1985: Live At The Apollo
Hall & Oates have almost always toured extensively for each album release. But in 1985, the duo took a break after the release of their Live at the Apollo album with David Ruffin and Eddie Kendrick—voices of The Temptations and two of their heroes. This was RCA's second attempt at a live Hall & Oates album, following the 1978 release Livetime. Live at the Apollo was released primarily to fulfill the duo's contract with RCA, and contained a top-20 hit with a medley of "The Way You Do the Things You Do" and "My Girl", both hits Ruffin and Kendrick had recorded with the Temptations in 1964.
After the live recording in spring 1985, the quartet of Hall, Oates, Ruffin and Kendrick performed in July at the Live Aid concert in Philadelphia, and again at the MTV Video Music Awards in New York later that year, complete with an Apollo Theater-style marquee descending on the stage during their performance. The Philly portion of the Live Aid concert used the Hall & Oates backing unit as the house band, consisting of Wolk, DeChant, Smith and Curry.
Just prior to Live Aid, on July 4, 1985, Hall & Oates performed at Liberty State Park in Jersey City, New Jersey as part of the Liberty Concert where they played an outdoor benefit concert for the restoration of the Statue of Liberty. It became a major music event, drawing an estimated crowd of over 60,000 people. Daryl Hall and John Oates also collaborated on the USA For Africa "We Are the World" project.
In 1986, Daryl Hall scored a Top 5 hit with "Dreamtime", from the album "Three Hearts in the Happy Ending Machine". That album also included the Top 40 hit "Foolish Pride" and the Top 100 hit "Somebody Like You," later performed by the duo live on their "Behind the Music" set. Although John Oates did not have a solo hit as a singer, he did earn a Top 10 credit as producer and co-songwriter (with Iva Davies) of the 1988 Icehouse hit "Electric Blue."
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