Daryl Hall and John Oates have known each other since 1967 and performed together as Hall & Oates for over 50 years. While they’ve each had solo projects, they’ve never officially split up as a band. As Hall & Oates, they jointly released 18 studio albums and toured together as recently as last year. All in all they’ve been a low-key music duo just turning out the hits with no drama. But that was all a LIE!! No, I’m exaggerating. Due to the filings being sealed, we don’t know much about what’s going on between Daryl Hall and John Oates the men — other than the attention-grabbing headline we got over Thanksgiving weekend that Hall was suing Oates and even got a restraining order. Très mystérieux.
Hall & Oates are embroiled in a confidential legal battle that has led to Daryl Hall getting a restraining order against his former music partner John Oates.
Little information about the lawsuit is publicly available, as the court documents are sealed, but based on court records, Hall filed an undisclosed complaint against Oates on Nov. 16, as well as a motion for a temporary restraining order, as reported by Philadelphia magazine. The following day, the court officially issued a temporary restraining order to begin Nov. 30.
The Nashville Chancery Court confirmed the existence of the lawsuit to Variety, but declined further comment because the lawsuit is sealed.
On Nov. 23, Hall played a concert full of Hall & Oates classics in Tokyo.
As TMZ points out, Hall disparaged Oates on Bill Maher’s “Club Random” podcast last year, saying, “You think John Oates is my parenter? … He’s my business partner. He’s not my creative partner.”
He went on, “John and I are brothers, but we are not creative brothers. We are business partners. We made records called Hall & Oates together, but we’ve always been very separate, and that’s a really important thing for me.”
Hall then went on to diminish the collaborative aspect of Hall & Oates, using the duo’s 1980 No. 1 hit “Kiss on My List” as an example of their apparent creative separation. “I did all those [harmonies],” Hall said. “That’s all me.” Oates is not credited as a songwriter on “Kiss on My List,” but is listed as a co-producer with Hall.
[From Yahoo! Entertainment]
First of all, major props to the aforementioned Philadelphia magazine for their perfect headline Hall Is Suing Oates, and We Can’t Go For That. Secondly, I’m not saying Bill Maher caused Daryl Hall to trash talk John Oates on the podcast, but I’m also totally not surprised that that kind of negativity found a breeding ground in a Bill Maher environment. Finally, yipes! What is going on here? TMZ goes further in their reporting (and yes, they did an “I Can’t Go For That” headline too, but their publishing date was two days after Philadelphia magazine). TMZ claims that Hall is suing over breach of contract, likely due to a royalties dispute and/or Oates singing certain songs in solo acts. My question then is, why would any of those issues require a restraining order?
This just in! Variety is now reporting that a Tennessee judge unsealed some of the court documents which reveals that Hall is suing to stop Oates from selling his share in their joint venture to Primary Wave Music. Ah, another major catalog sale at play. Still wonder about the restraining order, though.
Photos credit: i-Images, PacificCoastNews / Avalon, Retna/Photoshot via Avalon, Rob Cable / Avalon, Mike Gray / Avalon
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