‘Music to My Years’: New video series from The Post takes John Oates back to the Greenwich Village coffeehouse where Hall & Oates played their very first gig
The New York Post launches an exclusive new video series today — “Music to My Years.”
Famous artists will tour New York City neighborhoods that inspired them — and bring resident music critic Chuck Arnold along as they walk down memory lane.
For the premiere episode, John Oates went back to his roots. Chock-full of history, the 76-year-old musician chose three meaningful spots from his Hall & Oates days: Rudy’s Music Soho, Electric Lady Studios and the former site of Gaslight Cafe.
Gaslight Cafe is the Greenwich Village coffeehouse where Oates and former music partner Daryl Hall played their first New York show together in the late ’60s — when they were both in different groups.
“And so when you’re with one of the greatest singers of all time, of course you’re not going to be the frontman. And it’s actually OK, because I don’t think I really felt comfortable doing that anyway,” Oates explained to Arnold of their partnership.
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame duo met as students at Temple University in Philadelphia. The band recently split and Oates has gone solo with his new album, “Reunion,” which dropped this month.
“When we met, we pooled our individual influences and created something uniquely original. But the guy I was before that never really left. He just got pushed over to the side, you know, kind of like an old bear sleeping through the winter,” he said. “And now it’s been reawakened. And so I feel like I’m rediscovering a part of myself that I forgot about.”
New York, of course, was the backdrop for several of the band’s hits — including 1982’s “Maneater,” which was also a metaphor for Manhattan in the ‘’80s.
Oates recalled seeing a “drop-dead gorgeous” woman stroll into the restaurant Marylou’s, which was around the corner from Electric Lady Studios.
“And her great beauty was in stark contrast to her filthy vocabulary. And she opened her mouth, told the dirtiest joke I’d ever heard, and something hit me and I said, ‘Man, she would chew you up and spit you out,'” he told Arnold. “And then as I walked home, which was only a couple blocks away, I started thinking about that: ‘Oh, she’s a man-eater. Uh-oh, OK, I got this.'”
He quipped: “If you live in New York City, you know this is the kind of place that will chew you up and spit you out. There’s a certain edge here.”
Watch the New York Post’s exclusive interview with Oates and the debut episode of “Music to My Years” above.
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