Hall & Oates: 'I hated being a Daryl doll'

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/jul/21/hall-and-oates-interview

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The spotlights and the shoulderpads, the bushy moustaches and the floppy mullets, the vests, the soft-focus, the dry ice … no one who lived through the 1980s will be able to forget a Hall & Oates video. In I Can't Go for That, for example, tall, blond Daryl Hall and short, dark John Oates sway and fingerclick their way through the hit that helped to make them the most successful pop duo of all time, a synth solo here, a group shuffle there, all backlit with a heavenly glow.

Those images are certainly burned into Hall's memory. "I don't look at them any more," he says, "because I can't stand to. But if I did, I would wince and remember what I was thinking. I didn't like being objectified. That wasn't pleasant. So I went for it in a cartoony way."

After more than 40 years in the music business, the Philadelphians still seem uncomfortable with their success. Even being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame earlier this year didn't stop them feeling like outsiders. "There was a lot of back-slapping," recalls Oates. "It was like one big mutual-admiration society. Listening to people talking about themselves for four and a half hours is not my idea of a good time." Hall agrees. "I have mixed feelings about the whole event," he says.

With 34 hits to their name, including six No 1s in America, and seven platinum albums, there's no denying that Hall & Oates deserve their place in the sun. By 1985, they were so massive that they didn't just play Live Aid – they topped the bill. "Dylan, Madonna, Neil Young, Duran Duran … the list went on and on," marvels Oates. "And we headlined that show."

But they are hard to pin down. They're the 70s act who made it in the 80s; the singles artists (third only to Michael Jackson and Madonna that decade in sales with the likes of Private Eyes, Maneater and Out of Touch) who were really an albums band. And those albums showed their refusal to settle into a comfortable niche, from the semi-acoustic soul of Abandoned Luncheonette to the prog-metallic KO of War Babies, from the rocky Beauty on a Back Street to the hi-tech funk-pop of Private Eyes.

They emerged as junior members of the Philly soul scene alongside Gamble and Huff and Thom Bell. Subsequently, they became folkies, then doyens of blue-eyed R&B. They saw the New York Dolls and recall having their "minds blown" when they supported David Bowie on his first Stateside Ziggy Stardust tour. Hall befriended Television's Tom Verlaine, and Oates hung around with Andy Warhol. They were the chicly radical Zeligs of pop.

"We were kind of a cult underground band especially in London," says Oates, recalling the early 1970s when She's Gone, their white soul classic, was big on college radio. "We were totally experimental. But that's how we think. Look at our big hits: Rich Girl doesn't sound like Sara Smile; You Make My Dreams Come True doesn't sound like Maneater. We've never gone, 'Right, we've had a No 1 with that. Let's try and recreate the formula.' It's one of the reasons we're still around."

How did they go from Abandoned Luncheonette to War Babies in a single move? It wasn't via drugs ("We were never into cocaine," Oates says), but by collaborating with the right producers, in the form of Todd Rundgren and Arif Mardin. Oh, and by the power of the imagination. "What can I say? We're creative, interesting people."

For their fourth album, 1975's Daryl Hall & John Oates, they were androgynously airbrushed by Pierre LaRoche, Bowie and Mick Jagger's makeup artist, until they resembled glam hairdressers. According to Oates, they were just doing what was "au courant", while his partner adds, "I've never been afraid of being different." In 1977, Hall even recorded a solo album, Sacred Songs, with Robert Fripp. It was equal parts Bowie does Philly and Bowie in Berlin. "I think," he adds, "John and I are pretty brave people."

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Instead of being displaced by punk, they absorbed its energy and changed again. Albums such as 1979's X-Static (1979) and Voices the following year were like an American take on XTC. "New wave and disco were happening," says Oates, who also produced New York punk Judy Nylon. "We recreated it through our own prism. I loved the angularity of that stuff."

What they didn't love, however, was superstardom. "I didn't really want to participate in it," says Hall. He believes their tense, nervous music, though highly appealing and eminently sampleable (as De La Soul, Wu-Tang Clan, Kanye and others proved) "went over a lot of people's heads". So he took the piss. Hence the cheery, cheesy videos.Did directors tell him to take it more seriously? "To take it seriously would be a big mistake," he says. "The directors of MTV were all a bunch of fucking cokeheads."

"The 80s weren't as much fun as you might think," Oates adds. "The demands were so great. When you're in a rock band, travelling in a van, you may wish you were in a private plane, but you really don't know what you're missing. I enjoyed the 70s a whole lot better. It was a totally freer time. Then we became pop superstars and we couldn't go anywhere."

After the vertiginous peak of Live Aid, Hall & Oates made the decision to step back. "We felt like, 'What more can we possibly do?'" says Oates. "Anything less would have been a failure." In 1989, he even shaved off his famous moustache. "I evolved," he later told Billboard. "I wasn't the guy I am today, and I never want to be the guy that had the moustache." Frustratingly perhaps, the moustache went on to have its own life, in an online cartoon called J-stache.

These days, Oates is happy releasing music digitally, while Hall has his own TV show, Live from Daryl's House, as well as a sideline in historic home restoration. "I'm as popular as I was back then, but it's a different kind of popularity," says Hall, a remarkably well-preserved 67. "It's more pleasant. More fulfilling. I don't feel like people are treating me like a Daryl doll." After years of being dismissed as a "guilty pleasure", he is delighted to be venerated by a young generation of musicians, from the Killers to Arcade Fire. "I hear my influence all over the place," he declares, refreshingly immodest. "It's pretty widespread."

Both he and Oates, two years his junior, take credit for breaking down American radio's racial barriers. "We were accepted on black and white radio," says Hall. "And we opened the door for Prince and Michael Jackson to appear more on white radio." They also claim that their use of the latest technology, such as their early-80s experiments with digital sampling, broke new ground. But do they worry that their audience just wants to hear their hits?

"The average person probably won't understand, but that's OK," says Oates. "We're complex." Are they weirder than people imagine? "Yes," he replies. Hall isn't so sure. "I don't think I'm weird. But individualistic? I would put myself in that category, yeah."

According to a US magazine, his backing band in the 80s called him "the Führer". Is it true? "Very few people pay attention to the bullshit that comes out of Rolling Stone. I'm a nice guy," he says, adding with a wink: "As long as you don't piss me off."

• Hall & Oates play Birmingham Symphony Hall (0121-780 3333) on 22 July.