Putting Things In Plain Site

Below, get an exclusive look at Oates' contribution to Sweet 'Stache. The book is available now.

A Foreword by John Oates


I couldn’t wait to grow a mustache. I stopped shaving my upper lip the day I graduated from high school. By the time I was ready to enter college the following September, I had a sparse, vestigial growth of dark hair sprouting due south of my nose. Though I cannot recall the exact date, I can never forget the deep-seated motivation for this tonsorial compulsion. On the surface, I am sure it was somewhat inspired by the desire to look older and more mature . . . but if I had to delve, it was probably more driven by the fact that I always hated my upper lip and the way I looked when I smiled.


In fact, having a mustache and never smiling became a permanent component of my persona through the quaintly self-important decade of the seventies. Enter the big eighties and, symbolic of the zeitgeist of the era, my facial hair grew denser and more imposing, and like the supernova that was my career, the ’stache seemed to explode from my face, luminous and larger than life itself ... but still no smile.


Now in retrospect, I can see that my personality and my mustache had become intrinsically linked. That dark swath of hair became my living logo. As I begat the ’stache, the mustache became me, symbolically thrusting forward from its prominence in the center of my countenance. A flying buttress of follicles projecting my power and personality out to the world that fell before it. More than a hairstyle or a beard, the mighty mustache became somehow much more than a mere personal grooming choice ... moreover, it conveyed a subtly threatening and unyielding masculine image, complex in its message and undeniable in its statement.


So for over two decades I bore that albatross noir through the protracted adolescence known as pop stardom. From every angle, in every photograph, bopping through every silly ’80s MTV moment, my mustache became my marquis, until I could not distinguish between it and me. Then I changed. ...


In 1990, there occurred a life-altering convergence of circumstances, dusted with a sprinkling of fate, which led to a quantum collapse of many close relationships, both business and personal. The resulting mid-life revelation finally shook me from my childlike stupor, and one night, bathed in the light of where my future might lead me ... I stared at a mustache on a stranger’s face reflected in the mirror of a Tokyo Hotel room. Then, at that moment, with total commitment and trembling hand, I knew what I must do ... the ’stache had to go. The act itself, the stroke of the blade, was surprisingly simple, but as the shaving continued, the cutting began to take on a ritualistic gravitas ... for as the hair fell away, from the chrysalis emerged a man.


No longer possessed by the power of the ’stache, I was reborn, wriggled out from under the skin of that mustachioed character, and for the first time in so many years ...


I began to smile.


-- John Oates, music and mustache legend

(courtesy of Michael Sliwa)