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And it made all the difference in the song." (Allen wound up receiving an official co-writing credit on the track.) She said, 'Drop that shit in the end and go, 'She’s a maneater,' and stop! And I said, 'No, you're crazy, that's messed up.' Then I thought about it, and I realized she was right. "I played it for Sara," Hall said, "and sang it for her… ' Oh here she comes / Watch out boy she'll chew you up / Oh here she comes / She's a maneater…and a …' I forget what the last line was. He then showed it to his girlfriend, Sara Allen, the namesake of Hall & Oates' "Sara Smile." "I said, 'Well, the chords are interesting, but I think we should change the groove,' I changed it to that Motown kind of groove," he later recalled to American Songwriter. Oates had been workshopping it with Edgar Winter, trying it out as a semi-reggae number. Hall & Oates did this by personifying New York City as a lush but dangerous woman, though it took a while for the song to fully emerge. "What we have always tried to do," Oates later explained, "and if we have any kind of philosophy for our lyrics over the years, it was to try to take a universal subject and somehow make it seem personal so that people could relate to it as if it was a personal thing." "Maneater" attempted to express this uphill battle: " the beauty is there, but a beast is in the heart." Making it in New York – musician or not – was nothing short of a challenge. Safe, clean and welcoming were not words often used to describe the largest city in America in the '80s, which struggled under the weight of a skyrocketing crime rate and a crippling drug epidemic. The scene was set on the inside, but meanwhile, outside on the streets of New York City, life was only getting tougher. Watch the Music Video for Hall & Oates' 'Maneater'

The rest of the studio band was rounded out with Tom "T-Bone" Wolk on bass, another former bandmate of Smith's, and saxophonist Charles DeChant. "He's on 'She's Gone,' one of my favorites. "I was a huge fan because Bernard Purdie played on their album Abandoned Luncheonette," Curry later recalled to Modern Drummer. area.) Fortunately, Curry already knew all about Hall & Oates. (Curry and Smith were, ironically, former bandmates, having both played in a group called the Scratch Band in the New Haven, Conn. Mottola approached Curry directly and asked if he'd like to leave his drums set up and come ready to record with Hall & Oates the following week. There was also drummer Mickey Curry, who had made a good impression on Hall & Oates' manager, Tommy Mottola, after he had done a recording session at New York's Electric Lady Studios. Through mutual friends, Smith was recommended to the duo, but when he arrived at Hall's West Village apartment for an audition, the pair discussed everything but Smith's technical capabilities - their in vogue clothing, their similar backgrounds and shared love of Motown records. "The guitar never came out of the case," Smith recalled in 2016. Smith, who would later become a bandleader for the Saturday Night Live house band, as well as the initial lead guitarist in Bob Dylan's Never Ending Tour band, among various other prestigious projects.īut at tail end of the '70s, Smith was simply a musician hailing from Pennsylvania, something he had in common with Hall & Oates. Another involved employing new session musicians, whom they hoped could help bring their vision to life, like guitarist G.E. One way for Hall & Oates to do this was by making the switch to producing their own albums - a critical step if they wanted to find their niche. The '80s begged for a different approach. They eventually landed a couple of Top 10 hits toward the middle of the decade -"Sara Smile" and " Rich Girl" among them - but the duo still struggled to maintain steady radio play. A melting pot of styles and genres, New York proved a tough musical environment to break into, especially for an act that hadn't fully settled on the sound they wanted to achieve. But after their first album, 1972's Whole Oats, didn't produce the success they'd hoped for, the duo made the decision to move up the coast to New York and try their hand at working there. Though born in New York City, Oates grew up in a suburb of Philadelphia, the city in which he and Daryl Hall met and launched their career. It's something that people can understand." "But we have it in the setting of a girl because it's more relatable. "It's about greed, avarice and spoiled riches," John Oates explained in 2014.