Daryl Hall came close to writing a song with Bob Dylan, but in the end, to reference his own work, he decided to say “no can do.”
The Hall & Oates vocalist was working on songs for a solo album that became 1986’s Three Hearts in the Happy Ending Machine and realized that one of the tracks had a certain familiarity to it. “‘Dreamtime’ sounded a lot like mid-’60s Dylan,” he told The Morning Union shortly after the album’s release. “It reminded me a lot of Blonde on Blonde for about 10 minutes.”
His collaborator and producer, Dave Stewart of Eurythmics, suggested they reach out to see if Dylan would be interested in writing the lyrics. “He sent me these crazy lyrics,” Hall recalled during a new, wide-ranging conversation with the Naked Lunch podcast, hosted by Phil Rosenthal and David Wild. “Bob gave me this tape of him singing ‘Dreamtime’ with his lyrics.”
READ MORE: The Best Song From Every Bob Dylan Album
The lyrics, Hall said, were good. Still, as he recalled at the time of the album’s initial release, “They weren’t what I wanted to sing about, so I scrapped them. But I kept the phrase ‘movie star eyes.’”
Hall said Dylan didn’t hold a grudge, but with a bit of hindsight, he ended up with some regrets himself. “I don’t know what I was thinking,” he told Rosenthal and Wild. “I [could have been] like, ‘Yeah, OK, sure. I’ll sing those words.’ But I didn’t do it.”
Even without Dylan’s participation, Hall scored a Top 5 hit when “Dreamtime” was released as the first single from the Three Hearts album, and he was happy with the final results overall. “I purposefully was uninformed [when I started working on the record], because I knew what I didn’t want to do,” he shared back then. “I didn’t want this album to be a continuation of Hall & Oates.”
Watch Daryl Hall’s ‘Dreamtime’ Video
What Are Daryl Hall’s Future Touring Plans?
After wrapping up a successful summer outing with Elvis Costello, Hall will be back on the road this fall with fellow ‘80s hitmaker Howard Jones. As the songwriter revealed in the Naked Lunch interview, it’s closer to the kind of touring he wants to pursue moving forward.
“I did the Elvis show and that was a co-bill, but I feel like I don’t want to do those kinds of major tours anymore,” he explained. “I just want to do shorter Daryl’s House tours where it’s basically a live version of what we do on the TV show, [Live From Daryl’s House]. In order to do that, I need bonding and the right combination of artists to bring in. Howard is going to be doing it with me, and I have some other people in mind. I’ll be doing more shows with Todd [Rundgren] and I’m going to just keep doing it that way.”
Listen to Daryl Hall on ‘Naked Lunch’
Why These Classic Rock Acts Hate Their Own Records
Over a lengthy career, certain pitfalls also present themselves: Band members leave, songs become one-hit wonders, sounds go out of style. Then you start to hate your own records.
Gallery Credit: Nick DeRiso