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I remember attending a songwriters' panel at the South X Southwest Music Conference in 1993. Four shaggy, baby-boomer guys sat in a semi-circle of chairs, acoustic guitars sitting in their laps. One by one they sang their earnest imitations of Bob Dylan and Harlan Howard, fitting their exactingly clever lyrics to familiar chord changes. Finally the fourth guy, the one with the thick, dark mustache, strummed his guitar and sang something very different. In a peerlessly pure tenor and over a transfixing R&B-ballad melody, he tapped into the pain of romantic abandonment.
It was John Oates, and the song was "She's Gone." In less than four minutes, he blew everyone else off the stage, reminding everyone in the room that great songwriting has nothing to do with concepts like alt-country this or indie-rock that and everything to do with the marriage of musical and verbal hooks in the service of a plunging emotion such as the song's timeless, unanswerable question: "She's gone--what went wrong?"
When "She's Gone" pops up halfway through Disc One of the four-CD box set, Do What You Want, Be What You Are: The Music of Daryl Hall & John Oates, it marks the moment in 1970 when the duo went from admiring imitators of the Temptations and the Delfonics (two singles from Hall's earlier band, the Temptones, and one from Oates' group, the Masters, begin the disc) to something remarkably original.
The verses and the choruses were perfect enough, but it was on the coda that the song broke loose from every precedent and expectation to capture the dislocation felt by a deserted lover. Producer Arif Mardin sent the swirling strings and ladder-climbing horns through one modulation after another and suddenly Hall was no longer singing with the unstoppable groove but was slipping around it even as the harmony singers kept it steady, as if he had lost his way now that his girl friend was gone.
Here was a template the duo would use over and over again, even after they left Mardin and Atlantic Records to enjoy their biggest hits on RCA: They would write their verses as tightly as their choruses, so tightly that you couldn't tell if the rhythm was supporting the striking melody or the melody was supporting the driving rhythm--often with a tricky run of eighth-note syllables. Once they had established their flawless pop craftsmanship, though, they would unravel it with Hall and a guitar or saxophone spinning off from the inexorable logic of the song into some kind of emotional abandon.
These guys weren't about albums; they were about radio singles. They didn't belabor concepts; they threw things at the wall to see what would stick. They were incredibly prolific; while Bruce Springsteen was releasing eight albums in the ‘70s and '80s, Hall & Oates were releasing 15. Anyone who listened to the radio in those two decades will experience a small flush of pleasure at the mere mention of titles such as "Sara Smile," "Rich Girl," "Kiss on My List," "I Can't Go For That (No Can Do)," "Did It in a Minute," "Adult Education" and "Method of Modern Love." The duo scored 28 Top 40 hits between 1976 and 1988, including six #1s.
They're all here, and so are the songs that should have been hits but didn't stick to the wall for whatever reason: "It's Uncanny," "I Don't Wanna Lose You," "Everytime You Go Away," and more. Missing in action are Hall's collaborations with Robert Fripp and Elvis Costello. There are only five unreleased songs and they're non-essential.
Some familiar songs are presented in unfamiliar forms: three rare mixes and 10 previously unreleased live performances. Hall & Oates were a terrific live act, not only because they were both natural singers but also because they kept together a top-notch band that they used in the studio and on stage--just as Springsteen did with the E Street Band or Merle Haggard did the with Strangers.
The best thing about the box set is the 60-page, full-color booklet--not so much for the perfunctory biography or obligatory quotes from admiring celebrities as for the commentary on every track by Hall, Oates and their collaborators, a discussion that sheds welcome light on their achievement.
It soon becomes clear that while their songs were always rooted in their primary influences of Philly soul and Motown, their musical interests ranged far beyond R&B. Hall had studied classical composition at Temple University where the two met, while Oates had been a folkie singer-songwriter (he's currently out on tour in that guise with Jerry Douglas and Maura O'Connell).
Hall and Oates embraced disco--not as a format to adhere to but as a vocabulary to borrow from. Both were rock'n'roll fans, and they incorporated rock-guitar solos into their dance numbers in a way that echoed George Clinton and anticipated Prince and Michael Jackson. Hall & Oates drew from all these interests to inject subtle flavors into their records. Even if the casual listener didn't know why, those small touches made the duo's discs different from all the other dance tracks of the time.
As Hall and Oates discuss the genesis of each of the tracks on the box set, it's obvious that they were songwriters first and foremost. Again and again they explain how they refused to be satisfied with a promising first draft--as so many artists, rationalizing their laziness with a cant about the ‘original impulse,' would--but kept tinkering with songs until the words, the tune and the groove all locked in and reached out to grab the listener. That's why John Oates belonged on a songwriters' panel at South X Southwest; that's why "She's Gone" still worked with just a voice and acoustic guitar; and that's why he took everyone else on stage to school.
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