HALL AND OATES
Philly’s rock-soul duo talk gang fights, Live Aid and NY heat.
Whoah, here they come – Daryl and John, kings of song for over four decades, spill all about two-headed monsters, not being blue-eyed soul, and being on magazine covers with the Stones and Dylan.
WHO WAS the most successful singles act ofthe ’80s after Michael Jackson, Madonna and Prince? And, says Billboard, the most successful duo ever? Daryl Hall and John Oates, both times. Yet such mega-success arguably obscures the pair’s musical prowess, from the folk-soul hybrid of 1973’s Abandoned
Luncheonette and the pop acumen of Sara Smile and (’77’s debut US Number 1) Rich Girl on to big hits including Kiss On Your List, Private Eyes and Maneater. Separated by Covid, a nervy Hall is in upstate New York and prefers audio-only communication; in Connecticut, a more relaxed Oates chats via video. “We’ve always seen ourselves as two individuals working together,” explains the latter. “It’s always been Daryl Hall and John Oates on the covers of our records, never Hall & Oates.”
Has lockdown inspired your songwriting, or the opposite?
Daryl Hall: The opposite. I’m renovating an old house, which I find is a lot like making a record. I occasionally pick up a guitar and sing a little, but I’ve decided that these times are so tumultuous that whatever is valid after all this has passed, I’m not going to come up with it right now.
John Oates: Lockdown opened up opportunities I’d never have taken if I’d been on tour as usual. I’ve been writing, collaborating on Zoom, working on a movie project. Daryl and I had been preparing a new album, but it came to a grinding halt. I thought we could still try some stuff, but he felt we’d do our best work when physically together.
There hasn’t been an album of Hall and Oates originals since 2003 – what gives?
DH: We called our production company Two-Headed Monster, and we didn’t want to become a two-headed monster. As one matures, you become more yourself, creatively. But we have what we call ‘the kids’, namely our songs, and there’s never been a time when Hall and Oates were off the road.
Your first meeting (in 1967) was eventful to say the least.
DH: It was the Adelphi Ballroom in West Philly. People would lip-sync records to a crowd, which was popular then, but a gang fight broke up. People were swinging clubs, so we got out of there fast, and first met in the elevator. We discovered we’d both grown up in the suburbs, close to each other, and we both liked Philadelphia music, which was mostly soul and R&B. John brought in the Americana folk thing that I didn’t know much about. We roomed together as friends before we ever collaborated musically.
Daryl, you’ve said you resent being called ‘blue-eyed soul’.
DH: I stand by that. What we do, I call rock’n’soul. I’m a soul singer, the fact I have blue eyes is irrelevant.
After your first bout of Top 10 success in 1977, it took until 1981’s Kiss On My List to truly get going.
JO: With Sara Smile and Rich Girl, we’d gone out to California, where they had the best studios and players. But we wanted our own live band, and to produce ourselves. Back in New York, we already had 10 years of experience, and you gotta factor in the zeitgeist, New York’s kinetic street energy of the early ’80s – beatboxes, breakdancing, rap. Drum machines were changing the notion of rhythm. It wasn’t the organic ebb and flow of soul, but an unrelenting robotic, pulsing feel, so we went with that.
People magazine’s Live Aid cover featured The Rolling Stones, Dylan, Tina Turner, Madonna – and you. Was the level of fame overwhelming?
DH: Sometimes it felt like the eye of the hurricane, but I was never overwhelmed. I always felt, what can I do with this? Where can it take me?
JO: We enjoyed success and what came with it, but I’d missed out a lot on life. The only place left to go was down – no one can sustain that level of popularity. When it all ended, it also felt amazing. I remarried, had a kid, built a house in Colorado…
Tell me something you’ve never told an interviewer before.
DH: My nickname on tour is Daryl-pedia. I’m a bookworm and I love history.
JO: Don’t judge me by our music of the ’80s, because you don’t know who I really am.
Daryl Hall and John Oates are celebrating their 1980 song You Make My Dreams amassing one billion streams worldwide.
“We didn’t want to become a two-headed monster.” DARYL HALL