Rock ‘n’ roll is full of great meet-up stories. John Lennon and Paul McCartney meeting at Woolten Fete in 1957 or Keith Richards and Mick Jagger at Dartford train station in 1961. But perhaps a lesser-known but no less fortuitous meeting took place between Daryl Hall & John Oates in Philadelphia as the two young musicians fled for their lives.
In 1967, Daryl Hall and John Oates were students at Temple University. They were also aspiring musicians. Hall had a doo-wop group called the Temptones while Oates was in a band known as the Masters. Both bands were at Philly’s Adelphi Ballroom for a Battle of the Bands competition. Musicians, however, weren’t the only people clashing in the ballroom.
Daryl Hall related the story in a 1998 interview with the Independent:
When I was about 17 or 18 years old I had a doo-wop street-corner group called the Temptones, and one night in 1967 we were supposed to sing at a place called the Adelphi Ballroom in West Philadelphia. There were a lot of R’n’B bands on the bill, including a group called the Masters, which turned out to be John Oates’s band. And suddenly, right before we were due to go on, a fight broke out between rival high-school fraternities – which really were just gangs with Greek letters. There were chains and knives and shots rang out. Obviously, the show was over.
We were on the upper floor and there was a lift down to the street, so I ran and jumped into it, and John Oates was in it too. I said, “Oh, well, you didn’t get to go on, either. How ya doin’? You go to Temple University, I go to Temple University. See you later, bye.” And that was it, that’s how we met.
In 2017, 50 years after the fateful meeting, Daryl Hall and John Oates released a short animated video clip on their official YouTube channel with both members of the hitmaking duo describing the scene. Watch below:
