USoterica....

– by Mike Mettler

* Power Of Philly Soul: Blue-eyed soul-popster Daryl Hall (63) is one half of the most successful charting duo in the U.S., Daryl Hall and John Oates. Celebrating the release of the 4-CD boxed set Do What You Want, Be What You Are: The Music of Daryl Hall and John Oates (RCA/Legacy), Hall got on the phone on 8 October 2010 to discuss where Jimi intersected his life.

UniVibes: I asked your partner John Oates this question (during a lunchtime interview in NYC on 29 October 2002; see the USoterica column in UniVibes issue #43, December 2002), so now it’s your turn: Where does Jimi Hendrix fit into your world?

Daryl Hall: Well, if you asked John, I’m sure he said, “Really high.” [chuckles] I remember Hendrix from when we were kids, but I was never really a guitar player myself. I mean, sure, I can play, but John has been a guitar player since he was five. He was just blown away by Jimi Hendrix. In some ways, he was influenced by him because John was always a Curtis Mayfield guy, and there’s a lot of Curtis Mayfield in Jimi Hendrix.

UV: Right, just on Electric Ladyland alone…
DH: Yeah, you really can hear that. So that really resonated with John. He was really a Jimi guy, and I was, of course, in awe of his sonic abilities.

UV: Any particular song of his stand out for you?
DH: Shit, man, any of the ones from that first album…[pauses] “Foxy Lady.” Do you even need any more than that? Just a groundbreaking collection of songs.

UV: Did his songwriting or playing style have any bearing on how you approach any of your own material?
DH: The freedom he had always interested me. I don’t know if he directly influenced me, but he’s a reference. He’s certainly somebody, over the years, whom I’ve thought of enough to where I’ve said in the studio, “Why don’t we try this Hendrixy kind of thing?” And let’s not forget I did a lot of my best work in Electric Lady Studios [such as 1982’s multiplatinum H2O]. You’d see him there looking on from the wall. [chuckles]

UV: So did you get to catch him live during your college days at Temple University in Philadelphia?
DH: I did, actually. I saw him at the Factory. [The Electric Factory, either on 21 or 22 February 1968.] It wasn’t one of his better nights, I’ll say that. He went on and on and on, I don’t know how the drugs were running that night. And Woody’s Truck Stop opened [which featured a young Todd Rundgren, a longtime friend/associate of Hall’s, on guitar].

UV: Have you ever sung any Hendrix material yourself?
DH: Me? No. John did some strange version of “Have You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland)” on one of his solo albums [2002’s Phunk Shui]. But I haven’t. I’m not sure how that would transfer to my particular style.

UV: Oh, I don’t know, I could see you doing “Crosstown Traffic.”
DH: Hmm, maybe. Anything’s possible. Maybe I’ll pull it out for one of the “Live from Daryl’s House” sessions; get some strange guitar player involved, and we could lean toward Jimi for a little while there. [For more about Daryl’s “playing music with my friends and putting it up on the Internet,” go to www.livefromdarylshouse.com.]


* Pour Some Fire on Me: In 2008, Def Leppard guitarist Phil Collen (51) pulled double duty by singing and playing guitar on Surreal (VH1 Classic), an album from one of his side projects, Man-Raze. During a long chat on 11 July of last year, Collen delved into the Jimi effect.

UV: Have you done any Jimi covers?
Phil Collen: Yeah, “Fire.” That was great. It was a very natural thing that fell right into place.

UV: Tell me about Hendrix being an influence on you as a player.
Phil Collen: This may sound a little weird, but I really think he was underestimated as an all-around musician. He had a certain kind of expression, but many people see him as “just” a guitar player.

UV: People forget he was a great songwriter.
PC: Absolutely. There are only few people who can write songs that come out of them every which way, almost like they’ve been channeled. Stevie Wonder used to be like that, as well as some of the great composers. It’s something that may be beyond normal people’s comprehension. With Hendrix, it just struck him, and sometimes he couldn’t even get it all out.

What was really cool and really unique is that you never really heard another player like that. There’ve been some jazz guys, like Miles Davis. If Hendrix was still alive and he could still channel those things through him, I think he’d be doing some really crazy stuff. He’d be more dialed into it and figured out where it came from.

UV: What would you say is your favorite Hendrix song?
PC: I really like “Freedom,” which came out after he died, but it had such a groove and the fire in his playing, it was fucking wonderful. And the first album had some stuff on there that was just off the fucking chart. Even with “Hey Joe” – no one had really done it like that. The blues players couldn’t do that stuff. And all of a sudden there’s this guy who’s got it all: he’s got this rhythm stuff going on, R&B, and jazz. He’s the first real electric guitar player, really, which was mindblowing in itself.

UV: You think about the songwriting on tracks like “The Wind Cries Mary,” “Machine Gun”…
PC: Beautiful! And this was a guy who was in his twenties! I was starting to realize new stuff as player in my late forties, so you wonder what would have kicked in with him in his sixties.

*** From UniVibes issue #59 ***