Before they ever went one on one as Hall & Oates, John Oates played his first show with his longtime partner Daryl Hall in New York City.
After meeting as students at Temple University in Philadelphia in 1967, the blue-eyed soul brothers behind such classics as “Rich Girl,” “Kiss on My List” and “Out of Touch” made their debut in the middle of Greenwich Village’s fertile folk scene in the late ’60s.
“[Daryl] had a doo wop group called the Temptones,” Oates, 76, told The Post outside the site of the former Gaslight Cafe where the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame duo first played together in public — five-plus decades before their shocking breakup last fall.
“They were a vocal group, and they needed a backing band. They had a backing band, and they lost their guitar player,” he recalled. “And Daryl basically asked me to play guitar as a backup guitarist for the vocal group, and they were trying to get a record contract.”
So Oates drove from Philadelphia to support the man who would turn out to be his rock-and-soulmate for over 50 years.
“We came to New York and first thing I did was go to 48th Street, where the music stores were,” said Oates. “I bought a new guitar for the occasion, came down here and played backup guitar for them.”
Although the Temptones didn’t get a record deal that night, there was another kind of momentous occasion.
“What did work out was the Temptations were playing at the Apollo Theater, and Daryl was friends with those guys and said, ‘Let’s go to the Apollo,’ ” Oates told The Post. “And so we went to the Apollo, went backstage, hung out with the Temptations, sat in the front row.”
Oates — whose new solo album, the folk-flavored “Reunion,” was released last week — will forever be bonded with Hall from that night, which came full circle at the height of the duo’s career in the mid-’80s.
“Flash forward to 1985 or ’86 when Daryl and I played the Apollo, and we had Eddie Kendricks and David Ruffin, who were the principal singers of the Temptations … onstage with us,” he said. “And it was pretty amazing.”
And although the duo split up last fall — after Hall got a restraining order to block his longtime partner from selling his share of their Whole Oats Enterprises to music-publishing company Primary Wave — this new chapter is returning Oates to his roots in folk music.
In fact, he’ll be headlining the Philadelphia Folk Festival in August — 57 years after he met Hall when they were both students at Temple.
“When I first went to Philadelphia as a freshman in college, I was looking for a part-time job,” Oates recalled. “And I applied at this place called the Philadelphia Folksong Society, and the gal who was running the school — her and her husband started the Philadelphia Folk Festival.
“And she hired me, and she told me I could teach the beginners [on guitar] … And interestingly enough, this August I’ll be headlining the Philadelphia Folk Festival.”
Finding himself on his own now — that has been over five decades in the making.
“I started that way,” he said, “and I guess I’m ending up that way too.”
For more, watch Oates’ exclusive interview with The Post above.
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