Explore Quotes by 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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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!'

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

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 have a lot of friends who are involved in everything from Americana to blues to R&B to pop to country.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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 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 R&B.