Daryl and John at their Philadelphia Music Alliance Walk of Fame induction, 1993


Daryl's and John's prints on the Hollywood Rockwalk, inducted August 5, 2003

If you're the kind of person that takes those artificial distinctions about music seriously, you probably thought that Hall & Oates were too black for white radio and too white for black radio. Dante had a special place for people like you.

Joe and John Kohut, co-editors, Rock Talk: The Great Rock and Roll Quote Book




With John Oates at a meet-and-greet prior to a March 20, 2006 Warner Theatre show, Washington, DC.



With Daryl Hall, also at a meet-and-greet prior to a March 20, 2006 Warner Theatre show, Washington DC.



When I was in my early twenties, I went with a date to a nightclub in New York. Appearing there were two talented young musicians, Daryl Hall and John Oates. Although we would later know them as Hall and Oates, at that time they were known but not that well known, and their music had the fabulous impact of fresh beginnings and new sounds.

Something happened to me that night. I had been to many concerts before, but I had never experienced as I did then the transcendent way a musician can bring an entire room into a single heartbeat. I remember thinking, "They're priests; that's what they really are. They're priests." They weren't taking me on a magic carpet ride to music. Music was the magic carpet on which they were taking me somewhere else, that somewhere else the land and sky inside ourselves. It's the purpose of our lives to find that place and stay in it.

After that, I grew more in love with music and live performance but, most important, I became enthralled with the idea that a human being could create a space, through music or anything else, where peoples' hearts are harmonized and lifted up. I knew that was what music did, and literature and philosophy and all art. What fascinated me was not just the role of art but the role of the artist, not just philosophy but the role of the philosopher. What gave a person the magician's wand, that he or she could wield such awesome power and transport whole groups of people to an enchanted land?

And that's what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wanted to take people higher, the way artists did, and philosophers. I fell in love with the thought that a human life could be a priestly conduit, a connecting link between earth and sky.

Marianne Williamson A Woman's Worth (1993)


Inducted into Songwriter's Hall of Fame, June 10, 2004
The official Web site for Daryl Hall and John Oates
Web site for John Oates' 2002 solo project, Phunk Shui
Marc Lieberman's site (signup for Hall & Oates listserv)
jschmale's German site
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