We can safely assume Daryl Hall did not ask John Oates over for Thanksgiving dinner. Heck, maybe Oates suggested a dish that he would bring that Hall so hated that he felt the need to take out a restraining order against the guitarist. Hall did take out the restraining order, but we are not completely sure why.
Hall and Oates have sold a reported 40 million records and have had nearly 30 top-40 hits on the Billboard charts, but they apparently have not gotten along very well in decades. Hall told Bill Maher in 2022 on Maher's podcast, Club Random with Bill Maher, "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." Ouch.
The odd thing is that no one might have noticed any issues between the duo until the last couple of years. Before 2022, Hall and Oates toured extensively. If you really hated your musical partner, you probably would not do that. I mean, they do not have to be friends, but even people that do not get along don't take out restraining orders against the other.
Daryl Hall files suit against John Oates in Nashville
The court order is sealed so we do not know what peeved Hall off so much that he chose to legally bar the Oates trust from contacting Hall. The lawsuit was filed in chancery court in Nashville, Tennessee this week and, according to CNN, the suit is one of a "contract/debt" dispute. One might infer from that that Daryl Hall thinks he is not getting the money he feels he deserves from some pre-existing agreement between him and John Oates.
Oates currently splits his residences between Woody Creek, Colorado, and Nashville so this is why the suit was filed there. While Hall and Oates never seemed to be the kind of duo that worked together but disliked one another in a Simon and Garfunkel way, they certainly could not be more distant now. Fans wanting to see them tour together again will likely not get their wish.
But that's just a guess, and money talks. Maybe some dollar bills will exchange hands and Hall and Oates will hit the road once again