This Day in Rock History (Hall and Oates Take Step Forward With ‘Abandoned Luncheonette’)

Nov. 2, 1973— Abandoned Luncheonette, released by Atlantic Records, epitomized the larger career arc of Daryl Hall and John Oates: slowly building momentum until a confluence of factors brought a commercial breakthrough.

The two singer-songwriters, who would go on to become the number-one duo in rock ‘n’ roll history, were not strictly an Eighties phenomenon, despite what their ubiquity in silly MTV videos might lead one to believe. They signed their first contract with Atlantic in 1970, and released their first LP, Whole Oats, two years later.

Hall and Oates didn’t let their initial paltry sales discourage them. Instead, in the spring of 1973 they returned to the studio, only this time they moved to New York City, which allowed them to collaborate more closely with Whole Oats producer Arif Mardin.

The relocation not only got the pair thinking more intently how to achieve the sounds they wanted from other musicians in the confined space of a studio, but exposed them to multiple musical genres in the world’s greatest metropolis.

At first, it appeared that Abandoned Luncheonette wouldn’t do much better than its predecessor. Upon initial release, the lead single, “She’s Gone,” only peaked at #60 on the Billboard Hot 100. 

But when a cover version by Tavares hit the top of the R&B chart, Atlantic re-released it three years later, and the original climbed into the top 10 on the pop list.

While “She’s Gone” was the eventual breakout hit, other songs on the album’s first side have remained also fan favorites for the last 50 years. 

Mine include “Las Vegas Turnaround (The Stewardess Song),” inspired by Oates’ introductory conversation with the woman who became Hall’s longtime girlfriend and muse, Sara Allen, and “When The Morning Comes,” featuring special contributions from Hall on mandolin and Chris Bond on mellotron.

The album as a whole took longer to take off, but 29 years after it came out, it finally was certified platinum, with a million copies sold. Charlie Ricci’s recent post on the blog “Something Else Reviews” uses the term “acoustic soul” (i.e., folk music with the R&B-inflected Philly harmonies the pair had grown up with) to describe the sound they achieved.

I have a higher opinion of Hall and Oates’ Eighties work than Ricci does (and, as I explained in a blog post from three years ago, I particularly value the multi-hit, multiplatinum Voices). But I agree fully with his assessment of Abandoned Luncheonette as "one of the best albums of the classic-rock era."

In his 2017 memoir Change of Seasons, Oates remembered it fondly as the album “I always go back when I need to remember how things should be done. The collection that still resonates through every bone in my body. A musical moment that became such a personal benchmark, that to this day I measure everything against it.”

Flashback, Fall 1980: Righteous Brothers Cover Lifts Hall and Oates’ ‘Voices’

Hall and Oates had already recorded all their projected songs for their album Voices, but they still felt another was needed. An oldies tune they heard on a jukebox near their New York City studio, they quickly realized, was the missing ingredient in their mix.

The only cut on their LP not written by the duo, “You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling”—released in late September and climbing the charts rapidly in October 40 years ago—fit perfectly with the aural tone they were trying to achieve in their first self-produced album. More important, it marked a turning point in their careers, launching a string of platinum-selling albums and helping them sell out arenas in the first half of the Eighties.

It marked quite a turn from the start of 1980. After Top 10 hits such as “Rich Girl,” Sara Smile,” and “She’s Gone,” Daryl Hall and John Oates had struggled in their albums of the late Seventies to stay at that level. The best they could manage was the single “Wait for Me,” which only reached No. 18 on the charts.

Part of the problem was how to mesh their interest in “new wave” music with the “Philadelphia Sound” of rhythm and blues that they had grown up with—or, as the title of their greatest hits album several years later put it, “Rock and Soul.”

Hall and Oates and their record label, RCA, could have been forgiven for thinking the first single from Voices, the optimistically titled “How Does It Feel to Be Back,” would mark their return to their pop peak. With its use of a jangly Rickenbacker guitar, it was, as I heard a WNEW-FM refer to it at the time, “The Beatles Meet Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.” But it only made it to the Top 30, down a bit even from “Wait for Me.”

Ultimately, the duo’s instinct for the song they needed to complete their album proved fortunate. Subsequently, they differed slightly on exactly where they heard “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” (Hall recalled it being played in a downtown nightspot called the Mudd Club, while Oates remembered in his 2017 memoir Change of Seasons that they were in a pizza joint). But each recollected that the Righteous Brothers hit came at the end of their recording sessions, that they recognized how compatible it would be with their own vocal style, and that they recorded the song with the rest of their band the next day in only a few hours.

Only the year before, for his 52^nd Street album, Billy Joel had paid lavish tribute to the Righteous Brothers with “Until the Night,” matching his own lyrics and melody to the grandiloquent “Wall of Sound” employed by their producer, Phil Spector. This time, though, Hall and Oates set the classic Barry Mann-Cynthia Weil composition in what Oates called the “punchy and sleek” style of the rest of their LP—one that avoided overdubs.

For all the difference in aural arrangements, Hall and Oates harked back to the vocal style of their predecessors as purveyors of “blue-eyed soul”: Oates emulating the dark baritone of Bill Medley, Hall finding his groove in an approximation of Bobby Hatfield’s falsetto.

Their instinct for the right song for them was justified by events in the fall of 1980. “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” climbed to Number 12 on the charts, bettering the performance of “How Does It Feel to Be Back” and giving Voices continued radio exposure—and then the deluge:

*“Kiss on My List,” Hall’s collaboration with Janna Allen, sister of his girlfriend Sara, vaulted to Number 1 shortly after the new year;

*The ebullient “You Make My Dreams” jumped to Number 5;

*Propelled by its four singles, Voices spent 100 weeks—nearly two years—on the Billboard chart.

Having achieved success themselves with a cover song, Hall and Oates a few years later saw a younger artist score a hit with one of their Voices songs: the ballad “Every Time You Go Away,” which British singer Paul Young took to Number 1.

As the British singer Joe Jackson would do in a couple of years with his albums Steppin’ Out and Body and Soul, Hall and Oates felt that their sound benefited from exposure to the polyglot sounds of New York City:

“Living in New York at the time, you had punk and New Wave,” Oates told David Chiu in an interview for the Web site Ultimate Classic Rock. “We were living in the Village. We were in the vortex of all this energy that was happening. And so the music reflected it. It always has reflected where we were at the moment and the environmental and social influences of what was going on around us, because as songwriters, that's all you really have to use as your inspiration.”

The pair continued to record in the same vein in their subsequent LPs in the next few years: Private Eyes, H2O, and Big Bam Boom. Buoyed by MTV videos that, though laughable by their own admission, gave them additional exposure, they achieved superstar status.

“The momentum and success of Voices ushered in the next wild chapter of our career,” Oates recalled in Change of Seasons. “We had done it. We had produced ourselves and in doing so, tapped into the core of who we were as writers, artists, and producers. We’d once again found a sound. There was no turning back, but we had no idea what lay ahead. As it turned out, this new phase was, for many fans, the beginning of Hall and Oates.”

Amazingly, unlike, say, the Everly Brothers and Simon and Garfunkel, Hall and Oates have been able to maintain their partnership unfractured. Each was adept not only at singing, but also at songwriting and playing multiple instruments. Neither, then, felt threatened or jealous of the other’s skills, and they have not differed radically over the direction of their music. The result is that they have stayed together long enough to become the most successful duo in rock ‘n’ roll history.

Quote of the Day (John Oates, on the Origin of ‘Philly Soul’)

“Philadelphia was the first major city north of the Mason-Dixon Line, and the first place that many African-Americans settled in. They brought their experience from the deep south, and it combined with the Anglo-Saxon, classical tradition from Europe that was already in the city. So that is how you come to get that sound, of these lush string accompaniments playing alongside an incredible rhythmic groove, which is the soul of the music.”—Singer-songwriter John Oates, quoted in Peter Aspden, “The Making of Philly Soul,” The Financial Times, Oct. 14-15, 2017

Peter Aspden’s interview with John Oates and musical partner Daryl Hall allows those two genre-benders to speak, articulately and passionately, about the whole arc of their careers, including, as here, their formative influences. But I wish the article could have explored in greater depth the producers and musicians who made such an indelible contribution to the music of the 1970s.

So, I’ll take up the task, in a list that is probably woefully incomplete: Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, Thom Bell, the Spinners, the Stylistics, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, the O’Jays, Lou Rawls, Jerry Butler, Phyllis Hyman, Patti Labelle, and Billy Paul (whose “Me and Mrs. Jones” was covered by Hall and Oates in a barn-burner of a live performance in 2003).

(John Oates is pictured right with Daryl Hall, in this photo taken and pasted on Flicker by Gary Harris, Oct. 1, 2008.)

Song Lyric of the Day (Hall and Oates, on Those Who Laugh at Love)

“Everybody always laughs at love

But what they want is to be proven wrong.” —Daryl Hall and John Oates, “Did It in a Minute,” written by Sara Allen, Janna Allen, and Daryl Hall, from the Hall and Oates Private Eyes LP (1981)

It’s funny, but I’ve heard this song countless times over the years, but—perhaps because the intonation of the line differed from the rest of the song—never really paid attention to these particular lyrics. It’s only within the past week or so, in a moment of absolute stillness and concentration, that I finally heard and understood them.

Daryl Hall, by the way, wrote the song with his longtime girlfriend Sara Allen (inspiration for “Sara Smile”) and her sister Janna—who, tragically, died of leukemia at age 36.

This Day in Rock History (Daryl Hall, ‘Blue-Eyed Soul’ Bard, Born)

October 11, 1948—Daryl Hall, who with musical partner John Oates achieved the most record sales ever by a duo, was born in Pottstown, Pa., just outside the city where he imbibed the sounds that made him one of the great exemplars of  white “blue-eyed soul.”

A tendency exists, in more than a few quarters, to sneer at Hall and Oates. I’m not sure how much of this derives from their massive commercial success from the mid-‘70s to mid-80s—a decade of six #1 singles (Rich Girl,” “Kiss on My List,” “Private Eyes,” “I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do),” “Maneater” and “Out of Touch”) and six consecutive multi-platinum albums. And it might have helped them with critics if they had taken themselves a bit more seriously. (They would not argue the point that their goofy videos for “Jingle Bell Rock” and “Adult Education” were among the worst of the Eighties.)

That contempt for their music, though, is seriously misplaced. While not in the same league as songwriters with one-half of the duo they displaced as the most popular of all time, Paul Simon, they were pretty fair in their own right. (Their songs were covered, for instance, in a night of song at New York's Losers Lounge several years ago; see my post on the Kustard Kings' fine rendition of "Kiss on My List.") Each was an accomplished musician in his own right (while Oates handled production chores at their zenith, Hall was pretty handy himself with guitar and keyboards—not surprising, as he had worked in the industry originally as a session musician for Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, the prime movers behind the “Philly Sound” of the early ’70s). And those vocals—well, not for nothing was their signature album called Voices.

If you want an example of their vocal prowess, consider their work on a song not from their heyday, one that was actually a cover version of a classic from the “Philly Soul” era: the early Seventies hit “Me and Mrs. Jones.” Gamble and Huff had a bit of a problem with the singer who enjoyed his greatest success with it, Billy Paul, since his voice was—well, producer Thom Bell once said that, at times, it “sounded like you could land a 747 on it.” 

Gamble and Huff expertly camouflaged it with a lush big-band sound. No such problem existed for Hall (left, in the accompanying picture, with Oates), who performed the lead vocal for this tale of anguished infidelity brilliantly in VH-1’s Live on Request. In the closing minutes of the song, Hall makes the song entirely his own, in a style that can only be described as barnburning. But don’t take my word for it—take a look at the version from Hall and Oates' VH-1 “Live on Request” special from several years ago.

A year or two ago, Hall and Oates came to BergenPAC, a performing-arts arena located a few blocks from my home in Englewood, NJ. I didn’t attend the show, and at this point I’m not sure if it had something to do with my uncertain work schedule or the ticket price, which I regarded as too high. In any case, I’m not sure the concert then could have compared with the first time I heard them in July 1977 at Central Park—right after their first significant success, but before the blazing commercial run that began with Voices.

I knew the duo at that point pretty vaguely, as creators of some catchy pop ditties (“Sara Smile,” “Rich Girl”). None of that prepared me for musicians who played as tight and professional a set as you could get, effortlessly traversing genres: rock, soul, pop, folk, even some touches of jazz.

BergenPAC is a great venue, but nothing could compare to the arena of my memory more than 35 years ago, Manhattan’s great expanse of green in midsummer twilight, when we were all so young and there was nothing in the world like the sweet heartache of “She’s Gone” for those of us sitting in the stands in Central Park’s Schaefer Music Festival.

Well, maybe one thing might compare. Some time ago, a close relative asked if I had prepared a bucket list. Despite my advancing age and growing (though still minor) aches and pains, I was not at that point. But now, I think I have one item that might make that list: An invitation to a session of Mr. Hall’s terrific Web series, Live From Daryl’s House.

The premise of the show, which began in 2007 and will run for at least another season, couldn’t be simpler: Daryl jams with his friends! Only that doesn’t begin to explain the sheer charm of the whole thing. There’s the visiting musician coming up to Daryl’s place in rural upstate New York; sitting around, cracking jokes while they chow down (the food alone looks To Die For!); and then those songs. 

The visitor and Daryl’s band play Daryl’s songs; then Daryl returns the favor; then they pick songs by other artists that are special to them. I doubt that you’d get any two listeners to agree on a common list of their favorite duets from the series, but for what it’s worth, mine are Todd Rundgren and Daryl covering the great ‘60s hit, “Expressway To Your Heart”; Matchbox 20’s Rob Thomas teaming with Daryl on “I Heard It Through the Grapevine”; and a version of Hall and Oates’ “Kiss on My List” with KT Tunstall describable in one phrase: c'est magnifique.

Now, how might I wangle an invitation to such wondrous proceedings? I might have to resort to a slight bit of blarney, mind you. I could say that, because of my Irish heritage, I'm more than a bit acquainted with the bodhran, the great Irish drum. 

Even though, truth be told, I've never laid a hand on the instrument, I figure that, if Daryl and his house band were innocent enough to accept my explanation (an admitted stretch), I could pound along until I get a fascimile of the rhythm. By the time Daryl suspected the subterfuge, he might be blissed out enough to let me sit in the room as he picked up his guitar, sort of like a captain letting a stowaway on board, and tell me that he knew a really good lawyer who could help me retrieve any money I had wasted on learning the instrument. 

(Photo of Daryl Hall and John Oates from October 1, 2008, by Gary Harris.)