| "I'm an elusive
person;" Hall says in his dressing room as a hair person arrives, fluffs and leaves.
"Much more so than John. I like to scatter myself. I do try to take chances, break
patterns. When you're scattered, you have to think. You're not operating under a set of
rules, so you have to make your own rules. As Robert Fripp says, 'Danger is a point in
time when you have to think your hardest.' I like to put myself in states of peril. I like
the sense of aliveness that comes from being out on the point, way out in front." Hall, nicknamed the Führer by his band, says all this with some
animation. He refers to his lyrics as examples: "I can't go for being twice as nice/I
can't go for just repeating the same old lines." He refers to the fact that he went
into the studio to record Big Bam Boom with nothing planned. He was, he says, "daring
myself. Because, if I have a religion, it's the religion of the self. I don't follow
anybody. And that scares people, but I like the idea of scaring people. I wish I scared
people more. I don't know if I scared anyone on this new album, but I'm better at scaring
people |
in my personal life.
I change quickly. I go from nice to not nice. I'm like a snake. Don't back me into a
corner or I'll bite hard. Deadly hard." Hall
won't explain further. He offers no examples, just laughs, looks at the tape recorder and
shakes his head no. This is not surprising. "I mean," Hall explains, "how
would that look in print?" He's clever. He mixes philosophical allusions with
practical sense, "meaningful" lyrics with pop songs. He wants to be heard.
But Hall does have belief, at least in himself. Two of his
uncles were ministers, and his great-grandfather was a warlock. ("He cured cattle and
all.") "I grew up around that seein'-the-light kind of thing;" he says.
"And now I'm a secular version of it. In my uncles' time, you were a minister. Two
generations before that you were a warlock. Now you're me. It's just a current. I believe
in the ability to change reality through will, and that is the definition of magic. I feel
I have done that." |
Daryl Hall and John Oates
German Website
