When you're playing in front of people, everything is external. It's all going from you out to an audience. When you're in a studio, it's very internalised, it's going from the air through you into this meticulously crafted, layered piece of work.
Everybody who I ever cared about has told me that they like my music: Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Al Green, The Spinners, Smokey Robinson. Everybody that matters.
Like all soul singers, I grew up singing in church but sometimes I would leave early and sit in the car listening to gospel band, The Blind Boys of Alabama. Hearing their lead singer Clarence made me connect the idea of church and show business and see how I could make a career singing music that stirred the soul.
I'm in the trenches; I do the best work I can always do. Having said that, the way that what I do converges with the outside world is fascinating to me. Because it ebbs and flows. People's interest and understanding, it changes all the time.
I hear a lot of people singing in funny voices and singing like they're stupid. Singing in a deliberately fey and dumb and childish way. And I find it to be a disturbing trend.
To write a good song, an artist has to drawn from reality. There has to be some spark from realism that communicates a real feeling to someone else. You have to be real. Or you have to be a really good storyteller.
For years and years, I was beset with snide remarks by certain members of the press, where they would turn John Oates into a joke, or they would trivialize what I do, which never really bothered me all that much.
I returned to upstate NY where I just laid in bed for days with a fever that just wouldn't go away. After more of this, I grew increasingly sure that this was not simply the flu!
I was very inspired by my mother. She was a vocal teacher and sang in a band, and my first memories of her were going out with her on the local circuit.
I was always an introvert as a kid. Then, when I first kind of came out as a human being, I used to be one of those guys who'd go nuts on the dance floor, and people would gather around.
