Which is not the case anymore! (laughs) But I looked at the picture of them and went, they couldn’t be Christian, look at the way they look! Look at those spandex outfits!

So I went to go see a concert, they were opening up for Bon Jovi, in a place that had about 500 seats…

Stryper.com: The Country Club?

Daryn: Exactly. And when I saw them, I was amazed. The whole crowd wasn’t a Christian audience, and everybody went silent when Michael would speak and their hearts were getting touched. And then the bibles came out, and I still thought, “It still could be a gimmick.” And so, something happened where I ended up going backstage with the band, and I started praying with Robert in one of the dressing rooms. This girl that had taken me to the concert, Terry, managed to go up to Robert and say “Oh this woman wants to pray with you” or something. It totally embarrassed me! Anyway, I started praying with Robert. When I lifted eyes, after the prayer had been going on, everybody in the band and crew was standing there holding hands with me. It was an amazing electric prayer, and it was something that let me know beyond a shadow of a doubt that, “Wow, this is really real, and really powerful.”

My pastor came to a concert later on, and gave the scripture of, ‘if you put a milestone around a neck, you’re leading the little ones astray into hell’. So my pastor, who taught me everything I knew about God, told me that these guys were leading people astray. I had to leave my church, and everything that I ever knew, because I knew that’s where God was. God was going to use them.

Stryper.com: So your pastor knew that you were going to this, to kind of check them out. When you went to the show, were you just going to stand off in the background and observe what they were about?

Daryn: Well, the girl that took me, she had actually met them before and talked to them before. So she’s the one that went to my church that said, “Come on, you’ve got to meet these guys.”

Stryper.com: Was she a fan, and did she believe in what they were about?

Daryn: She had seen them a few times, I think she actually just thought they were cute. (laughs) Maybe had a crush or something. She’s a Christian and thought what they were doing was interesting. Yes, I’m sure she probably did believe it.

Stryper.com: So you didn’t have any plans of meeting them, talking to them or confronting them that first concert?

Daryn: No, I’m not the kind of pushy person that would go up to somebody and go, “You’re doing the wrong thing”, it’s just not in my personality. I might not believe in what they’re doing, or object to what they’re doing, but it’s not my place to do something like that.

And with some of the bands that Stryper played with in the beginning! I was just looking at the old sheets of who they were playing with: Witch, and Sin, Anthrax and Raven … I mean, there were concerts back then when people would spit in their faces, do upside-down crosses … anybody who thinks that they had it easy in the beginning! Most Christians didn’t want them, and most heavy metal fans didn’t want them. They created a road in the music industry that did not exist. And they got flak from both sides. But they believed in their hearts that they were doing something that they were supposed to do. And so it gave them the strength to do it. But there were times when some satanic church came out and sabotage their bus! The upside-down crosses in their faces, while they’re playing with these other bands, on the same bill on the same stage on the same night! So you’ve got all these kids, going up and ceremoniously giving their hearts to satan, and they’re sitting there watching these guys throw out bibles!

The band had to win over audiences, and there was no way that they would have done it unless they were driven with the feeling that they had to do it. It was something that they wanted, to touch the audience. Stryper were not raised up for Stryper, they were not raised up to be looked at as, ‘aren’t they great’,‘look at those rock stars’. Everything about the reason that Stryper was raised up was all about the audience. It was about God wanting to touch the people. God wanting to use them to reach out and tell the people that He loves them. And allow a way for them to know that God wanted to be a part of their lives. Not a religion, nothing religious. A relationship. Just reach out, call on him, and he’s there for you. No matter what you look like, or what you’ve been into. And that’s the beauty of the simplicity of God and Stryper. The innocence of a bunch of guys that just wanted to do what God wanted them to do.

They looked really mean, and they were all dressed up in the Hell’s Angels-type garb, but they were Bikers for Christ. And they actually became Stryper’s bodyguards. People didn’t understand their ministry either, but God’s got a personality… so he raises up all kinds of unusual people because it’s a world of unique, different people that all need to be touched.

Stryper.com: I remember seeing some footage of the Bikers for Christ, was that you that set them up as the bodyguards?

Daryn: Everything that happened with Stryper, kind of came in a vision. It was all by miracles. Things just fell into place. Actually, when I started with the band, I just said, “Oh, let me help with whatever I can do!” I realized the need for this, and I just wanted to help in any way I could. What started to happen were the miracles, the visions, and the dreams of actual things that He would give you the ideas for.

For instance, the Bikers for Christ, we met them, they looked great, “Oh my gosh, why aren’t they up on stage as the bodyguards?” things like that. One time I was driving down the street with Robert, and I was telling him about this dream I had about this limo. But it wasn’t a new limo, it was one of those old Mafia type limos with the TV antennae on the back. As we’re driving down the street, we both look over to the side of the road, and there’s one with a “For Sale” sign in a hotel parking lot. Now when does that happen! It doesn’t! God made everything happen, including the promotion and everything about it. It was all by miracle.

We striped the limo, and it became the “Stryper limo”. They didn’t even have a record out, and it made them look bigger than they were when they drove up to these small little clubs in LA, like the Roxy, the Whiskey, those kind of clubs. We even had other rock bands that tried to follow and do exactly what we did, like buy a limo. We were the first band to have a three-sided billboard up on Sunset Blvd on top of the Rainbow. It was the kind of thing where I had a dream one night, and the next day I went in and talked to the owner of the Rainbow, and put up a three-sided billboard. But other bands actually went and did the exact same thing we did, to try and make it happen. But you see, it wasn’t because it was brilliant promotion, it was because God was leading, guiding and directing, in a unique way that had never been done before. And it was amazing.

Daryn: No, it didn’t exist. Stryper was a skilled, hot, incredible band that could have made it in the regular rock world playing songs that weren’t about God. They are really great musicians, each one of them has a personality and a stage presence that is unique. They never looked at somebody and said, “Oh, I’m going to bring those moves into my act” or anything. Each one of the band members is very unique. And it goes back to that ‘God is the creator’ and ‘the enemy is the imitator.’ They just weren’t of the mold because so much of the Christian world is “let’s see something in the regular world, and copy them.” That is totally backwards if you think about how it should be with God. Stryper had something they wanted to say. You can recognize passion in people, and it was real with them. Their talent coupled together with the real spirit, and God wanting to reach out to the people … it was an incredible combination.

Stryper.com: Was Stryper your first … I guess we’ll call it an investment?

Daryn: Yes, absolutely. I didn’t even care about the music world. Since I was a child I was always raised around movies, TV, and that whole world, but I knew nothing about the music industry. I still don’t think I know very much about it. (laughs) And that’s how you see God in it, because God made all of those incredible things happen. There’s not one human being on the planet that can take credit for anything that happened with Stryper in the beginning. It wasn’t a brilliant idea, it wasn’t some important person coming in. God shows through because He made it all come through. People just didn’t have a clue how to do this, and He gave them the inspiration to make it happen. It was all miracles!

Here’s an example of a miracle: There was a phone in the Stryper office, and it had a recording saying “Stryper Concert Hotline” and it would go through all the lists of the concerts. The phone didn’t ring, and we never answered it. It just sat there and every time somebody called it would play the recorded information. One day I walked by that phone and picked it up for no reason, and on the other end was a man I could hardly understand because he had a really heavy Japanese accent. He said, “I’m sitting here in Tokyo, with a Bam magazine.” Robert and I had stayed up all night doing this double page ad in Bam magazine, which is a local free paper magazine. So here was this man sitting there in Tokyo with this magazine that’s only for Los Angeles, and they don’t even have a record out! He said “I like the fashion. I want to send my number-one critic in all of Japan to meet you.”

So he sends Masaito, who was like a god in Japan. As far as heavy metal, there was no greater than this man. And so he came out, saw the guys, and just thought they were incredible. He comes back with CBS Sony to sign them in Japan! At that time, Stryper was with this little tiny record company called Enigma Records, which was a hole-in-the-wall record company at that point. And here we are, this little band that they (Enigma) decided to sign, and we’re bringing them the largest record company in the world, which is CBS Sony from Japan to meet with them. Do you see the miracles in this? (laughs) Do you see how no human can take any credit for this?

Stryper.com: What other investments did you make? You talked about the limo, the billboard …

Daryn: No, it’s not like that. I sold everything I had, and I put my money and my whole life behind them. You know that my church didn’t approve, so I left the church. My family thought I was nuts, because they don’t even know God. And I’m a Beverly Hills Bell Aire kind of person, I really never spent time in other towns. So I end in Cypress, CA, finding a little office with a place to live. I rented the office for the band, and there were a couple of rooms upstairs to live in. Then basically I sold everything that I had, and put the money behind Stryper for everything that was needed. So it wasn’t like a limo, this or that, it was everything.

But we had to have a unique office that would hold the truck and the limo. So after much prayer, we found this little back house that was perfect. But it was very small. The house that you saw in the video was when they finally got the nice office, and we actually lived there too.

Stryper.com: This year is the 20th anniversary of the EP. What do you remember about it?

Daryn: It was a really neat fun time. And it was exciting, because before I came into the picture, the band was going to release a demo tape. Enigma wasn’t going to put up any money, and they weren’t spending any money on doing it because nobody had any money. Robert had even been told that some woman is going to come in and she’s going to bring money into the band, where the band won’t have to worry about it any more. A very (hums Twilight Zone theme) kind of thing. And that was before he’d ever met me. So we were able to go in and do the EP, and they were all really excited about it. And Ron Goudie was a doll. We just love Ron, who was the producer.

The costumes they made themselves. At that point, when they didn’t have designers or anything, the guys would go and get black and white striped clothes. They would have this big vat of yellow dye, and they would sit there and dye the clothes before a show. It was always at Janice’s house, there was always a huge kettle of yellow dye. And whenever they would go to the store, they were always looking for things that were black and white, so they could do it.

I remember I got arrested while they were recording the EP! (laughs) I had a video camera and I would take videos of them all the time. And we were leaving the recording studio, and we were walking across the street to do something. I’m taping them, and walking backwards across the street. (more laughs) At that point, a police car stopped. They looked up my driver’s license, and I had forgotten to go to traffic school it seemed like, and so they actually took me in. They put me in a cell, and all this kind of stuff. It’s so funny because the guys hardly had any money, and are trying to put their pennies and dimes together to bail me out of jail. It was hilarious. And there’s another miracle. When I actually went to court, I found that I had gone to traffic school, but I had never sent in my paperwork. And it was a judge that I had met on the slopes of Aspin! But it was another kiss and a wink from God. I call them ‘kisses and winks from God’; those little moments that He lets you know that He’s there. And that was a huge one.

Stryper.com: The “Yellow and Black Attack” was originally a 6 song EP. Why 6 songs instead of a full-length album?

Daryn: I don’t know, I was just there to help. Maybe those were the six songs that they felt most comfortable with? It’s probably a good thing to ask the guys in the band.

Stryper.com: I’m surprised they didn’t make it a seven song EP!

Daryn: (laughs)

Stryper.com: What’s the story behind the messages etched in the vinyl?

Daryn: Robert found you can do that, and it all came from God. With the etching, Robert found out that we could write something on every record that is secretly a wink and a kiss to the fans. Maybe “By his stripes we are healed” or something like that, that the fans can go, “Oh wow, look!” But to make it unusual, where it’s not out in your face, but you have to find it. It wasn’t like some record company came up with all of these things. Robert would say, “I want the missiles, and I want the Hand of God pointing at all of the world, and all the stripes are where we’re supposed to take this.” It was amazing. He would look at something and come up with an idea and tell you exactly how God put it in his brain.

For instance, the Stryper acronym. I’m sure he’s told you this… but he’s just praying in the garage one day and he looks up at the word Stryper and goes, “Salvation Through Redemption, Yielding Peace, Encouragement and Righteousness.” He wasn’t sitting down with a piece of paper thinking, “What works with S and T?” Robert was always looking for the unusual. I mean, look at his drum kits!

Stryper.com: In the midst of recording “Yellow and Black Attack” or the early club days, did you have any inkling of where this band was headed? Did you know how big they were going to become?

Daryn: I had a vision, because I didn’t see any limits with God. You knew that God is the one that was handling things, because the miracles are so far above anything that any man could do. So there’s a wall, so what? God’s going to take you right through it. Part the Red Sea, we’re going! We’re going with God, how can anybody tell us that we aren’t going through? And that was what happened with Stryper.

Stryper.com: Anything that happened that that surprised you, you were like, ‘wow!’

Daryn: Everything! Everything was new, everything was exciting. We didn’t take for granted one little thing that happened. It wasn’t like, “this band is going is going to be so big and so huge”… no. The first time they were on the radio, we were like little kids, all of us. Often Robert and I would go off and do the business, and then we’d come back to Robert and Michael’s home. The boys would all be sitting around waiting, and we would be able to tell them about all of the miracles God had done. And it was really exciting. It will be exciting to see what happens in the future.

Stryper.com: The book is still being written.

Daryn: The book is still being written, yes. Matt Crouch from the Trinity Broadcasting Network was another miracle. He had this show called “Real Videos” with Jim Hodgeson and they came down to video a show, and they were going to put it on their show. We heard later from Jim that supposedly when TBN went to air it, Matt’s dad had walked by and had seen it was on, and was like “Get that off the network now!” We’re all sitting down ready to watch it, and the big sign comes up that says, “Having Technical Difficulties”. So you see like one minute of the video, and the technical difficulties sign went up. We just knew that something had to happen. But see, Stryper didn’t really belong on Christian TV. They weren’t raised up for Christian anything, they were raised up for the regular world. There are lots of Christian bands that are able to play to Christians. Stryper did the unusual, the different, the thing that had never been done before. They touched people that normally could never be touched.

Stryper.com: It’s funny now looking back on it, because Stryper became a staple of “Real Videos” for many years.

Daryn: That is kind of a blur to me now, but that may be. Patty found yesterday, a sheet of paper that says, “Call Channel 40 and say, why aren’t you airing Stryper?” and I remember it was a big deal. But that was probably a lot more in the beginning. They probably became more lax after that.

Stryper.com: So a lot of the things that happened with Stryper in the beginning was more of a grass roots, knocking on doors, making the calls type of thing?

Daryn: It was very much something that took on a life and a spirit of it’s own. For instance, there was a point where Janice (Robert and Michael’s mother) was doing the booking, and it was getting too much for her. Michael Guido, who was the spiritual-type leader of the band, was walking down the streets of New York with a Yellow and Black Attack tour jacket on. As he was walking, somebody said to him “Oh, you know that band? Would you mind coming up with me to this office?” It was Amy Grant’s manager, and he took him up to John Huey’s office with Frontier Booking. He just walked him into the office! I started to talk to John on the phone for hours. I’m telling him “I don’t know if this is for you, because this band is going to do things that have never been done before. There’s going to be a lot of heat that people are going to take for this, and it really needs to be done the way God wants it to be done.” And we talked for hours on the phone, and I had never met this man. And then he finally came out, had a meeting with Janice, and took over the booking for the band. See, God did bring us brilliant, incredible people that knew what they were doing. So when I say that nobody can take credit, I give a lot of credit to the incredible people God gave us. God gave us Wes Hein, the man that owned the record company and that put his heart and soul into this band. He gave us Rick, who did promotion for Stryper. Rick wasn’t a Christian, but he didn’t care. He’d tear down the walls of those places to put the press together.

Stryper.com: Rick Orenza?

Daryn: Yes. Rick Orenza was awesome! Even Lori who is Wes Hein’s wife now, was working her tail off for the band. People got caught up in what God was doing with Stryper. It didn’t matter if they were Christians or not, they just got caught up in this whirlwind because they saw what God was doing with this band. It became a passion of people to see this band make it.

Stryper.com: What do you remember about those early Stryper shows?

Daryn: They would play a 400 seat club, and the line would go around the block of people who couldn’t get in. When they would open up for another band, the place would be packed, with no room to breathe. Then the band that was headlining would come out, they would have hardly any audience! (laughs) They would play to crowds where there was no physical room to walk through people. They became such a phenomena. So it was a demand for them. Even in that, God made the buzz so big that people had to take notice. People that didn’t even want to take notice! They were doing interviews with ABC radio, they were coming and checking things out. Stryper was one of the most publicized bands because of the controversy. They did Playboy, I think they even did Hustler. They were in People, and they were in Newsweek. They were in everything because they were a controversial band, it hadn’t been done before. They were really making people sit up and take notice. For good or for bad, you know! (laughs) At least they were talking!

Stryper.com: Any press is good press!

Daryn: (laughs) Exactly!

Stryper.com: Tell us about the Stryper van from the cover of the Soldiers album…

Daryn: I had a Triumph Stag, which is a very cool car, it’s like a little Mercedes with a hardtop that comes off. My brother, who was an actor and a child star, had made a movie called Seven From Heaven. In the movie, there was this van. And it had rotary machine guns on top, and a drawbridge door in back. It was a movie about seven women in tight suits that bust up a cocaine ring or something, and this was the van of those girls. So I traded my Triumph Stag with my brother for that van, and I gave it to Robert. When I first met the guys in the band, everybody was really young. Michael had never had a car before. I gave Michael his first car. I gave him my really hot convertible Cougar, three-toned paint job, the whole thing. And that van was Robert’s second car he’d ever had. They didn’t have checking accounts or anything, they were just a bunch of guys God called! (laughs)

Stryper.com: So you gave Robert the van, which I believe it was originally grey…

Daryn: Yes, and we took it and had it painted at a car shop. Actually, the man painting it ended up being in the Mafia, and ended up being executed. He at one point held the van up as ransom, because he wanted more money. I actually had to call in my brother, who has made so many movies being the bad guy or the FBI guy. I had him come to the meeting where we were supposed to get our van back, and he ended up in a road chase with this guy, because my brother is so convincing! He did not know who my brother was, and my brother is also a skilled race car driver type guy… so he’s going up over the pavement, following this van. So it’s not boring in the world of God! There are all kinds of challenges and excitements! Stryper was not without excitements.

Stryper.com: Many fans are familiar with you primarily because of the “In the Beginning” video. But most people don’t know about your partner in crime …

Daryn: Patty.

Stryper.com: So how did you first meet Patty Gannon?

Daryn: I basically saw around the band a large amount of women that were crazy about them. They would say things like, “Oh, I want to help” and they’d come and try and hang out around the band and see how cute they were and how close they could get to them. (laughs) Basically worthless. There were tons of them. I saw this woman come in and be so organized, and never care about being in the guy’s faces. She came in with something to do, and she did it. Things she wasn’t even asked to do, like mailing lists. I just always saw her buzzing around, working. She told me yesterday that there were a couple of times where I just said, “Who are you?!” And then I asked her to come over to the office one time, there was actually someone there helping me who was leaving, and Patty had come to help with something… a mailer or something.

Stryper.com: Do you recall the year?

Daryn: Early. Very early. During the EP time. I ended up praying with her, she ended up doing the work, and we never let her go home. Patty does the work of five or six people. She takes no credit for anything, she never has to have her name on anything. She never has to stand out. She’s always in the background working. People never knew what she did. That office would not have been without her. Nothing would have happened anywhere without her. I’ve actually had Patty helping me in recent charity work I’ve done. You call her, you ask her to do something, and she does 20 things that you never even thought of doing. She has a really big blessing in heaven coming, and she has a really big place in this world where God recognizes her. You just don’t find people like that.

Stryper.com: What can you tell us about the early days of the office?

Daryn: It was excitement, always things going on. We would get all these letters. One guy wrote a letter saying that he went into a room and was going to commit suicide, and he turned on his brother’s stereo, and put on the record, and it was Stryper, and it so touched him that he gave his life to the Lord. The miracles that came through that office, we could see that what we were doing was touching lives and helping people. The guys would come in and see some of the things, but us being there and seeing everything that was going on – the letters, and people calling, it was just amazing. Nobody could reach out to these people. These people would not listen to some church guy. They are so bogged down by religion! The people that are forcing Jesus down their throats and hitting them over the head with the Bible, are the same people that are hurting them. So they say, “Excuse me? He’s supposed to love God and he’s beating me over the head with the Bible, I don’t want anything to do with it. God, who needs Him?” I felt the same way with my nuns in Catholic school growing up, I thought, if they’re supposed to know God … I guess that’s why it took me so long to get to know God. I thought if they have God, He’s the last person I want to get to know.

That’s the beauty of what Stryper is about – not religion, it’s relationship with God. All that other stuff, all the doctrine, and the things people use to battle each other, ‘I don’t believe that, I believe this’, that’s all man-made. It’s a relationship between the two of you, and the Bible is there with a road map.

Stryper.com: There was a point with Stryper that you stepped away from the ministry. What year was that?

Daryn: I don’t exactly know. I went through all the hard times with the band. I’m a Bel Aire brat, born and raised with a silver spoon in my mouth, and I had these guys coming from across the street because they stood in the line for cheese and things to feed us! Going in with 17 pennies to the day-old bread store to find something to eat. We went through all those hard times. I remember money being sent in to me for just exactly the amount that I needed. Then we finally get into the big offices, and we finally get to where we have money happening. At the gold record release party for “To Hell with the Devil", God gave me my first tickle that I was not going to be there much longer, that it was time for me to go. We had made a commitment to the guys in the band. When we, Patty and I, committed to working with the band, we committed to working with four guys. We didn’t commit to anybody’s management, we didn’t commit to anybody’s anything else. When we felt it was time for us to leave, we flew out to some little town and said, “We love you guys, but we’re leaving. We wanted you to know before you heard it from anybody else.” And then we flew back, and that was it. It was so hard to do.

Stryper.com: And that was ’87?

Daryn: I don’t know. Patty and I are the perfect team, because she is all details, she remembers dates, times, details. I am not the details person, I’m the whole picture person. I don’t remember dates.

Stryper.com: What was their reaction?

Daryn: Well, they were in a whirlwind, with all the things they were doing. Things were happening, they were moving, and that was fine. The wonderful part is, that God so set up us being with them and caring about them at that point. It’s like we all grew up together. No matter what any of us do in our life, we are so connected as family, because we experienced all of those miracles together in the beginning.

Stryper.com: Any funny stories?

Daryn: The guys were total jokesters. They were always hilarious, always doing silly things. Always doing things that would blow your mind, always having fun. One of the things that I really hope, and I believe will happen again, is that they’ll be able to find that childhood fun that they used to have together, and that will come in to their new shows. Because when they were first Stryper, they were all a bunch of young guys. Maybe with their first job, maybe not even a job… maybe their first car, some didn’t even have checking accounts. And then life happened. Then they had all the responsibilities, and scary things happened. Then kids and wives and mortgages and the real pressures of life. The thing that is really exciting, and that they could all bring into this new-ness, of whatever Stryper is, is to become, and will be, is the life experience. They are never what they used to be. They are never going to be those people. They have such a richness of experience. God was maturing them and bringing them to be what they are today, so they can help people because of their life experience. But put the fun back into it, because now they know God’s doing it again. The excitement of being able to be innocent and a child, while getting across God’s message, that’s the key.

Stryper.com: Do you see a future for the band?

Daryn: Absolutely. None of them wanted to come out and say, “We’re just going to get back together so that we can make money, be rock’n’rollers, and be out there.” No, they have all gone through their own hard times, the things that have matured them as human beings, and right now I have seen in each one of them such a maturity, an overcoming spirit, so much of the things that God has taken them through, and they have been able to persevere. The knowledge and the wisdom in them, it could never be the same message it used to be. It was a simple “hey, you need to know God!” message. Now, they have matured into incredible men of God, who have had really hard times. Each one of them has had to lay down music, because they didn’t know if God wanted them to go on. Each one of them has had such severe financial problems, that normal people might take their own lives type of thing. They have gone to where they had to go to learn what they had to do to bring a maturity to their message, to what they’re going to say to the people, to breathe life into the audiences through the concert, because it’s all about the people. It’s all about the people in the concerts being touched with what God wants to say to them. And I believe they’ve matured to that place. I believe now they know God wants to use them again. And I believe now they will come together as one spirit.

One thing that really has to happen with the band, and I believe that it will, is that all the band members, before they go out on that stage, they need to be alone together. Nobody else around them. And I think that their wives and their families and their friends have really been called to be great supports to them in that. Because it takes a spirit of caring to realize that’s what needs to happen. They need to get out on that stage and they need to be one spirit. And all of the people that love them and care about them, wives and roadies and all of us included, need to be in heavy prayer for them while they’re praying. So that they can do what they need to do on that stage and in the planet, so that lives can be changed and God can have his way. I believe that’s going to happen!