Spokesperson For Movember John Oates Opens Up On Why He Shaved

Mental health has recently begun receiving the attention it has always deserved. In 2013 however, two Australian men, Garone and Slattery, saw the need to raise awareness about men’s health problems. This included prostate cancer and suicide. The program, which is called Movember, requires men to grow their mustaches during November to show support and raise funds.

For other people, it was just growing a mustache to show support. For John Oates, it was more than growing facial hair. Oates’s whiskers, as he sometimes liked to call them, represented his insecurities. For someone who was not really open about his mental health, whether he wanted his facial hair on or off highly depended on whether he was happy or he was depressed. Luckily for him, Oates has seen past his mustache as becoming a representation of his misery, but a look he decided he could pull off whenever he wished.

John Oates sees past his mustache as a representation of his mental health

STALLONE: FRANK, THAT IS, John Oates, 2021. © Branded Studios /Courtesy Everett Collection

American rock and roll star Oates who recently teamed up with Movember, an NGO, to raise awareness about mental health, reveals that growing his facial hairs for him was an act he did naturally. “I grew a mustache as soon as I graduated from my school. I guess I was destined to have a mustache somehow or another. Maybe I didn’t like the way my lips looked, who knows?”

RELATED: Hall & Oates’ ‘RICH GIRL’ Was Recorded March 4, 1976

He later realized it was an act he did to hide his insecurity. “There’s always a lot of deep-seated, hidden meanings behind things like that. But, you know, it became a thing. And then, interestingly enough, I felt like I became a caricature of myself, and the mustache was kind of representative of that.”

John Oates experienced a mid-life crisis

Oates went experienced mid-life crises in his late thirties. He was going through a divorce, financial problems, and his musical career was not paying off for him anymore. He was going through another depressing moment, and in a room in Tokyo, he picked up his razor and scraped off his mustache. He didn’t want to be reminded of his old self, and the shaving stick seemed to help.

ENORMOUS: THE GORGE STORY, John Oates, 2019. © Trafalgar Releasing / courtesy Everett Collection

In shedding off his old self by shaving off his mustache, the guitarist started a new life in the mountains after selling off his properties. In 2000, John Oates came back to the music industry with his co-group member Daryl Hall with the song “Out of Touch.”

“And so then, when I did come back to music in the early 2000s,” he claimed. “I really came back with a different perspective. I’d re-identified myself, I think.”

John Oates makes a come-back

After his hiatus, the 74-year-old musician is back to being the international spokesperson for Movember. Recently, he released the video to his song “Pushing a Rock,” released in 2013. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee now unapologetically rocks his mustache, which has naturally turned grey all year round.