Since 1972 he’s primarily been known as part of one of music’s best-selling duos. But these days Daryl Hall is happily on his own once again.
The truth is he and John Oates have existed primarily as a touring act for well over a decade, working on other endeavors separately. But now they’ve split, seemingly for good, over business matters; specifically Hall sued Oates last year for attempting to sell his share of their joint company, Whole Oats Enterprises, without Hall’s required consent. Reconciliation seems unlikely, but they leave a formidable legacy — sales of more than 80 million records worldwide, 20 Top 40 hits and inductions into the Rock and Roll and Songwriters Halls of Fame.
Last month Hall, 77, released a new solo album, “D,” his first of all-new material in 11 years. Recorded in the Bahamas and co-produced with Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart, the nine-song set is musically diverse but rooted in the soulful vein where Hall’s music has been rooted since his youth. Hall’s already eyeballing another album, while in the wake of “D’s” arrival he’s back on the road, too, this time touring with Elvis Costello…
* Hall says by phone that he was well aware of how much time had passed between solo albums. “It HAS been a long time. I couldn’t believe how long ago (2013’s ‘Laughing Down Crying’) was. I dunno — time flies. I’ve been busy with various things and trying to do what I was doing, and the years just flew by.”
* Hall began working on “D” during early 2023 in Harbor Island, where he and Stewart both have residences. “It was really just the two of us, with an engineer (Jesse Samier). We pretty much worked in one-month increments; we’d do a month, then I went away — I was on the road for a year — then I’d come back and we’d do another month and then it was just kind of tying things together, which we did fairly recently. I think in some respects it was better to take breaks, ’cause every time we’d jump back into it it’d be fresh. It was all very spontaneous, very happy, not a lot of thought, really. It was just ‘Don’t think, just do,’ and (‘D’) is what came out of it.”
* “D,” he adds, is a “very personal” album, right down to its title, which is his friends’ nickname for him. “The album is a complete thought, and we organized the songs to go through a journey with it. We hit sort of a bottom place with ‘I’d Rather Be a Fool’ — that song is totally autobiographical — and then start coming back up again to the new, better world. We didn’t write the songs with that in mind, but when we realized what we had we put it together into a story, in a progression.”
* Regarding the situation with Oates, Hall says that, “John and I did not have a creative relationship for decades; the last song I write with John was in 2000, and that was with somebody else. We toured and we toured and we toured, and it was very restrictive to me, and to John, The real truth of it all is John just said one day he didn’t want to do it anymore. I said ‘OK,’ but the problem is (Oates) didn’t’ make the parting and breakup easy, and that’s where the difficulties lay and still lay, and that’s all it is. I always say I’ve been a solo artist my whole life, I was just working with John, mostly.”
* Hall is also continuing to work on his “Live From Daryl’s House series, which he re-launched last year on YouTube. ”Instead of doing whole seasons we’re talking about just maybe doing two (episodes) at a time and putting them out. So every once in awhile we’ll throw a couple out there; that way it doesn’t take too much time out of other things I’m doing, ’cause it really does take time. So that’s the plan; I don’t know who (the next episodes) will be yet, but it’ll probably be just a couple of new things coming out.”
Daryl Hall and Elvis Costello & the Imposters with Charlie Sexton perform at 7 p.m. Monday, July 8 at the Masonic Temple Theatre, 500 Temple St., Detroit. 313-548-1320 or themasonic.com.
