Everyone, no matter their stature, can find themselves regretting a few things – and John Oates of Hall and Oates is no different. Only the thing he hates the most about his early career isn’t something perhaps more expected like those over-the-top MTV videos.
No, it’s Hall and Oates. The name.
“We have the worst name in rock and roll history,” John Oates tells Vanyaland‘s Michael Morotta. “Hall and Oates – it’s terrible.”
Over the decades of their lengthy partnership, Daryl Hall and John Oates took that name plenty of places, not least of which was to the top of the Billboard charts over and over and over again. There was Live Aid, the Apollo, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and, more recently, Dublin for the very first time in a concert-film triumph.
You’d think by now John Oates might have made peace with their moniker. He still hates it. “It only rolls off the tongue because you’ve heard it so many times,” Oates counters. “It’s a horrible name. Just be totally objective about it: It sounds like a law firm or a doctor’s office or something.”
To be fair, neither Hall or Oates ever wanted to be called “Hall and Oates” in the first place, and none of their albums list them as such. Their music, though few have ever noticed, has always been credited to Daryl Hall and John Oates.
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