The return of Daryl Hall and John Oates

Let’s go back in time. Was there a perfect harmony from the beginning? The relationship, reveals Oates, began with a bang. Literally. The smaller, darker, half of the duo, who left his Zapata moustache behind for good in the 1990s, tells of their 1968 meeting at a gig in Philadelphia. “We were in different bands at the time, (The Masters and The Temptones) and ready to promote our singles being played on Philadelphia radio, doing some lip synching,” he recalls. “But a gang fight broke out and we leapt into an elevator in a retreat to the ground floor.”

Outside in the alley, having literally dodged a bullet, Daryl Franklin Hohl and John William Oates chatted and found a real commonality. “We discovered we’d grown up just a few miles from each other,” says Hall, who looks like Robert Redford’s rock star brother. “We were at the same university, and we learned we were very similar in the music that drives us. But while I was into Philly music, John brought his folk music background.”

Hall, whose father was a professional singer and his mother a vocal coach, sang from an early age. The very young Oates had been taught the accordion and quickly progressed to guitar. Hall studied Music at Temple University while Oates opted for journalism. But by the age of 19, both were majoring in becoming pop stars.

The pair formed Hall & Oates. But Hall says their similarities were also complemented by their yin and yang differences. He emerges, for example, as the more self-assured, confident and formidable. (His band would later refer to him as Der Fuhrer). Oates, a college wrestler and tennis player, is considered the more sensitive.

“It was us against the world,” says Hall, reinforcing his determinative streak. But was it true, as some rock magazines have a claimed, that Hall was in fact the leader, and Oates the support? Oates says the relationship worked from the outset because no one was in charge. Hall would often take lead vocals but when they came up with the classic She’s Gone, for example, it was Oates who brought his partner the chorus and they worked on the verse together. “Sometimes, we do things together, sometimes, not,” he explains. “We respect each other’s musical sensibilities, and we have an innate sense of what works.”

Hall agrees. “Part of the success is down to creating songs that are real. Material that’s so often biographical is what we’ve been about.”

So what inspired She’s Gone, the song that every heterosexual man who has ever been dumped can connect with? Oates grins as he rewinds. “I met this girl in a coffee bar in the middle of the night in Greenwich Village. She was wearing a pink tutu and cowboy boots and was something of a wild child. We really hit it off. But on New Year’s Eve when I invited her round to my apartment she didn’t show up.”

The experience was enough for Oates to take his near suffocating sorrow, throw some chords around it, and take the haunting chorus round to his songwriter partner to work up a verse.

Thank god for misery? “Yes,” says Oates, laughing. “It always helps. Incidentally, did he ever hear from the pink tutu girl again? “She popped up over the years, but nothing happened.”

Still, Hall & Oates had each other. And in 1972 released their first album, Whole Oates. It was “too folky” said the critics, but the follow-up Abandoned Luncheonette, a blend of Philly R&S and Motown was critically acclaimed.

But the next album, War Babies, “alienated everyone,” according to Rolling Stone magazine. What this revealed was that Hall & Oates were never going to write to prescription. In 1975, the Silver Album (with their much talked about cover photograph which made them look like apprentice drag queens)) produced the hit Sara Smile, written for Hall’s long-term girlfriend Sara Allen.

But the duo then endured a period when their albums were received to the sound of silence. In 1980, however, the Voices album had hits fly out of it like a jukebox. The likes of Kiss On My List, You Make My Dreams, and I Can’t Go For That stormed the US and UK charts.

“We were vindicated,” Hall says of the time. “We were accepted on our own terms. To all those people who said, ‘Those guys are on their way out,’ we said, ‘You guys is wrong.'”

Hall’s grammar may have been clumsy but the pair were now in tune with a world audience. And they lived a life of world class, pop star indulgence. Oates, for example, married a model, Nancy Hunter, whom he met when he pulled her up on stage during a concert. He bought racing cars and a plane. Meanwhile, Hall bought several homes and married Bryna Lubin, but the marriage lasted just three years. At one point, Hall & Oates had homes close to each other in Connecticut, along with their other residences in Manhattan and London.

But one day in 1987, the needle skidded right off the record when the duo’s accountant Sigmund Balaban called them into his New York office. He revealed they were more broke than a 16-year-old choir boy’s voice. Oates, for example, was $9m in the red. In the taxi home, anxiety pains were so severe he thought he was going to die. “By this time, I had gotten divorced, Daryl and I had stopped touring and recording and our manager had left for greener pastures. I had run into financial difficulties I wasn’t aware of because I was running around the world behaving like a pop star, and not paying attention to certain things.”

The more money you make, the easier it is to lose it? “Yes. And I needed to recalibrate my life.” He pauses: “I needed to grow up. And I realised that living in New York surrounding myself with the same group of people was not going to allow me to do that. So I cut ties with everyone. I moved to Colorado and into a little condo. Then after a year or so I met a young gal (Aimee) and got married, had a kid, built a house – and started my life over again basically.”

He laughs: “It was lucky I didn’t have the money to buy a mansion in Beverly Hills. If I had done something stupid like that and I would have been in the exact same boat.”

Hall didn’t suffer to quite the same extent. He hadn’t gone down the racing cars and planes route. But he admits: “We were used and abused [by the record industry]. That’s the only way to describe it and suddenly we were faced with cold reality and that was sobering. Very sobering. It caused us to man up and take charge of our lives, in a way we weren’t allowed to do, or chose to do, in our younger lives.”

The pair were never into hard drugs but their lives had been consumed by touring and performing and the pressure to write hit singles. Oates, in particular, was burnt out. “I had been on tour from 1972 until to 1987, without stopping. In some ways it was a great life but the reality was it was a protracted adolescence. And it reveals how you can live in this suspended personal animation.”

Hall, however, didn’t feel the need to climb off the carousel and head for the hills. He had more of an overview of the business. He loved renovating property, for example. He loved the social buzz. He loved London. “I think John was always that way [an escapist] more than me. I was always looking for adventure and especially in those days I wasn’t ready to step away from anything.” He muses; “As the years have gone on I have a different perspective. But the 1980s changed us as individuals and we explored things on our own.”

When Oates took off to the mountains, what was the relationship like with his musical partner? “We didn’t speak,” he says in emphatic voice. “I had no idea what he was doing, although we later got together to do occasional shows. But this wasn’t part of a concentrated effort. It was just to keep the cash flow going.”

Looking back, do they both agree it was better to travel than arrive? “Yes, in a way,” says Hall. “The 1970s was all about doing everything for the first time. And we didn’t really know what we were doing. It was also about getting out of the States for the first time and getting to go round the world. It was a great time.”

It was a wild time. Relationships were sacrificed on the altar of sexual discovery. Oates’ admits he didn’t act as though he were a married man. In one interview, Hall & Oates hinted the hedonism was such that they may have shared a female partner. But they were never gay, as Rolling Stone magazine, who once declared the pair The Self-Righteous Brothers, suggested.

Hall believed the ever-fickle rock press loved to find reasons to hate the band, after the initial stint of adoration. “It p****d me off,” he says of the accusation. “I was very hurt by it. Rolling Stone did their best to bring us down and it was a cruel thing. I will never forgive them for it. So right now I would say they can go f*** themselves." He offers a dark smile: “Except that the writers are now all old – or dead.”

You can see that Hall, in particular, made it easy for the rock press to scratch his eyes out. At the peak of their powers the musician, who had been named by his mother after movie producer Darryl F Zanuck, declared: “I think we’re the 1980s' Beatles. If we had been born 20 years earlier, maybe the world would have seen that. There’s something about our personalities that is very Lennon-and-McCartneyesque. And there is something about the body of work that we both have that’s similar.”

Yet, while some saw that statement as arrogance, for others it translated into absolute conviction. And Philly’s Lennon and McCartney certainly had enough resolve to rebuild their careers – and lives.

They sued their record company and got money back for unpaid royalties and gained the publishing rights to their songs. They reformed and took to the road.

Perhaps the reason they could get back together was they had never had a major falling out in the first place? “That’s true,” says Oates.

Nor, however, were they twins separated at birth. “We’re different people. I think that’s part of the reason we get along so well.”

They had different friends’ groups. They had different interests but the essence of what made them friends never went away. “We’ve had the success and failure to deal with. As a result of that we have a brotherhood more than a friendship.”

Yet, brothers can fall out? “Sure. We can go our separate ways. But we can get together after being apart and everything will come right back.”

Hall now lives in Charleston, South Carolina, while Oates is in Colorado. But when they did get back as a working unit, nothing, they realised, had really changed. “It’s the same today as it will be when we play Caesar’s Palace or Glasgow,” says Oates, grinning. “We haven’t played since November but it won’t matter. It will work.”

Hall agrees. “That’s true, although I was shocked to hear the main bulk of our audience is between 25-30. And the second group is teenagers. And I love it.”

But then it’s not surprise, says Hall, that the duo are still filling halls, as are the likes of Elton John and James Taylor. “I knew these people and they were in it for the long run. They’re dedicated, which leads to timelessness. We’ve got some of that as well.”

Perhaps the main reason the pair are still appearing on stage together aged 72 and 71 is they are unabashedly appreciative. “Lots of people would dream of having this opportunity and I’m all too aware of how precious it is,” says Oates. “For us to be able travel the world and have this 50 year career, well that’s great.”

Daryl Hall & John Oates, the SSE Hydro, with KT Tunstall, May 1.