John Oates on 50 Years With Daryl Hall, “You Make My Dreams,” and the Problem With Having Too Many Hits

John Oates met Daryl Hall in 1967, and the two Philadelphia singer/songwriters released their first album together in 1972, eventually becoming the most successful duo in American pop history. They topped the Hot 100 half a dozen times and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014. And in some ways their slick rock and soul sound is cooler now than when they were ubiquitous MTV hitmakers, sampled by rappers like 2 Chainz, name-checked as an influence by indie rockers, and constantly popping up in movies and television.

Hall and Oates announced a U.S. tour with Squeeze in 2020 that, like every other tour in 2020, was postponed amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. But both bands were able to reassemble and kick off the rescheduled tour on Thursday in Mansfield, Massachusetts. The morning before their tour resumed, John Oates called GQ to discuss how he spent his year at home, returning to the road, and how “You Make My Dreams” unexpectedly turned into a pop culture staple that became their first song to hit a billion streams last year.

GQ: So tonight is your first performance since when?

John Oates: February 28, 2020. I was at Madison Square Garden and that was going to be the beginning of a very successful 2020, and then that was the end. (laughs)

What have you guys been doing with yourselves in the past year?

Well, I can’t speak for Daryl but I know what I’ve been doing. Frankly it took quite a while for me to come to grips with the fact that I wouldn’t be traveling, because at first we didn’t know what this was really going to mean. It was the first time in my professional life that I hadn’t traveled, honestly. So I stayed home, embraced the fact that my wife and I could really enjoy being together, and I began to do things virtually.

I began to write and collaborate with people all around the world. And some projects started coming my way that, had I been on tour, would not have happened. There was a movie project—I got to do five songs for an indie film [still untitled] from E.J. Forrester, a friend of mine from Colorado. I collaborated with a guy named Jack Savoretti in London who has a very successful album that just came out. My wife found a young undiscovered artist named Sirlan Campbell on Instagram and he and I began to work together and do a few things, and we’re going to release a single . And then my wife and I put on a virtual song festival that we streamed online for the benefit of Feeding America, and we generated 450,000 meals for hungry American families, which has been kind of a personal passion of ours, to help in that arena.

You guys have this catalog that just keeps coming back in different forms. When people request to use your songs for samples or for movies, are you active in that or do you just let people do what they want with them?

We’re very proactive with it, we have an entire licensing team with BMG and Sony Legacy. They’re constantly working our catalog. And so what they do is they inform us of requests for various things like samples and/or licensing opportunities, whether it’s movies, commercials, TVs, whatever it might be. And then we approve or do not approve.

What does it take to not approve something?

Something’s crappy or objectionable in some way, or just not appropriate for who we are and the kind of image that we want to project, that sort of thing.

It was cool to see “You Make My Dreams” hit a billion streams last year. I grew up not hearing that song a lot, I didn’t think it was considered one of your biggest songs, and at some point it just became huge.

I know, it’s crazy, it’s taken on a whole new life. That song, I believe it went into the top five but it was not a number one record. It got overshadowed by the big number ones, and it wasn’t even released as a single in the UK or Europe, so it was virtually unknown really outside of the US.

At what point did you notice something happening with that song? I know Wedding Singer was one of the first movies to use it, but then about 10 years later it started to pop up everywhere.

It was a combination of things. When I saw how they used it in 500 Days of Summer, I thought it was really one of the best integrated usages of a song in a film, because it seemed to symbolize the feeling that he was having at the time, and the way they did it with the cartoon birds and the kind of joyful euphoria of falling in love. There was something about the magic of what they did in the film and how the music really enhanced what the film was doing and vice versa.

I had kind of an experience in the theater, I knew the song was in the movie but I didn’t know how it was being used. So my wife and son, we were in L.A. and had an afternoon off and went to a matinee. We were the only ones in there except for a few teenage girls. And when that song came on and that scene happened, the girls started clapping. And I thought, that’s weird, I’ve never heard people clapping in a movie theater. So I knew that it was connecting in some way. And that was only the beginning.

I love your early stuff, so I enjoyed hearing “When the Morning Comes” in Palm Springs last year.

Yeah, I love the ‘70s era too, which is overshadowed by the big hits of the ‘80s. But the ‘70s were my sweet spot, because everything was new, we weren’t these kings of pop, so to speak, of the ‘80s decade. Every city we went to was a new experience, developing our band, developing our show, developing our writing, everything was in the process of becoming. And to be honest with you, I find that the story of creating something is much more interesting than taking a victory lap.

Abandoned Luncheonette is such a cool, unique album. I saw that it took about 30 years to go platinum, so that’s another record that took time to really get its due.

I just got a platinum album for that a few years ago, it’s crazy. And of course “She’s Gone” was really the big hit off that album, that’s the song that put us on the map. Without that, who knows what would have happened?

The Bernard Purdie drums on “She’s Gone” and a few other tracks on that album are amazing.

Are you kidding me? That was one of the highlights of my life to play with those session musicians on that Abandoned Luncheonette session, and especially Bernard Purdie. He was always a favorite even back then to me. And so the fact that we had Arif Mardin producing us, he could surround us with these incredible New York session players, Joe Farrell, Bernard Purdie, Gordon Edwards, Ralph McDonald on percussion, Hugh McCracken played some guitar.

One thing the great drummers seem to have, they have this unspoken command of the groove. When you play with a great drummer, your life becomes easy, everything floats on this confident unshakable groove, and it really changes everything, it makes you a better player, it frees you up to do other things, because there’s this heartbeat that just won’t quit. And that’s what he would bring. One thing I noticed, during that session, is when he would count off a song, it was always right. It was always exactly where it should have been. Sometimes you play with a drummer and they count off something, “Eh, let’s do it a little quicker, that feels like it’s dragging.” Not with him, he counted it off and it just settled into this perfect tempo.

You wrote and sang lead a bit more on the ‘70s albums. Were you at a certain point ceding the spotlight to Daryl? What is songwriting collaboration like for you guys?

The songwriting collaboration was that there were no rules. We’d write a song separately, we’d write a song partially, we’d operate almost as editors of each other, or have a true collaboration, and everything in between. What I think happened, obviously Daryl’s voice is so outstanding, and his voice really cut through the radio way better than mine. I’m a good singer, I’m not a great singer, but when you’re standing next to Daryl, he’s a great singer. So naturally radio kind of gravitated to his voice, and his voice became the signature of the sound.

What goes into making a setlist for you guys?

Here’s the thing, y’know, we’re victims of our own success. And I don’t mean that in any negative way at all. We have this incredibly great issue, and the issue is that our hits are evergreen and they stand the test of time, and everyone comes to hear them. I personally feel like I have a professional responsibility to play songs that people expect to hear when they pay good money and make an effort to come and hear and see us. But that being said, it doesn’t leave a lot of room to tap the vast and I think musically interesting catalog that we have.

Yeah, a band that has three or four hits can pepper those in and do whatever they want the rest of the show, where you guys have so many songs that people want to hear every night.

We have a set full of hits, there’s no doubt about it. But y’know, listen, go see Elton John, same thing, go see Paul McCartney, same thing’s going to happen. It’s a blessing, c’mon, if every artist could have their dream set, that’s what they would have. We’re fortunate to be able to do that. And what we do is we rotate various kind of album-esque tracks into the set, and it’s fun for us, because we change that up a lot. We put “Is It A Star” in the set, which is a pretty obscure song from the War Babies album. But it’s a cool chance for me to play a little bit more blues guitar, it’s kind of in a different groove from most of our other material. And then we’re thinking about playing a song like “Back Together Again,” which was a semi-hit, went into the top 20, but it’s got a great feel. A lot of times we’ll look for a spot in the set where we feel we need something. And so then we can go to this catalog of 300 songs and find something.

Being a duo for 50 years can’t be easy. I’m sure there’s ups and downs.

Y’know, way more ups than downs, to be honest with you. It’s actually a miracle, I’m actually shocked that we are able to still play together and it’s great. It’s something that you have to really appreciate, because like you said, it’s not easy.

Do you get recognized less when you shave off the mustache?

Well, I didn’t have a mustache for quite a while in the ‘90s, then I have a mustache again with a goatee, I have a modern version. I definitely don’t have the ‘70s macho ‘stache, that’s gone.