Philadelphia Weekly

illustration by ALEX FINE

"I think we're the '80s Beatles. If we had been born 20 years earlier, maybe the world would have seen that. There is something about the body of work we both have that's similar. I know people will have trouble accepting that, but I don't have any trouble accepting it."

That's Daryl Hall in the pages of Rolling Stone in January 1985. The issue's cover story--"The Secret Life of Hall and Oates"--featured that now infamous line.

"I was savaged for that quote," laughs Hall over the phone from his home in upstate New York. "People thought it was sacrilege to say such a thing. But you know what?" Hall pauses. "I was right."

The number of people who think Hall is wrong about the matter is shrinking--the benefit of 23 years' perspective.

Consider, for one, the man's history. At 18 he was writing songs with Chubby Checker, singing with the Delfonics and Stylistics in streetcorner doo-wops and working loosely with Philly soul giants Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, soaking up the skill around him and acquiring soul-singing street cred by the barrelfull.

Hall told Pitchfork last year, "If you're a white guy and you sing the blues, you're Mick Jagger, you're Eric Clapton. If you're a white guy and you sing soul, you're a freak." You can't help but wonder whether that would be the case if, say, the entire world could've just grown up in Philadelphia during that era.

Hall laughs, "It's true. Philly really was color blind back then. All this 'blue-eyed soul' stuff people throw out now--that didn't exist back then. I was just a guy singing music. I know things have changed, and people don't believe me when I say that, but it really was different in Philadelphia."

Hall didn't see John Oates' color when the two met one night backstage waiting for their respective bands to share a bill. The guys began working together, releasing their first album Whole Oates in 1972.

They sparked a couple hits in the '70s--"She's Gone," "Rich Girl"--but the duo really caught fame's elusive fire at the top of the Reagan era when they began peeling off hit after hit--"Kiss on My List," "Private Eyes," "Maneater."

The numbers: Hall and Oates are the No. 1 selling duo in pop music history. Throughout their career they had eight No. 1 singles, and have managed three double platinum and two platinum albums. "We sold more records in the '80s than Madonna," Hall says, driving the point home.

It's for those numbers and Hall and Oates' "unique and indelible influence on generations of music makers" that BMI (Broadcast Music Inc.) is bestowing the two with its highest award--Icon--on May 20, where they'll join the elite ranks of those BMI Icons before them (Paul Simon, James Brown, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Merle Haggard, to name a few).

"It's very exciting," says Hall of the Icon honor. "I'm not really an awards guy, but this is a pretty no-nonsense award."

On Hall's short list of "nonsense" awards: the Grammys, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Hall isn't shy about his disgust for music's institutions--its major labels, its awards. Now that the music industry is crumbling, its holy cathedrals going up in the flames of file sharing, Hall couldn't be more pleased. He's positively giddy about it.

It's an odd tack for a guy like Hall to take. After all, those institutions, that industry, is what delivered Hall and Oates their staggering numbers. If--as Hall asserts--they'd have been the Beatles had they been born 20 years earlier, wouldn't it be fair to assume they'd be anonymous had they been born 20 years later, just another speck of silt set adrift in the swollen waters of too much music in which we're all currently drowning?

Hall doesn't miss a beat. "No. We'd have been bigger."

Really?

"Really. I think I'm defining 'bigger' differently than you. I'm not talking about record sales. What I'm talking about is freedom--freedom to do what you want to do artistically which is, in the end, what it's really all about."

Maybe. But I'm more inclined to believe this 1985 quote from Hall, also in that issue of Rolling Stone: "To me the best music now is music that everyone's listening to. Obscurity is just obscurity. There's no romance in obscurity."