Daryl Hall has filed a restraining order against John Oates, his partner at Hall & Oates, which could mean the end of their 50-year partnership.
The quiet world of Hall & Oates was rocked this week by news that the longtime duo is in the middle of a legal battle. The exact details are unknown, but we do know that Daryl Hall has obtained a restraining order against John Oates. There is also a trademark dispute. (Representatives for both artists did not respond to emails from Rolling Stone seeking comment).
This case is shocking in more ways than one. Hall & Oates are one of the few duos in music history that have always seemed to get along. They are very different, but their friendship goes back 50 years and their creative partnership has produced 29 Top 40 hits. They’re both in their 70s and no one would have thought they’d be making headlines so late in their careers.
But looking back over the past year, there are signs that this partnership is crumbling. Hall & Oates have toured extensively over the past few decades and haven’t taken a single year off, but in 2022 they’ve played just seven concerts and haven’t performed together once this year. When Hall appeared on Bill Maher’s Club Random podcast last year, he surprisingly lashed out at Oates.
“John and I are brothers, but we’re not creative brothers,” he said. We are business partners. We made records together as Hall & Oates, but we were always very separate, and that’s very important to me. »
When Rolling Stone spoke to them ahead of their planned 2020 tour with Squeeze, which was ultimately postponed due to Covid, there were no signs of tension and they spoke enthusiastically about their plans for a new album. “Daryl has refocused on Hall & Oates, which is great,” Oates said. I’ll definitely try, but we’re just at the beginning, in the first few days. »
Hall said he initially wanted to work on the music without Oates, but he didn’t present it in the same way on Maher’s podcast. “We don’t write much together, we never have,” he said. We took different creative paths. In that sense, we needed this separate space, even though we never stopped playing together, but now it’s like… I don’t know how to describe it. »
Later in the interview, we asked Hall how they stayed in harmony all these years and avoided the bitter fate of most other duos in rock history. “The difference is we’re not a duo,” Hall replied. We are not Simon and Garfunkel. We are two people leading a group. It’s more like Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. »
Jagger and Richards have, of course, had disagreements over the years. But they never disbanded the group and never went to court to get an injunction against each other.
Hall & Oates’ final concert took place on October 22, 2002 in Laughlin, Nevada. It was a standard concert with big hits like “Maneater,” “Sara Smile,” “Out of Touch” and “Rich Girl” taking center stage. Here’s a video of “She’s Gone” filmed by fans during what could be their final concert.
In recent months, Oates has performed solo concerts and Hall has toured with Todd Rundgren. They played an encore together, meaning Hall & Rundgren could become a reality in the future. As for Hall & Oates, we’ll have to wait and see what the legal documents say once they’re released.
Andy Greene
Translated by the editorial team