Dynamic Duo
The music of Hall & Oates defined the 70s and 80s and continues to enchant audiences worldwide
By Tim Wassberg
Daryl Hall and John Oates of the rock duo Hall & Oates are among the most successful duos of all time in popular music. The 70s and 80s were dominated with such number-one cuts such as “Rich Girl,” “I Can’t Go For That,” “Maneater,” “Private Eyes” and “Out Of Touch”—their hit list goes on and on. But the effective musicianship behind the process is evident in their being inducted into the Songwriters as well as the Rock N’ Roll Hall Of Fame. Casino Player sat down with Hall & Oates to discuss their passion, ideas of fusion and the elements of their sound as they prepare for their up-coming gig at The Colosseum, the first time they’ve played Caesars Palace since New Year’s Eve of the Millennium.
Casino Player: How has the vibe of the music evolved live over the years since all your fans know the songs by heart?
John Oates: We have a very good problem. We have a lot of hits. As professional performers, we have a responsibility to play the songs we believe people are coming to hear but, at the same time, we don’t look at ourselves as being defined by those big hit records. We feel we have more to offer. One thing we have avoided over the years is becoming this human jukebox. I really dislike when performers put together a string of a medley of their hits because they feel like they want to get them out of the way. Those hits are the things that brought them to that point. I think if you don’t have respect for your own music and you don’t believe in it enough, then why bother playing it? That’s how we look at things. We still have a lot of passion. We’re still very proud of the music we’ve made together and we have an amazing band which actually gives us a kick in the ass when we are playing older material.
CP: What about creating the voice and the sound of Hall &Oates?
JO: The voice is a physical thing. It is a muscle. And age and health all factor in to your ability to sing. I think Daryl and I have been blessed by a certain vocal talent, especially Daryl. He is one of the greatest singers of all time as far as I’m concerned. What he is able to do every night is honestly sometimes hard to actually believe. We sing all the songs in the same original keys. We’re both vocally trained so we actually know how to sing from a physical point of view. We’ve developed a certain harmony style over the years that compliments each other’s particular tambour and talent.
CP: Daryl—your voice has always had the ability to morph across different octaves and possibilities…
Daryl Hall: At my heart, I’m a soul singer. That is where I come from. From Philadelphia. I grew up singing gospel and soul music and that’s really what I am. Everything goes from there. But saying that, I speak a lot of musical languages and I can adapt to various things. And being a songwriter, that’s what I do because my songs are an extension of my voice.
CP: For you then, where did the soul begin?
DH: It was from my childhood. Soul music is music that comes from no thought whatsoever. It comes straight from the soul—straight from the heart. If you think about it, it’s not soul. You put your emotions from your body straight out into the world. There is no censorship to it. It is complete feeling. That is why it originated in the church. It is a spiritual form of music, and in the secular world, it is the same thing. You sing about what you feel about. That is what makes it soul. It is not a style. It is not about black or white or any of that type of stuff. It is not about regions. It is about a state of mind.
CP: Can you talk about finding that angle of songwriting and that point of view that drove the identity of Hall & Oates?
JO: It comes from the way we view the world. Our songwriting is a reflection of how we express ourselves emotionally and how we try to describe the world around us. That world changed over the years. It started for us in a small town in Pennsylvania. It went to Philadelphia. Then it went to New York. Now we are citizens of the world. I mean I live in Colorado and Nashville. Daryl lives in Charleston and New York and London. We travel all over the world so those things in combination are the things that affect a songwriter. And that’s what we really are. We never tried to play the pop hit game where we’d have a hit record and then try to do a follow up. We consciously did not do that. One of the other things that people don’t realize is that we put as much attention and care into every song we ever recorded on every album. Nothing was a throwaway. And the songs that rose to the top as commercial Top 40 hits were a by-product of all the work, and not a conscious effort on our part. That was the consensus of radio, marketing, the record label and A&R people; that is where those hits came from. We didn’t do “Maneater” or “You Make My Dreams Come True” and say “Here is our big cymbal fellas!” We just gave them an album of songs. And they picked the ones they thought that radio would gravitate to. So, for us, we’re just as proud of our album tracks as we are the hits.
CP: Can you talk about the fusion of music styles you brought to the forefront?
DH: John and I came up at a very interesting time because we spanned the rise from simplicity in recording all the way through the advances that happened. I guess you call them advances but all the things that happened in recording like going from a 4-track to an 8-track to whatever, and then from analog to digital. Then it also became moving from certain kind of instruments that were available to all electronic synthesizers—sounds you could make that had never been made before. Things that don’t come out of normal instruments. Drum machines. All these things happened throughout our recording career. We always used them as tools. I think in some cases, the songs, both individually and together, reflected that technology. I did a lot of work writing with the basis of the drum machine as well as a lot of electronica and things like that. But you know I always wanted to get back to the simple things. I went through the process of technicality and then got back to a more simplistic and original way of recording.
CP: Speaking of experience, do you have a reflective experience of Vegas that stays in your mind, performance or otherwise?
JO: You know we played Caesars Palace on New Year’s Eve of the Millennium. That was the last time we played there. I remember going outside at midnight after the show and taking a picture of our names on the marquee with my little son who was only four at the time. My parents were there and we were expecting Las Vegas Blvd to shut down and everything to go black and our lives to end but nothing happened (chuckling). That’s my memory of Caesars Palace.
Editor’s Note: Hall & Oates Play The Colosseum at Caesars Palace October 22. For more information, visit www.caesarspalace.com.
