Just Go For It_ (Baker, 1974) — _It's Not Over Until It's Over_ (Baker, 1975) — _Keep Laughing_ (Baker, 1976) — _Staying Power_ (Doubleday, 1977) — _Live It Up!_ (Doubleday, 1978) — _The Best of Joe Bataan_ (MCA, 1986) _— Live at the Troubadour_ (DMC, 1983) — _Live at the Bottom Line_ (DMC, 1983) — _The Last Live Show_ (DMC, 1984) — _Live at the Coconut Teaser_ (DMC, 1987) — _Bataan Live_ (Razor & Tie, 1998) — _A Great Day in the Morning_ (DMC, 2002) — _Laughter on the 23rd Floor_ (DMC, 2003) — _Don't Stop The Music!_ (DMC, 2004) — _The Lost Show_ (DMC, 2005) — _Don't Give Up_ (DMC, 2006) — _Rio_ (DMC, 2006) — _Live at Daryl's House_ (DMC, 2007) — _Greatest Hits_ (DMC, 2007) — _Daryl Hall_ (Shout! Factory, 2008) — _Live from Daryl's House_ (DMC, 2008) — _Live from Boston_ (DMC, 2008) — _Best of Live_ (DMC, 2008) — _My Stories: Daryl Hall_ (DMC, 2009) — _Daryl Hall and John Oates Live_ (DMC, 2009) — _Live: A Little Loose in Waco_ (DMC, 2009) — _Live In Japan_ (DMC, 2009) — _Live From Daryl's House: The Collection_ (DMC, 2010) — _The Daryl Hall and John Oates Show_ (DMC, 2010) — _Live From Daryl's House: The Christmas Collection_ (DMC, 2011) — _Daryl's Acoustic Live_ (DMC, 2012) — _Live From Daryl's House_ (DMC, 2012) — _Live From Boston_ (DMC, 2012) — _Music: Greatest Hits_ (Shout! Factory, 2013) # ACKNOWLEDGMENTS At a time when many journalists have been laid off or laid off and furloughed, I was fortunate to spend the last seven years of my employment with _Entertainment Weekly_ at home in Florida, caring for my mother, who was battling a degenerative neurological disease. Without the continued and generous support of my boss, _EW_ publisher/CEO and senior vice president Bob Sillerman, I couldn't have done this. My gratitude also goes to _EW_ editor in chief Adam Stotsky and _EW_ executive editor Mark Golin for letting me devote time to this project. My editors in this book were all great guys. David Browne and Jason Fine were wonderful to work with. And a special thanks to John Darnton, who gave me my first shot. My agent, Bob Myman, was unflinching when it came to encouraging me to work on this book and believed in me more than I could ever believe in myself. To my assistant, Lisa Kuhlmann, thank you for putting up with my never-ending and incessant questions. To my writing family—my wife, Lisa, and our kids, Lauren, Sarah, and Nicholas—thank you for not giving me a hard time about spending so much time on this book, allowing me to disappear, but always keeping me connected and centered. To my mom, Judy, thank you for being the person who taught me to sing. —DAVID STOTTSKY # NOTES One afternoon I drove to Daryl Hall's farm in the foothills of New Hampshire. I was about to meet one of the most revered singers of my generation, a musician who had spent more than fifty years in the business and had a lot of stories to tell. And Hall, with his long silver hair and mustache, was as cool as he looked. He had that classic country accent, but a voice that was smoother and more polished than most country singers'. He was known as a songwriter, but I came away fascinated by how a gifted musician works his way into the ears of the world's greatest singers. And as far as I could tell, Hall and John Oates were two of the biggest rock stars of the seventies, before they formed a band that would take them into arenas across the globe. That afternoon Hall was wearing a pair of overalls that fit him perfectly. He was making something in the kitchen, and he made me tea. He made a great pot of tea and then asked about my kids. He was genuinely curious about them, and I gave him his first look at little Nicholas. I started to tell him that Nicholas was named after him, but Hall quickly interrupted me. "I'm sorry," he said. "I don't have time for anything but work right now." Hall has three children—Nicholas, sixteen, Sarah, fourteen, and nine-year-old Lauren—with his wife, Annette, whom he has been with since they were teenagers. But I had to tell him the news. "I was named for my dad," I said. Hall leaned against the wall and looked at me. "That's an interesting coincidence," he said. I told him that I had never thought about that until he had mentioned his name to me. Hall looked at me, clearly curious about my heritage, and for a moment I felt a little self-conscious about sharing my father's heritage. But it was my dad's love of music that got me here, I wanted to tell Hall. "A lot of people come up to me and ask if I know Bob Dylan or Aretha Franklin," Hall said, trying to keep the conversation light. Hall's father, a musician from England who was often called "Bobby," taught him how to sing. "My father was very particular about where he would sing," Hall said, "and I wanted to follow in his footsteps." He also admired the way that his father sang. "He would sing a line and then he would add something extra to it," Hall said. "That's the kind of songwriting I wanted to do." Hall started singing as a little boy, but the first time he stepped onstage he was seventeen. His father's death, when Hall was just nine, was traumatic for him. "The music that helped him get through it," Hall told me, "helped me get through it, too. The music that I would play on my dad's piano helped me through a difficult time in my life." Hall got his first professional job singing in a band called the Honeys. He was twenty-one and singing with a group that included a fourteen-year-old bass player named Chris Clark. He played small clubs and got good gigs. It wasn't until Hall was twenty-eight that he made a serious mark in the music business. He was in a new band that made its debut on the night of April 10, 1969. They played "My Boyfriend's Back," a single Hall had written and recorded with a group called the Honeys, which had a number-four hit on the _Billboard_ charts and cracked the top twenty on the _Billboard_ R&B chart. The song was written by Hall with a then unknown songwriter named Bruce Johnston, who was now known as one of the most prolific songwriters of the seventies. "The '70s were a crazy time," Hall told me. "I spent all my time writing songs, just pouring them out like they were on fire." Hall had written more than two hundred songs in his career, and to my surprise he didn't have an album of his songs. "I had a collection, but I didn't know what to do with them," he said. "Now I'm glad I got those songs out of the way. I needed time to prepare myself for the future. Now I'm ready to go." Over the next several decades Hall would do almost every type of music. He did a duet with Cher. He sang pop songs with Frank Sinatra, and he sang a concerto with Harry Connick Jr. But what he was most excited about was singing what he called "the real thing." "I never thought about doing that sort of singing until this album came along," Hall said. "It has just been a joy to me. I feel like I'm taking my life and turning it into a movie every time I go out onstage." It was clear that he loves the stage. He's almost always performing somewhere in the world, doing everything from concerts to appearances on talk shows to recording his radio show in between. He played a concert on the first night of my recent trip to New York City. He sat at a keyboard onstage playing and singing, and I noticed the soundman onstage had headphones on. Hall had his