Daryl Hall & John Oates:

Original Fan Fiction

Welcome to the first and only Daryl Hall and John Oates fan fiction site. As the weeks progress, you will be able to read stories, both short and novella-length, based on songs, videos and the lives of the dynamic rock duet that ruled the 1980's and are still performing in the US and Europe to this day.

Daryl has always been my favourite and in August of 1986, I was fortunate enough to meet him in Toronto as he visited our music video station, Muchmusic. He was there to promote "Three Hearts" and I'd been waiting outside the studio since 8AM. Finally, at 5PM, he showed up in a stretch limo. I said "Hi, Daryl" and gave him a hand-made book of his life from childhood to the present and included poems and stories for him. Daryl was extremely gracious and friendly, smiling for pictures and telling me how much he enjoyed my gift. The book's title was "This Is Your Life" and that amused him a great deal. I had this one terrific shot of the two of us, but, unfortunately, since I have moved so many times since then, I lost the wonderful photos, but still own my rock and roll t-shirt with his autograph on the back.

I had been going through some pretty heavy-duty emotional difficulties at the time and so this meeting meant a great deal to me. There didn't seem to be a lot to live for and this trek to Toronto, so early in the morning, was a last-ditch attempt to find something validating, to make some kind of connection with a world so very distinct from my own.

Somehow, I knew that Daryl had also been dealing with personal issues, due to my interpretation of his lyrics on his nakedly candid solo effort. I had read that he had been very depressed in 1985, a year before we met and I knew how self-destructive despair can be. Fortunately, we both survived and Daryl Franklin Hall has proven that life holds much promise, even if the spotlight dims somewhat and we find ourselves living in a totally different age, music-wise.

Daryl Hall and John Oates will always be remembered as the City Of Brotherly Love's most successful and kickass rock duo. They endure, as we all do, moving and changing as the world in which we live continues to push forward. It stumbles, as we do, but underneath all of the glitz, the fame and the adulation, Daryl and John are simply two incredibly talented and persevering men, musicians who gave people like myself a reason to just keep going. Thanks so much, guys.

I absolutely love Daryl's second solo album, "Three Hearts In the Happy Ending Machine" and still play it on a regular basis. The songs are complex, intricate and very personal and I felt as though I knew Daryl quite well after studying the lyrics. Here's a picture of the back of the album cover. I adore cows and obviously, so does he:

There's something I want to say to anyone reading this site and that is that something happened during that hot summer of 1986. I had been experiencing severe bouts with depression and wasn't sure if I wanted to keep struggling. My best friend was scared to death and I did not offer her any sense of relief. My planned trip to Toronto to meet Daryl had more than one meaning. Sure, I wanted to introduce myself to him and let him know how much his music had helped sustain me in times of crisis.

But there was another reason: I had convinced myself that "Three Hearts" was Daryl Hall's farewell album, that he was dying and that if I didn't travel to the big city to meet him, then he'd surely not make it. Sound crazy? It was, because I'd been awake for over seven days and nights and was experiencing delusions. My illness had not been diagnosed as yet and so my drastic mood swings were just dismissed as a personality glitch. So there I was, this mixed up young woman from London, Ontario, thinking that I and I alone could save one of the world's most successful, good-looking and influential rock performers. Talk about delusions of grandeur.

Now, before this metamorphosizes into a tell-all diatribe on how screwed up I used to be, let me point out to other fans that may be reading this that, in the end, everything worked out and that Daryl was really NOT dying of lymphoma, as I'd mistakenly thought. As I read the lyrics for the songs that made up the "Three Hearts" album, my mind raced with panic and despair. In the song, "Right As Rain" which is actually about starting over and letting bad thoughts and deeds wash away with the rainfall, I saw a man preparing to die: "I've been trying so hard to close my eyes, Dawn is rising under those cloudy skies, Days in darkness, Seemed like they'd never end...." Somehow I'd twisted things, as in "Next Step", when the line "We're gonna have more fun NOW," made me think that he was saying that he and his girl should squeeze everything good out of this world at that moment, for soon he would be gone.

The reason I'm writing all this is because, through all the years of my illness, which turned out to be borderline personality disorder and bipolar affective disorder, there was the music of Daryl and John. I'd been a fan of theirs right from their first hit in 1976 and I still love their material. Daryl has always possessed a strong, hypnotic presence and was able to make even the most banal words sing with deep meaning and thought-provoking mysticism. These guys have been misunderstood from the outset---some even dismiss them as "The Bee Gees of the 1980's"---but they are wrong. Sure, a number of the duo's hits appeared somewhat shallow, but that was because they were taken strictly at face value. Remember "Maneater"? The line "The beast is in the heart," was Daryl's way of saying that we, as human beings, are still ruled by animal instincts and have reached a point where our sophisticated technology is overpowering our intellectual capabilities. But then, someone else may see something entirely different.

Saying that the music of Daryl Hall and John Oates is superficial sells them far too short. Personally, I have a great deal of respect for anyone who can achieve mega-stardom and wild success in a world designed to spit out potential superstars before they can get the first lyrics out. Music has many purposes: To enlighten, to educate, to move and, yes, to entertain. Daryl and John entertained us AND made us use our heads. Daryl has said that he often represents himself as a symbol in his songs and I believe him.

I remember, back in the latter months of 1984, that there was a full article on the guys in Rolling Stone. It presented Daryl Hall in a rather dark and unsavoury light---he was quoted in some pretty controversial conversations that had Muchmusic Veejays tittering and poking fun. Now, everyone has bad days and cannot always be "on" as it were, so I just shrugged and said to myself, "This guy doesn't sound too happy to me." Then later I found out about his depression, which happened in the summer of 1985, that magic summer of Live Aid.

I have begun a website on that phenomenon, which was orchestrated by Bob Geldof to raise money to feed the starving in drought-stricken Ethiopia. The cybernovel chronicles the lives of five teenagers as they make a lengthy pilgrimage to Philadelphia, where half of the Live Aid show took place. The URL for that site is: