# 1944         Daryl Hall -    FOOLISH  PRIDE
                                                                                        

           Three Hearts in the Happy Ending Machine, RCA Records, 1986                                     
                         BILLBOARD CHART ACHIEVEMENTS:
                                     Adult Contemporary:  # 21
                                           Hot 100:          # 33
                                    R&B/Hip-Hop Singles:    # 91

                                   Top Ten hit at MATT RADIO                                      

 

This song's lyrics are among the wittiest on the entire countdown.
Three Hearts sounds quite different, is a lot harder, than your first solo effort.  How would you characterize the new direction?

It's hard to describe musical things verbally.  I can talk technically, though.  I spent a lot less time with synthesizers.  It's not a New York-ish album at all.  I wanted to get out of New York and bring a more international feel to the record.  I used mostly English musicians and a French engineer.  I used a lot of real percussion.  I used a guy who's spent quite a bit of time in North Africa and India studying with musicians and making his own instruments.  I used some strange instruments: a hurdy-gurdy, mandolins, medieval instruments, a lot of strings.  So it's different right there.

Do you think you'll be reaching a different audience?  Do you think you'II maintain the appeal with this new LP that you've enjoyed with Hall and Oates?

  I don't know.  I'll be curious to find out.  I don't know who's gonna like it.  I hope everyone will.

Can you genuinely say that your work is experimental?

In the purest sense of the word, avant-garde means out in front, at the forefront.  The new record is pretty probing as far as pop music goes.  I'm not sure if it's breaking totally new ground, but we're trying to push the barriers.

How was collaborating with David Stewart?

Real easy.  He's got a great sense of humor and is really a quick worker, like me.  I'm spontaneous, really, not a planner, and that worked well with us.  Yeah, it's very much from the heart.

My impression is that Stewart is very technically oriented.

Not really.  That's his persona, maybe, but he's really just a guitar player.  I found him because for several years people that I respect a lot had been telling me the two of us would get along.  I was looking for some catalyst to begin the LP, someone to let me see myself more objectively, outside of Hall and Oates.

How do you feel about your first solo effort, Sacred Songs?

That first LP was a real aberration.  It came in the middle of something I was trying to do with Hall and Oates, to pull together a new step, next step.

The Sacred Songs collaboration with Robert Fripp produced work quite unlike that of Three Hearts.

Yeah.  There was a lot of Fripp on Sacred Songs.  This new one is much more me.  But Dave had a lot to do with the feeling of the record.  He got it all started.

What's the nature of collaboration for you?

What I like about it is that the process is different with every person so there is no formula.  It's simply an interaction between two or more people.

Are you an easy person to work with?  There are lone wolf artists, and then there are team players...

Well, I have a real open mind and I'm flexible so I guess that makes me easy to work with.

So whom would you like to collaborate with next?

I never know ahead of time.  I really like working with Dave.  And I'd like to work with him again.  I'd like to do a whole project with him next time as opposed to him just starting it up and moving out of it.

You mean a record with him?  Hall and Stewart?

Yeah, maybe more.  I like Nile Rodgers, too.  I've worked with him a few times.

How did Bob Geldof and Joni Mitchell get involved in a couple of the songs on the record?

Well, they're just friends I asked to stop by in London when we were recording, to make some contribution.

What are your upcoming plans?

Well, promoting Three Hearts, of course.  That's a lot of work right there.  We made the first video, of "Dreamtime," in London in mid-July with Matt Forrest, who has made videos for Grace Jones and Art of Noise.  I got really involved in the making of this video, for the first time.

Will you be going on tour soon?

Oh, sure, but I'm going to wait a bit because I want the record to get out in the world.  I think I'll start out in January or February, doing the States, Europe and Asia.

Do you still get a thrill from performing?

There's nothing I like better.  But in the past five or six years, I've been spending nine or ten months on the road.  I want to change that.

source:   Barbara O'Dair,  "NY Talk" magazine,  October 1986