defend the indefensible: Hall and Oates

I interviewed Hall once and he was great. He got a kick out of me asking if they were going to perform "You Burn Me Up I'm a Cigarette" that night. He has a great voice. Other than that, I've never felt compelled to spend much time with them other than the time I've been made to spend with them because their songs were all over the radio for much of my adolescence.

The thing that surprises me the most is how kind of chintzy so many of their hits sound now, despite having big budgets and great players. They're one of the rare bands I wish really would re-record their catalog.

Huh. I thought the early '00s CD remasters sounded great: rich and full, especially on the synth jams. As for the original arrangements, their spareness was the attraction when younger bands discovered them a decade and a half ago, no?

Case in point:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfgUqQg8UqM

yeah i think their records sound great! the 70s stuff is lush with old school studio time, and the 80s stuff is punchy as hell without losing a sense of texture and detail. and their voices are great together. I agree they don't have a "perfect album," but they do have a number of very good ones.

i'm curious which 80s pop acts folks would definitively rank *above* them in terms of overall output. okay, Madonna, MJ, and Prince wouldn't surprise me, but ... who else?

i feel like their best-selling duo status MIGHT depend a bit on 80s numbers being more reliable/available than 60s number. S&G and the Everlys moved a LOT of product. but H&O had a LOT of BIG hits - there's a reason they've never gone away from daytime feel-good radio.

They had so many hits that you only hear a handful of them on radio, according to Sean Ross.

https://radioinsight.com/blogs/187495/lost-hits-of-the-80s-year-by-year/

Like I said, I've never listened to them on purpose (for no particular reason), so I'm at a discussion disadvantage, but much of what I'm familiar with (and there are more songs of theirs I'm familiar with from the radio than some bands' entire catalogs) has long struck me as weirdly not slick. Like, not bad - they were hits, after all - but "Private Eyes," "I Can't Go For That," "One on One," stuff like that, felt strangely not just spare but even demo-like, practically lo-fi, compared to contemporaneous stuff by, say, Billy Joel. The production was more akin to a lot of crossover new wave music than '70s soul guys with big budgets and session dudes.

that's precisely what made them palatable to ILX in the early '00s

Yeah, I dunno about what made them palatable to ILX 20 years ago, not that I believe you. I'm just surprised that's what the songs sounded like *then*, in the early '80s. Have they ever talked about it in interviews, why it ended up that way? "Boys of Summer," for example, started life as a demo, and supposedly much of the demo ended up in the final version because Don didn't like any other versions better. Same with Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock and Roll" and Quiet Riot's "Cum On Feel the Noize." But the first two of those still sound pretty slick and full, finished and fleshed out. Did Hall & Oates go that spare, demo-like route on purpose, as an aesthetic?

Don't get me wrong, the absence of glop is definitely what's helped the songs weather the years! But was that a happy accident?

(Not that I *don't* believe you, sorry!)

Remember this? pic.twitter.com/7SdrokQNRl

— Daryl Hall & John Oates (@halloates) July 28, 2020

They later had a tour presented by the Pontiac Fiero:

https://www.picclickimg.com/d/l400/pict/224034924046_/Hall-and-Oates-Big-Bam-Boom-Tour-Pontiac.jpg

"For Up-To-The-Minute Tour Information See Your Local Pontiac Dealer"

It's a Trans Am
And it's gone too far
Cause you know it don't matter anyway

Dunno if this quite answers your question, JiC, but I've come to mentally lump them in with other 60s/70s veterans who were drawn to new wave at the turn of the 80s. I imagine that they (counting the whole band here) found the spareness and directness of the style appealing, recognizable even as a return to the old garage-band days, stripping back some of the glop and cobwebs... etc.

G.E. Smith and Mickey Curry (on guitar and drums respectively) are also a little younger than H&O - later Boomers, really the right age to just be into new wave as the hot new thing that was happening. But also seasoned enough from being, I think, studio players on disco records... Wiki tells me Curry is on Dan Hartman's "Instant Replay" for example, which sounds kinda like a thinner X-Static track with weaker vocals. Bassist T-Bone Wolk (hired between Voices and Private Eyes) is on "The Breaks" by Kurtis Blow! Wow.

Tbh, I also don't hear the demo-ness as much as you do, except on things that are clearly intended to be striking in their spareness, most obviously "I Can't Go For That." I guess there's something... metallic? about the sound on Hall's "Private Eyes" vocal...

Maybe it's just as simple as the primitive drum machine?

"I Can't Go For That" is an essence a demo: Hall + Oates play everything except the sax.

Dunno if this quite answers your question, JiC, but I've come to mentally lump them in with other 60s/70s veterans who were drawn to new wave at the turn of the 80s. I imagine that they (counting the whole band here) found the spareness and directness of the style appealing, recognizable even as a return to the old garage-band days, stripping back some of the glop and cobwebs... etc.

Yeah, that's pretty much how it sounds to me - New Wave was clearly an influence on them. Throughout their career, they clearly listened to other music and really tried to learn from them. Unlike Billy Joel, they had a deeper and sincere curiosity about other sounds, so they weren't just doing pastiches. I think the results were really all over the place, and I'd say more times than not the experiments didn't work, but it did make their catalog a lot more interesting: just look at left turns like the Rundgren-produced War Babies or Hall's collaborations with Robert Fripp.

All I have now is a reference compilation of 40 tracks spanning their first album to Rock 'n' Soul "Part One" - even there I tend to skip quite a few tracks, but most of it's a pretty good listen. I can't call them a great group, but I wouldn't call them a bad one either.

I guess the big '80 stuff, like Out of Touch, came much later. I wonder if any reviews circa the early '80s stuff mentioned how spare and stripped down, let alone "new wave," it was compared to their lusher '70s stuff? Pretty clearly between the sound and the advent of MTV they were suddenly attracting younger kids, but was there an older contingent of their fan base that sniffed at the new sound?

I haven't heard any of the full albums from 1975 to 1979, and I'd like to hear the change in style they went through in that era. The other records I've heard all have interesting deep tracks. I like the non-singles on Voices more than the hits.

A deeply transitional phase -- desperate, they played every style, experimented with producers. Along the Red Ledge is one of their more consistent albums.

The Lou Reed thread reminds me that, promoting War Babies, they opened for him on the Sally Can't Dance tour! Probably the two acts at their greatest stylistic proximity.

I kind of assumed they worked with Rundgren because he was a fellow Philly guy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAWOboDuYkI

The prophet 5 rules

it's probably redundant to the contents of this primary thread, but here's a somewhat neglected thread specifically on their wilderness period: OK, You ILXor Hall & Oates Lovin' Motherfuckers, Tell Me All About Their Relatively Obscure 1977-1979 Releases

also, forgot to note this when i watched it, but recent indie/stoner Groundhog Day-inspired comedy Palm Springs makes excellent use of "When the Morning Comes," off Abandoned Luncheonette.

I would put up Side 1 of Voices against any side of any new wave/power pop record anywhere.

And most of H&O.

My X-Static jam is a disco adult contemporary number called "Who Said the World Was Fair."

Are they still the biggest-selling duo of all-time? I guess the '80s were a gold rush in selling records, but it's still surprising to me that they'd sell more records than, say, Simon & Garfunkel.

― birdistheword

I would have thought Daft Punk or Outkast would have outsold them but no.

“Out of Touch” is surely one of my top 20 songs of the 80’s, if I ever made such a list.

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Thursday, August 12, 2021 2:55 PM

you're cool. can we be friends?

(i have an unofficial playlist in my head titled "put on any of these songs at any time and austin will dance like a foole" and 'out of touch' is on it. other selections include 'close to me' by the cure, 'spottieottiedopaliscious' by outkast, 'say it loud i'm black and i'm proud' by james brown, 'take five' by dave brubeck, and so and so forth. classic material and whatnot.)

I love all of those songs. We shall dance together as fools!

"M.E.T.H.O.D.O.F.L.O.V.E. ..." I've had this stuck in my head for decades.

both of those songs totally rule

The senior with the junior miss
I wonder what the junior wishes
That she could graduate to adult
Kisses

some outlets get hall, others get oates: https://www.gq.com/story/john-oates-hall-and-oates-interview

Norris and Dell’Abate

https://i.imgur.com/3xlXvds.png

With Joey ramone, 1983

Here's how I'd do it.

came in to wonder if along the red ledge didn't get its permission from nite flights -- tho if so the timing is very tite tight (walker bros release is july 78, H&O is aug)

xxpost lol

So, "Maneater" was 1982, "Tell Her About It" was 1983, "Part Time Lover" was ... 1985? Three very similar but very different takes on the same sort of Motown groove. Looks like Phil's "fuck it, let's just record the song again" "Can't Hurry Love" was released as a single less than a month after "Maneater." (FWIW, "Big Chill" soundtrack was released almost exactly a year after "Maneater.") Early '80s was Motown crazy.

Boomers getting moist-eyed for the LBJ years.

I suppose "Modern Love" can get slotted in there somewhere too.

"Modern Love" doesn't sound Motown-indebted to my ears. Adjacent maybe? And it's far from nostalgic.

Yeah, it's too ... modern.

"Town Called Malice" by the Jam was earlier than all of these other pastiches.

Yeah, earlier the same year, right? 1982? But of course the Jam like a lot of UK acts were directly keyed in to the Northern Soul/mod stuff, so it's very on-brand. And of course "Get Happy!" was riffing on that world a few years before *that*. Either way, to my ears both less overtly nostalgic than the Motown worship stuff to come.

I thought British or blue-eyed soul was an ongoing tradition, like further back than even Dusty in Memphis and passing through popular albums like Bowie's Young Americans?

Although neither Dusty in Memphis and Young Americans were exactly retro, they were playing in/with contemporary Black styles.

...and Daryl doesn't like you using the term "blue-eyed soul", better watch out.

I know _Sacred Songs_, that is a nice one. I always wished Fripp released an all-Hall _Exposure_ as he originally planned, but he did do a great job of turning a drawback into an advantage with the new vocalists he recruited.

When and why did they add the "Daryl" and "John" to their bandname? Egotism? A silly decision if you ask me: "Hall And Oates" rolls off the tongue so much more easily. (But at least "Daryl Hall And John Oates" is still much better in every way than "England Dan and John Ford Coley"!)

― Myonga Von Bontee (Myonga Von Bontee), Monday, July 26, 2004 2:15 AM

https://i.ibb.co/hM66tcd/Screenshot-20220218-110244-120.png