Stuff I Read: Daisy Jones & the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Two white-hot talents combine to form an iconic rock band in mid-1970’s California, with their meteoric rise to fame equaled only by how suddenly they disappeared. 40 years later, the band members are tracked down to tell their side of the story in Taylor Jenkins Reid’s 2019 novel, Daisy Jones & The Six.

And because I like you, here’s a mild SPOILER WARNING.

Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Daisy Jones & The Six is written as an oral history and the band members are interviewed for their take on the time spent in the hottest group on Earth. Daisy is a talented singer/songwriter from Southern California who chases boredom with booze and pills. After dating a few rock star wannabes, she gets fed up with being a muse and sets her sights on stardom. Across the country in Pittsburgh, brothers Billy and Graham Dunne start The Dunne Brothers, a rock band that featured Billy as the lead singer and songwriter and Graham at lead guitar. They’re later joined by drummer Warren Rhodes, brothers Pete and Eddie Loving, at bass and rhythm guitar respectively, and keyboardist Karen Karen (actually it’s Karen Sirko, but there’s a funny bit behind the stage name that I won’t spoil for you). Shortly into their time together, they’re rechristened “The Six.” As the band gains local popularity, Billy meets a fan in Camila, who becomes his girlfriend and subject of many of the songs he writes. After touring the East Coast, The Six lucks into a recording contract and move to Los Angeles, and Billy marries Camila. Billy learns that Camila is pregnant as he and The Six go on tour to promote their self-titled debut and he falls into a spiral of addiction and adultery.

Meanwhile, Daisy has also been signed to a recording contract after being discovered singing in a club. However, she isn’t allowed to record her own songs, as none of them win over the label. Fiercely protective of her work, she’s close to quitting the business when she’s introduced to The Six (with Billy now clean, sober, and enjoying being a father) and is invited to feature on a song on the group’s second album, titled SevenEightNine. The powerful onstage chemistry between Billy and Daisy, plus the fact that they sounded incredible together, leads the band to formally invite Daisy to join. The lead-up to the only album they would ever release together is fraught with band infighting (Daisy and Billy clash over songwriting; Eddie and Billy clash over the band’s leadership) and Graham and Karen breaking the golden rule of being in a band (Thou shalt not bang your bandmates). Billy’s chemistry with the hard-partying, free-spirited Daisy has him face temptations he thought he’d beaten and struggles not only with the urge to drink, but his attraction to her. This all bubbles over at and after the last show they perform in Chicago, 1979.

I absolutely adored this book. I devoured it in large chunks over three days. There is so much good stuff in here, and it starts with the narrative style. The genius in a well-written oral history is that you get a complete sense of who the subject is by how they’re viewed by other people. I’ve read one other oral history that I liked, and that was Chuck Palahniuk’s Rant. It wasn’t as well done as Daisy Jones & The Six. By making the band the subject of the oral history, Taylor Jenkins Reid accepted the challenge of making seven main characters compelling, each with distinct personalities and viewpoints of the events of those heady times. She nailed it. I’m also a big fan of music stories. Narratives about musicians—and stardom, by extension—tend to chart a similar, predictable course from formation and discovery, to rise, to moment on top, and the inevitable collapse. Movies like That Thing You Do! and The Five Heartbeats use the rags-to-riches-to-rags mechanic as do books like Tyler McMahon’s How The Mistakes Were Made. It’s a formula for a reason; we love that roller coaster. And because you know how that story tends to go, great characters will make or break you. Daisy Jones & The Six charts such well-rounded and believable characters, and makes you care about them so much, you would be forgiven if you checked Amazon or eBay for a copy of their album (it isn’t there, I heard). The band and everyone in their periphery is all struggling with this whole fame thing, and the whole thing is amazing and emotional to read.

If there’s a downside (and believe me, you have to really dig for one in this novel), it’s that the territory is so well-worn that there are very few surprises here. However, they are all in the last 30-60 pages, and all have roots in earlier parts of the story. I’ll spare you those spoilers as well. Let me be clear, though: yes, you’ve seen this type of story before, but you haven’t seen it like this.

And because it’s cool, I’m compelled to inform you that the author includes “liner notes” at the end of the story—the complete tracklist for Aurora, lyrics included—to further sell us on the plausibility of the story. She’s just showing off because she’s apparently a solid songwriter too. I’m more than a little jealous of her talents.

I’m not going to waste your time with a summary. If you haven’t read this brilliant beast of a novel, buy it. If you have, read it again because it’s just that good, and rejoice in the upcoming adaptation on Amazon Prime. Maybe we’ll get an album out of this after all.

Pros: Well-drawn characters, great interview style, believable, top-notch storytelling, and high-level songwriting.

Cons: Umm…

Rating: 5 of 5 stars.

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