A COUPLA WHITE GUYS SITTIN’ AROUND TALKING

“Now remember,” the harried veteran publicist briefs me as I perch on the jump seat of the chauffeur-driven limousine cruising groovily over the 59th Street Bridge into Queens. “They don’t like to be called Hall & Oates. It’s Daryl Hall and John Oates.” She hands the advance cassette of the duo’s new album, Big Bam Boom, to the driver, who slips it into the deck. The synthetically treated tribal percussion sound booms out of the car speakers, an impressive electronic intro to the unmistakable Daryl Hall croon.

Suddenly, the sensurround serenity is abruptly shattered. “Let me see that tape,” snaps my companion on this trip to observe, unh, Daryl Hall and John Oates shoot the obligatory video to the obligatory Top Ten first singjp“Out Of Touch,” from their new LP.IHs just this song that has been interrupted by my hostess, eaggpo make sure the duo’s full name is inscribed on the cassette case. She inks in “D-A-R-Y-L” and “J-O-H-N” ^BP&bove “Hall & Oates.” It is just this paranoia about image which has always undermined the duo’s Philly roots in sweet soul music and dance-oriented R&B.

Since 1980’s self-produced, multi-hit Voices, though, Daryl Hall and John Oates have parlayed their stylistic versatility into a nonstop series of chart

smashes. But pop success has never been an end in itself for the pair, especially Daryl Hall, who craves the kind of hip credibility his solo elpee collaboration with Rolpprt Fripp, Sacred Songs, brought him just before the breakthrough of Voices. I like Darvl and John as people, but it’s about as cool to admire them as rockers as it is to do one of those coffee achiever commercials. I mean, what difference does it make if they’re known as Hall & Oates anyway?

“It makes us sound like a law firm,” mock-complains Daryl Hall.

“Or a cereal,” offers John without missing a beat.

Broadway Studios is tucked away between a beauty parlor and a sushi bar in a quiet middle-class Astoria, Queens neighborhood. A roadie leads us through a small waiting room into a huge set dominated by a 10-foot drum kit, a big billboard with fashion stills of Daryl and John and a giant pyramid of stacked letters spelling out “BIG BAM BOOM.” The crew is shooting a segment with the rest of the band; guitarist G.E. Smith, drummer Mickey Curry, saxophone player Charlie De Chant and bassist “T. Bone” Wolk, prance around the towering drum set, their teased pompadours prompting jibes about joining the Alarm. A Louma crane swoops in and out as the hip-hop strains of “Out Of Touch” bounce around the studio. The cameraman spins his rack focus and stomps around like a demented heavy metal guitarist. Music video sure has enabled film crews to pretend they’re in rock ’n’ roll bands, I muse as the band’s road*manager ushers me into a dressing room for a chat with the boys. “Do you write those photo captions?,”

John Oates asks menacingly. Sure is comforting to know rock stars read CREEM cover to cover, ain’t it?

The two have just come from a dress rehearsal for the following night’s MTV I Video Awards and Daryl is complaining I about one of his lines. “I told the guy, ‘...and he’s the one with the mustache,’

I just won’t work.” The band’s manager,

Tommy Mottola, is huddling with video director Jeff Stein. “Can you finish in three hours? Because that’s as long as you can have ’em.” Stein agrees, then rolls his eyes heavenward.

Daryl considers making a video a necessary evil, admitting he and John have not yet found a director they feel completely comfortable with. He compares their difficulty in discovering the right director with the duo’s early problems in settling on a sympathetic record producer.

“As soon as you work with somebody else, you get your ideas filtered through another person’s perceptions,” says Daryl.

John draws an analogy between video’s infancy and pre-British Invasion American pop music, when producers “took guys like Fabian off the street corner, told them how to comb their hair and dress, gave them songs to sing and promised to make them stars.”

Oates insists, “That’s where videos are right now. There are a lot of visually ignorant musical artists putting themselves in the hands of directors and make them into the stars of their own movies. And there are more and more directors and producers willing to do that.”

“We’re still shopping around for the right person,” adds Daryl. “Right now, we’re definitely part of a machine. We’re looking for a director we can have a rapport with. What we’re really aiming for is to have our ideas go directly from our brains through the records and onto the screen. I have a feeling that eventually we’ll wind up doing it ourselves, but we’re not good enough yet. We don’t know enough about video, but every time we do one, we learn. Especially what not to do.”

In a like manner, working with a wide range of strong-willed producers such as Arif Mardin and Todd Rundgren in the ’70s, Daryl and John tried on a series of musical suits, from the folk-rock of Whole Oates, their debut, through the hard edge of War Babies and the pop/soul of the self-titled RCA LP which produced the hit single, “Sara Smile.” The end result was a versatility that left their following splintered and confused as to the duo’s musical identity.

TURN TO PAGE 58

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 24

“We had to see what we were,” confesses Daryl. “We were finding ourselves. Nowadays, people have to do that outside of their records. You’re not allowed to experiment on an album. When we started out, we had that luxury. We made our mistakes in public, on record. We were in a learning process through the '70s, which were really not a very conducive time to do the kind of music we wanted to make.”

Ironically, with the massive success of Voices and it’s three successors—Private Eyes, H20 and last year’s Rock And Soul, Part 7—Daryl and John have found themselves in a familiar position: dismissed by critics as lightweight, taken for granted by a public which sees them as the sum of their pop hits. The new album draws heavily on the influence of co-producer Arthur Baker and the rap sound of the NYC streets.

“We’re doing what we always wanted to do,” boasts Daryl. “And more of it. This record is more upfront. It’s got soul, energy. We’re playing around with our own history and what’s going on around us.”

“We’ve delineated what it is we do,” echoes John. “Because we have a lot of people listening to us, it’s our duty to stretch ourselves musically and take our audience along with us.”

Daryl casually dismisses any talk of the pressure to continue coming up with chart-toppers.

“I’ve got enough money. I don’t care anymore about anything except making great music. I never have, really. Our only pressure is self-induced and whether we can improve on what we’ve done already. Take it someplace else. That’s all. Am I right, John?”

“Yes, of course, Daryl. You’re always right,” chimes in Oates. “The success of this record is that we have expanded, but, at the same time, it’s a super-accessible album. People completely embrace what’s going on the first time they hear it. None of this, ‘Let me listen to it a couple more times to figure out what’s going on.’ Though it can withstand repeated listenings, too.”

“Which is what I think all good music should do,” offers Daryl. “I don’t believe in obscurity for its own sake. That’s something people hide behind.” This from the guy whose own solo effort remained locked away in record company vaults for years, deemed too inaccessible.

“It was necessary for me to do that at the time,” says Daryl, defending himself. “John and I needed to take a breather from one another.”

As the group’s ever-vigilant road manager stands at the stage door tapping his foot and eyeing his watch, I am aware of the enormous demands on rock stars’ time. Daryl agrees the tour-record-tour grind is getting to him and the pair may soon take anther break from the business of H&O to concentrate on individual careers.

“It’s a challenge to keep yourself fresh,” suggests John.

“It’s not as simple as John being the rhythmic one or me being the melodic one. Or John being the one with the mustache,” offers Daryl pointedly. “I don’t think either one of us has a distinct identity in that way, The music is what we have in common, but our personalities and the way we perceive what’s going on around us is what’s different. And that’s where we’re opposites, but it’s also how we complement one another.”

For all their seamless amalgam of today’s hippest pop/soul trends on Big Bam Boom, Daryl Hall and John Oates still don’t appear to have a real message beyond their deft stylistic borrowings. There’s a nagging feeling that, contra Daryl’s pained assertion, they are merely pop musicians. I wonder why Daryl didn’t communicate the confessional quality in his collaborations with John that he had on his solo work.

“I think, if you listen to the lyrics on this new album, you’ll hear a change,” he insists. “I wrote the words quickly, with more complete ideas and thoughts.”

“I believe we address some issues more directly,” adds John. “Pop lyrics can seem to be superficial or broad, but at the same time, really say something, too. That’s the challenge. To communicate a specific idea while keeping it general enough so people can take it on any level they want. Like how people heard ‘Kiss On My Lips’ instead of ‘Kiss On My List’ because they didn’t listen carefully. Or the girl in the front row, wearing a t-shirt that says, ‘I’m a maneater...’ ”

“Meanwhile, we’re saying, that’s too bad,” laughs Daryl. “It should be up to the audience to interpret it any way they want. And, if they like it, good. If they don’t, that’s their problem.”

Daryl Hall and John Oates (there, I said it) haven’t created too many problems for listeners in that regard. Any more serious inquiries as to what these two are really like is deferred to their upcoming Nick Toschespenned biography, Dangerous Dances.

“We were forced to deal with our image by tapping our most personal memories to explain our motivations,” says Daryl about the tome. “We used everything from family scrapbooks to private diaries. It’s our story and how it pertains to what we do.”

“It exhibits a side of us you can’t put on vinyl,” remarks John.

And what did they conclude was their place in rock history?

“Let’s put it this way,” says John. “The World Book Encyclopedia places us under the heading, ‘Black Music.’ ”

And, despite their squeaky-clean image and modern pop machinations, Daryl Hall and John Oates have remained loyal to their background as Philly street-corner doo-woppers. Blueeyed? Most definitely. But soulful, too. They call them Mister Daryl Hall and Mister John Oates. Not a law firm nor a cereal, but the most successful pop duo ever. You can take it to the bank. They have.