I CAN GO FOR THAT!

Rip It Up, Issue 58, 1 May 1982, Page 4

I CAN GO FOR THAT!

Hall and Oates' smooth, catchy white Philly soul sound has made high and regular forays into the bland record company controlled wasteland of the American Top Forty. They haven't subverted that wasteland but their music is well above most of the acts that monopolise the Billboard circus. ' Hall and Oates were on the last week of an American tour that began last September when I talked with Daryl Hall from New York three weeks ago. Hall described the tour as a 'long haul', some understatement, and after it was over they were taking time out to write new material for a new album in August and then into a world tour. Busy, eh? .• But never mind the future, I wanted to know about Hall's early Philadelphia influences especially since he worked as a studio musician in the famed Sigma Sound Studios: "In those days the Philly sound was still very regional, especially the stuff I listened to which was only being played on obscure r&b stations. I never listened to top ten stations. I did a lot of street corner doo-wop singing but as soon as I could I was in the studio working with Leon Huff, Tommy Bell, Len Barry, and the Intruders, and so not only was I influenced by it but I supposed helped to form it." That was the early sixties, so what were your favourite black performers from that period?

"The Delfonics, the Intruders, Marvin Gaye and the Temptations and Smokey. I worked on their records and I used to back them up live. If I didn't have soul in my music then it wouldn't mean anything anymore. It transcends any musical style and to me it's one of .“the'reasons music is made'in the first place." • But what of the demands of radio, don't you taper your music to suit radio consumption? "No nothing we do is deliberate, things just happen very naturally. It just happens to be what people like to listen to right now. Five years ago we were doing the same, kind of music with a slightly different production sound and it wasn't as popular because people wanted a different sound. There's i a lot of crap on the radio right

now as it is very money and ratings oriented but we work in spite of it, we try to work around it. I don't think we fall into the normal top ten category. There's nobody that sounds like us on American radio and we want to keep it that way but we still wanna sell lotsa records." And we can all relate to that. But now a brief history lesson that touches on Hall and Oates' second album Abandoned Luncheonette, released on Atlantic in 1973 and one which has worn well: "It never really sold that much but it is a kind of a classic and it still sounds current to me and it seems to have that vitality that transcends time." War Babies followed a year later and it starred Todd Rundgren as producer and guitarist: "Todd grew up in almost the same neighbourhood. He moved to New„York and so did we and we felt that it was only natural that he should work on that album with us. Todd and us were the only white groups that came out of Philadelphia that did anything. Todd now lives in Woodstock. I see him occasionally but he's concentrating on video although he

has done a tew small shows with just him on guitar." After a leanish period, by their standards, in the late seventies, 1980 saw the release of a Daryl Hall solo album in collaboration with Robert Fripp: "I've been friends with Robert for a long time and so he helped me on Sacred Songs and I helped him with Exposure. Originally I sang on the whole first side of his album and because of that RCA wanted to call it Fripp and Hall so my vocals were taken off and other people were brought in to copy them. That was a real drag because my original lead vocals were much better. But the Sacred Songs things I was very happy with although it was recorded in 1977 and wasn't released until three years later. That was a real pain in my ass. RCA delayed because it didn't sound like a Hall and Oates album and so they took three years to get the nerve up to put it out. "I felt like I was being strangled as I felt that Sacred Songs was a step for me not only as a solo artist but it was also a prototype for what I'm doing now with John the voices on Private Eyes are more simple, direct and hardedged than what we had been doing in 1977 and so to have Sacred Songs delayed was a major slap in the face." Keeping more or less current the CONTINUED ON PAGE 20