Before his house was live, Daryl Hall talks about Unplugged craze and acoustic songwriting in February 1991
In February 1991, Hall and Oates were transitioning from large arena tours to an acoustic tour, which was gaining popularity due to the emergence of MTV Unplugged. Daryl Hall discussed the challenges and creative freedom of performing acoustically, noting the use of acoustic instruments and a theatrical stage setup. He reflected on the band’s evolution, including the production differences between their 80s hits and their newer, more personal songs. Hall also touched on the band’s history, the making of their album “Change of Season,” and the importance of creative success over commercial success.
Daryl Hall on acoustic tour wi…th John Oates in February 1991
Sat, Nov 16, 2024 8:49AM • 15:40
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
acoustic tour, MTV Unplugged, Hall and Oates, set list, fanboy, live show, theatrical stage, song melodies, production value, creative success, musical success, commercial success, personal songs, session players, Change of Season
SPEAKERS
Daryl Hall, Nestor Aparicio
Nestor Aparicio 00:00
Welcome back. Wnst Towson, Baltimore and wnst.net it is wnst Rock week here, and that is the hashtag, and you can say hello or toss an email my way. Nasty. Wnst.net this next interview is from sort of the end of my music 10 years in 1991 February of 1991 Hall and Oates still one of the biggest bands in the world, certainly, you know, from a hit standpoint, no one more successful. But they were starting to move from giant arenas and Capitol center type of tours that they did in the mid 1980s to Dar Constitution Hall, they were on the road with an acoustic tour. And keep in mind, this is at the very, very beginning of MTV Unplugged and acoustic became all the rage right around 1991 so there was no internet. There was no way to know about set list or background band members names if you didn’t get the bio. So there’s a little bit Almost Famous in this, and certainly when it comes to Hall and Oates. I mean, I remember rich girl coming out. I had rich girl on one of those k tell albums, right with, you know, the variety of songs that would the commercial would play in you, you would have to mail away $9 or whatever it was to get the album and even sell it in stores. But a rich girl and Sarah smile. And then after that, I mean, obviously everything from kiss on my list. And you know that whole era of 8081, 8283 where they were on the radio every minute of every day, your kiss was on their list, all of that stuff, Christmas songs, the whole nine, an incredibly successful band unto itself. And then you consider that this interview was in February 1991 25 years later. I just think live from darrell’s house is one of the really incredible TV shows and one of the great story lines of my band’s gonna jam with your band. We’re gonna do it at my house. We’re gonna make some food, we’re gonna drink some wine, probably smoking funny stuff the whole deal, but live from darrell’s house is awesome. But this interview 25 years ago, I had a couple of flybys with Daryl Hall. I had interviewed John Oates on the big bamboo tour at the news American in 1986 I do not have a copy of that interview. I’m searching for it wherever that briefcase went but, but I do have this piece from Daryl Hall, and I ran into him at 98 rock one afternoon and inquired about interviewing him. And he gave his PR persons name. And you know that I had him on the phone very, very soon after. So I do allude to that in this conversation. Again. You little starstruck, sure, a little Almost Famous, absolutely, I wound up writing a good piece. You could Google it. It’s on the Baltimore Sun from February 20 of 1991 that still sits out on the web about Daryl Hall and John Oates. And, you know, again, there’s a lot of fanboy a lot of set list priming in this one, but also some good stuff, and he was a relatively good sport. And I love Daryl hall and I love John Oates, and I love Hall and Oates, and I still see them to this day, and never talk to Daryl Hall again. I don’t think IV I spent a minute all star game. Amy, the 96 All Star game. Yeah, he was on the field in Philadelphia for that all star game. But that’s that’s my only one, and only run in with Daryl Hall, other than this interview, which is a little awkward, but still fun. Here’s Daryl Hall from 1991 before dar Constitution Hall Show. Hi, Darrell, yeah. Nestor from Baltimore. How are you? Hey, I’m the guy that walked up to you in front of the radio station that day. Oh, yeah. Do you remember me? I told you I wanted to interview you. You said, go to the right channel. Yeah, right. Sure. I think I found you anyway. How’s the store coming along here? How many dates are you into it?
Daryl Hall 03:44
We’re just starting. This is only the third date today, third day. Now,
Nestor Aparicio 03:47
when did the whole idea for this acoustic thing come about? And you are doing acoustic? Yeah,
Daryl Hall 03:52
it happened a little bit at a time, really. We started doing some one off things, playing acoustic guitars and TV shows, and I did a couple. I did the Lenin Lenin festival in Liverpool, and the Lennon festival in Tokyo. We played acoustic, we did the unplugged show on MTV. I think a lot of things made us feel like it was fun to do and just to rearrange the songs to fit into that kind of a groove. It was this was interesting to us is easier. It’s not easier. I don’t know what the word is.
Nestor Aparicio 04:25
Did you have a backing? Man? She had percussion at all? Yeah. We
Daryl Hall 04:28
have a full band, except everybody’s playing acoustic instruments. We have a violinist and a cellist, Charlie the Champlain saxophone. We got a drum,
Nestor Aparicio 04:38
two grand pianos, so it’s a big sound. It’s just all acoustic. Okay, so this is not, not any easier to put it on the road, is what I’m saying. Because, I mean, last time you came, was a very big production with lots of lights and rigging, and the lights and rigging
Daryl Hall 04:52
are a little bit different. We have a more elaborate kind of a theatrical kind of a stage set. So there’s a lot. Scrims and backdrops and things like that. It’s very, like I said, very, very theatrical kind of this isn’t
Nestor Aparicio 05:05
nearly as stripped down as one might think. I mean, the idea of Hall notes, thing acoustic show to me and to some other friends I’ve talked to, or fans of yours, think that they’re going to go and just see Darrell and John on stage with two guitars. So not
Daryl Hall 05:16
that, not that, but it is very intimate, you know, I mean, we do do some things with just us playing guitars, and then we do some things with more band members playing the four guitars, or something like that. So
Nestor Aparicio 05:32
what do you think is the nationwide fascination with these unplugged shows? Is it MTV pretty much starting this or,
Daryl Hall 05:39
I think it’s in the air that people want to hear songs again. I think that it’s an antidote. I mean, there’s a lot of you know with rap and everything that’s going on, the obvious alternative to that are our song melodies. And the best way to hear a melody in a song is to hear it in a natural state, in a pure state, and who has literally no production value at all. It’s an acoustic song, right? It’s just what you have. You play the song, you play the chords, and you sing it, and there’s minimal enhancement. And I think that’s the nice part of this, is you mean you hear, you take our songs and you play them that way. You really things, different things come out, the words come out, and all these come out. You hear different different sizes of the song.
Nestor Aparicio 06:26
Was there a time when you saw it differently? I mean, big bamboo certainly was not lacking for production. Oh no,
Daryl Hall 06:32
that’s that’s just another way of putting music together. The 80s, a lot of things happened in technology that allowed new sounds to come out, and it was very, a very stimulating time for trying new things out and using technology in new ways. I still like this kind of music. I just right now I feel it’s time for to bring the more pure side of things out.
Nestor Aparicio 06:58
Is there anything in your your catalog that you’re going to have trouble bringing across in this live show. I mean, are there songs you just can’t do because of the format?
Daryl Hall 07:08
Well, not really, because we tried a lot of different things and we weren’t sure certain ones, and they all work. We do. I mean, we can we do? No, can do. You wouldn’t think that would work, but it sounds like, it sounds like,
Nestor Aparicio 07:23
like adult education, for instance.
Daryl Hall 07:25
You know, adult education could just play on the guitar if you wanted to. We’re not seeing that song, but you can’t do it because we did you over the song.
Nestor Aparicio 07:32
I guess. You know, you tried everything, right? Yeah,
Daryl Hall 07:35
are there certain songs that you have that are older you don’t like anymore? Is it mean, is that one of them, or certain songs that I think fit into this whole idea better than other ones. And yeah, there’s certain ones that I’d rather not be playing right now, and certain ones that we bring out that we haven’t played in years, or maybe even never played, that we’re playing.
Nestor Aparicio 07:51
So it’s the odd songs you never hear on the radio. Is that the kind of thing
Daryl Hall 07:55
like John and I just sit down occasionally play Las Vegas turnaround on the show. I mean, that’s the song we never played live ever. So, you know, things like that that
Nestor Aparicio 08:03
is a show give you a little more freedom when you’re up on stage to pick and choose what you want to do. Yeah, well,
Daryl Hall 08:08
I mean, we’re still in the beginning of the tour, so we’re sticking to a fairly set, you know, the same songs, but we’re going to start adding and subtracting all the time because we have so many songs to do. It’ll start being very flexible.
Nestor Aparicio 08:21
Do you throw in any weird kind of covery things or no, we’re
Daryl Hall 08:25
not doing any covers.
Nestor Aparicio 08:27
If you and John just sat down with guitars. I mean, how many songs do you have the capacity to play? Well, I mean, hundreds.
Daryl Hall 08:33
We got between, between two songs. We have 200 songs there. 200 plus and other songs we happen to know, as long as we kind of lyrics. I can’t remember lyrics. I mean, I think we got a fairly large repertoire.
Nestor Aparicio 08:50
Okay. Well, anyway, I just want to prepare my readers for the best and the worst year. So with change of season. Now, when did you do you guys? First off, get get back together and decide that, hey, let’s make an album. Well,
Daryl Hall 09:03
we we’ve been kind of working. We did, yeah, and that was kind of getting together, and then we stay with that, put us back on the road, and we had this great band. We said, why don’t we make a record that we just use the band to in its best way and and just have guys playing together and make a record that sounds like that. So that’s really where the idea from for change of season came from, and then we just let the album make itself. That Were you disappointed with the year? No, I wasn’t disappointed. I think that certain things in the production, since we didn’t have a band when we were making the record, I was there was a lot of times when I wish that there were real people that I had more of a close musical communication with, that I could use, instead of using so many machines, because I would rather have done, oh, yeah, more like the album we just
Nestor Aparicio 09:54
did, who was the situation with your band members at that point? I mean, like, what is g situation? I mean, are you guys pretty much divorced from each other? With who? G, Smith, oh, well, G, now, I
Daryl Hall 10:05
mean, G, he’s not working with us. He has his own stuff. He works with Dylan, he works with SNL, and, you know, we’re friends and all that. It’s just it was in 85 it was time to stop that and do something different. And now we have portions of that. I mean, T bones back in the band, but he’s playing guitar, right? And Charlie’s chants around. They’re the only two members from the past. So when
Nestor Aparicio 10:31
you put these songs together, I mean, did you write them kind of as you went along, or were some of the songs already in the can before you and John got together? They weren’t in the can, but I was, I was, yeah, I was writing. It seems like such a reflective, kind of lyrically so much. I mean, it’s certainly not kiss on your list, you know, kiss on my list kind of stuff, right? It’s a little deeper than that. I mean, did you aim for that? Or just the way it came out? It’s
Daryl Hall 10:53
more personal. I didn’t really write, you know, Janet Allen wrote that song, you know, it was more different
Nestor Aparicio 11:02
idea in mind. This isn’t a pop record, right? When you’re doing something like starting all over again. I mean, to me, that song seems very, very personal. Yeah, well, it seems like something you’d sit down and write when you’re depressed. And, you know, that’s, that’s an
Daryl Hall 11:16
old r&b song that was done by Mel and Tim in the early
Nestor Aparicio 11:19
70s. Didn’t even check the lyric sheet, actually, but I thought you wrote, you wrote most of this stuff, though, right?
Daryl Hall 11:26
Yeah, most of it, that song I didn’t write, and a couple other ones I wrote with other people, but certainly fit into the thing that lyrically and musically, the songs that fit together the best of the ones that are on there, and there is a certain theme that’s going on. It has to do with change, and the way people deal with change personally, and the way the world deals with change. And that’s really the concept behind
Nestor Aparicio 11:51
you said about getting the same group of players together. You have all these celebrities playing on so close, and you got Doug stegmeyer playing, giving up. And how did this all come about? Too well,
Daryl Hall 12:01
we did most of the records, about 80% of the record, in our studio with our band, and then we decided that we wanted to get be a little more objective. So we we went outside of that, and I went to California, and that’s where all those people you call celebrities or whatever, they were all on one or two sessions.
Nestor Aparicio 12:19
They’re celebrities because they are session people. They’re
Daryl Hall 12:21
well known, but they’re la people. You know, they’re guys that work on a lot of records, and they were available, and I happen to know everybody that was on that record, but I called my friends, but they’re people that play on a lot of people’s records, so you know their names, yeah, like a guy like Danny corm, if he’s ever made his own album, but, I
Nestor Aparicio 12:36
mean, he pops up on everybody’s album. So I’ve known Danny since
Daryl Hall 12:39
the 70s, so that’s why I called him up in the first
Nestor Aparicio 12:43
place. Looking back over the past six or seven years, I mean, you’ve gone from basically being almost a stadium act to playing small kind of places do you kind of feel bad that you stopped after big bamboo for a little while and did the solo thing? Or no, that was very necessary.
Daryl Hall 13:00
It was all part of getting to where we are now and going to the next place. We judge our success by, by our creative success, our musical success, commercial success is something you can’t, you can’t depend on, and you can’t work towards so much. I mean, we, we do fine, you know, we’re all right, and we’ve done fine. We’ve we’ve made a mark, and we’re continuing to do it. I I want to go beyond my next hit single. I’m not really interested in living my life based around that. You know, I care about me too much for that.
Nestor Aparicio 13:34
Yeah, well, I remember when I was back in like, junior high, high school, you guys were touring around, and my friend was going to see you one time, and, you know, they have a few hits. He says they have too many hits. And you almost feel that way, that you’re, you’re almost you don’t need another hit ever again. Well, you always need one, because you need people to be aware of you. But there’s different kinds. There’s hits, and then there’s hits, you know, there’s different kinds. There’s kinds of songs that actually mean something to people, and that they that stand the test of time and go beyond just what’s on, like what’s on the radio this week, or something, you know, is so close one of those songs, yeah, I
Daryl Hall 14:11
think it is. I think it is. It seems to be perceived that way. It’s got a lot of meaning. So it’s very personal, and we’ll see, if you know, whether it’s a classic or not. We’ll see in 10 years.
Nestor Aparicio 14:26
Were you a little disappointed that didn’t, wasn’t a number one hit and didn’t blow out? You know, it wasn’t really made to be that. I
Daryl Hall 14:32
mean, it got it got me where I wanted to be, if that makes sense. Well, I
Nestor Aparicio 14:39
just had some questions about that song in particular, just the lyrics at the end of the refrain about, I don’t want to be wise, I just want to stay young. Is that out of your head? Or where did you I wrote
Daryl Hall 14:50
that about my girlfriend, you know, that’s kind of a joke, because she loves the sun, and she says things like that, you know. And it’s just a way of to me that.
Nestor Aparicio 15:02
So you hear these songs so many times on the radio, and you know all the words, and you never really figure out what they mean. And I figure when Daryl Haw sat down to write this song, was a reason he put that in, and it’s just such a profound kind of an understated kind of thing to say, sort of like, I hope I die before I get along. Well anyway, I think I’m through with you, and I really appreciate you talking to me from your little car phone. I very appreciate we had a good connection. These are very rare. Well, anyway, I hope to see you next week and look forward to seeing you put on a good show. Okay, thanks, Daryl, sure.
