John Oates focused on ‘moving forward’ amid Daryl Hall lawsuit

John Oates is still performing amid his nasty court battle against former Hall & Oates music partner Daryl Hall — on “The Masked Singer.”

Oates, 75, was revealed as the Anteater during the Fox show’s latest Season 10 episode on Wednesday. Although his name rhymed with his hit 1982 song “Maneater,” no one on the panel managed to guess his true identity.

“That was the first thing I thought of. They were trying to make a connection between ‘Maneater’ and Anteater, but no one else seemed to get that for some reason, which I found kind of surprising,” he told Entertainment Weekly of the clue. “To be honest with you, I didn’t really like the costume when I first saw the drawing of it, but they twisted my arm and convinced me that it would be cool. And I’m like, oh, God, all right, sure. Why not?”

Oates appeared in good spirits on the program despite his ongoing lawsuit with Hall, 77. He briefly commented on Hall when asked if he would ever perform with him again.

“Oh, you know what, I never say never to anything,” he told the outlet. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I just want, right now, I’m focused on where I am in life and leading the best life I can and moving forward.”

Hall accused Oates of ambushing him with plans to sell Oates’ half of their company, Whole Oats Enterprises, LLP, to Primary Wave, a prominent music publishing company. He filed the lawsuit (with his organization, the Daryl Hall Revocable Trust, suing Oates’ trust, the John W. Oates TISA Trust, and its co-trustees) in Nashville on Nov. 16.

“This recent bad faith conduct by John Oates and the Oates Trust has created tremendous upheaval, harm, and difficulty in my life,” Hall wrote in a second Nov. 29 filing, obtained by People. “Not to mention unnecessary expense and burden, during a time when I am in the middle of a tourthroughout the U.S. West Coast, Japan, and Manilla and need to focus and perform at top level.” 

“I believe that John Oates timed the Unauthorized Transaction to create the most harm to me,” the frontman continued. “Respectfully, he must be stopped from this latest wrongdoing and his malicious conduct reined in once and for all.”

“His behavior has become adversarial and aggressive instead of professional and courteous. He began making numerous demands upon me related to, among other things, the social media and trademark assets in WOE, creating disagreements brought to my door by a revolving cast of lawyers,” he continued.

“It appears to me that John Oates’ intent has become to burden and harass me without regard to my interests as his business partner, or the interests of WOE.”

Oates, meanwhile, said in his own filing that he is “deeply hurt” over the ordeal and he has “no idea who or what is motivating Daryl to take these steps and make such salacious statements.”

Hall was granted a temporary restraining order against Oates, which went into effect on Nov. 30.

The musicians met as undergrads at Temple University in Philadelphia and formed the band in 1970. They released their debut album, “Whole Oats,” in 1972, and they’ve achieved six No. 1 hits since.

They were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2014.

Amid the bitter lawsuit, Hall has continued to perform some of their biggest hits at shows. Oates also plans to release new music with a new single on Dec. 15 called “Get Your Smile On.”

“It’s a song that I actually wrote during COVID when I was trying to write something that was really positive. And it’s just a super simple song. The cool thing about it is it’s a song that I actually recorded at home on my laptop that I played all the instruments and sang all the vocals and never went into a recording studio with it. It comes straight from my computer, right to your ears. So I’d never done that before. So it’s different that way,” he told EW.

“All the proceeds of the downloads will go to Teen Cancer America, which is great,” he went on. “So it’s nice to be able to put out a song and know that people are going to hopefully like it and it’ll do some good.”