Daryl Hall

00:00:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Dare I say? Daryl Hall is one of the great pop songwriters of our time, as half of the duo Hall and Notes, who was all over the charts in the seventies and eighties from Sarah Smile to Rich Girl to You Make My Dreams and Man Eater, But beyond the hits and the pop chart is a gifted, soulful writer and player of all sorts of songs. In this episode of Broken Record, I talked with Daryl Hall about his early days entrenched in Phillies arm b scene, his stint on Electra records with his band Gulliver that found him being label mates with The Doors, how he wrote classics like She's Gone Off, Abandoned, Lechenette, his partially shelved album with Robert Fripp, and his latest album d a collaboration between him and Dave Stewart of The Rhythmics. This is Broken Record, real musicians, real conversations. This episode is brought to you by Defender, a vehicle engineered to meet challenges head on so you can explore with confidence. Adventure seekers and risk takers can explore the full Defender lineup at land ROVERUSA dot com. Here's my conversation with Daryl Hall.

00:01:26
Speaker 2: How you doing, I'm doing well.

00:01:28
Speaker 1: How are you?

00:01:30
Speaker 2: I'm doing okay? Overworked? I'm overworked, but I'm good. You got it.

00:01:34
Speaker 1: You gotta take some time to relax.

00:01:36
Speaker 2: Yeah. One I'd like to know.

00:01:38
Speaker 1: One that is, do you do you find being busy or not having it enough to do impacts your songwriting, your creativity.

00:01:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a funny thing. I'm either too busy or I'm champion at the bit. It's one or the other. I'm either sitting here reading my book and going, oh fuck, you know what am I doing? Or I'm overworked and I'm might pull my hair out.

00:02:05
Speaker 1: You know what books do you typically read? Oh?

00:02:08
Speaker 2: I read Jesus depending on my you know, if I just want to relax, I read, you know, like Michael Connolly books and things like that, James L. Roy, you know. But you know I read for information. I read constantly. Is what I do?

00:02:22
Speaker 1: Is fiction a source of inspiration for you at all? And when it comes to music.

00:02:27
Speaker 2: Who writing is a source of inspiration? A turn of phrase, I might twist it around my own way, adapt it to something I'm thinking about, use it in a song. I do that all the time. I hardly ever, actually basically never pull something directly from an author, but.

00:02:46
Speaker 3: I'll use it in some form that is part of the expression that I'm trying to achieve in a verse or even maybe sometimes in the chorus.

00:02:58
Speaker 1: Is there an example that comes to mind? Oh?

00:03:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, like say it is it? So that's an obvious one, you know, it's just part of my and also I log it hit. I might read a phrase and remember it at some point. It'll it'll come back to me as I'm as I'm looking for looking for something in a lyric.

00:03:22
Speaker 1: How often do you listen to music?

00:03:24
Speaker 2: I am not a good audience. I don't really listen to music. I make it. You know, I have so much music in my head that I I really don't care to hear things for what for pleasure? I guess you'd call it. I mean I hear I listened for information. Occasionally, I hear things, you know, if I'm if I'm in out and about and I hear something come on, I might log in my head listen to it, say well that's pretty good, that kind of thing. But I don't sit around listen to the radio. I don't, like I said, I'm not a very good audience around.

00:03:59
Speaker 1: When did you hit that saturation point where you're like, I have enough music in my head that I don't need to sit around listening anymore.

00:04:07
Speaker 2: It's hard to say, you know, I was what I was a kid and a teenager or whatever. I was a sponge, you know. All I did was was collect records and listen to records and do all that kind of thing. I don't know. I guess it was after a while where this became a way of life and experiences and music in general and life experiences started building in my head. That's when I stopped listening outside of well I needed sometimes obviously with a life from Darrels, iuse I listened to I listened to an artist that's going to be on the show, and I listened to their work, and I try to get it inside their head and figure out how they work. And in that case, I am an audience. But I'm quite sure when that all started happening, because like.

00:04:53
Speaker 1: When you were a young kid, used to hang out at like what wdas and just.

00:04:58
Speaker 2: I was a freak for music. I was the ultimate audience. I listened to everything I was. I used to just hang out at w das, and in the Uptapa places like that. I mean I just lived there, literally lived there.

00:05:14
Speaker 1: What was it like getting signed to Elektra early on?

00:05:19
Speaker 2: Well, Jack Holtzman was pretty cool. I have to say I liked him. I was doing, you know, working at Sigma Sound at Philly, and there was sort of an offshoot of side men and a producer named Tommy Sellers that we after hours. He asked me if I wanted to join it, and we used to you know, kind of come up with songs and do whatever. And we got a body of work together. And then this fellow that we all worked for named John Madera. He wrote that the hop that's who he is. He wrote, you don't own me, you know. He wrote those kind of saws from a real old school Philly and he started shopping this group of songs around and Electra bit and they called it Gulliver And it wasn't a band at all. It was just a bunch of we were just writing songs. So I kind of went up there. It was my first experience outside of Philly working with or being involved in sort of a New York a big label. You know. The doors were one Electra and everything, and it was an experience and interesting, but I wasn't really, it wasn't real. It wasn't honest. I wasn't trying to shop my work or a band that I was working with or anything like that. So it was kind of kind of a phony situation really.

00:06:38
Speaker 1: But you did you get to meet Jack Oldsman who ran Electra.

00:06:42
Speaker 2: He was in those days. Man, those kind of guys were very hands on. Amah was the same. Absolutely. I was in used to hang out. Not a lot, but I used to be in Jack Holtsman office and he was really a nice guy. I'll to say.

00:06:55
Speaker 1: But you didn't write any tunes for that for that record? Correct or am I wrong?

00:07:01
Speaker 2: I actually did every Day is a Lovely Day. I think it was called something like that, But I didn't. My heart wasn't in it. I was just doing it, you know, it was It wasn't really. I was doing a lot of things to try and basically get in the quote business and do things for money. You know. I was doing commercials. I was I was doing Cidebend stuff. I was working with the Game All Rough team, playing on records with those guys. I was doing anything I could do to really to make a few bucks. And that electric thing was part of that whole scene, you know, and I was sort of trying to find myself, to tell you the truth.

00:07:39
Speaker 1: By the time you get to Whole Oats, does that start to feel like this is actually what I want to do and this isn't just a way to get in.

00:07:51
Speaker 2: It was a way to get in, but it was It was a little of both. I had met John in school in Temple University, and I needed a roommate. We were both sort of suburban. Not we weren't suburban, that's the wrong word, but we lived out of town, and so I started sharing apartments with him, and we always did things separately. And I think that's the whole mark of anything I ever did with Jon Oates. He had his own world. I had my own world, and proximity pulled us together more than anything, even in those days. So we decided, I remember the words, I said, let's you know what, We'll share the stage. You do your thing, I do my thing. And that was how the Whole Oats thing happened. Because on the mailbox it's their hall and Oates and we turned it into Whole Loats, you know, really really creative. And we used to play around Philly in these little places. There was a place called World Control Headquarters that held about eighty people, and we became fixtures there and we got and we started getting a following, and then we play other places that were similar and we started doing that, and that was how the whole relationship with It's got started, by doing that and people enjoying it what we were doing, and then we started looking around from record deal after that.

00:09:19
Speaker 1: Did you recognize at the time what work in with like in a Reef Martin?

00:09:24
Speaker 2: Meant? Absolutely because I was used to working with Tommy Bell and Huff, so I knew what good shit was. I knew immediately that a Reef was something special. I mean I was. I was familiar with his work first of all. I mean, you know, he'd go from Carly Simon to Aretha to Me to to you know, even named It to all these folk bands, all kinds of things. He taught me fluency in a lot of musical languages. I think I really learned that for the first time from him. Before that, I was more like just straight out of Philadelphia, you know, or at least by version of it.

00:10:02
Speaker 1: What was his impression of your songs?

00:10:05
Speaker 2: He said, that I reminded him of an English composer that I can never remember the name. There was an obscure English composer, and there was something about what that that was his frame of reference. But he saw something in me that I think other people hadn't seen yet.

00:10:23
Speaker 1: Did that encourage you at the time? Scare you?

00:10:27
Speaker 2: It didn't scare me, but it encouraged me because he again, he was he was an encourager. So he tried to bring it out. He tried to he tried to give me confidence. He egged me on, and he was a cheerleader, you know he was. He had a great sense of you Bert too. But he kind of made me feel legitimate in what I was, in what I was thinking about and doing, and and to be unafraid to do things.

00:10:52
Speaker 1: Do you remember an album like Abandoned Luncheonette, which is the second Hollanoats record he was he worked with you guys on also the songs themselves sound leaps and bounds more evolved past holl Oats, and also just the way that they were put together or the way that they were arranged or orchestrated, and how much of that was just you guys progressing as artists and you progressing as an artist, Daryl, and how much of that was working with a Reef and seeing the potential and the songs that you were writing.

00:11:26
Speaker 2: The Whole Oats album was this grab bag of songs that John Oates and I had written over the years, like we were still in high school and college. You know, we decided we were going to put him down one record. To me, the Whole Oats record was a Whole of Oats demo. It wasn't really a record. It was in record form. It was sold as a record, but it wasn't a record. It wasn't a thought. A band. A luncheon, in my opinion, was our first record and at the times dictated that kind of production. You know, I think the involvement of a guy named Chris Bond, Christopher Bond was it can't be discounted with it because he well he was a budding producer himself, and he was a unlike me or Reef, he was. He was totally a beatlemaniac, you know, and and I think he was influenced by that kind of late late period beatle music and you can almost hear it in the songs where there'll be whatever I'm doing or ease is doing, and then suddenly this kind of beatless thing will be attached to it, you know, which bugs me to type of truth. But the I think if I don't know if it enhanced the album, but I am very proud of that album, and it was I think, I think the body of work was really interesting. I think I consider it to be the first Hole of Notes record, and maybe one of the only real Hole Notes records. What makes you say that because we didn't really work together that much after that we did that record, and then I and then I we did that record with wore Maybe's album Todd that was basically being Todd, you know, and then after that it really got very separate, where John wrote some songs and he'd sing them, you'd hear them one there, and his voice would be the lead singer, and then I wrote whatever I wrote, and that was that was the majority of it. And that that that that idea that continued all the way through our career.

00:13:28
Speaker 1: Really so seventy two seventy three abandoned lunch and that you guys are working actually together. What was it about that time that allowed that to unfold that way?

00:13:40
Speaker 2: I think a lot of it had to do with we were new. It was us against the world because we were still really kids, just out of college, and we were sharing apartments and we moved in we moved from Philly to New York, and we shared an apartment. We were in the same house. So it was kind of hard to not collaborate because you know, I'd be doing something and Neat hear it, or he'd be doing like She's Gone, for example, which is a real Hall and O song fifty to fifty. All the way, he was playing that kind of chorus riff, like a fokye riff, and I said, well, that's cool, that's kind of interesting, and I sat down on the piano and I want you know, you know, you know, I did that, and that turned into She's Gone, and then we we wrote the lyrics together, so that was a real holl And Old song.

00:14:31
Speaker 1: Well you guys, proud of that song when you at the time. I mean, that is still to this day. It's just a jaw dropper. I knew it was.

00:14:37
Speaker 2: Good, but I okay. And then we took that to a reef and calcombat jaw drop his jaw dropped and I was just playing it on a Fender Rhodes, and he's the one that came up with that, and you know, all that progression at the end of the song, which is really off the wall, really and that, but that was his idea completely.

00:15:02
Speaker 1: That's interesting because that progression sounds almost like almost feels like a signature at least of yours. Like I feel like, I, uh, that change, that step up. I'm just shocked that that came from from him.

00:15:14
Speaker 2: Well, I learned it from him and decided it was a good idea.

00:15:20
Speaker 1: Because that's one of those moments you're listening to that you're like, oh, there's the hollow notes that I think the majority of people think of when they think hallo notes, you know, just a casual listener.

00:15:30
Speaker 2: I have a mixed feelings about modulation, but I like it. Sometimes it's really effective, like thin the She's Gone kind of song. More more recently, I don't use so much modulation anymore.

00:15:41
Speaker 1: Why is that what causes the mixed No.

00:15:44
Speaker 2: I just changed. My taste changed.

00:15:47
Speaker 1: It's not an intellectual thing, now, you know what it is?

00:15:50
Speaker 2: Too many, too many shitty songs modulated. A modulation is a trick to take something mediocre and make it sound like it's better than it is in a lot of cases.

00:16:02
Speaker 1: Was there ever, the thought after abandon Lunchinette to do something more on your own?

00:16:07
Speaker 4: That's what I decided that I want to And it's a strange thing I started for getting that sort of Okay, I want to go out there and do this on myself at that period of time, but I was in an environment with people who did not want to hear about it, and they did everything they could over.

00:16:29
Speaker 2: All those years to stop me and stop my impulses to do that, and try and keep me. He'd be aligned if you want the truth to be, and keep me, keep me doing. What they were making money from was that label pressure. It was label management everything.

00:16:51
Speaker 1: When did your relationship with Tommy Motola start?

00:16:53
Speaker 2: It started back around that whole Oats period. Really. He was working in Chapel Music. He had an office the size of the closet, and we went up there with John Madeira and we were doing something I don't even know why. I guess Johnny I was trying to lease his Lisa's publishing or something, and I got started talking to Tommy, and Tommy wanted to be a manager, you know, he had big ambitions and I guess he heard me play something or whatever, and he said, why don't you you know you don't want to stay in Philadelphia, watch let me manage it. And I went, well, that's interesting, okay, sure, And he kept me laughing for about fifteen years, and then I woke up.

00:17:38
Speaker 1: When you write a song like Gino on the White album, that's about Tommy Matola.

00:17:44
Speaker 2: Right, I was speaking truth right there.

00:17:48
Speaker 1: Did he find that funny at the time or.

00:17:51
Speaker 2: He acted like he was he thought it was funny. I assume he was smart enough to realize what it was about.

00:18:00
Speaker 1: How'd you come up with the course on that? It's such a strange used.

00:18:05
Speaker 2: To say shit like that, hard works being something you know and lift fast. I laughed, and that's all they did, was laugh all the time. No, no, herd of maskt nothing for nothing, and that's straight out of his mouth.

00:18:17
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with more from Daryl Hall after the break. I want to talk about Todd run Gren and David Foster, because you do war Babies with Todd run Gren, you do a couple of records with David Foster. To hear you say that a reef kind of opens you up and allowed you to sort of put all these different styles and kinds of music together makes sense to me because it's very hard to make sense of your career in the sense of it's so broad. It's I mean, you make a record with the Reef, David Foster, Todd Rundgren, Robert Fripp. I mean, like, it's just it's it's insane, it's different, it's incredible.

00:18:56
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, I I, as you can imagine, I'm an adventurous soul and I and I'm not afraid. I like to try things. I like to expand myself. I like to put myself in in uh sometimes I'm comfortable situations, but usually just in creatively, creatively exciting situations and see what comes out of it. Todd was the first one that I did like that. I mean, I have very mixed feelings about the War Babies album. I mean, I think there was a lot of great ideas on it. To me, it sounds like squirrels on acid. I mean, I you know, it's just sorry. You know, people talk about that album like and I go, okay, well glad you like it. But at least it was an attempt to break out of something and then be open to the world be open to the musical world, and I tried to keep that attitude. And I certainly kept that attitude when I worked with Robert and that was the point, except that I was more controlled within that. And I think what I did with Robert was I was very happy with. And David Foster that was another one that it was kind of suggested. David was twenty two years old when I met him, and he had done some things with Chicago. I think we were the first bands that here were really produced. We butted heads, but at the same time, I think there was a lot of respect going on there and on both sides, and we did we did some interesting things.

00:20:26
Speaker 1: When you're in a situation like that and you and Oates maybe aren't as strong as a partnership as you could be, and then in your sort of button heads as a producer also, that's got to feel kind that's gotta be a bit isolating.

00:20:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean again, it was I was dealing with it like it was my show, and it was the principal characters was me and the producers. And I knew what I wanted. I knew what I wanted to do, and a guy like David he's a he's a he comes from the autocratic school, where he's a great musician, and he wants people to do it his way, and I don't necessarily agree with that.

00:21:06
Speaker 1: All the time you mentioned you were really happy with the Robert Fripp record, it blew my mind. I looked back at the dates, and you guys recorded that the month after he wraps Heroes with David Powie, and then he's in the studio with you the next month, and you guys are making what's your first solo record?

00:21:27
Speaker 2: I met Robert and uh. I was actually playing a gig in Toronto, and Robert happened to be there and he came backstage and we instantly clicked. And he was right at the time going in he was very involved with in the Gurgia of philosophy thing, you know, and and he was going away to retreat and he said, I'm going to know this is Robert's way. I'm going to away for the retreat for about six months, and then when we come back, why don't you and I get together and make some music together. And I said, sure, okay, sounds good. And he decided he was going to move to New York City after the Gurgiaff thing and sort of immersed himself in New York and that's what Heroes happened and all that. And he and I started paling around together really and we recorded the Sacred Songs album. I had a few songs, and some of the songs we recorded on the spot and just made up with the spot and we did it in Town in New York. And then he said, okay, well I want to make a record. Let's do the same thing for my record. So we made a record that became Exposure to Robert record called Exposure. And that was my first setback because we recorded and wrote the songs together, and my label said that they wouldn't allow me to use my vocals on the record. I finally got them to let me use I think two or three, and he had the task of trying to find someone or people and who copy or have some kind of reasonable try to copy the vocals that I had come up with on the record, which luckily he found some people who were pretty good to do it. But Maya, was it frustrating. I realized that I was really in trouble, that I was I was really being locked into something that I didn't see having an happy ending.

00:23:31
Speaker 1: It's wild. Do you say that because it from the outside, it doesn't. It seems like you just kept on trucking, keep on trucking. I had no choice. And here's the thing.

00:23:41
Speaker 2: Not only did I keep on trucking because Robert was saying, Okay, let's put a band together and start doing this for real. And then suddenly I had a commitment to our sia to Gwin and that's when Voices album happened, and the whole fucking world blew h for Hall of Oates, and then I was really stuck in the groove with the situation I was in.

00:24:03
Speaker 1: Did you hear any of that stuff he had been doing with Bowie that Frip had been doing with Bowie around that time?

00:24:09
Speaker 2: Yeah? Sure, I was pretty familiar with with that whole scene. You know. I knew Brian, you know, and and uh and Robert and I got to know Peter Gabriel and I working with lou Reid and we actually hold up, believe it or not, we opened for a tour, a lou Reed tour. You did, so It's hard to believe, but we did. Yeah, And uh, and I knew David and uh so I mean, yeah, I'm much familiar with all this stuff that was going on, right.

00:24:36
Speaker 1: Because you guys opened for David Bowie too around seventy two ish, really early.

00:24:42
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:24:43
Speaker 1: How was lou Reid on the tour?

00:24:48
Speaker 3: He was?

00:24:48
Speaker 2: It was the Sally Can't Dance No More tour. I Can't dance no more? Uh yeah? And uh he was strange, man. I mean it's to say that, it's just to be obvious. I lou was. Lou Is a very unusual man, and I kind of liked him. I liked I liked this attitude I liked he was. He just didn't give a fuck. You know, he was a curmudgeon. But yet he wasn't you know. There was a lot going on with lou Reid that I think more than people even realize. And I wound up living in New York City. I lived next door to him, So I mean, not only was I I go on tour with it, but I used to see him walk his dog and things like that. And I wouldn't say he was a friendly man, but you know, would would you talk though?

00:25:39
Speaker 1: Would you you know, keep a cordial.

00:25:42
Speaker 2: As I'd say something to me, Wait, how you doing it?

00:25:46
Speaker 1: What do you make of a songwriting.

00:25:48
Speaker 2: I was. I was just with Dave Stewart, and Dave Stewart has a book of Lou Reed's lyrics, and I was in between doing stuff that we were doing. This just happened last week, uh, and I started reading his lyrics and the early stuff, the develovet stuff. I mean, it's good, it's it's just it's it's completely different than anybody else. I mean, you take a song like I don't know, Sister Ray or something like that. I mean, the words are just amazing. It's like it's a slice of life, but ugly life and a fucked up life. But it's you know, he he managed to to create a mood that was based on something that really was and I respect him.

00:26:30
Speaker 1: I thought about him a bit when I was listening back through your records because with Lou it always felt like there was he knew how to write a pop song and just subverted the lout of it, you know, and it felt like you could do either thing, Like it felt like you could write the perfect pop song, you could write the most subversive weird thing. With Robert Free, i mean it's like and everything in between, you know, Yeah.

00:26:58
Speaker 2: I mean that's that describes by the way my brain works, I can I can do it go both ways, you know, or a lot of ways. I always say, I speak a lot of musical languages.

00:27:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, do you remember Do you remember any of water Wheel?

00:27:15
Speaker 2: I remember, but I would never be able to sing it because my voice saying near that high aning war man, I hear you call me that I wrote that. I was just out of high school when I wrote that. You know the Philly scene it was. It was a really strange thing. There was a big folk scene going on too, and I heard I heard something that made me want to write that. I don't remember what it was, and it was it was basically written in that tradition, and it was certainly different than anything I was doing. When I say, working with game.

00:27:52
Speaker 1: One, it's interesting how nostalgic you can be just out of high school.

00:27:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know. I think all these songs I wrote, I seem to be obsessed with writing songs about nostalgia and being older and all that when I was just a kid. I don't know why I thought that way, don't ask me.

00:28:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, but to be able to write a song like water Wheel wasn't a hit, but sounds in so many ways like a perfect pop song from that era of when songs sounded like that. Then to be able to go and do something like you know, I mean just United State, you know, on voices, and then to do I mean one of my favorites, like I'm in a Philly mood, you know, in like ninety three ninety four. I mean that you have that kind of a range and can write in all of these various styles, these things that are just like deep and incredible. Is something else?

00:28:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean I won't ask me why I can do that, but I seem to have the ability to do it. My ears are open and I have that facility. I guess I would never be able to explain that.

00:29:04
Speaker 1: And by the way, you just want to say you put your voice down. But I watched the Frip live at Daryl's house, you and Robert Fritt and your version of NYC and why that you did probably what just two years ago sounds better than the record still do that. We should talk about Dave Stewart because you did a record with him in the eighties. I think your third or second solo record. You guys just did a record together last year. D how did you guys come together?

00:29:39
Speaker 2: Life many thinks I met him. I just met him. Somebody introduced me to him, and they said, actually, somebody said that you guys should get together. I think you enjoy each other this company. And he was I've lived in London for a lot of time. I don't live there right now, but I for years and years I lived in London. So I went up to his house at the time, he was living up in made of Vail, and I went in and we immediately started. I mean I literally went into his house. He says, come downstairs and we started writing a song. That was the way I met Dave Stewart. We've been friends ever since. You know, we just get along. I don't know what it is. And he makes me feel creatively, he's a very stimulating person. He makes me feel alive. He's a gigantic bundle of energy, and he's extremely smart and extremely full of ideas, like I can't even tell you happened. It never stops with him, and I don't know. He's just fun to be with and and and so over the years we've we made that record, we made the Three Hearts album, and I have a great time doing it. And then over the years we've we've written a few things and done things together, and he's played on some of the records and done things with him. And more recently, I told him about the place I live in the Bahamas and he wound up buying a house down there, so we're neighbors now. On top of it all, you know, it's family. It's really become family.

00:31:11
Speaker 1: You might have figured out the life. If you're moving between New York, London and the Boss. That's a good triangle. This might be the perfect triangle. His stuff with the rhythmics is I mean his stuff in general, but I mean that rhythmic stuff. To this day, I've been revisiting it because I've been playing it for my kids, and that stuff's mind blowing. Still.

00:31:36
Speaker 2: He wrote those songs, you know, and that's his productions. And he's a great singer, by the way, which doesn't hurt, you know. And she sang the ship out of that stuff, and yeah, I mean, he has a great body at work.

00:31:50
Speaker 1: The sounds you guys got on the new record, like the I mean the whole World's Better. Yeah, beautiful sound.

00:31:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, that song I love. I love playing that. Recently in my latest tours, I'm starting the show with that because there's just something about it. Then, you know, when you just bang that thing out, you know that.

00:32:16
Speaker 3: You know.

00:32:19
Speaker 2: It just wow, it just makes you stand up. That song. I wrote that song about one subject and I had most of that song and then it turned into something else and it became anthemic, And that was Dave's idea to put the you know, I mean, you know all in the end, and we just had people come in, friends from the from the island, they come in and sang. So it became a real communal, athemic kind of song.

00:32:49
Speaker 1: What was what was the song originally about?

00:32:52
Speaker 2: It was about, like many of my songs, I had a very tempestuous relationship with the with the my late wife and I don't know, she was so moody with what I would hear her saying in the kitchen everything got better. That's where it started.

00:33:09
Speaker 1: Is there an early version of that that you can share a bit of.

00:33:13
Speaker 2: No, not really, because I had the chorus and that's when that was. That was the original, and then I had I had the chords of the song that I didn't have the words, and that's when it turned into something else. You know when when I was with Dave and I had a melody without any words to go with it, and and then we you know, I wrote with his major help. I wrote the lyrics.

00:33:39
Speaker 1: Would would you mind giving us a little of the choruses because they gave us a bit and it's it's it's too good.

00:33:45
Speaker 5: The chorus is, well, that's lots again.

00:34:02
Speaker 2: Here it is.

00:34:04
Speaker 1: It's a moving song. It's a moving song.

00:34:07
Speaker 2: You know, it comes from a real emoment. Should everything all right? Comes from something real? And people ask me, what you know, your new new musician in the world, What do you do? I said, you got to believe it, you gotta you gotta live it. You got it's got to be something that almost makes you makes you want to cry inside, or does make you cry inside? Uh? Just me playing that, I just got a feeling in my throat because it brought back the memories of when I wrote it. Uh, yeah like that.

00:34:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know you mentioned your late wife, Sarah Allen Jena Allen were incredible inspirations and collaborators crouded doubt along your career.

00:34:50
Speaker 2: They both Sarah and Jana. They played such a large part in the song from the eighties. Jenda originated Private Eyes, I mean, and she originated Kiss on My List. I mean things like that. We I mean, they were complete collaborations. And Sarah it was it is a U a really good lyricist, really good lyricist. Did she contributed a lot?

00:35:13
Speaker 1: Did they figure how to channel that from being around you or think so?

00:35:19
Speaker 2: I don't know if I just gave it off. I mean they were both musical people, and especially Jana. I mean, Janna is a guitar player and a singer and all that. Sandy is a singer, but you know, more just a music lover. And yeah, I think proximity had to do with it. And I don't know, something rubbed off and they just came up with really good ideas and they would throw them out and just to compliment things really add to the quality of whatever it is that I was coming up with.

00:35:49
Speaker 1: How would Janna bring like a Private Eyes to you?

00:35:51
Speaker 2: She actually made a demo of that. The chorus was there, but then I kind of fleshed out the verses. I changed. You know, that's a pretty complicated chord progression, all the chords, and so that had a lot to do with me and I was doing that. But she came up with watching't you they see your reverie move? She she came up with that, sir, can.

00:36:14
Speaker 1: You play through a bit of those that chord progression? You were?

00:36:16
Speaker 2: Okay, let's see here. I can't believe that. I have to think about it.

00:36:25
Speaker 5: You may.

00:36:35
Speaker 2: Watching you, watching and watching you, watching you, watching you.

00:36:43
Speaker 1: So she had those chords or.

00:36:46
Speaker 2: She came up with the chords. Well, okay, uh, well what's in watching you? That's me? You can tell, right? She but her was a ship. She came up with that.

00:37:01
Speaker 1: Wow, what a gift.

00:37:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, well she had one and talk about you know, I don't know man tragedies sometimes. I mean, she died, really you she died. She got the leukemia and died. She was thirty nine years old. And I'm still misser.

00:37:19
Speaker 1: Did that impact do you and Sarah are working together? Oh?

00:37:22
Speaker 2: Sarah was, But did it impact it? I can't say it didn't. It kind of put disruption in our family. Yeah, that kind.

00:37:32
Speaker 1: Of personal stuff. Would you put that into music? I do all the time. I'm not afraid to put it all out there. The most obvious.

00:37:43
Speaker 2: One is the one that the album and the new album. I'd rather be a fool. I mean, soar the end of that song. I'm just saying it.

00:37:51
Speaker 1: When you put something like that down, does it ever give you pause?

00:37:56
Speaker 2: I'm not afraid. I put my emotions right out there rather be a fool. It's a very direct version of that. You can't look at my music without here and the reality of it. It's just it's all in there.

00:38:10
Speaker 1: Has it ever caused maybe not problems, but has it ever caused friction with people that you're close to.

00:38:17
Speaker 2: I think I've made some people sad. I'm saying that with a smirk on my face, which is terrible. I don't feel smirky about it, but I don't know. I mean the truth herds sometimes, and that doesn't mean you can't speak the truth.

00:38:34
Speaker 1: I had a conversation with Michael McDonald about a year ago, maybe a year and a half ago, and he told a story about I think it was I can't remember which Doobe's record it was now, but one of the records wasn't doing so well, and one of the blackn hours at Warner said like, this should go on, this should go on black radio, you know, living on the fault line, That's what it was, and sending a Black Radio. Black Radio loved it and kind of saved that version of the band. But it occurred to me, like, you know, like the doo Bees, there's a lot, there was a number of groups like that that they they kind of got eventually pigeonholed as yacht rock, but really what it was was just there. We was just R and B guys. They were just making R and B records and they were white.

00:39:22
Speaker 2: And so this is something I don't understand. First of all, yacht rock was a fucking joke by two jerk offs in California, and suddenly it became a genre and I don't even understand it. I never understood it, and I totally, man, I'm glad you say that it's just R and B. It's just another with some maybe some jazz in there. It's mellow R and B. It's it's it's it's it's smooth R and B. Yeah, I don't see what the yacht part is.

00:39:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it seemed like, you know, it seemed like like with the Doobies, for instance, like they like, because they were white guys, they didn't know where to not all of them, but the majority of Michael McDonald's white and It's like they didn't know where to put it. It's like, well, I can't go on Black Beads. The guys aren't black, but you know, the white audience they want to hear, you know, whatever they want. But it doesn't feel like you guys necessarily ever had that issue. From my vantage point, I don't know if you feel that way.

00:40:19
Speaker 2: I was more of a pioneer. I mean my music. When I was I had a group called the Tenttones, and and I had a you know, pretty like a top twenty hit in Philadelphia, you know, one w D A. S And and Sarah's Smile broke on on on R and B on on black radio. It had to make its way to pop radio. That's how Hollanolds started. That was that's our origins. And uh, people misjudged us and and and and uh because they couldn't label us, and they always they came up with all this kind of crab soft rock and yacht rock and all this other nonsense and none of the none of it really describes anything that I do, really, yeah, or doesn't describe it any anybody does.

00:41:04
Speaker 1: I didn't realize sarah Smile broke on on black radio first.

00:41:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, the RB station Ohio, not dating but some place like that. Uh, And then it spread through the RMB charts, and it wasn't until after it was a it was a gigantic record that the R and B charts that it went to. Uh, pop radio makes sense.

00:41:25
Speaker 1: I mean that is that is a hell of a soulful record. And listening to a recently, I've always played guitar, so I was always taken by the guitar part, and I love vocals, so I was always thinking about the vocal. Hadn't paid proper attention to the basstil recently, but I think it was Leland Skar on there.

00:41:42
Speaker 2: I think it was Red.

00:41:44
Speaker 1: Uh.

00:41:44
Speaker 2: The guy that played that amazing guitar solo was Christopher Bond And that is one of the most beautiful, amazing introduction guitar solos ever written.

00:41:54
Speaker 1: It really is. I mean the notes played, in the way it's played, that the way he approaches it.

00:42:00
Speaker 2: What an amazing guy. He was a very unusual guy. He's unfortunately that whether it's anymore.

00:42:05
Speaker 1: Your vocal runs on there too? Are are I mean just your your choices vocally are?

00:42:10
Speaker 2: I mean I would just be in again just I don't know that that can that that was a real that was reality. I wrote that song like a postcard to Sandy and Sarah Allen and I don't know there it is.

00:42:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Daryl Hall. How would you approach in the studio like a song like a loan just thinking of that album now, like Alone Too Long? That was it. That's a John song, right, that's a John song. How much would you involve yourself with John songs? I guess you know.

00:42:45
Speaker 2: I would do all the backgrounds and everything. I would flesh out the drama, have the song, uh, and this goes with any of his songs so that they were on a whole on this record, like had I Known You Better Than or something like that, and and and Alone Too Long? And I would come up with a vocal arrangement that would accompany his song and and do all the parts sing If it was a three part harmony, I'd sing three parts. And I mean, when you listen to all of ots records, that's all me singing. Like kiss on my list, that's all me sing in the backgrounds. Occasionally John would sing a part on a record, and sometimes he would I would sing the parts and then tell him to sing over one of the parts. That's how we did it, you know, I did it. Excuse me?

00:43:32
Speaker 1: Was there anything in your view special about your blends? Just the way your voices would blend well.

00:43:38
Speaker 2: The reason to blended because it was all me. If I could blend with.

00:43:43
Speaker 1: Myself, then when might you though decide? John, sing this? I got something for you? Sing this?

00:43:50
Speaker 2: Like?

00:43:50
Speaker 1: When would that occur to you?

00:43:52
Speaker 2: Because I woulded to add is tambre to the to the background. It was. It was one of those things. I mean, John has a very distinct voice.

00:43:58
Speaker 1: And it's not a bad voice either.

00:44:01
Speaker 2: Hey I'm not putting that down, but U and and on stage you could tell when we were working together. I mean it was you know, in a million years, but he was more of a take dictation kind of a singer, you know, like sing this.

00:44:18
Speaker 1: I mentioned I'm in a Philly mood. That's one of those songs that makes me wish I was actually from Philly, which I could say I'm in a Philly mood the whole record, But I mean that that song is incredible. Borderline, you have a Mariah sing backgrounds on a song and co wrote a song.

00:44:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, she wrote what was that one?

00:44:40
Speaker 1: Helped me find a way?

00:44:42
Speaker 2: The way to your heart? Yeah, yeah, I was sorry I wrote with Mariah. Yeah, Philly Mood is one of my favorite songs I ever wrote. I play that every show. I love singing it. I like playing it. It really describes the way I feel, the way I felt again the scenes that I was creating. Boy, is that real? That's a very emotional song to me, kind of like Tony Bennett's I Left My Heart and say Francisco mood Man, it's that's Philly Mood.

00:45:11
Speaker 1: You worked with a couple of folks from the Family Stand, which I feel like that group is sort of maybe the lost of time a bit. But they were really really cool.

00:45:22
Speaker 2: They were really cool. I don't know why that didn't really stick around, you know, they and and and Peter and Jeff that's Peter Lord and Jeff Smith. That was a really interesting combo that we had going that was a talk about Philly Mood. You know, Peter was really good. He egged me on, you know, he really he brought a certain thing out of me that I don't think anybody anybody else has, you know. And I think that that solo on record sort of reflects that, and he reflects the mood the thing that he brought out in me.

00:45:52
Speaker 1: Do you think you can put into words what he brought out of you?

00:45:55
Speaker 2: No, I can't. It's it's just something that's certain kind of jazz soul thing that I occasionally do. But brought that to the front.

00:46:04
Speaker 1: When you did it help me find a wadyr heart With Mariah, I think Emotions maybe had been a hit at that point, but were very familiar with her.

00:46:13
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it was Tommy Mottola's girlfriend, right, I mean, my God, And and she actually came up with it with she came up with a chorus of that and she and she played it for me and then I went from there.

00:46:26
Speaker 1: So that song started with her.

00:46:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, she was. She sent me that, she sent me a tape would help me find the way to your heart, and then I I kind of enhanced it.

00:46:38
Speaker 1: I always feel like people sleep on Mariah as a songwriter, you know, as someone who can write a song.

00:46:44
Speaker 2: I think Mariah is a very talented person, as we all know, and but I think that they she got into that old diva thing and and you know, with the big voice and and all over the place voice, and but that kind of takes away from the source of it, you know, the fact that she can put together a good song. She's she's good man.

00:47:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, are you going to do any more Live from Darryl's House?

00:47:14
Speaker 2: That going one on Tuesday? And I'm not going to tell you with who because I never do. But yeah, that's that's an ongoing project. I've been doing it for a long time, and uh, I've decided instead of doing whole season, so I'm just going to do occasional ones, maybe in groups of one and two, three or something like that, and just keep adding to my YouTube channel.

00:47:38
Speaker 1: What does that add to your life, your creative life doing that show?

00:47:41
Speaker 2: I love it. I loved Life from Darrel's House. I love doing it. It's the most stimulating experience that you can imagine because we don't do any rehearsing, only the most rudimentary of do. We know what's happening, and so everybody is completely on their toes doing it for the first time. There's an artist in there that may or may not be comfortable, and I have to make them comfortable. Sometimes they're you know, sometimes there's especially the heritage artists, they're stuck in their ways and I have to unstick them. You know. There's there's so many things going on, and then we have those amazing you know, conversations around dinner and and the whole thing. It's an amazing experience. Usually takes me two days to recover from one.

00:48:28
Speaker 1: Have you ever come out of one feeling like, oh, maybe I should maybe we could do a whole a whole record together, you know?

00:48:34
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean I I I've got a lot of people, I mean, what I've been doing instead of making records together, like Okay, I'm going out on the road. Glenn Tilbrook, uh, and that I'm going to be working with him all year, I think, off and on, and he's a he's an LFDH lift ELL's House alumni at this point, you know. So I think that I came up with this idea and based on the how we work together that way, and there's an you know, there's a lot of artists like that, Howard Jones, and a little bit that I've done obviously, I mean, that's that's what I do on stage now. I do Version of Life from Darryl's House.

00:49:10
Speaker 1: And that's maybe more rewarded because I just think, I mean, that that you can get and most especially heritage artists, that you can get them to come and play in that way that you do and get them comfortable, but also sort of be on the edge a bit of we don't exactly know what we're doing, but we know exactly you know what we're doing. Like that's like, that's that's it. I mean, you're basically producing these people, and that's not something that I think they're always accustomed to.

00:49:36
Speaker 2: You know, I am, I am doing exactly that on the spot, and you're right, they're not. People aren't accustomed to it. Oddly enough, to the brand new artists are the easiest ones because they don't know what's going on. They're just like puppy dogs. They're like, yeah, let's go, let's do it. You know. You take a guy who's been around for as long as me, and he's like, am I doing the right thing? Here? My fucking up? You know, this isn't the way I always sing this song.

00:50:02
Speaker 1: I mean, it's interesting even seeing The Fruit I just watched it. I didn't really know that Robert Frup had been on that. I didn't know why how I missed that one, But I was watching that last week and even he seemed a little you know, me as adventurous as they come, but even he seemed a little a little nervous.

00:50:15
Speaker 2: You know, Well, Robert is a very controlled books, but with an amazing sense of humor. I got to add, But but I know he was he was good, He was he was fine. I think he just was really he wanted to He'd been wanting to do this for a long time. Just what it was is we've been trying to get together for years and it finally happened. And maybe that that showed, you.

00:50:36
Speaker 1: Know, seeing you guys, do I think it's NYC? And why that hasn't like just insane opening riff?

00:50:42
Speaker 2: You know, it isn't really really how did he come up with that? I don't know.

00:50:50
Speaker 1: He's insane and he's like, you know, I haven't done this in forty something years, you know, just like oh this, that's the level of his genius, is that he's just these things are just coming out of him.

00:50:57
Speaker 2: You know, She's unbelievable, is what he is.

00:51:01
Speaker 1: If I wrote that riff, I would never stop playing it.

00:51:05
Speaker 2: He just over that ship. That's just another riff.

00:51:09
Speaker 1: A couple Were you into King Crimson in the day.

00:51:12
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, I was very much into that to his version of progressive rock. Well, I was into him, is what I was into. I mean, you know, we didn't do red From on the show, and I'm so proud of my band. They just played that now. Roberts said, I have never been in any organization that ever played that song that it didn't take at least three days to learn it. And these guys just play it. They just listened to it at home by themselves. We got together and we played the Motherbucker, you know. I mean, it's one band I got, but that comes you know, my love for King King Crimson comes from back then, the Lark's tengun aspect and all that stuff. I mean I heard, I heard the power and the soul in it, and I heard the the Stravinsky in it. I heard everything in it. But I think that he's a very unique musician.

00:52:02
Speaker 1: I don't want to keep it too much longer, but I do want to return to I feel like maybe I glossed over Christopher Bond. We mentioned him a couple of times during the conversation, so he comes in during the band in lunchonette. Was it a reef that brought him in.

00:52:16
Speaker 2: No, he was. He's a Philly guy. He was. He was in our band, John and I had our little quartet and he was. He was. He was one of the guys. He was in your b I didn't realize he was in yeah in the in the beginning.

00:52:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, so someone else from Philly. I was just scarious what happened to Jim Hellner, who was the drummer in Gulliver played on Whole Oats incredible drum parts on that record.

00:52:40
Speaker 2: I know it was good. I lost track of Jim. I lost track of all those guys. I know Tim Moore he was, he was a songwriter, guitar player. He was a woodstock. That's all I know. But I don't know anything. I have no idea what happened to Jim.

00:52:54
Speaker 1: Just wonder well I have you. I just that always bugged me. Just didn't know what happened to him.

00:52:59
Speaker 2: Definitely the first person ever asked me about Jim Miller.

00:53:03
Speaker 1: Which is cool. Just batt and clean up here. I do want to ask you about g too. How important do you feel he was to that version of Holland Oates.

00:53:15
Speaker 2: I think he added his very large personality to things. I think that his guitar work on the records that he played on on the holl of Oose Records, Well, it was really really exceptional. I did it. I think he did a lot of things that were really amazing. He didn't get the way he added the ge sound to it, you know. I mean, I'm again a great guitar player.

00:53:39
Speaker 1: And that the ge sound wasn't really you know, a thing that had been on records like that before, you know. I mean, you guys really were the first to get him like that.

00:53:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, give me a brand new He was straight out of I think he's from Stroudsburgh, Pennsylvania. Yeah, yeah, and I met him when he had just moved out of there. Basically, did you.

00:54:00
Speaker 1: Just let him go or was there much shaping? Would you talk through parts with him?

00:54:04
Speaker 2: Or I'd let him go, but I would let him go within a controlled situation, you know, I mean and tell him what I thought. And if he did something I didn't like, I'd say tell him that too. You know, he usually did the right thing. Is that a good relationship overall? Or we had a we had a Leslie good relationship because he's he's uh, he's a strange guy, man. I mean he I don't know how to put it. Personality, his personality of mind weren't exactly in line. That's the best way I'll put it. I could put it.

00:54:38
Speaker 1: I think that's a way that everyone can understand. Yeah, and doesn't diminish the talent. Yeah, at this point, set list wise, when you go do dates, how are you picking a set list?

00:54:51
Speaker 2: I do a little. Well, I'm I'm going to try and emphasize the d album, but I think I'm going to do about four songs from that. That's that's that's my plan. Well, I'm already I've already been doing this and uh, other than that, I play the things from whatever you know, from whatever my history is. And there's certain songs that you have to play. I mean I have to play Sarah Smile, which is fine with me. You know. I mix it up. I play Philly Mood, I play all kinds of things.

00:55:25
Speaker 1: Well, Daryl Hall, thank you so much for talking about all of this. I mean, it's a hell of a musical history. So I mean, thank you, oh thanks for having me man. In episode description, you'll find a link to a playlist of our favorite Darryl Hall tracks. Be sure to check out YouTube dot com slash Broken Record to see all of our video interviews, and be sure to follow us on Instagram at the Broken Record Pod. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced by Leah Rose with marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Holliday. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus US. Push and Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and ad free listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions, and if you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app. Our theme music's by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.