Daryl Hall and Glenn Tilbrook: Proof that you can be too old to rock
At the midpoint of a set that at times tested the boundaries of endurance, on Monday night at the Royal Albert Hall, Daryl Hall played a yawningly indifferent version of Walking in Between Raindrops, a yacht-rock lowlight from his most recent album, D. At its eventual end, with something like chutzpah, he looked at the audience and said, 'I can tell that you liked that one'.
Not where I was sitting, they didn't. Presumably tired of listening to new songs from an LP that failed to chart anywhere in the world, up on a balcony that wasn't full to begin with, this was the point at which people began exiting their seats, never to return.
With his peripheral vision perhaps compromised by a straw fedora with a brim as wide as an industrial-size wok, from the stage, it may have been that Daryl Hall had no idea that the listless and consistently thinning crowd up in the gods were responding only to hits released in a previous century with his erstwhile partner John Oates. Like an elephant in a grand and beautiful room, at the Albert Hall, Oates's name went unmentioned. That the pair have recently fallen out, badly and publicly, over the sale of publishing rights, only added to the air of decline that seemed to me to be stinking up this loveliest of venues.
It wasn't that Hall didn't play some of his best-known hits, it's that he didn't play them very well. Rich Girl seemed alarmingly shrill, while a clatteringly elongated I Can't Go for That (No Can Do) outstayed its welcome. In truth, signs that this might not be a smooth night arrived as early as the second song, when the usually irresistible Maneater was derailed by a vocal that sat too far behind the beat and some way off key. With Daryl Hall just 18-months away from his 80th birthday, a polite way of putting it would be to say that his voice is not what it once was. Speaking impolitely, I'd say that his once world-class larynx is today worth less than toffee.
Notwithstanding the muscle and finesse of his undoubtedly accomplished six-piece band, at times, it was difficult to watch. Particularly painful was a duet, during the encore, of the Squeeze favourite Pulling Mussels (From the Shell) with the evening's support act Glenn Tilbrook. A mere babe in arms, at 67-years-old, Tilbrook's own voice had no problem recalling the pitch and clarity of a pop classic he co-wrote and recorded more than four decades ago. (He had no trouble, either, singing gems such as Tempted and Black Coffee In Bed during his own set.) Warbling away by his side, both figuratively and literally, Daryl Hall sounded as though he was drowning.
By the time the musicians onstage unfurled a well-received and deftly executed You Make My Dreams, the evening's closing song, it was too late to do much more than graft a phoney happy ending onto a concert that warranted nothing of the kind. With entire rows by then empty, both upstairs and down, evidently, not everyone was buying it. Emerging into the London night, I caught an exchange between two less-than-happy customers. 'It wasn't great,' said one, 'but you have to give it to him, still playing live at 78.' After a moment's consideration, the reply came. 'Yeah – but do you?'
Daryl Hall is on tour in the UK until Friday; darylhall.com
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