There is no duo without divorce. It’s almost a pop rule: two people start their career together and achieve success together. Then they distance themselves and separate, bitter and promising that together, never again. From Simon and Garfunkel to She Dances Alone. From Eric B. & Rakim to Ike & Tina, the breakup seems inevitable. The latest case, known only a few days ago, is Hall & Oates, the artistic couple that in 1984, the Recording Industry Association of America, the professional association of the American music industry, called “the most successful duo in history.”.
In late November, Daryl Hall, 77, filed a lawsuit against John Oates, 75, alleging breach of contract the duo signed over the rights to their music. Apparently, Hall found out that Oates was planning to sell them, he sued him, and a Nashville judge issued an order preventing him from closing the sale of his interest in Whole Oats Enterprises, the company he shares with Hall, the Primary Wave fund. IP Investment Management. The lawsuit included a temporary restraining order, which is a measure taken to prevent one party from harming the economic interests of the other.
That of Hall & Oates is the story of one of the most profitable duos in history and at the same time one of the most ignored. It is difficult to find references to them in rock history books and when they appear, as in The Biographical Dictionary of Pop by Dylan Jones, blood is drawn. “Hall & Oates were never cool. Not even when they started (Bowie was then cool), not even at the height of her popularity (Madonna was then cool). The problem is simple. Although they have made some of the best songs on blue eyed soul never written, they had an image problem. “Daryl Hall looked like a hairdresser from a provincial town and John Oates looked like the ugliest version of Super Mario’s little brother,” wrote the English author.
The key to the current conflict is that they collected successes. They published 18 albums between 1972 and 2006. They had six number one albums in the US; 16 songs in the top ten; 34 in the top 100. In the early eighties they released three albums that sold millions of copies: Voices, Private Eye and H2O. On their last tour together, in 2021, speaking about their live repertoire, Oates stated: “We have the incredibly serious problem of having too many hits. We love those songs. It’s not hard for us to play them because they’re great. And they speak for themselves because they stood the test of time.”
But they were always the example of the band that made music for people who didn’t care too much about music. Being a fan of Hall & Oates didn’t give any cache. “Wearing a Hall & Oates T-shirt means nothing,” he once said. manager by Metallica. And it is true, but it is also true that on the classics stations, now ubiquitous, it is easy to listen to Maneater, She’s gone either Out of Touch. That has not increased his reputation. It didn’t even touch them when groups like Steely Dan began to be claimed as champions of the subgenre. yacht. Hall & Oates were not from California, their songs did not sound like executives and silicone blondes drinking prosecco on a yacht. They were from Philadelphia and were associated with middle-class housewives in a suburb. In The prince of Bel AirCarlton, Will Smith’s cousin who behaved like a posh white guy, danced secretly You Make My Dreams by Hall & Oates. Will would catch him and he would leave in shame.
To a large extent what there is about them is prejudice. They say that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame I did not want to include them because the institution was accused of being too masculine and white. Hall and Oates were white people making music that could be considered cultural appropriation because their most glorious songs are the closest to the soul. If they got in it was thanks to one particular young, black fan: Questlove, from The Roots. He was also the one who gave the presentation speech. “Hall and Oates cure any known disease. They crossed all borders because that is what good music does,” he declared.
The truth is that they were a curious couple. Daryl Hall, from a German family, was tall and blonde. John Oates, of Italian, Gibraltarian, Moroccan and English origins, was short with very curly black hair and a mustache that he shaved off decades ago, but which, even so, is what is most remembered when you think of him. Both of their attempts to seem like children of their time were pathetic. In the video of rich girl, Hall is wearing absurd glasses and a fur coat and John Oates is wearing a suit with a vest that is closer to Joe Pesci in a movie. gangsters that of John Travolta in Saturday night Fever. And that took away from a magnificent song that Marvin Gaye could have composed.
They met in the sixties, when Hall was promoting the first single from his group, The Temptones, a white quartet making soul in the style of Four Tops or Temptations. The two hit it off, they were freshmen at Temple University, and they began sharing a flat. They ended up founding Hall & Oates in 1972. They began recording with Atlantic, but it wasn’t until they signed with RCA in 1975 that they began to stand out. His first megahit is the album Bigger than Both of Us. It seems that Daryl Hall had that quiet conviction, so common in one of the components of duos like Wham! or Laziness, that he did everything and Oates was little more than an extra. In fact, he didn’t even like the idea of being a duo.
“Whatever the mystique of being in a duo is, I don’t like it,” he declared in 2022 to Los Angeles Times. “John and I called our touring company Two-Headed Monster [monstruo de dos cabezas], because that’s. It’s very annoying being a duo, because people always say, ‘Oh, you’re the tall one, you’re the short one.’ ‘You are the one who sings, you are the one who doesn’t sing.’ They always compare you to the other person. It works in comedy, like Laurel and Hardy or Abbott and Costello, but with music, it’s actually fucked up.” In fact, it is said that if they did not separate before it was due to contractual obligations. RCA believed the odd pairing worked and boycotted any attempts by Hall to pursue a serious solo career. When in 1976 he recorded an album with Robert Fripp that completely departed from his work with Oates, RCA banned him from publishing it and put it into storage.
In recent times, Hall was already saying it openly. “Do you think John is my partner? He is my business partner. He is not my creative partner,” he declared in an interview. According to the AP agency, although what is known about the lawsuit does not specify what exactly is for sale, the Primary Wave fund has shown interest in acquiring Hall & Oates’ song catalog for 15 years. In a 2021 interview with Sky News, Hall alluded to a previous sale of part of his catalog. “They sold it and I didn’t make anything,” he said before advising artists to keep their rights: “All you have is that.”
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