Corridor and Oates Hit No. 1 With ‘Maneater’

The very first thing to learn about Corridor & Oates’ “Maneater” is that it is not about what you assume.

On its floor, the 1982 hit would seem like a couple of girl of grave consequence, “the lean and hungry sort” who will not hesitate to upend a person’s life in a single fell swoop.

However like plenty of Corridor & Oates songs, “Maneater” is not meant to be taken so actually. There’s one other fearsome character that might simply as simply rip one’s world aside: New York Metropolis, within the ’80s significantly.

“It is about greed, avarice and spoiled riches,” John Oates defined in 2014. “However we now have it within the setting of a lady as a result of it is extra relatable. It is one thing that individuals can perceive.”

Although born in New York Metropolis, Oates grew up in a suburb of Philadelphia, the town through which he and Daryl Corridor met and launched their profession. However after their first album, 1972’s Complete Oats, did not produce the success they’d hoped for, the duo made the choice to maneuver up the coast to New York and attempt their hand at working there. A melting pot of types and genres, New York proved a troublesome musical atmosphere to interrupt into, particularly for an act that hadn’t absolutely settled on the sound they wished to realize. They finally landed a few Prime 10 hits towards the center of the last decade —”Sara Smile” and “Wealthy Woman” amongst them — however the duo nonetheless struggled to keep up regular radio play.

The ’80s begged for a unique strategy. A method for Corridor & Oates to do that was by making the change to producing their very own albums — a vital step in the event that they wished to search out their area of interest. One other concerned using new session musicians, whom they hoped may assist deliver their imaginative and prescient to life, like guitarist G.E. Smith, who would later grow to be a bandleader for the Saturday Night time Stay home band, in addition to the preliminary lead guitarist in Bob Dylan’s By no means Ending Tour band, amongst varied different prestigious initiatives.

However at tail finish of the ’70s, Smith was merely a musician hailing from Pennsylvania, one thing he had in frequent with Corridor & Oates. Via mutual pals, Smith was really useful to the duo, however when he arrived at Corridor’s West Village house for an audition, the pair mentioned all the things however Smith’s technical capabilities — their in vogue clothes, their comparable backgrounds and shared love of Motown information. “The guitar by no means got here out of the case,” Smith recalled in 2016. He obtained the job.

There was additionally drummer Mickey Curry, who had made a very good impression on Corridor & Oates’ supervisor, Tommy Mottola, after he had performed a recording session at New York’s Electrical Woman Studios. Mottola approached Curry straight and requested if he’d like to depart his drums arrange and are available able to report with Corridor & Oates the next week. (Curry and Smith have been, satirically, former bandmates, having each performed in a bunch referred to as the Scratch Band within the New Haven, Conn. space.) Luckily, Curry already knew all about Corridor & Oates.

“I used to be an enormous fan as a result of [drummer] Bernard Purdie performed on their [1973] album Deserted Luncheonette,” Curry later recalled to Trendy Drummer. “He is on ‘She’s Gone,’ one among my favorites. So I stated, ‘Yeah, I might like to.'”

The remainder of the studio band was rounded out with Tom “T-Bone” Wolk on bass, one other former bandmate of Smith’s, and saxophonist Charles DeChant.

Watch the Music Video for Corridor & Oates’ ‘Maneater’

The scene was set on the within, however in the meantime, outdoors on the streets of New York Metropolis, life was solely getting harder. Secure, clear and welcoming weren’t phrases typically used to explain the most important metropolis in America within the ’80s, which struggled below the burden of a skyrocketing crime fee and a crippling drug epidemic. Making it in New York – musician or not – was nothing wanting a problem. “Maneater” tried to precise this uphill battle: “the sweetness is there, however a beast is within the coronary heart.”

“What we now have at all times tried to do,” Oates later defined, “and if we now have any type of philosophy for our lyrics over time, it was to attempt to take a common topic and in some way make it appear private so that individuals may relate to it as if it was a private factor.”

Corridor & Oates did this by personifying New York Metropolis as a lush however harmful girl, although it took some time for the tune to completely emerge. Oates had been workshopping it with Edgar Winter, making an attempt it out as a semi-reggae quantity.

Corridor had one other concept. “I stated, ‘Effectively, the chords are attention-grabbing, however I feel we must always change the groove,’ I modified it to that Motown type of groove,” he later recalled to American Songwriter. He then confirmed it to his girlfriend, Sara Allen, the namesake of Corridor & Oates’ “Sara Smile.”

“I performed it for Sara,” Corridor stated, “and sang it for her…[Sings] ‘Oh right here she comes / Be careful boy she’ll chew you up / Oh right here she comes / She’s a maneater…and a …‘ I overlook what the final line was. She stated, ‘Drop that shit in the long run and go, ‘She’s a maneater,’ and cease! And I stated, ‘No, you are loopy, that is tousled.’ Then I considered it, and I spotted she was proper. And it made all of the distinction within the tune.” (Allen wound up receiving an official co-writing credit score on the monitor.)

Corridor assuming lead vocals on the monitor was one thing that, as Oates later described, “occurred naturally.” The duties had been cut up extra evenly of their earlier days, however Oates was capable of acknowledge Corridor’s energy – and the way it labored of their favor on the charts.

“At that time, if I used to be dominated by ego, I may need stated, ‘OK, I do not wish to be concerned in one thing like this’ and I’d have left,” Oates defined to The Vinyl Dialogues Weblog in 2017. “However I at all times accepted that Daryl was such an distinctive singer and such a novel expertise that it did not actually shock me, to be trustworthy with you, when his voice reduce the best way it reduce by way of the radio. It has a high quality. It is a pure present that he occurs to have that I evidently do not. So be it.”

Like many different artists of their period, Corridor & Oates had little management over the music movies that accompanied their songs — that was typically left to report firm executives who have been vulnerable to pushing the shock worth of movies, particularly when tens of 1000’s of eyes have been watching the newly launched MTV channel. The video for “Maneater” was created alongside these strains, with photographs of a girl and an actual life beast spliced in between footage of the band. “Any individual determined the ‘Maneater’ video would not be full until we had an precise panther, a man-eating animal, within the video,” Corridor stated for the 2011 e book,