Stuart BergDaryl Hall & John Oates are currently in the middle of a tour which features the duo playing their many hits and then some. But one thing you won’t hear from the duo is new music…because they don’t have any. What’s more, they have no plans to make any. At least, for now.
“We haven’t written together in quite some time,” Oates tell the Allentown Morning Call — but notes that they’ll never say never.
“If Daryl and I found the right collaborator, or if one of us wrote a song that we thought was really going to be appropriate for us, we might do it,” he says. “I’m not saying we wouldn’t.”
In fact, last year, the duo teamed up with the band Train to write and record a new song, “Philly Forget Me Not,” so the two acts could perform it together on tour. But Oates says in general, it’s all he and Hall can do to fit their old hits into each concert.
“We have such a huge catalog of music…and we don’t really get a chance to play a lot of it,” Oates tells the paper. “There [are] many, many songs that we’ve actually never played live because we have so many hits. And the…emphasis on the hits over the years, has outweighed everything else we’ve done.”
“Which is a shame in a way, but also an amazingly good problem to have,” he adds. “I mean, we have this incredible legacy of music that we created together, and in a sense, every show that we do, for me, is a celebration of a lifetime’s worth or work. And that’s how I look at it.”
The duo plays Atlantic City, New Jersey tonight; the tour’s set to wrap up September 28 in Thackerville, Oklahoma.
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