Hall & Oates: The Eviction That Brought The Duo Together [Highlight From Episode 312]

Chris Epting, co-author of John Oates' memoir 'Change Of Seasons', tells the unlikely but true story of how Daryl Hall and John Oates met and eventually paired up musically.

Listen to Episode 312: Rock Legends & Landmarks, Paul Rodgers' Memoir News w/ Author Chris Epting

----------
 
BookedOnRock.com
 
The Booked On Rock Store
 
The Booked On Rock YouTube Channel
 
Follow The Booked On Rock with Eric Senich:
BLUESKY
FACEBOOK
INSTAGRAM
TIKTOK
X
 
Find Your Nearest Independent Bookstore
 
Contact The Booked On Rock Podcast: [e-mail]

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Here's a highlight from a recent episode of Booked on Rock.
Our guest is author, TV host photographer Percepting. Not too
long ago, the news hit about the falling out between
Hall and Oates over their song publishing you co author
John's memoir from twenty seventeen, Change of Seasons. How did
he meet Daryll Hall? What was their relationship like through
the years? Were there was there always tension between the two?

(00:23):
Was that more recent?

Speaker 2 (00:24):
They met in Philadelphia, both going to school. There was
a battle of the bands basically, and I think of
the not the Uptown Theater, another theater in Philly. Their
bands are both going to play their backstage shots ring
out in the theater, and so John and Darryl's band
gets pushed into a service elevator where they're going to escape,

(00:47):
and they're face to face and they're like what the
And they start talking in the elevator and they're like, well,
we should hang out. And that's the spark of it.
That's really where it starts. And then one of my
favorite part a lot of the books, for me, the
most interesting parts are before the people are famous, because
once they're famous, you know a lot of that stuff.

(01:07):
But there's a fascinating sequence set of sequences in John's book,
and John, I will tell you, of all the books
I've done, I think John's is always going to be
in a way. It's especial on a real, on a
big level because John as a writer, we collaborated, We
remain great friends. I'm really fond of John Ohates as
an artist, as a writer, as a musician, everything, And

(01:31):
you know, we wrote very closely on this. But the
other sequence in the book I was referencing was when
John gets out of college in like sixty seven or so,
he does what a lot of them do that he
went to Europe and trades around for three months. Right.
He and Daryl are friends at that point, but that's it.
They've not worked together, and Daryl gets his sister to

(01:53):
rent John's apartment while he's gone. John says, hey, would
Kathy sub let my place? Yeah, no problem. Three months later,
there's a padlock on his door. She didn't pay the rent.
So John's been evicted and he's got nowhere to go.
He walks down to Darrow's place and says, your sister
kind of did me in here, And Darrel has got
a little loft apartment and says just stay here. That's

(02:16):
what put them in the place to start making musics.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Oh my god, right, so wow, that's We.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
Would walk the streets of Philadelphia before the book came out,
did a little video series like Okay, here's the apartment.
If you don't get evicted from this place, maybe you
don't get to this place. And we went to Darryl's
place and the fact they were forced to live together,
that's where they start really collaborating. That's the spark of them.
I mean, the mailbox was haul and oats.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
And when did things start to go wrong for them
long into their career.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
I don't know. I mean, look, I saw all on
Out's play. If I saw them once, I saw them
sixty times working on the book. I mean again, they
put on great shows, sold out every arena, every theater. Whatever.
It caught me off guard too. I mean, look, there's
always artistic tensions that I think exist, or disagreements, but
I've seen that a million times, sure, you know, so

(03:12):
what happened was nothing. I was privy to it, and
I was, you know, surprised, like everybody was if that happened, you.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
Know, yeah, surprised for sure. When he's on CBS. I
think doing an interview with CBS, it's basically saying, you know,
people think that when you see these bands, they're all
buddies and everybody's getting along. Yeah, he goes, we haven't.
We would for the longest time, we'd show up at
the gig in separate buses or planes or whatever.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
Ye stage home isn't a bad thing because I think
once you understand the business of it and the dynamics,
you don't have to be friends. You know what you're
there for. You know whether it's Jagger and Richard whomever.
You know what the gig is and what can help
it keep it going. Sometimes you don't get sick of
each other. You're there to work, and I think you

(03:58):
can look at it that way as well.