M&B June Book Club Pick: Daisy Jones & The Six
Last night I finished a new book, Daisy Jones & The Six. If you know anything about me, you know Almost Famous is my favourite movie of all time and I think Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours is the best album ever made. Which means, when I say Daisy Jones is essentially the love child of Stevie Nicks and Penny Lane, it means I adored this book. It transports you, capturing the manic sexual, creative, and drug-fuelled energy of the seventies and the kinetic youth of the rock-and-roll movement.
Written as a transcript, the book reads like a cover story from Rolling Stone or Creem; a long-form interview with everyone from the band to management to close friends and family. It wasn’t until about halfway through the book, after doing some Google searches, surprised I hadn’t heard about the young ingenue Daisy Jones from my Fleetwood Mac-adoring parents, that I realized the book was fiction. With such snappy and honest dialogue, I had no idea, it felt real. I just thought the author, Taylor Jenkins Reid, was a phenomenal interviewer.
I will say in some ways, it felt maybe too reminiscent of Almost Famous. Daisy Jones’ Billy feels awfully familiar to Penny Lane’s Russell. Then there’s the bandcest and the drug addictions, but maybe that was universal amongst rock bands in the 70s. And of course, the power dynamics and jealousy that come when there is a clear frontman in a band - a dictatorship in what was supposed to be a democracy, as the guitarist Eddie mentions more than once. In other ways, I could see the inspiration Reid drew from 1960s bestseller The Valley of the Dolls (one of my favourite books ever), to craft Daisy as a character. The excess, loneliness, and talent of a young woman making her mark in a universe ruled by her male counterparts.
Regardless of the parallels, the oral history approach to the writing leaves a delicious gap between what is remembered individually by each character and what was the group’s memory of a scenario. It gives you a chance to see what and question why certain characters leave certain pieces out of the narrative. Because of course, we know that every person has their own truth, coloured by their own feelings, experiences, hopes and fears.
In the end, there was one undeniable fault to this novel and it was one that couldn’t be overcome by the medium. Writing about music is never the same as hearing a song for the first time, or discovering music that speaks to the deepest parts of your psyche. It felt unfair, reading about an album that supposedly changed the world of rock and roll, without ever hearing it, especially considering it was such a pivotal storytelling mechanism, acting as the engine pushing along the plot. Soon that will change, thanks to the dynamo patron of written storytelling and female-narratives, Reese Witherspoon, who optioned the rights to the novel. Picked up by Amazon, the made-for-digital-TV story will span a 13-episode arc. Which means, we will get to hear all the famed songs - Honeycomb, Aurora, Regret Me - the true drivers of the story, outside of our imagination. I can only dream that Harry Styles and Stevie Nicks, both dabbling actors and flower children, snag roles or at least writing credits on the soundtrack.
