John Oates Says He Was ‘Shocked’ By How Johnny Carson Shut Down When the Cameras Stopped Rolling
The greatest late-night host of all time wasn’t nearly as fun as soon as the lights went out.
In the history of talk show comedy, there may never have been another host whose on-air personality differed from his true self quite like Johnny Carson. Despite his witty, confident and genial demeanor when the cameras were rolling, The Tonight Show king was notoriously introverted when he wasn’t “on,” so much so that Carson’s sidekick Ed McMahon once called his old boss “the most private public man who ever lived.” And, to be fair to the late legend, it’s not like we can fault Carson for being a wallflower when he wasn’t performing — nobody expects doctors to perform surgery in their free time.
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Still, the stark differences between Johnny the character and Carson the man were unsettling to some A-list Tonight Show guests, such as blue-eyed soul and soft rock legend John Oates. In a recent interview with Vulture, one half of Hall & Oates revealed that his excitement to appear on the legendary Tonight Show and meet Carson early in his career dissolved into discomfort when he realized that the host was a completely different person when the private eyes weren’t watching him.
As Oates explained, The Tonight Show was Hall & Oates’ first nationally broadcast appearance on television, and the young songbirds were ecstatic at the chance to be on the show they’d watched countless times. “I was very excited, because Johnny Carson was Johnny Carson. He was in your living room. Then you were there, it was real, and he was a guy with a couch and a chair,” Oates recalled of the TV appearance that he still calls “the big one.”
“What I remember most was he was very subdued. But the moment the countdown started — ‘three, two, one’ — and the lights came on the camera, he was Johnny Carson. He was like, boom,” Oates said of Carson’s ability to get into character, which of course, was followed by a disconcerting exit. “And then the moment they went to a commercial, it was like he just stopped. The director would come over and whisper in his ear, probably talking to him about the next segment or whatever. Then the lights came on again. It was kind of shocking, to be honest with you.”
Now, Carson’s cold demeanor around his guests when the cameras weren’t rolling wasn’t because of some snooty, dismissive, I’m-better-than-you show business ego, but, rather, it was an awkwardness born out of a social anxiety that stuck with Carson throughout his Tonight Show career. When reflecting on his friend and colleague’s interpersonal struggles, Dick Cavett once said, “I felt sorry for Johnny in that he was so socially uncomfortable,” adding, “I’ve hardly ever met anybody who had as hard a time as he did.”
“I don’t know what it came from, but I would rescue him if, in leaving the studio and going back to his dressing room, three tourists or somebody had stopped to talk to him for a moment,” Cavett said of Carson’s off-camera interactions. “You could see him being affable but straining. He just was so uncomfortable that way.”
As such, Oates shouldn’t take Carson’s commercial break shut-down too personally, as the Tonight Show host certainly meant no offense with his iciness — it’s not like Oates was Joan Rivers, after all.
