Daryl Hall got a restraining order against John Oates

After a year of high-profile celebrity divorces, maybe it shouldn’t come as a surprise that there are deep-seated issues between Hall & Oates. The musical duo have gone their separate ways over the years, but they generally came back together, reuniting for a performance as recently as October 2022. Yet something has gone seriously awry, as Daryl Hall is now taking legal action against his longtime collaborator, John Oates.

No one really knows what this lawsuit is about, except that it’s classified as a “Contract/Debt” dispute on the website for the Nashville Chancery Court (where the suit was filed). But while business issues between old partners are somewhat commonplace in the industry, the more eyebrow-raising aspect of the situation is that Hall additionally filed a motion for a temporary restraining order against Oates. Per Rolling Stone, “a restraining bond was set at $50,000, and the restraining order itself was issued” on November 17, the day after the suit was filed. The outlet reports that summonses have been issued for Oates, his wife Amiee, and Richard Flynn, listed as a co-trustee of the John W. Oates TISA Trust along with Amiee.

Beyond that, Hall filed a motion to keep all the legal documents under seal, so the rest of the details are unknown. However, some resurfaced interviews over the last couple years point to tension between the pair, who met while attending Temple University in Philadelphia in the late 1960s. In October 2022, Oates suggested that the pair were done playing together (or at least finished touring) in an interview with The Big Takeover. “I think we both have grown apart professionally and personally. I think we both want to do something else. I don’t want to sound like doom and gloom, but there’s a reality to being old, to being our age. I think Daryl and I feel the exact same way. As our life is winding down, we want to make up for lost time and do the things that we didn’t get a chance to do while we were working together.”

Hall’s comments that same year were less generous. “It’s very annoying to be a duo,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “Everything you do is juxtaposed against another person. Try doing that sometime. I don’t want to use the word ‘emasculating,’ because that’s male, but it takes away your individuality.”

Hall described Oates as “my business partner… not my creative partner” during an appearance on Bill Maher’s podcast, saying, “John and I are brothers, but we are not creative brothers. We are business partners. We made records called Hall & Oates together, but we’ve always been very separate, and that’s a really important thing for me.” Seems the business is about to get even more now.