US musical icons Hall and Oates helped Australian band Icehouse enjoy their biggest hit. But it could have all been so different.

John Oates co-wrote 1987’s Electric Blue with Icehouse, a No.1 hit in Australia and No.7 in the US.

Oates revealed the unlikely inspiration behind the lyrics while writing with Icehouse’s Iva Davies.

"We were on a topless beach in Sydney,” Oates said. "I was thinking of a porno TV show I’d seen in New York called Electric Blue. This girl came towards me. She had blue eyes. I thought 'Should I look at her tits or should I look at her eyes?’ I looked at her eyes and it hit me – Electric Blue. Luckily I didn’t look at her tits, it might have been Electric Boobs. That might not have had the same longevity.”

Hall and Oates, the highest-selling duo in music history, haven’t toured Australia since 1991.

Over the past two decades, the band have found themselves sampled by the likes of De La Soul and Kanye West, used in movie soundtracks and last year had two songs in a mash-up on divisive TV show Glee.

"Glee, well, whatever, it was OK,” Hall said. "Our publisher made a lot of money off that. We try as best to control what people do with our songs.”

They’ll bring their arsenal of hits – Rich Girl, Maneater, Out of Touch, She’s Gone, I Can’t Go For That, Private Eyes, Kiss On My List, You Make My Dreams – to the Plenary tonight (Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre) and A Day on the Green at Yarra Valley on February 12.

"We could play for hours and you’d know every song, which is a great problem to have,” Hall said. "We like to keep it nice and tight and change the set all the time.”

Originally published as Unlikely inspiration for Electric Blue