Daryl Hall with Todd Rundgren

Venue:

Hammersmith Odeon

Date: 09/07/2023

What a night at the old Hammy Odeon! Two of my all time favourite singers having the time of their lives in front of a great audience, mixed with fans of each and both artists. Daryl Hall’s ‘Live from Daryl’s House’ band were house-band for the night, with the addition of Mr. Casual himself, the wonderful Hall & Oates sax player, Charlie DeChant in his silver lame jacket and matching shoes.

Todd came on at 7.30 sharp to the opening bars of Real Man and it was clear from the off that the voice was in fine fettle. He let Shane play a faultless copy of THAT guitar solo and it was into Love of the Common Man, cementing my Back to the Bars experience from over 40 years ago at The Forum in London. A beautiful It Wouldn’t Have Made Any Difference and a playful We Gotta Get You A Woman led to Todd strapping on that famous green guitar and asking ‘Do you mind if I rock out a bit?’

The Todd fans around me roared their, (our,) approval.

He fluffed the first solo in Buffalo Grass, almost like he couldn’t hear the rest of the band, but normal service was resumed by the end. A gorgeous I Saw The Light, with Shane taking the solo and Todd joining him for the harmony section at the end, into Black Maria and Hello It’s Me, (tears here at the ‘I’ve thought about us for a long, long time’ line – how many times did I play that song and wish I could fall in love?) before the keyboard player began those distinctive opening chords to Sometimes I Don’t Know What To Feel. The band played it perfectly, with five harmony-voices on the chorus, and Todd sang his heart out. Heaven.

I’ve never heard Todd sing I’m So Proud/Ooh Baby Baby live before but it was worth the wait. I wondered how long he’d coached the band to sing his lush harmonies from the 1974 original – they nailed it. Smokey’s Ooh Baby Baby was our wedding song but it was Todd’s version I knew first. A cover of Marvin’s I Want You and then a headlong For The Want Of A Nail and he was gone – an hour in the company of the 75 year-old musical genius who has shaped so much of my time on this planet – how can that be so life-affirming, so calming yet so invigorating? Don’t ask me, it just is.

After a twenty-minute break, the band are back, kicking into the intro to Dreamtime (from Daryl Hall’s 1986 solo album, Three Hearts In The Happy Ending Machine,) and the Coolest 76 year-old On The Planet walks onto the stage. The voice is in great order – he may have lost the very top end of his beautiful falsetto but he’s that good a singer that he can get round it quite easily – and he’s obviously having a good time. Foolish Pride, from the same album, follows, before we get the first Hall & Oates song, Out of Touch. After that he tells us that he first played ‘this place’ in 1975 and that he used to live five minutes around the corner – no ‘John and I first played…’ you’ll notice. He’s pretty spiky about his ‘other situation’ as he calls it later, having said in recent interviews that he and John only ever see each other on stage, that they were always two solo artists who ‘happened to come together occasionally,’ – who he’s trying to kid, I have no idea – himself, probably.

Say It Isn’t So is the second H&O song before we get I’m In A Philly Mood from his third solo album, 1993’s Soul Alone. Daryl really gets to stretch his soul vocals on this one and it brings the house down. After that he goes over to the grand-piano and sings Everytime You Go Away before introducing a deep cut from his very first record, Sacred Songs, an album he did with Robert Fripp, in 1980. Daryl says that he and Robert are good friends and that the great man is in the audience. Babs and Babs is my favourite song from that pretty strange album and it sounds wonderful here.

We are then treated to an acoustic version of Dave & Annie’s Here Comes The Rain Again, slowed down and given lots of space to breathe. You could hear a pin drop. For once. Sara Smile follows before he’s back with a guitar, storming through I Can’t Go For That. The encore sees him welcome Todd back, who sits beside Daryl, on a stool, while DH stands at his keyboard. This tour has been playing across the U.S for a good while and there is obviously a deep relationship between the teenage friends, growing up in Philadelphia. What happens next is quite breathtaking.

Wait For Me, from the underrated 1979 Hall & Oates album, X-Static, is slowed down, with the two of them singing alternate verses and Shane playing G.E.Smith’s wonderful guitar solo, perfectly. Daryl then introduces the next song as ‘one of my very favourite Todd-songs’ and they duet Can We Still Be Friends. I don’t think I breathed for the whole song. Seven voices replicating Todd’s original harmonies, his lost-love song to Bebe Buell never sounded so good. More tears in seat AA52, I’m afraid. After that, they paid homage to their Philly heritage, (Daryl sang back-ups on many of those Thom Bell hits from the late-sixties and early seventies,) by delivering a killer version of The Delfonics’ Didn’t I Blow Your Mind This Time. Todd waved goodbye to a standing ovation before Daryl and his wonderful band ripped through You Make My Dreams Come True and the night, all three hours of it, was over.

As we walked back to the car I reflected that I first saw Hall & Oates in 1975 and have loved their music for 50 years. They are a great live act and, if they come to a gig near you, just go. You’ll have a great time and be so glad you did. However, tonight was about two voices which have sustained me for most of my life. The three songs at the end? I could have taken three hours of just that, quite easily, (my wife, who is much less familiar with Todd than with Daryl told me that she had never heard two voices go together so well.) It was a brilliant show and, hopefully, confirmed to Daryl that he needs to bring it back to Europe for a full tour.

The audience:

Hall & Oates fans with plenty of Todd devotees, sporting battered t-shirts and paunches, just like me. Oh, and Robert Fripp.

It made me think..

It also occurred to me, on a weekend when I had seen Southside Johnny, Bruce, Daryl and Todd, that we have to cherish these people because they aren’t going to be able to to do it for much longer. God bless every one of them.

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