A series where artists share their musical firsts and lasts.
“I began to grow my mustache the moment I graduated from school. It didn’t take that long since I was a young, virile, and growing teenager.”
Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos Getty Images
Over the course of his career, John Oates has released 18 studio albums as one half of the soulful pop-rock titans Hall & Oates, and today he’ll bring his seventh solo album, Oates, into the universe. He has so many No. 1 songs with Daryl Hall, in fact, that it takes him a few moments to remember them all. (Surprisingly, “You Make My Dreams” never ascended to the top.) And don’t even get us started on his Hall of Fame–worthy mustache. So what were some of the milestones that Oates experienced along the way? Let’s find out — we can definitely go for that, especially since there’s no more lawsuit.
It was Ray Charles’s Greatest Hits. It was probably the early ’60s. I started buying singles way before I bought an album. I lived in a small town in Pennsylvania. There was only one record store in the adjacent town. In fact, it might have not even been a record store, it might’ve been part of a Woolworths.
The first live music I ever heard was Bill Haley and the Comets in 1955 at Willow Grove Amusement Park, outside Philadelphia. My family had just moved us from New York, where I was born. As a little kid, we went to this amusement park and there was a band shell and they were playing. I had never heard live music before. I remember running down to the stage. It was life changing. The musician who was playing the big, upright bass rode it like a horse. He put it on the ground and it was like a rockabilly thing. I’ll never forget that.
A guitar made by the company Sears Roebuck, which doesn’t exist anymore. I still have it. It was an acoustic guitar. It wasn’t very expensive. I only used it for a little while because I was really serious about music. My folks took me up to New York City and we went to 48th Street where all the music stores were back in the day, and we ended up buying another guitar.
That’s hard to remember because I was a little high. If I wasn’t so high, I probably could remember. It might’ve been Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love,” because I had a black light in my room and the album cover actually glowed in the black light.
Oh, you mean the one I didn’t read? Only the first of many. The first contract I signed was with my high-school band in 1967. We had saved up our money to make a record. We went to a little studio on North Broad Street in Philadelphia. We paid a hundred bucks or something like that to make a record. They cut it on a lathe in those days. It was a little plastic record. Then I went to a store on Chestnut Street called the Record Museum, which had a lot of old 45s and things like that. I literally walked in with this little record in my hand and said to the guy behind the counter, “Hey, we made a record. You want to hear it?” The guy said, “Yeah, sure.” I put it on the turntable and he said, “Hey, that’s good. Come on back here.”
I went back into his office, they gave me a contract, and I put my name on it. I didn’t read it and didn’t know anything about it. And that was my first record. It came out in 1966. Nothing happened. Their particular record company was called Crimson Records. They had one hit called “Expressway (To Your Heart)” by the Soul Survivors — a local Philadelphia band. That actually became a national hit. Then our record came out and was played regionally in the Philadelphia area, but that was it.
That’s an interesting question, because when we first met, we actually tried to do something together musically and it sounded really bad. We looked at each other and said, “This is never going to work. We sound horrible together.” Eventually he came my way, I came his way, and we found this place. I don’t know how we did it. It was just through trial and error, really.
Our first album, Whole Oats, was a collection of stuff Daryl had and stuff I had. It wasn’t really a coherent record because of that, but we wanted to make a record and we had a contract with Atlantic Records. There was a song called “Lily (Are You Happy),” which was an early song for us: “Are you really happy, Lily? Are you really happy? Lily, laughing lady. Do the smiles disguise the tears inside?” There you go.
I began to grow my mustache the moment I graduated from school. It didn’t take that long since I was a young, virile, and growing teenager.
Oh, we opened for some wacky people. We opened for Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks and Cheech and Chong. Dan Hicks was playing strip poker with the two girls in the band in the dressing room. Cheech and Chong were just absolutely insane. How we got on that bill, I’ll never know.
We recorded Whole Oats in New York, but we were still living in Philadelphia. We were very good friends with the DJs at WMMR, which was one of the early underground FM stations — one of the first stations that would play longform music. There was a guy named Gene Shay who had a folk show. He came on at midnight and was on until three in the morning. He would play entire albums, so he tossed us a bone and played all of Whole Oats.
The first time we were on television was The Mike Douglas Show, which was a local Philadelphia talk show. But we did The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson a few times, so that was the first “big” one. I was very excited, because Johnny Carson was Johnny Carson. He was in your living room. Then you were there, it was real, and he was a guy with a couch and a chair. What I remember most was he was very subdued. But the moment the countdown started — “three, two, one” — and the lights came on the camera, he was Johnny Carson. He was like, boom. It was that pencil-tapping thing with the coffee mug. And then the moment they went to a commercial, it was like he just stopped. The director would come over and whisper in his ear, probably talking to him about the next segment or whatever. Then the lights came on again. It was kind of shocking, to be honest with you.
I think the first one was “Sara Smile”? Oh, no. “Rich Girl.” “Sara Smile” probably went to No. 3 or something. It was big. But yes, “Rich Girl” was the first. Funny story about that. We were on tour in Kansas City, at a very famous barbecue place that was in the outskirts of the city. We had a limousine that took us. It was me, Daryl, and a few of the guys in the band. We had some barbecue and then when we came out, the limo was gone. He just left us there and it was really out there in the ghetto. This guy came by in a pickup truck with some firewood in the back and we flagged him down. A few of us got in. I was sitting in the back on top of the wood and “Rich Girl” came on the radio. That’s the night it went No. 1, and that’s how I celebrated.
I remember it very well. We were at the old World’s Fair site in Astoria, Queens, doing a video for a movie called Earth Girls Are Easy — a very niche movie. Look it up. Nile Rodgers was co-producing it with us and we were going to lip-sync one of our songs for an early music video for the movie. In a break in between takes, this little girl walked up to the stage and said, “Hey, have you heard this?” She had a cassette and handed it to me. I looked at it and it said, “De La Soul, ‘Say No Go.’” I was like, “What’s this?” And she goes, “Oh yeah, you’ve got to hear it. They use your song.” I didn’t know what sampling was. I didn’t even understand the concept. We listened to it and thought, That’s pretty cool. How did they do that?
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