The Time Hall And Oates Stopped An Armed Robbery

As one of the most successful duos in rock music, Daryl Hall and John Oates dominated pop music throughout the '80s. Certified by the recording industry in 1984 as the most successful rock duo of all time, snatching the title formerly held by the Everly Brothers (via All Music). With 13 gold and platinum albums and 34 singles released (via Billboard) in their near 50 years together, Hall and Oates have left a lasting mark on pop music.

And as any pair that has been together for five decades will tell you, some weird and wild things happen along the way. Like back in 1987, when John Oates found out the band was essentially broke (via People). Or having someone create a personal hotline in your honor that anyone can call at anytime to hear some Hall and Oates music (via NPR).  Nothing, however, beats the time John Oates and his crew foiled a robbery while on tour in Australia with Daryl Hall.

After playing a gig while on tour in Australia around 1980, John Oates and some of the band's crew members went for a bite to eat at a local restaurant (via the Modern Rogue) when a man wearing a ski mask and toting a shotgun, walked into the place. Affectionately known by the Australian media as "The Rusty Gun Bandit," the man demanded money from the restaurant's patrons. Brandishing a gun that John Oates told Nicki Swift "probably wouldn't have fired" the Rusty Gun Bandit went table to table looking for cash. At one point, Oates recalled the bandit "...reached into the lady's pocketbook to take her money and the chef, or one of the other guys hit him in the face. Knocked them down and we charged him and stepped on his hands. Knocked him through a plate glass window. And by that time, the cooks in the back had called the cops ... And so we captured this guy ..." (via Nicki Swift)

According to the Modern Rogue it was actually Oates himself who took down the crook, tackling him through the glass plate window. The next day, the press was at their hotel, waiting to hear how Oates and his crew took down the Rusty Gun Bandit. And while the crook faced the full extent of Australian law, John Oates, surviving the incident, would go on to sell millions of more albums with Daryl Hall.