The Maneater Manifesto

I throw a Hall & Oates tribute party every year, and every year I get eye rolls and disbelief: “Seriously?” People insist that I “can’t really like them” and dismiss their output as elevator music. Or they assume I’m celebrating them in an ironic, hipsterish, so-dumb-it’s-fun manner—as if I’m throwing a Backstreet Boys or Vanilla Ice tribute.

But Hall and Oates are no guilty pleasure. They are a pleasure in which we should all take great pride.

Even when Hall & Oates were finally inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (after many years of being passed over by the disdainful rock cognoscenti, despite sixteen Top Ten singles and breaking records as best-selling pop duo of all time) the haters bitched, moaned, and whined. Fans of Nirvana (who were inducted at the same time) were predictably apoplectic. Music journalist Stephen Deusner went so far as to pen an entire anti-Daryl & John screed in 2013 titled “I can’t go for that: The case against Hall & Oates” in which he accused them of making “safe pop that minds its manners” and derided their Philly soul bona fides as “ sheer luck of geography.” Salon called them “the musical equivalent of mom jeans” and claimed that “the new Rock & Roll Hall of Famers get no respect… Who likes Hall & Oates? Who admits to liking Hall & Oates?”

It’s time someone spoke out against this defamation. Today, I’m standing up to demand respect for Daryl and John as pioneering musicians, peerless songwriters, and excellent human beings. Yes, they sang songs with titles like “Maneater” and “You Make My Dreams Come True.” Yes, they made a series of accidentally hilarious music videos and usually dressed like giant dorks. Yes, tiny Oates with his giant mustache next to tall, blonde, flowy-locked Hall made them look like a musical version of a bad buddy cop movie. And no, they didn’t behave ironically or disparagingly about anything they did—they took their music seriously, and sang every word passionately.

The world has never forgiven them for it.

It’s time to set the record straight. Here’s a cheat sheet to which you can refer any time you’re confronted with a Hall & Oates hater:

10. They met for the first time while fleeing gunfire that broke out on the floor of the Adelphi Ballroom. In 1967, both John and Daryl were at Philadelphia’s Adelphi Ballroom to compete in a Battle of the Bands. When rival gangs broke out firearms and started shooting, the crowd ran, America’s future 80s chart kings ended up in the same service elevator and the rest was history. Escaping gunshots?? COME ON. That’s some street shit, people.

9. H&O has serious cred in the Philly soul scene. More than cred, really: They came up in it and were part of its very formation. By the age of 17, Daryl Hall was already singing on Philly street corners with the likes of the Delfonics and the Stylistics. He and Oates ran with Smokey Robinson, the Temptations, and many other top soul singers and producers of the 60s (H&O actually inducted the Temptations into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1985). Hall was a session musician for Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, the legendary production duo who founded Motown rival Philadelphia International Records and pioneered the Philly soul sound (they wrote and produced the actual “Soul Train” theme song). People don’t realize that Hall & Oates’s song “She’s Gone” made little headway on the charts until the legendary Lou Rawls and Tavares decided to cover it.

Consider that, haters and music journalists apparently unable to use Google: Maybe you don’t respect Hall & Oates, but Gamble & Huff, the Temptations and Lou Rawls totally did.

8. They’ve earned serious respect from many brilliant and badass contemporary musicians. Electro funk geniuses Chromeo claim that Daryl Hall’s influence on them is so strong “he pretty much wrote half our songs.” Sharon Jones and Minus the Bear have appeared on Daryl’s show “Live From Daryl’s House,” and indie rock darlings the Bird and the Bee released an entire album of Hall and Oates covers, Interpreting the Masters. Their songs have been sampled by Public Enemy, De La Soul, the Notorious B.I.G., Wu-Tang Clan, Kanye West and countless other hiphop gods. Fellow Philly music legend Questlove of the Roots advocated strongly for adding the pair to the Rock & Rock Hall of Fame, claiming at the induction ceremony that their music could “cure all illness” and reminding the crowd that, throughout their storied career, Hall and Oates “stayed true to their soul roots…They crossed all the boundaries, because that is what great music does.”

Do you know more about music than Questlove, haters?
Yeah, didn’t think so.

7. Though they’ve always been vilified for writing meaningless pop cotton candy, Hall & Oates paid serious dues and actually have mad amounts of artistic integrity. People don’t realize that Hall & Oates had already released nine albums before achieving radio domination in the early 80s. Nine albums!!!! Many of which flopped.

Even the moderate success of their second album, Abandoned Luncheonette, boomeranged on them when their third album, War Babies, sounded nothing like it. “It would’ve been easy to make Abandoned Luncheonette II,” Hall told Rolling Stone in 1985. “That would’ve set our entire career, but we didn’t do it.” Fans booed and walked out of shows, and Atlantic Records dropped them. Their careers were very touch-and-go for many years, yet they persisted in writing new material that they felt was true to their musical instincts. Hall defended their artistic integrity in a 2007 no-holds barred Pitchfork interview: “You can be Rod Stewart, and be Clive Davis’s dog, and have a career at the expense of your artistic soul… I love the fact that the record companies are all going down. This is a personal triumph for me.”

I THINK DARYL HALL JUST CALLED ROD STEWART A BITCH, Y’ALL.

6. They endured ridicule for appearing “homosexual” and yet stayed consistently gay-positive even while people bashed them. It was the late 70s/early 80s in America, so of course two dudes couldn’t be in a band without gay slurs being hurled at them. “Two is a couple,” said a marketing exec at the time, “and male couples, like Hall & Oates, are threatening to males. Nobody’s gonna put a poster of two guys on their wall.” Their 1975 self-titled album was notorious for its silver cover photo, a glitzy shot of the duo in heavy makeup that only fueled the gay rumors.

Many musicians would’ve been falling all over themselves to assure the record-buying public of their hetero-ness, usually by slamming gay people and talking shit about them. How did Daryl respond when asked about the gay rumors in 1983 by Rolling Stone?

“‘People still think that,’ says Hall, repeating his standard rebuttal. ‘The idea of sex with a man doesn’t turn me off, but I don’t express it. I satisfied my curiosity about that years ago… Men don’t particularly turn me on. And, no, John and I have never been lovers. He’s not my type. Too short and dark.’”

How’s that for not taking the gay-bashing bait? Also, I think Daryl Hall quite casually copped to some bicuriosity. In 1983. TAKE IT IN, HATERS. DEAL WITH IT.

5. They haven’t shot anyone, stolen their greatest hits from lesser-known Black musicians, or beaten up their girlfriends or wives. Hall & Oates have been touring for more than 40 years, and continue to perform superbly. Hall still has his golden pipes. They’re still friends and don’t hate each other. They give me hope that you can be a successful musician, do great work, live a long life, be a happy person, and not end by choking to death on your own vomit.

4. Hall & Oates have crossover power like few other artists past or present. From the beginning, urban radio stations loved and supported Hall & Oates, and were instrumental in giving them their first breaks (“We couldn’t get any play on white radio for years,” John Oates said.) “Sara Smile” only became a hit when an R&B station in Toledo, Ohio started playing it nonstop in response to overwhelming listener requests, eventually generating so much buzz that their label released the song as a single. And unlike some other white musicians who incurred resentment for seeming to just cash in on music styles created by Black musicians, people seem to get that Daryl and John’s reverence for and history with soul music was real, lifelong, and heartfelt. They were one of very few white acts to be invited to perform on Soul Train, where host Don Cornelius welcomed them as “two men who are among the few in history to master the art of crossing music over in the other direction.” Who are you to challenge Don Cornelius, haters?

3. They’re liberal and they use their superpowers for good. Hall and Oates’s album Live at the Apollo featured two members of the Temptations, David Ruffin and Eddie Kendricks, who by 1985 had fallen on very hard times. Kendricks described that recording as life-changing for him and Ruffin: “They [Hall & Oates] could have easily done on the show without us. We needed them more than they needed us.….You get used to selfish people in this business. It was good of them to remember us.” In 2010, the duo joined the artists’ boycott of the state of Arizona over the state’s harsh immigration laws. Perhaps best of all, they paid tribute to retiring left-wing doormat/Sean Hannity punching bag Alan Colmes on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show by singing a rewritten version of “She’s Gone,” which included the lyrics “You’re the only non-douche bag on that show.” SUCK IT, HANNITY.

2. They invented rock and soul. Who sounded like them? And who sounds like them now? No one, that’s who. They blended rock, soul, pop, new wave, and doo-wop, and managed to rack up six number one hits at a time when disco was dominating the airwaves. Why don’t you try fusing a bunch of completely disparate music genres together and writing six number one hits if you think it’s so easy, haters?

1. The absolute number one reason why Hall and Oates are gods and their haters are both laughably stupid and insanely wrong: “I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do).” If Hall & Oates had done NOTHING else, writing “I Can’t Go For That” alone would have earned them a place in the music history books. “I Can’t Go For That” is famous for being one of the few songs ever recorded by a white act to reach number one on both the R&B and pop charts. The song resonated hugely in the hiphop world, and has been sampled by De La Soul, Heavy D, 2 Live Crew, Stereo MCs, and the Notorious B.I.G. According to John Oates, Michael Jackson told the duo that he loved to work out his dance choreography to it. Jackson approached Daryl Hall during the recording of “We Are The World” and admitted to lifting the bass line from “I Can’t Go For That” for use in “Billie Jean.”

Let’s just sit with that for a moment, shall we? Arguably the greatest pop songwriter of the last 50 years used DARYL HALL’S bass line on arguably the greatest dance track on arguably the best dance album of all time.

When Michael Jackson borrows your shit? For a song on Thriller??? You are a golden god. End of story.

Let this last little factoid be your ace in the hole, your coup de grace, your crane kick, the kraken you can unleash to defeat anyone who would dare to besmirch the legacy of Hall & Oates.

Let us insist that the haters know our bliss.

Jennifer Boeder (pictured left) is a Chicago writer, editor, yoga teacher & dance party enthusiast. Her annual holiday party “Deck the Hall & Oates” goes down at Cole’s Bar in Chicago on December 10, 2015. Mustaches strongly encouraged.

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