John Oates is contemplating life and death. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, the Hall & Oates rocker revealed how Ozzy Osbourne’s death made him think about his own mortality.
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“I see the horizon’s a little closer for me now than it was back when I was younger, which is as it should be, really,” Oates said. “… Even just recently Ozzy Osbourne, you know? So many people are passing away. People who are my age—younger than me, even—and I see them falling by the wayside for any number of reasons.”
With that in mind, Oates came to realize that he wants to continue to put out new music.
“I’m still at the point in my life where I can still write, I can still sing, I can still play,” he said. “I’ve got something to give, and who knows how long it’s going to last. And so I take it very seriously.”
It’s for that same reason that Oates decided to cease his decades-long partnership with Daryl Hall and set off on his own.
“I needed to take this [opportunity],” Oates said. “I needed to step away from Hall & Oates, and I needed to really get a lot of the creative feelings, emotions, and thoughts out there on my own—to make a statement on my own as I get to this point in my life.”
John Oates’ New Album
He released a new self-titled album, Oates, on Aug. 29.
“To me, the legacy of Hall & Oates and the things that Daryl and I created together is like a visit to a museum,” Oates said. “It will stand the test of time and hopefully still resonate further into the future.”
“That music will hopefully never go away, which I’m so proud of,” he added. “But, at the same time, you walk through a museum after a few hours, your feet start hurting, and you’ve seen so many beautiful things, and you say, ‘OK, enough is enough. I gotta move on. I’ve gotta go out into the sunshine and see what else is out there.’”
His seventh solo album, Oates told NPR that his new LP is a return to “a very important part of my musical DNA.”
“The groove, R&B, soul, rhythm-section-oriented style, as opposed to the acoustic singer-songwriter genre, which I’ve been working in for the past, actually about 10 years or so,” he said. “So I like to mix it up. So this one has definitely got more energy and more—definitely more groove-oriented.”
Photo by Paras Griffin/Getty Images
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