the songwriters and musicians I am collaborating with.”
Oates has not made or released a new studio album with Hall in nearly 15 years. Might one be coming soon?
“We don’t plan on it, let’s put it that way,” replied Oates, who defers to Hall as the duo’s lead singer. “I’ll never say ‘no’ to anything. But right now, no. We’re both so passionate about our own projects and we created so much music together. It’s really a lifetime of music — and more. And we don’t play deeper than our catalog of hits (in concert), which is an amazing problem to have. It’s not really a problem; many artists would love to have the ‘problem’ we have”
But isn’t it frustrating to have no new songs to play live?
“No,” Oates said firmly. “I feel liberated in the fact I have best of all worlds. I have the ability to play these songs I created with Daryl. People still want to hear them, and we do them with a great band.
“Then, I can leave that world and go back into my own personal universe, and write and collaborate with a whole new group of people. It’s like a new relationship — you get re-inspired, if that’s even a word. Then I can go back and play with Daryl, and thousands of people are packing arenas to see us. So it’s a unique situation.”
It is not uncommon for jazz greats to update their classics and change the arrangements, in subtle or dramatic ways. Pop and rock audiences, clearly prefer to hear radio hits that don’t deviate from the familiar versions they know.
How, then, can Oates and Hall satisfy their concert listeners and still keep their old songs fresh and engaging for themselves as performers?
“That’s a very good question,” Oates said. “First, you have to make a distinction. Let’s start with the songs. We record a song I wrote or Daryl wrote, then we make a record of the song. That record is really the collaboration between the original song and songwriter, and then the producer, the engineers, technicians and musicians required to translate that song into a recording.
“Now, you go one step further with that record, which people recognize and perhaps love, and take it to the stage and you’re doing a live version of it. My philosophy is there’s no reason it should be completely a performance of the record, because it no longer is. Now, it’s a live performance.
“The issue then is: What key elements of the original song and record do you want to preserve, so that it’s recognizable and has the elements that made the original record and song good? And, then, what elements can you add in live performance that make it exciting, vital and in the moment?
“There are certain solos or musical passages in songs that are really signposts to that song, and other parts that can be more fluid. And putting all of that together is really the art of putting on a great live performance.”