Hall & Oates and their songs all going strong after 40 years

The saying is that if you write a good song, it will outlive you. But so far, Hall &Oates are running neck and neck with their musical legacy.

On the musical side of the race, “a song like ‘You Make My Dreams Come True’ sounds just as good today as it did in the early ’80s,” John Oates contends.

“That’s the mark of good songwriting, and we pride ourselves on that. That’s why when we go out as Hall &Oates and we play the hits, we’re not playing them in any ironic way. We’re playing them because we’re still proud of them and they still sound good.”

But the humans are holding their own, too. “(A)fter 40 years, we still feel like we’re vital, we’re out there playing, people still seem to like what we do and we’re making new music,” Oates says of his musical partnership with Daryl Hall. “That’s a very unique place to be after being around for so long.

“You couldn’t have planned anything like this,” he says of the duo, who play the Colosseum at Caesars Palace on Wednesday. “If someone would have told me back in the ’70s that I’d be in my mid-60s, playing for thousands and thousands of people, and still doing all the things I’m doing creatively, I’d be like, ‘Man, I better live good because I want to make sure I survive that long.’

“I’m really happy that I did,” he adds.

The duo haven’t recorded a whole album of new songs together since 2003. “When we play together, we represent ourselves as Hall &Oates” and stick to the hits, he says. “When we go off to our individual things, we’re totally independent.

“In terms of our live show, we’re actually probably bigger now than we were in the ’80s,” he adds. “It’s crazy but it’s true. We play everything from medium-sized to huge venues, and our corporate business (for private dates) is through the roof.”

The two also seem to be opening the door to their lives to let fans get to know them in a way they never did in the 1980s, when “Private Eyes,” “Maneater” and “One On One” ruled the airwaves.

“There’s been more time to find out,” Oates, 65, quips.

The Web and cable series “Live from Daryl’s House” took people inside Hall’s former home in rural New York to film duets with musical friends and peers. The series will continue on the Palladia music channel next year, after relaunching in a Connecticut restaurant Hall recently remodeled.

Oates also will be on Palladia on Jan. 23 with “Another Good Road,” a concert and documentary follow-up to this year’s solo collection “A Good Road to Follow.” A new set of live-in-the-studio sessions will be intercut with “more personal stuff about my home and my life (to show how) my personal good road to follow has affected where I am today.”

The singer-guitarist figures he and lead singer Hall, who turned 68 on Oct. 11, have written close to 400 songs since they met as Temple University students in 1967. They combined their twin interests in Elvis Presley and the Everly Brothers with the soul sounds of their native Philadelphia, breaking through with “Sara Smile” and “She’s Gone” in 1976.

“It’s really how pop music and American rock and roll has always evolved,” Oates says. “Elvis took the race records and the R&B records that he heard, and basically did his version of them, which got on white radio.

“Everyone referenced someone,” he adds. “Nobody is born into this world with this original gift that has no relationship to what’s come before them. That’s just a fantasy.”

The duo brought its sound into the ’80s by absorbing a new influence, New York’s exploding new wave scene. Suddenly all the elements were in place for a decade of hits, from the No. 1 “Kiss on My List” in 1981 through “Downtown Life” in 1988.

If that ride coincided with the rise of MTV and arrangements that now seem frozen in the era, Oates cautions not to let those be confused with the songs themselves.

“I think a common misconception is that a record and a song are the same thing,” he notes. A synthesizer sound “may date the record but it doesn’t date the song.”

“The production of the record is carving a moment in time, and that will forever be,” he adds. “But the songs transcend time. That’s where you set the bar as a songwriter. And for us, the fact that our songs have done that is the reason we’re still out there.”

Wednesday’s show in the Colosseum at Caesars Palace continues a long association with the property, including a 1988 show in its bygone outdoor boxing stadium and a New Year’s Eve concert in 1999 to ring in the new century. (“We went outside expecting all the lights to turn off and everything to stop working,” Oates recalls of “millennium bug” fears.)

That history can only add fuel to speculation that will probably be attached to every act booked at the Colosseum in the wake of Celine Dion canceling much of her schedule there: that they are “auditioning” for a berth in the year-round rotation.

“I think we would always entertain something like that,” Oates says, but cautions “our show is about music. It’s not a lot of high production values and whiz-bang special effects.”

However, he adds, “People always seem to be very happy when they leave.”

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.