Oates Sues Hall & Oates
John Oates, the shorter and hairier of the standard-bearing duo of the problematically-named “blue-eyed soul” style of culturally appropriated pop/schlock/rock/R&B music, Hall & Oates, has sued Hall & Oates for firing him from the band after his antipode in the dyad, Daryl Hall, entered the stage at the band’s most recent gig, at the Pavillion Center in Orlando, to the opening refrain of Private Eyes, rather than Oates’s preferred entry anthem, How Does It Feel to Be Back, which allegedly led to Mr. Oates directing at Mr. Hall a “double guns”-mode flip off (i.e., pumping the middle fingers of both hands up and down in an exaggerated manner at the intended target of the metacarpal insult) and rolling his eyes while Mr. Hall greeted the crowd with a lengthy anecdote about a soggy bagel that he and Mr. Oates had had a disagreement about at the venue’s craft services table moments before.
The lawsuit comes on the heels of a strikingly similar one by Lindsay Buckingham against Fleetwood Mac.
The lawsuit demonstrates ongoing problems within the Philadelphia-originated soft-rock doublet, which reunited only three months ago twelve years after the brace’s 2006 breakup, their third, and is, in fact, not the first lawsuit by and against the band by and against the two men who comprise it.
Beginning with the band’s initial disrelation, the bad blood and barratry between its only two members has consistently boiled over to the bar. The dissolution of the band began after Hall & Oates (by and through Daryl Hall) sued Oates for failing to show up for a show in Wilmington, Delaware. Oates claimed he was ill; Hall claimed he was an asshole. Oates countersued the band (and Hall personally) for defamation. Depositions in the lawsuit revealed allegations that Hall had secretly hired an unidentified professional set musician (i.e., a “hired gun”) to replace Oates on guitar and that Oates had plotted to replace Hall with Chapchai “Daryl” Aphibarnrat, a Thai soundalike, or, failing that, to have Hall killed.
The lawsuit was settled in 2007, pursuant to which Hall and Oates agreed to tour separately, Hall with Daryl Hall’s Hall & Oates, and Oates with The Hall & Oates Experience featuring the Incomparable John Oates. Ticket sales for both of the new Hall & Oates alternative lineups were disappointing and both Hall and Oates faced difficulty financing their theretofore lavish lifestyles.
Yet the two continued on separately out of spite (and because Oates allegedly slept with Sara Hall [the inspiration for that condescending patriarchal microaggression in lyrical form, Sara Smile] and Hall was alleged to have publicly poured a beer on Oates’s stool at the Woody Creek Tavern, the landmark bar in Oates’s hometown of Woody Creek, Colorado).
When their yacht and alimony payments finally forced Hall and Oates to reunite as Hall & Oates, the antagonism between them only continued, with a 2013 show in Auburn Hills, Michigan famously ending mid-set with an argument between the two men over the levels of the on-stage monitors that quickly degenerated into an Oasis-level barrage of deeply personal insults and profanity so severe that it left many of the concert-goers speechless, in tears, and covering the ears of their adult children.
Yet, bound together with golden handcuffs, the pair soldiered on in silence, always arriving to concerts in separate helicopters and often leaving the stage only after encores consisting of them throwing plastic water bottles at each other while the supporting musicians lamely played on.
Recently, fans also could not fail to notice that their constant feuding had taken a toll on Hall’s and Oates’s mental health and physical appearance, with both men becoming increasingly paunchy, sudoric, and obviously abusive of a variety of designer drugs.
Thus, the latest of the band’s internecine legal battles should come as no surprise to “H&O Nation,” who have grown despondent and elderly as they have waited for Hall & Oates to reclaim the ineffability and F-ability of their early-’80s heyday.
