INTERVIEW: John Oates reflects on his Hall of Fame induction

In 2014, Hall & Oates, the duo responsible for such hits as “Maneater,” “Private Eyes” and “You Make My Dreams,” will be inducted into the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame. John Oates celebrated the announcement in a most appropriate way: some wine and songwriting at a midnight jam session in Nashville.

“We knew that it was going to be announced on Dec. 17, and I was actually in Nashville having a midnight songwriting session with a friend of mine,” Oates recently told Hollywood Soapbox in a phone interview. “And the phone rang literally at midnight, and it was our manager calling to say that he had gotten the word, and we were in. You know, it was great. … We toasted, had a glass of wine, had a toast with my wife and my friend who I was writing with, and kept on writing a song until 3:30 in the morning. So that was good.”

Oates said that the duo has been eligible for years but had never made the list. Eventually he put the possible accolade out of his mind. “There was no sense in worrying about things that you really can’t control,” he said. “And then this year, you know, it felt like there was a groundswell from the fans, and even the committee just seemed to be on board with getting us in. It was the right thing at the right time, I guess.”

Oates, one half of the most successful duo act in rock history, has earned his share of honors throughout an illustrious career. (He and his soul partner, Daryl Hall, have already been inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.) The Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame announcement is a credit to his decades-long career, and the musician sees it as a lifetime achievement award.

“We’ve been recording professionally for over 40 years. We still are extremely active. We’re on the road all the time. Daryl and I are working all the time. We are friends still, which is just absolutely amazing after all these years. And, you know, it’s just a great honor. I’m very happy about it. And I just think, you know, we got inducted into [the] American Songwriters Hall of Fame a number of years ago, and that was a big deal because my heart and soul really is in songwriting. I think the reason we’re being inducted into the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame is not only because of the record sales and commercial achievement, but it’s really more about the body of work that we’ve created over the years. … Our songs have endured. Our songs are still being played on the radio. People still want to hear them.”

The enduring quality of Hall & Oates — from “Sara Smile” to “Kiss on My List” to “Rich Girl” — is likely because the two musicians complement each other in their playing and stage presence. Oates said that they have a similar drive and sensibility when it comes to music. “When we come back together, even if we’re apart for a while, we just have this common musical bond that is just unshakable, and it’s very unique,” Oates said. “It’s really amazing. I think over the years as I’ve gotten older, I’ve appreciated my relationship with Daryl even more. You know, in the beginning you kind of take these things for granted, but then you realize that there’s not very many people who’ve been able to stay together for that long a period of time.”

Oates said that they always thought of themselves as two individuals rather than a duo. Even their album titles feature music from Daryl Hall and John Oates, separated musicians. “We never thought of ourselves as the group Hall & Oates,” he added. “We thought of ourselves as two guys working together, which gave us … this exit strategy that we could be individual and we could be unique.”

That individuality has brought Oates to Nashville, a city he’s called home for the past few years. It’s in this musical mecca that he lives and breathes songwriting projects. 

“I’ve been going there since the early ’90s, but I didn’t feel like I was really embraced and accepted into the musical community there until my wife and I got a place there. So we’ve been spending more and more time. … It’s probably the only place on earth where music is the driving force behind an entire community. And it’s not just country music. It’s indie music, it’s blues, it’s R&B, it’s rock, it’s all sorts of things. It’s just great, very fertile and exciting place to be.”

While in Nasvhille and working on his solo career, Oates decided not to toil away on the traditional 12-song album. Coming up with coherency and a theme didn’t fit his yearnings to be diverse and experimental. Instead, he contacted some of his favorite music buddies and started writing new tunes — really just for the fun of it.

“I recorded for about a year and a half with all these various collaborators and all these really unique people,” he said. “And so I had this amazing collection of singles, of which I released seven digital singles starting last May. … So then I looked at the body of songs, and I said, there is some consistency here but not across the board. I couldn’t release a CD with 20-plus songs on it, so I just said, let me divide them up into the songs that seem to work together thematically. So that’s what I did.”

This so-called Good Road to Follow is a musical journey will include three EPs, aptly titled Route 1, Route 2 and Route 3. The collaborators include Ryan Tedder, Sam Bush, Vince Gill and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, among many other artists.

This art of jamming and collaborating is what still excites Oates about music recording and songwriting. “I just got a call from Karl Denson from his group the Tiny Universe and asked me to sit in with him at the Brooklyn Bowl on Jan. 25. So I’m going to go up to Brooklyn, and I’m just going to go and play with him basically and just have some fun. I love doing that. Every time I do it, I learn something. … Every time I do it, I just get so much out of it because it’s just a way for me to step outside of what I do naturally. And it challenges me, and it’s really great.”

With such an expansive Nashville project, which will last throughout 2014, will there be time to tour with his old buddy Daryl Hall? Of course. In fact, in 2014, the two plan to tour more than they have in previous years.

“I think we both have kind of accepted and finally realized that we have established ourselves with our solo projects. And I think having that confidence and that satisfaction of having done that, we’re really excited now about playing together as Hall & Oates. One of the things we want to do this year is we want to explore the depth of our catalog. We feel like we’re so much more than our hits. We have so much interesting music that we’ve created over the years, and we have a really good problem. We have all these hits that the fans obviously come to see us; that’s what they expect to hear and quite rightly so. But nevertheless, we love some of these album tracks, and we have been actually introducing them little by little into our set. And we’re going to continue to do that in unique ways. … When you haven’t played a song in 30 years, you don’t approach it as the 20-year-old who wrote it. You approach it as the guy today who has a whole depth of experience.”

When he gets together with Hall for a string of shows, there’s not much need to rehearse. Actually, Oates said there’s virtually no rehearsing. “We just show up and play,” he said, adding that new songs in the set list are worked on a bit. 

“With the hits, we’re very fortunate. All of our hits have stood the test of time. They still sound good. If a song starts sounding a little tired during our live show, we retire it temporarily. And we’ve done that periodically over the years. … We’ll do a show of basically mostly hits, and at the end of the night, people will say, ‘Hey, but you didn’t play ‘You Lost That Loving Feeling,’ or you didn’t play whatever.’ And, well, yeah, ok, we don’t want to be a human jukebox. We could be, but we don’t want to be. So we would rather play a really interesting and unique album track and insert that into the set for freshness and for interest, and to make our set more interesting and well-rounded. Like I said, we have a really good problem. We don’t deny our hits, but at the same time we want to go beyond them.”

When he takes the stage later this year for the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, Oates and his musical partner will cement their status in history. As far as his speech that night, he’s going to wait and see how everything plays out.

“I really don’t want to have a preplanned speech,” he said. “I think I’m going to see what it feels like. I think I’m going to see who inducts us and what they might have to say. I want to see what my emotions are on the evening and let it be more spontaneous and more real.”

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

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