Rock ’n Soul, Part 1

Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia

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Daryl Hall and John Oates: Their songs were earworms, their videos cheap and goofy. John Oates’s mustache and Daryl Hall’s mullet are relics of their time. And…for about five years, their crazy streak on the pop charts was comparable to Elvis, the Beatles and the Bee Gees. They were also more cutting-edge than you may realize, essentially inventing their own form of cross-racial new wave after spending the ’70s trying everything: rock, R&B, folk, funk, even disco. At their Imperial peak in the early ’80s, Hall and Oates commanded the pop, soul and dance charts while still getting played on rock stations. And decades later, when the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ignored them, it was Black artists—rappers and soul fans—who pushed them in. Join Chris Molanphy for a dissection of the Philly duo who invented “rock ’n soul” and made their dreams come true. Sign up for Slate Plus now to get episodes in one installment as soon as they're out. You'll also get The Bridge, our trivia show and bonus deep dive. Click here for more info. Podcast production by Asha Saluja. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Talking about

Speakers

(8)

Chris Molanphy

Hall & Oates

Casey Kasem

Transcript

Verified

Chris Molanphy

00:00

Hey there,

Hit Parade

listeners. What you're about to hear is Part One of this episode. Part Two will arrive in your podcast feed at the end of the month. Would you like to hear this episode all at once the day it drops? Sign up for

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00:19

And it supports not only this show, but all of Slates acclaimed journalism and podcasts. Just go to slate. com/hitparadeplus, you'll get to hear every

Hit Parade

episode in full the day it arrives, plus

Hit Parade

the Bridge; our bonus episodes with guest interviews, deeper dives on our episode topics and pop chart trivia. Once again, to join that's slate. com/hitparadeplus. Thanks. And now, please enjoy Part One

of this Hit Parade

episode.

01:01

Welcome to

Hit Parade

, a podcast of pop chart history from

Slate Magazine

about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Molanphy; chart analyst, pop critic and writer of

Slate's

’Why Is This Song No. 1? ’ series.

01:17

On today's show; forty years ago this week, in January of 1982, America had a new number one song built out of a cutting-edge digital rhythm track. It sounded both frigid and fiery, with icy, fluttery keyboards and a sizzling baseline. It was chilled-out but club-ready; a perfect pop song to liven the dead of winter.

01:48

The same week, it topped

Billboard's

’Hot 100 Pop’ chart. The song also rose to number one on

Billboard's

’Hot Soul Singles’ chart, which was pretty remarkable. Because at a time when the ’R&B’ chart was at a peak of bespoke blackness, commanded by the likes of

The Gap Band

Teddy Pendergrass

and

Kool and the Gang

, the two men who performed this number one R&B hit were white.

02:28

With the song ’I Can't Go For That’,

Daryl Hall

and

John Oates

had, after a decade of recording together, finally achieved a dream. They had not only taken control of their music and become regular chart toppers, they had also proven the universal appeal of what they called ’Rock ’n Soul’, a seamless blend of black and white sounds that could crossover effortlessly all along the radio dial. But, it really had been a slog to get there.

03:15

Hall & Oates

had spent the entire ’70s trying a little bit of everything. Not being any one thing meant they did not naturally fit into any specific chart or radio format. They were urbane rockers whose biggest hits sounded a lot like silky soul.

03:47

They took inspiration from the pop, rock and R&B of the ’60s.

03:57

And yet, when they broke big, they couldn't have sounded more like the ’80s.

04:07

And they went onto dominate the charts at the peak of

MTV

and New Way.

04:19

At their height, when everything

Hall & Oates

touched turned to gold, cutting edge dance and electronic producers wanted to work with them and they just kept topping the charts.

Hall & Oates

04:34

You're out of touch, I'm out of time. But I'm out of my head when you're not around.

Chris Molanphy

04:42

And even after they fell off,

Hall & Oates'

music was persistent and resonant. Re-emerging with a millennial generation who admired their craft and their irresistible hooks.

05:07

Hit Parade

, we come to honour

Daryl Hall

and

John Oates,

two independent-minded singer-songwriters who joined forces, stuck to their guns, dominated their era and never lost their hunger for new sounds.

Hall & Oates

05:26

Watch out boy, she'll chew you up. (Ooh here she comes) she's a maneater.

Chris Molanphy

05:31

Maneaters, try omnivores, the genre resistant age we now live in, where

Gen Z

artists veer from pop to rap to punk and refuse to adhere to any one radio format. Arguably,

Hall & Oates

got there first, defying rock convention and eradicating genre definitions before Poptimism was a thing and it all reached its apex when they topped a pair of

Billboard

charts simultaneously.

06:14

And that's where your

Hit Parade

marches today; the week ending January 30th 1982, when ’I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)’ by

Daryl Hall

and

John Oates

hit number one on both the ’Hot 100’ and ’Hot Soul Singles’ charts. It was also on the dance charts and the ’Album Rock’ chart that week too.

06:38

Hall & Oates

made their dreams come true. Their decade long experiment to define their own lane had in fact succeeded beyond their dreams. How did this pair from Philadelphia make ’Rock ’n Soul’ not only viable, but the sound of the ’80s and beyond?

07:10

In 2015, in yet another of its many articles ranking things,

Rolling Stone

listed what it considered the twenty greatest duos of all time. The magazine noted that the very form of the duo is unique, quote, less narcissistic than solo performers but more intimate than a mere band, unquote.

07:36

The

Rolling Stone

critics cast their net fairly wide, ranking not just hit-making duos like

Simon & Garfunkel

—

07:49

But also, acclaimed but low-selling pairs like electro-punk duo Suicide, producer dream-team

Robert

Fripp

& Eno

and the fractious ex-married couple

Richard

Linda Thompson

08:15

There were duos who actually played virtually every instrument on their records, like the minimalist but raucous

White Stripes

, a former-married couple turned foe brother and sister.

The White Stripes

08:29

And the message coming from my eyes says "leave it alone".

Chris Molanphy

08:37

And conversely, there were duos who were backed by armies of session musicians like

Steely Dan

. The meticulously smooth studio creation of

Donald Fagen

and

Walter Becker

Steely Dan

08:51

Come back to you. Peg, it will come back to you.

Chris Molanphy

08:58

Rolling Stone

ranked rap's greatest duos including

Eric B. & Rakim

and of course,

Big Boi

and

Andre 3000

aka

OutKast

09:12

Even the brother-sister duo,

The Carpenters,

who in their seventies hit-making heyday, were mostly scorned by critics. They too, rightfully, made

Rolling Stone's

duo ranking.

Carpenters

09:33

And the only explanation I can find.

Chris Molanphy

09:38

The top spot on

Rolling Stone's

list, given their formative influence on generations of bands and harmony singers, went to the legendary brothers

Phil And Don Everly

; no argument here.

09:55

What I do have a bone to pick with however, is the duo that's not ranked at all; an act that by the way, had just been inducted into the ’Rock & Roll

Hall

of Fame’ the year before this list was compiled. And yet to

Rolling Stone

, they didn't even rate above the twentieth ranked duo,

The Black Keys

. Given the subject of this

Hit Parade

episode, you've probably already guessed. Yep,

Daryl Hall

and

John Oates

were blanked.

10:35

I find this bizarre and yet, in a way predictable. The music critic establishment has long had a wary relationship with

Hall & Oates

. Several generations of listeners were taught to think of them as uber-commercial cheese merchants.

10:56

As recently as a decade ago, even fans of

Hall & Oates

seemed almost apologetic about their fandom. Listen to these excerpts from a VH1

’Behind The Music’

episode devoted to the duo that was released in 2010.

11:14

A lot of these kids have no sense of irony about the band. It's not a guilty pleasure for them.

11:19

I know, like critically, they were never appreciated in their day as much as they should have been.

11:24

If they're snooty about them, f* them.

Chris Molanphy

11:26

Clearly,

Hall & Oates

fans and

Hall

and

Oates

themselves have their backs up after years of condescension. Mind you, the duo was rarely actively hated or became an easily-loathed target on worst lists like, say,

Kenny G

Nickelback.

Even prior

Hit Parade,

subject

Billy Joel

gets more vocal scorn from critics.

11:52

But as that

Rolling Stone

ranking of duos proves,

Hall & Oates

are just easy to overlook.

12:00

But in the world of hit-making,

Hall & Oates

are impossible to overlook. At their height, in the 1980s,

Casey Kasem

said this about them, ’Holy Hyperbole, Batman’:

Casey Kasem

12:19

I'm

Casey Kasem,

on ’American Top 40’. Each decade of the Rock and Roll era seems to have had one dominant recording act on the

Billboard

’Singles’ chart. In the ’50s, it was

Elvis Presley

; in the ’60s, The Beatles, in the ’70s, it was the

Bee Gees

and now in the ’80s, a male duo was taken over and here they are at number one, the top act of the ’80s so far,

Daryl Hall

and

John Oates

Chris Molanphy

12:50

Yes,

Hall & Oates

really were that big. Even if they were later eclipsed in ’80s chart dominance by titans like

Michael Jackson

and

Madonna,

and okay, comparing

Hall & Oates

Elvis

or The Beatles was even then a little much; but

Casey Kasem's

analogy of the duo to the

Bee Gees

is much more apt.

13:15

Both groups took a while to find themselves longer even than The Beatles did.

Bee Gees

13:22

Night fever, night fever. We know how to do it.

Chris Molanphy

13:24

As we discussed in our

Bee Gees

episode of

Hit Parade

; who could have predicted that a trio of white English brothers raised in Australia, who first broke during the ’60s'

British Invasion

, would score their biggest hits singing R&B flavour disco?

13:48

In their first decade,

The Gibbs

had as many misses as hits before they found the sound that would bring them super-stardom in the mid to late ’70s. And then, as I noted, when the

Bee Gees

became uncool, the fall was particularly hard.

Bee Gees

14:08

Nobody gets too much heaven no more. It's much harder to come by, I'm waiting in line.

Chris Molanphy

14:12

The fall off of

Hall & Oates

wasn't as abrupt, but like the

Bee Gees

Hall & Oates

are tied in the public imagination to a specific moment.

14:32

A time of obligatory saxophone solos, kitschy early

MTV

videos,

John Oates'

peak ’80s moustache and hits that came with synthesized clapping —

14:52

And like the

Bee Gees

by straddling the cultural boundaries of music perceived as white and black;

Hall & Oates

were universally consumed but perhaps held close by no one audience.

15:13

Which results in a situation where some listeners think you have to enjoy

Hall & Oates

ironically, or as camp, or categorize them with trends they had nothing to do with. As we discussed in our

Yacht Rock

episode, the creators of that genre name have clarified that despite the satirical appearance of

Hall & Oates,

the

’Yacht Rock’

video series as comic foils from the East Coast and the Doobie Bounce of a couple of their hits,

Hall & Oates

are not

yacht rock

and that is the last time you'll hear me use the ’Y-word’ in this episode.

16:12

What

Daryl Hall

and

John Oates

were and are, can't be reduced to kitsch. As we'll detail in this episode, they traveled in hipper circles than you may realize; especially

Daryl

, whose voice is prized by artists across the musical spectrum.

16:37

And in their way,

Hall & Oates

were post-genre pioneers, a pair of distinctive singer-songwriters, each with his own sensibility. By the way, they prefer to be known as

Daryl Hall

and

John Oates

on many of their album covers; they even leave off the ’and’. They joined forces to mix up their varied influences while remaining individuals and they never wanted to be classified as any one thing; which makes sense when you consider where they came from.

17:17

Like so many pieces of Rock and Roll history,

Chubby Checker's

1960 number one smash, ’The Twist’, originated in Philadelphia, on local label

Cameo Parkway

and on

Dick Clark's

Philly-based show

American Bandstand.

One year later, so did

The Dovells'

number two smash ’The Bristol Stomp’, another dance-craze single, on

Cameo Parkway,

named for the Bristol suburb of Philadelphia.

17:56

This was the melting pot, young

Daryl Franklin Hohl

, spelled ’H-o-h-l’ and young

John William Oates

grew up around in the 1950s and ’60s.

18:11

They would later cite these records as formative to their upbringing in the

City Of Brotherly Love

, where the black

Chubby Checker

and the white

doo-wop

group

The Dovells

, not only co-existed but competed on the charts. Born a year apart, in 1946 and ’47 respectively,

Hall & Oates

, each grew up in a North Philly suburb.

18:37

Hall

was born in Pottstown and

Oates

born in New York City moved with his family to North Wales, Pennsylvania at age five. Both were playing in

doo-wop

and soul groups while still in high school. Both independently enrolled in

Temple

University

, which finally brought them into the city of Philadelphia itself.

19:00

And by the mid 1960s, each man began recording —

19:18

This 1966 single,

’I Need Your Love’

is ’The Masters’, an all-purpose ’Rock'n Soul’ group, fronted by

John Oates

who picked up the guitar as a kid after giving up the accordion. Over five years of playing both covers and originals,

Oates

had tried his hand at everything from

Motown

and

James Brown

covers to coffeehouse folk. By 1967, his future partner was singing on wax too.

20:04

This 1967 single is ’Girl, I Love You’, sung by

Daryl Hall

. He would finally change the spelling of his name to

’H-a-l-l’

, and credited to a group called The Temptones.

Hall

had an exceptional tenor voice, nurtured by his mother who was a professional vocal coach. And, why was his mid ’60s group named The Temptones?

Hall

himself explained it to VH1:

Daryl Hall

20:38

The Temptations were our Beatles, you know, they were like the gods; because they were the best vocal group in the world at the time.

Chris Molanphy

20:50

Paul actually befriended members of ’The Temptations’, including

Paul Williams

and

David Ruffin

when they passed through Philadelphia to play the

Uptown Theater

21:02

And among the local industry figures

Daryl

befriended and impressed, were legendary Philly producers,

Kenny Gamble

Leon Huff

and

Thom Bell

, who would revolutionize sophisticated soul in the ’70s, and by the mid ’60s, were already producing vocal groups like

The Delfonics

21:42

Hall

sang backup for some early

Gamble

Huff

and

Thom Bell

recordings. However, the first recording to make the national

Billboard

charts to feature

Daryl Hall

had no vocals at all. The fluke number sixteen hit ’Keem-O-Sabe’ by the Philly instrumental studio band,

The Electric Indian,

Hall

played keyboards.

22:13

Given all the parallels in

Daryl Hall's

and

John Oates'

upbringing, the way they finally met is oddly improbable. It wasn't in a Philly studio session or at

Temple

University

; it was at a gig, but not while either one of them was performing. It was a 1967 multi-act radio showcase at West Philly's Adelphi Ballroom. Acts from various Philadelphia labels were all there, like Chicago's the

Five Stairsteps

and local hit-maker

Howard Tate

23:07

Also there to perform were The Temptones featuring

Daryl Hall

and The Masters featuring

John Oates

, but as they were all waiting backstage, a fight broke out between rival gangs and someone pulled a gun.

Daryl

and

John

ran to get out of the way. In some versions of this apocryphal story, they each bolted for a freight elevator and when the hubbub died down, they made small talk. They realized they both went to

Temple

and said maybe they should hang out sometime.

Hall & Oates

would then spend the next several years rooming together in various apartments around Philadelphia, while each man tried to make his recording career happen.

23:58

For the rest of the ’60s, nothing quite took off.

Hall

joined several more Philly soul groups and continued playing sessions while

Oates

played with country bluesman

Jerry Ricks

and briefly, a band called Valentine led by

Frank Stallone;

yes,

Sly's

brother. In one fluke gig,

Hall

joined singer-songwriter

Tim Moore's

band, Gulliver, who got signed to

Elektra Records

and issued one self-titled studio album in 1970, marked by groovy psychedelic pop.

24:39

It didn't sell. It was around this time that

Daryl

and

John

who had been roommates off and on for three years.

Oates

even briefly lived with

Hall

and his first wife. And playing with each other mostly for fun, decided to actually record together.

25:04

By 1970, they had gone full hippie with long hair down to their shoulders and their earliest work sounded more like

John Oates'

trippy folk and blues experiments than anything to do with Philly soul.

25:27

They played their first club show together in December 1970 as

Daryl Hall

and

John Oates

. At one point, they considered naming their project ’Whole Oats’ spelled the normal way without the ’e’, unlike

John's

last name. They even played a few gigs under the ’Whole Oats’ moniker, but after signing with a scrappy young manager in 1971 - I'll get to him in a minute - and signing to

Atlantic Records

Hall & Oates

decided instead that ’Whole Oats’ would be the name of their debut album.

26:17

From the jump,

Hall & Oates

worked with great producers. Their

Atlantic

debut was produced by

Arif Mardin

, who had produced

Dusty Springfield's

celebrated

Dusty in Memphis

LP, and who would later guide the disco breakthrough of the

Bee Gees.

On Whole Oats,

Mardin-guided

Hall & Oates

toward a plush folk-inflected sound with soulful overtones.

26:50

AllMusic's

Stephen Thomas Erlewine

, who has written extensively on the duo said, quote, some of the album's haziness derives from the fact that at the time of its recording,

Hall & Oates

were essentially two singer-songwriters, playing their own tunes in tandem, unquote.

27:23

Indeed, the LP veered from more of

Oates's

folky musings like ’Southeast City Window’ to the

Hall-penned

’Waterwheel’ on which he echoed

Joni Mitchell

27:36

When Whole Oats failed to chart,

Hall & Oates

pulled up stakes and moved from Philadelphia to New York City where they would wind up making the bulk of their future albums. Producer

Arif Mardin

corralled a bunch of studio pros in New York to back them up on their second album.

28:13

This approach worked on 1973's

Abandoned Luncheonette

LP; the duo would sound less like a pair of individual folkies and more like

Hall & Oates

, a collective identity. It is perhaps ironic though, that this New York-based album generated a track that very clearly evoked the sound of Philly soul. It would also turn out to be

Hall & Oates's

first signature song.

28:51

’She's Gone’

was a true collaboration; a song that evoked breakups both men were going through in their move to New York.

John Oates

started it on acoustic guitar as a bluesy lament one night when a girlfriend stood him up. Then

Daryl Hall

, whose first marriage was falling apart, transformed it on his keyboard into something closer to R&B. It also featured very distinctive octave-based harmonies that showcased both men's voices.

Hall & Oates

29:31

I need a drink and a quick decision. Now it's up to me, (ooh) what will be. She's gone, She's gone. (Oh I, oh I) I better learn how to face it.

Chris Molanphy

29:41

Released as the first single from

Abandoned Luncheonette

in November of ’73,

She's Gone

, took months to connect. It broke on the charts in February of 1974, rising to a modest number sixty on the ’Hot 100’ that finally nudged

Abandoned Luncheonette

onto

Billboard's

’Top LPS’ chart. The first

Hall & Oates

album to make the chart, but it only got as high as number one hundred and ninety two.

30:20

So, a single that missed the ’Top 40’, an album that just barely cracked the charts,

She's Gone

was an amazing song and a vocal showcase, especially for

Daryl Hall

, but that would not be the end of the story for the album, or most especially that song.

30:42

A group of five brothers signed to

Capitol Records

;

Tavares

recorded a cover of

She's Gone

in the summer of 1974. Tavares' producer

Dennis Lambert

loved the

Hall & Oates

version so much, he replicated its arrangement almost exactly reinforcing that the song was R&B to its core.

31:20

By December 74, the

Tavares

version of

She's Gone

, reached number 1 on

Billboard's

Hot Soul Singles’’ chart. It was in a way, prophetic. The first chart a

Hall & Oates

song topped was the ’R&B’ chart. It wouldn't be the last time for that either.

Break

Chris Molanphy

34:05

R&B was not how

Hall & Oates

were being marketed in 1973 and ’74. The band was opening for white rock acts, including

David Bowie

on his

Ziggy Stardust Tour

34:29

In addition to playing rock shows, they were attending them as well. At the very moment, punk was starting to break in New York.

Daryl Hall

recalled, quote, I was going to the Mercer Arts Center and seeing the

New York Dolls

and those kinds of bands, I wrote a bunch of songs that reflected the chaos of that scene, unquote.

35:04

So for their third album, they teamed with an old friend from Philadelphia who had just produced the first

New York Dolls

album, the iconoclastic

Todd Rundgren

35:29

And

Rundgren

produced what turned out to be

Hall & Oates

most experimental rock album, 1974's progressive utopia-like LP, ’War Babies’.

35:50

In essence, ’War Babies’ was an act of willful commercial suicide.

Hall & Oates

were annoyed with

Atlantic Records

for under promoting

Abandoned Luncheonette

, which had earned universal critical acclaim.

36:05

War Babies’’ did manage to reach number eighty six on the ’LP’ chart, but

Atlantic

fed up with

Hall & Oates'

identity crisis where they folk, R&B, prog rock, dropped the duo.

Hall & Oates

parting gift to the label was a final single. It's uncanny that sounded like

Billy Joel

crossed with

The Doobie Brothers

. It peaked at number eighty on the ’Hot One 100’.

36:44

Truth be told, they wanted to get dropped.

Hall & Oates

were already eyeing a better deal at another label; one that had been arranged by their energetic hustler of a manager.

37:03

Perhaps, you've heard the name

Tommy Mottola

Hall & Oates

called him Little Gino’’, and they even wrote the song ’Gino (The Manager)’ about him.

Mottola's

wheeler-dealer reputation was so legendary by the mid ’70s that the disco group

Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band

referenced him by name in a song.

37:39

Most likely you've heard of

Tommy Mottola

from his success two decades later with his discovery

Mariah Carey

, who famously became his wife and then infamously his ex-wife.

38:02

But I digress,

Hall & Oates

were

Tommy Mottola's

first success. They signed with him back in 1971 when

Mottola

was twenty one and barely even a manager. It was he who got them signed to

Atlantic

in ’72 then dropped by

Atlantic

in ’75.

38:24

He was pleased when ’War Babies’ flopped because it cleared

Hall & Oates

to sign with

RCA Records

. They recorded a new LP for

RCA

right away, produced by studio guitarist

Christopher Bond

. The self titled album became better known thanks to its metallic cover as ’The Silver Album’.

38:51

But that LP jacket was famous for more than its color. In a cover photo taken by

David Bowie

stylist Pierre La Roche,

Hall & Oates

appear in heavy glamorous makeup, styled as women, only

John's

moustache breaks the gender bending illusion.

Daryl

in particular makes an especially comely woman.

39:16

He later joked that he looked like the kind of woman he would want to date. Though, the cover lead to blowback from certain narrow-minded rock fans who made homophobic insinuations about the duo's sexual identity, it was in keeping with the look of glam rock at the time and the notoriety might have helped. The

Daryl Hall

and

John Oates

album debuted on the ’LP’ chart in the fall of ’75, even as its first couple of singles flop.

39:57

Both

RCA

and the artists were convinced that either ’Camellia’ or ’Alone Too Long’ were the potential hits on the LP. ’Alone Too Long’ even briefly cracked the ’R&B’ chart at a lowly number ninety eight.

40:13

Hall

in particular, rebuffed those who suggested the album's best track was a gentle pillowy ballad he had written for his girlfriend. But then, a DJ in Cleveland, Lynn Tolliver, began playing that ballad as an album-cut and he proved

Daryl Hall

wrong.

Hall & Oates

40:35

Baby hair with a woman's eyes, I can feel you watching in the night.

Chris Molanphy

40:45

Sara Smile

was named for

Sarah Allen

who was more than

Hall's

companion. In 1973, when

Hall

began seeing her, she was a flight attendant.

Hall

wrote a song on

Abandoned Luncheonette

called ’Las Vegas Turnaround (The Stewardess Song)’ about her.

41:13

But after several years living with

Daryl

and hanging around, as he and

John

worked on songs,

Sarah Allen

began chiming in with lyrical and other musical ideas. To their credit, rather than regarding

Allen

as an interloper,

Hall & Oates

brought her in as accredited songwriter. Starting with ’The Silver Album’,

Sarah Allen's

name began appearing in the liner notes of their LPs.

41:44

She became both

Hall's

lover and professional collaborator, roles she would go on to play for over twenty years and on what turned out to be the duo's breakthrough hit, she was

Daryl's

muse.

42:11

After Lynn Tolliver began playing it,

Sara Smile

spread from Cleveland to other cities.

RCA

belatedly issued it as the third single from the

Daryl Hall

and

John Oates

LP.

42:24

It rose all the way to number four on the ’Hot 100’ in June of 1976. It even made it to number twenty three on the ’R&B’ chart; this time under

Hall & Oates'

own names. And the languishing LP finally rose into the top twenty and went gold. In a move to recoup their investment in the now hit act,

Atlantic,

Hall & Oates'

old label, reissued

She's Gone

as a single. The slow burning lament now sounded like a natural follow up to the soulful

Sara Smile

Casey Kasem

counted it down.

Casey Kasem

43:04

You know, back in 1974,

Daryl Hall

and

John Oates

wrote and recorded the song that became their first chart record. It peaked at number sixty on the pop chart. Then, a half a year later, to virus cover the record, getting up to number fifty and going all the way to number one on the ’Soul Chart’ this week. Two and a half years later, after it was first released,

Hall & Oates

debut on the forty with their original recording of that song coming in at number thirty nine. It's called

She's Gone

Chris Molanphy

43:41

She's Gone

, the original version, would peak at number seven on the ’Hot 100’ by the fall of ’76. The

Abandoned Luncheonette

album re-entered the LP chart and cracked the ’Top 40’, going gold in October by which time, there was now a new

Hall & Oates

album in music shops. Recording again with

Chris Bond

. The duo tried to emulate the ’Rock ’n Soul’ sound that had finally broken them.

44:18

When

’Bigger Than Both Of Us’

dropped in the late summer of 1976, the duo and the label again had a hard time choosing a single. In an effort to emulate the revived

She's Gone

, they issued the slow burning ’Do What You Want, Be What You Are’ but it only reached number thirty nine. And then in the winter of ’77, they released a new more up-tempo and much snarkier single and it obliterated anything

Hall & Oates

had released to this point.

44:58

Here's the funny story about

’Rich Girl’

Daryl Hall

wrote it about a rich boy.

Hall

later told the story to American Songwriter. Quote, it was about an old boyfriend of Sarah's from college. He came to our apartment and he was acting sort of strange. His father was quite rich, I think with some kind of a fast food chain.

45:25

I thought this guy is out of his mind but he doesn't have to worry about it because his father is going to bail him out of any problems. He gets it. So I sat down and wrote that chorus. He can rely on the old man's money. He's a rich guy. I thought that didn't sound right. So I changed it to rich girl, but he knows the song was written about him, unquote.

45:60

Hall & Oates

did best with the songs that evoked their hometown background.

’Rich Girl’

was pure Philly soul with the kind of lush strings

Kenny Gamble

Leon Huff

and

Thom Bell

had made a chart staple. For

Hall & Oates,

it was a chart juggernaut. By March 1977,

’Rich Girl’

had become their first number one hit.

46:28

By April,

Daryl Hall

and

John Oates

were on the cover of

Rolling Stone

. Three of their albums were gold and all three had been riding the LP charts simultaneously. If you know where the

Hall & Oates

story is headed from here, you might think it's an instant road to platinum, but that's not how the late ’70s turned out. The duo's identity crisis persisted even after topping the charts.

47:11

On their 1977 album,

’Beauty On A Back Street’

, producer

Chris Bond

insisted on recording

Hall & Oates

in a stripped down style that echoed current rock titans like the Eagles or Kansas; it was a bad fit.

47:28

A failed effort to nudge

Hall & Oates

notes in the direction of album rock. Since they were not really going for pop airplay,

’Beauty On A Back Street’

singles were stiffs. ’Why Do Lovers Break Each Other's Hearts? ’ peaked at number seventy eight and ’Don't Change’ missed the ’Hot 100’ entirely.

47:49

Hall & Oates

were in essence back to square one. Sensing an opportunity,

Daryl Hall

decided to try an experiment. Without breaking up with

Oates

, he would pause for a solo album. And

Daryl

, after the conservatism of his recent work with

Chris Bond,

was eager to make a hard left turn; one even more unpredictable than ’War Babies’.

48:31

King Crimson

leader

Robert Fripp

, the subversive British progressive rocker and the thinking-person's guitar hero, according to

AllMusic

, had befriended

Daryl Hall

in the early ’70s and he kept up with him whenever he visited England. Impressed with

Hall's

supple voice

Fripp

pledged to work with him someday. In 1977,

Robert Fripp

made good on that pledge.

49:05

Between 1977 and ’79,

Robert Fripp

recorded a trio of albums that he considered his pop trilogy accessible by his standards, but experimental for the artist's fronting the projects.

49:23

The first of the three albums was a solo LP for

Daryl Hall

on which

Fripp

invited such musicians as

Brian Eno

and bassist

Tony Levin

King Crimson

to perform.

49:41

The next year,

Fripp

brought many of these same musicians to work on

Peter Gabriel's

self-titled 1978 sophomore album which echoed the sound of

Daryl Hall's

solo album.

49:57

And the year after that,

Robert Fripp

brought in both

Peter Gabriel

and

Daryl Hall

to sing on exposure

Fripp's

own solo debut outside of

King Crimson.

Hall

sang lead on several tracks, including the punky rave-up, ’You Burn Me Up I'm a Cigarette’.

50:24

And the positively ethereal, almost freeform ’North Star’.

50:48

This was all miles away from

She's Gone

and

Rich Girl

and it weirded out

RCA

. Truthfully,

Hall's

album was the most accessible of the

Robert Fripp

Trilogy. But when

Hall

presented his solo LP to the label in 1977, under the title ’Sacred Songs’ —

51:17

RCA

balked. They would not release it, claiming it would unsettle the

Hall & Oates

fan base. ’Sacred Songs’ would remain unreleased for three years. Quote, they thought I was getting weird on them,

Hall

later said. They got scared and didn't want to lose their investment. It didn't sound like

Hall & Oates

and it wasn't supposed to. To me, it's a pretty straight ahead album.

51:51

Dutifully returning to the fold,

Hall

recorded two more ’70s albums with

John Oates

that continued the search for their next sound. Produced by LA-based journeymen,

David Foster

, 1978's

’Along The Red Ledge’

did generate a ’Top 20’ hit in the mellow, ’It's A Laugh’.

52:24

And

Hall & Oates

leaned back towards a more discofied version of Philly Soul on ’I Don't Want to Lose You’ which just missed the ’Top 40’.

52:41

David Foster

manned the boards as they went even deeper into disco on 1979's album,

’X-Static’

. On the club-crazy, ’Who Said the World Was Fair’ —

53:05

And the disco-rock hybrid, ’Portable Radio’ —

53:18

But none of this connected on the radio or the charts.

’X-Static’

landed in the middle of the 1979 disco backlash and it became

Hall & Oates's

first album not to go gold since 1974 ’War Babies’. The only thing salvaging the LP and ushering the duo into the ’80s was a soulful rocker called ’Wait For Me’.

53:47

It peaked at number eighteen on the ’Hot 100’ in January of 1980. And ’Wait For Me's crisp sound suggested how

Hall & Oates

might move forward. The next month,

Daryl

and

John

had a long talk with their manager,

Tommy Mottola

, insisting that they wanted to produce themselves from here on.

54:12

Even after working with pros, from

Arif Mardin

Todd Rundgren

David Foster

, they felt if they couldn't define their sound themselves, they shouldn't be making music.

Mottola

agreed; quote, you're absolutely right, he said, and we have nothing to lose.

54:32

Their first move was convincing

RCA

to belatedly issued

Daryl's

Sacred Songs LP. When it finally arrived in stores in March 1980, it did decently, reaching number fifty eight and even selling a little better than a couple of

Hall & Oates's

’70s LPS.

54:59

’More Important’, that 1977 recording with its uncluttered, new-wavey, Frippertronics production would inspire the sound of 1980s voices; the self-produced LP that would become

Hall & Oates's

blockbuster.

Hall & Oates

55:25

But every time you go away, you take a piece of me with you.

Chris Molanphy

55:31

It helped that both men assisted by their co-songwriter

Sarah Allen

were writing strong material such as

Daryl's

love ballad,

’Every Time You Go Away’.

For ’Voices’ lead single, as a statement of purpose, they chose the

John Oates-penned

mid-tempo rocker, ’How Does It Feel To Be Back? ’

55:57

It reached number thirty on the ’Hot 100’. Then, hedging their bets a bit, the duo followed it up with a cover. The first of their singles ever, not to be written by one of them,

Hall & Oates'

take on the righteous brothers, ’You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling’, still a radio staple to this day, rose to number twelve in November 1980.

56:36

What's remarkable about these two good but fairly unambitious singles was what

Hall & Oates

were holding in reserve; a song so catchy, it was like a control-alt-delete reboot of the duo's entire career.

57:02

’When We Come Back’,

Daryl Hall

and

John Oates

defined the eighties, the

MTV

era and blue-eyed soul, entering the record books in one of the greatest imperial runs in chart history. The lane they built turned out to be a superhighway.

57:20

Non-Slate Plus

listeners will hear the rest of this episode in two weeks. For now, I hope you've been enjoying this episode of

Hit Parade

57:29

Our show was written, edited and narrated by Chris Molanphy; that's me. My producer is Asha Solutia. Special thanks this month for research support from Matt Shady Wardlaw and

Stephen Thomas Erlewine

. June Thomas is the senior managing producer of

Slate

Podcasts. Check out their roster of shows at slate. com/podcasts. You can subscribe to

Hit Parade

wherever you get your podcasts in addition to finding it in the

Slate

culture feed.

58:02

If you're subscribing on

Apple Podcasts

, please rate and review us while you're there. It helps other listeners find the show. Thanks for listening, and I look forward to leading the

Hit Parade

back your way. We'll see you for Part Two in a couple of weeks. Until then, keep on marching on the one. I'm Chris Molanphy.

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