John Oates and Daryl Hall are in a bitter legal battle. And for Hall & Oates fans hoping for the two to reunite, Oates has some bad news.
Speaking with The Rolling Stone, Oates talked his new solo album while also shutting down reuniting with Hall. Oates says he really has no interest in performing any of his classic songs either. He wants to move forward and focus on new material.
He said, "I understand why people come and want to hear the big hits. Those songs are going to live forever. But I wanted to relegate them to the classic file that they're in. And I wanted them to be heard in the best possible light, the way they were when the spark was on fire in the '70s and '80. That's when those songs really resonated. To keep playing them, for me, was no longer interesting. I just wanted to do something else."
The duo haven't performed together since 2022. In 2023, Hall put a restraining order against Oates. The two are in a legal tug of war over their songs' rights. Oates wants to sell his shares, but Hall has objected to the transaction. He has called Oates' attempts "a betrayal."
Hall said, "I believe that John Oates timed the unauthorized transaction to create the most harm to me." Oates believes ultimately, they will work things out legally. He said, "There was some things about the business that we disagreed with, which happens all the time in business. And we're going to work it out."
John Oates Casts Doubt On Future
However, he isn't interested in ever playing with Hall again.
He said, "As far as I'm concerned, I've moved on. I feel like I have a new lease on my creative life... A good friend of mine said something to me when this was all starting. He said, 'John, you were a musician before you met Daryl, and you're still a musician. You're an individual.' And Daryl and I have always called ourselves Daryl Hall and John Oates, because we always wanted to be perceived as two individuals who work together. That was very important to us. If you look at the albums, you'll see that on every album. And so this is the ultimate expression of that."
But Oates would like to be friends with Hall again. He hopes that the two can reunite and mend the broken bridges between them.
He said, "We have a different strategy for our lives, and we have a different strategy for our business lives as well as our personal lives. And that's that, so be it. We're old guys. We deserve to be allowed to do whatever we want to do."
