'Cause you know it don't matter anyway

You remember that song, "Rich Girl," by Hall and Oates? Well, it was not originally about a girl at all.  And Hall and Oates don't like to be called "Hall and Oates." They insist on being referred to as Daryl Hall and John Oates.

Also, Daryl Hall is not his real name. He's Daryl Hohl, so you can see why he went with the pseudonym.

Now that you've had a chance to listen to the song again, here's the scoopy-doo. 

Hall had a girlfriend back then by the name of Sara Allen. She figures prominently in two Hall and Oates classics: "Sara Smile," and "Las Vegas Turnaround," which mentions her being what they called a stewardess then (they're flight attendants now, a much more respectful title.)  Sara contributed lyrics to several H & O songs, as did her late sister Janna Allen, co-writer of "Kiss On My List" and "Private Eyes." 

Before taking up with Hall, Sara's boyfriend was a spoiled restaurant heir named Victor Walker, whose father owned Walker Bros. Original Pancake House in Chicago and a great many KFC franchises. Victor was the sort of young man to whom everything had been given. Hall wrote a song about this pampered pancaker called "Rich Boy," including the line, " "He can rely on the old man's money/he can rely on the old man's money/he's a rich guy."

"But you can't write, 'You're a rich boy' in a song, so I changed it to a girl," Hall told Rolling Stone.

The "Rich Girl" single hit the Billboard Top 40 on February 5, 1977, at number 38 and on March 26 of that year, it became the first of their six number-one singles on Billboard. It wound up as #23 overall on the list of 1977 hits.

 

Hall and Oates made a big deal of not being called Hall and Oates, but in 2015, when the Brooklyn-based Early Bird Food company came out with a snack they called "Haulin' Oats Granola," Hall and Oates sued them. The company was even offering a 25% discount for online orders that used the coupon code #sayitisntso. 

 

And even though they resemble each other enough to be mistaken for brothers, John Oates is NOT the same person as Howard Stern's producer Gary "Baba Booey" Dell'Abate.