The team of Daryl Hall and John Oates bring us today’s classic song of the day, “She’s Gone.” The standout track on the duo’s Abandoned Luncheonette album, “She’s Gone” was originally released as a single in November of 1973—and promptly stalled at a meager #60 on the Billboard Hot 100. After the duo had moved to RCA Records and had genuine success with “Sara Smile,” their old label, Atlantic Records, decided to re-release “She’s Gone” in July of 1976. This time around, “She’s Gone” was a hit, going all the way to #7 on the Billboard Hot 100, #6 on the Cash Box Top 100, and #6 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart.
Hall & Oates’ Abandoned Luncheonette was a wonderful album that not enough people listened to the time. It’s my favorite album of yours, with a number of memorable tunes, including “Las Vegas Turnaround,” “Had I Known You Better Then,” and a previous classic song of the day, “When the Morning Comes.” It’s just a bunch of good songwriting performed well, with misters Hall and Oates backed up by a cadre of top-flight studio musicians, including Hugh McCracken on electric guitar, Steve Gelfand on bass, Joe Farrell on oboe, Ralph MacDonald on percussion, and Bernard Purdie on drums.
As to “She’s Gone,” it’s said that Daryl Hall thought it was the best song he and John Oates wrote together. I won’t disagree with that. As to what the song is about, some reports say it’s about Mr. Hall’s divorce from his wife, while others say it was about a girlfriend standing up Mr. Oates one New Year’s Eve.
Whatever it’s about, the song apparently came about rather quickly. In Mr. Oates’ own words:
“I sat down with the guitar and sang the chorus of ‘She’s Gone’ basically the way that it is. Then I played it for Daryl because I didn’t have anything else. It just happened. I said, ‘Hey, I’ve got this really great chorus.’ And we wrote the verses together. ‘She’s Gone’ is a song that endures.”
For today’s daily bonus video of the day, here’s Hall & Oates performing “She’s Gone” live on the BBC’s The Old Grey Whistle Test in 1976. The arrangement, especially at the beginning, is a little different from the record, but who cares? It’s a great song.
