Coming up next, icon John Oates tells the surprising story of the classic Maneater. This alltime hit came to John after he sat next to a famous actress in a restaurant and she began to cuss like a sailor telling dirty joke after dirty joke… Oates was no prude, but he was SHOCKED. All of a sudden, one of the most familiar lyrics of the 80s came into his head, and within a few minutes, he was jotting down Maneater… His musical collaborator Daryl Hall made some tweaks the next day and they recorded it. It became a #1 smash. Who was the actress and what was the change that made this a hit? Find out next on Professor of Rock.
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It’s time for another edition of our series Revelations where featured artists take us for a deep dive into their greatest songs and albums and you get the insight you won’t find anywhere else. Today we are going to go in depth with a member of the most successful duo of the rock era. John Oates of Hall and Oates on their 1982 #1 smash Maneater.
If you were to ever make a list of the most iconic lyrics of the neon decade, Watch Out Boy She’ll Chew You Up would be near the top of the list. And that exact line came to John Oates and a hoitytoity restaurant in New York City when a famous model and actress came and sat at his table. John Oates will tell you the Story along with a few stories of the other huge hits they had in that moment and then I want to elaborate a little further on the song’s impact as well as solve the mystery of who this mystery model woman is that inspired such a cutthroat song. Man, I’m so sad that Daryl Hall and John Oates, the greatest duo in history are no longer together. It’s a heartbreaker… but at least we still have the music.
When I did that interview with John I had to rush through it due to time but I was able to glean some more info about the making of the song. After he tried it with Edgar Winger and it was that Reggae thing. Daryl Hall would say that he advised John Oates to change the groove to a Motown thing. and then John Oates sang it for their frequent collaborator Sara Allen. So he sang the all familiar.
“Oh here she comes/Watch out boy she’ll chew you up/Oh here she comes/She’s a maneater…and apparently he had some other words that would the keep chorus going and She immediately said, “Drop that stuff in the end and just go, ‘She’s a maneater,’ and then stop! Oates thought it was crazy. He was used to singing it with that filler line but then he thought about it, and I realized she was right. And it made all the difference in the song.
The music video was a mainstay on Early MTV… It opens with a woman walking down a red staircase, and the band playing in a dimly lit studio with partial light falling down on them. The band member all step in and out of the light to sing their parts. A young woman in a short party dress is shown in fadein and fadeout shots, along with that scary black jaguar, that goes with the line "