Pitchfork Media interviews pop-star and soul singer Daryl Hall (of Hall and Oates) about his career, his past interest in Aleister Crowley, his collaborations with a Gurdjieff-trained Robert Fripp, and the witches in his family tree.


Daryl Hall in younger days.

"I come from a family of ministers. And my great-grandfather was what they used to call in Pennsylvania a "pow-wow man," which is basically a male witch. It goes back to the old Germanic and English things -it's like the evil eye, keeping the crops from getting the blight, and the cows from getting sick, and all that stuff. It's just old, old folky things. He was a healer, he used to heal people's warts and give them all kinds of potions and all that kind of stuff. He also had an evil side. And I heard some stories about him. [laughs] I never knew him, but I heard lots of stories about him ... I see what musicians do, especially singers, as a primal thing. It comes from howling around the campfire. Everybody was sitting around whatever, in the earliest of early times-- pre-literate times, how's that? Pre-conscious times. And pre-sentient times. And somebody would be the guy that would start the howling. And that's what I do."

As for his interest in the teachings in Aleister Crowley, Hall says his "Crowley phase" is well behind him now.

"A lot of people go through that kind of thing. And I went through it, and I retained a lot of it, and I discarded a lot of it. My life was unbalanced at the time, when I was doing that."

Sadly the interviewer doesn't do much follow-up on Hall's current religious/philosophical beliefs. Considering his past interest in Crowley, and his family tree (not to mention his singing ability), I'm sure most Witchcraft traditions would recruit him in a heartbeat!

Labels: Aleister Crowley, Daryl Hall, Music, Pitchfork Media, Witchcraft