Peter Viney's Blog

Ten part series

Based on the novel Taylor Jenkins Reid
Adapted by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber

Amazon Prime, 2023

Daisy Jones, lead singer / songwriter – Riley Keough
Billy Dunne, lead singer / songwriter / rhythm guitar- Sam Claflin
Camila Alvarez, Billy’s wife, band photographer – Camila Morrone
Karen Sirko, keyboards – Suki Waterhouse
Graham Dunne, lead guitar – Will Harrison
Eddie Roundtree, bass guitar- Josh Whitehouse
Warren Rojas- drums- Sebastian Chacon
Simone Jackson- Daisy’s ex roomate, disco singer – Nabiyah Be
Teddy Price- the producer – Tom Wright
Rod Reyes, tour manager- Timothy Olyphant
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Nicky, Daisy’s husband- Gavin Drea
Bernie, Simone’s lover – Ayesha Harris

I tend to buy books with rock music settings … Groupie, The Man Who Shot Mick Jagger, The Commitments, Number One With A Bullet. I’ve even written one, Pulling Into Nazareth (LINK HERE).

That’s why Karen bought me the novel of Daisy Jones & The Six, but started reading it before I could, and I never got around to it, then the TV series arrived. It’s often best to watch the screen version before the book so you are not irritated by the difference between your mental pictures and what’s up on the screen. I will now look at the book.

We didn’t binge watch … it took nearly three weeks, and we never did two episodes in an evening, but we generally looked forward to it. The on-stage sections are created very well. It looks and feels 70s. It takes place between 1968 and 1979.

It has ten episodes, or ten ‘tracks’ and portrays the rise of a 70s rock band from humble beginnings to stardom and Lear Jets. The band are doing pretty well (like Fleetwood Mac) until they meet a charismatic female lead singer (like Fleetwood Mac) then they become mega stars (like Fleetwood Mac). Her stage name is Daisy Jones, which has the same rhythm as Stevie Nicks … Daisy Jones … Stevie Nicks. On stage, once they’ve become famous she has floaty dresses and is famed for twirling on stage with the dress swirling around her (like Stevie Nicks). She has a penchant for snorting cocaine before shows. No accusations, and Stevie Nicks and everyone in the band has declared that the urban myths about a roadie being employed to blow coke through a straw into her anus, so as to protect her vocal cords is merely a crude and untrue urban legend.

The band, The Six has five members. Drums, lead guitar, bass guitar, keyboards, lead singer / rhythm guitar … plus Daisy Jones. There are two women in the group (like Fleetwood Mac), and early on Karen, the keyboard player, sings and throughout she has a microphone in front of her. She is English. An English female singing keyboard player in a band with a female lead vocalist? That’s a bit like Fleetwood Mac. Here the rest of the band are American though, and it has two brothers, only one is the star singer and writer. (A bit like The Kinks, Dire Straits, Allman Brothers).

The Dunne Brothers was the original Pittsburgh band. The bass player leaves, and Eddie is persuaded to switch from guitar to bass. That rings true. So many bass players were guitarists who switched to bass so as to join a better band. Eddie also simmers quietly with resentment right the way through. They move to LA where they meet first Karen, who joins the band, then Daisy who’s a waitress. She is discovered by Teddy Price, an astute and experienced African-American producer, and it’s he who places her with The Six.

You can’t draw the parallels too tight. There is a strong streak of Janis Joplin in Daisy Jones. There is a strong impression of muscular blue collar singer from an unfashionable city in Billy Dunne (which doesn’t fit Lindsay Buckingham). The story is the onstage love / hate relationship between Billy Dunne and Daisy Jones as they co-write songs, sing duets powerfully, and then cosy up on the same microphone to audience applause. Look at pictures of Bruce Springsteen and Patti Scialfa on the Tunnel of Love tour for inspiration.

The main storyline is ‘Will they? Won’t they?’ and there are no plot spoilers here. In fact, when we saw Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham, long long out of relationship, were acting out a similar drama on the mic. That’s showbiz. The author has said watching Fleetwood Mac on TV partly inspired her.

There isn’t as much inter-band sexual swapping as Fleetwood Mac (a biography of Fleetwood Mac is probably racier), and Billy Dunne was a member of the band before Daisy’s arrival, who felt usurped. Eddie felt usurped by being moved to bass. Camila felt usurped by all the close shared mic stuff on stage. Is it what it looks like?

The songs are the hardest part. They have to sound like major hits, especially Look At Us Now (Honeycomb) which is a Billy original that Daisy improves. It’s their signature piece. I think the songs sound good enough to be feasible (but are not Go Your own Way, Gypsy or You Make Lovin’ Fun). We need a degree of willing suspension of disbelief and I accepted that these could be hits. Just about. For starters, to have been a major band with a Lear Jet with their name on the side, they would have needed three or four hit albums, not the one.

The songs (sung by Riley Keough and Sam Claflin) have been released as an album to accompany the series, Aurora. Will they front a real band out on tour as Daisy Jones & The Six? I wonder.

There’s a great deal of found music, with Patti Smith singing the theme, and every track has the title of a well-known song … Come and Get It, Someone Saved My Life Tonight, I Saw The Light, Fire, Whatever Gets You Thru The Night … and track ten is Rock & Roll Suicide. I’ve done the same with chapter titles.

What I like most is the band members twenty years on, in a supposed interview, commenting on the past and why they broke up on that night in 1979. They’re interspersed with the action all the way through the series. It works very well, and they’ve all been aged carefully. Sam Claflin as Billy has gone from long hair and rugged looks to a small neat beard and the air of a serious songwriter (he switched from performing to writing, which is a hard one to parallel). Daisy has gone on to a huge solo career. Warren Rojas is the drummer who married a film star, and he has the most cheerful memories. He says he’s been a top session drummer for twenty years and has the yacht to prove it. That means he’s the most proficient on his instrument in the band too. Graham has persisted in minor bands. Karen has stayed in bands too. Eddie has left the business. That all sounds about right.

It’s an enjoyable series.