Everyone who knows me knows that I love all things music. This is probably why I fell in love with Daisy Jones & The Six. I had heard about the book everywhere for a while and it was always on my “To Be Read” list, but recently I finally picked it up at a bookstore in Boston. I sped through the book in a couple of days and immediately started watching the show that night.
For those unfamiliar with Daisy Jones & The Six, the book was published in 2019 and written by Taylor Jenkins Reid, an author also popularly known for her novels The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Malibu Rising. While her books have been popular, this is the first time one of them has been adapted on-screen. The book tells the story of a 70s rock band and their journey to the top, while also revealing the truth behind the band’s breakup.
The book follows Billy and Graham Dunne who originally started a band with their friends in Pittsburgh called The Dunne Brothers. As the band becomes more popular within their area, playing at wedding venues and local parties, they start to get recognized. They begin to book gigs and the band decides that it’s time to move to Los Angeles in order to get serious about their music. As they begin producing their first album, they know that a female voice would fit best on one of their songs. That’s when they meet Daisy Jones. Daisy has been recording her solo music with Teddy, the producer that both the artists share, and trying to make it big on her own. Daisy begins to work with the band and everyone recognizes how good they sound together. This sets off their music career as “Daisy Jones & The Six” and they decide to record a joint album. The band spends increasingly more time together, and what first brings them together is now what they can’t stand about each other. They begin to sacrifice too much for success and decide that staying together is taking too much of a toll on all of them. Even though their music gets them to the top, all other aspects of their life begin to go downhill.
Four years after the book came out, the show was released in 2023 by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, alongside Reese Witherspoon’s production company Hello Sunshine. Both the show and the book take the form of an oral history and documentary, with interviews of the characters years after the band was at its peak. The show stars Riley Keough (Elvis’ granddaughter) as Daisy Jones, Sam Claflin as Billy Dunne, Suki Waterhouse as Karen Sirko, Camila Morrone as Camila Dunne, Will Harrison as Graham Dunne, Josh Whitehouse as Eddie Roundtree, and Sebastian Chacon as Warren Rojas. Each member of the band navigates their place within it, all while also trying to create the best music possible for their fans.
I think it’s safe to say that as the show goes on, it becomes kind of like a horror movie where you are yelling at the characters from behind the screen not to go through that door. Daisy and Billy continue to make bad decisions, whether it be related to love, drugs, their music careers, and how they treat their band members. Their stubbornness is what draws the two of them together, but this dynamic between them is also what creates most of the problems throughout the show.
While Reid never states that she intended the story to be completely based on Fleetwood Mac, fans of both have noted the parallels between the two. Fleetwood Mac has secured its place as one of the most iconic rock bands of the 70s. The British-American band is known for their blend of a folk, pop, and rock sound throughout their discography and their biggest-selling album, Rumours. It’s pretty clear that a lot of Daisy and Billy’s performances were inspired by the intimate performances between Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. One of the most referenced performances to describe the similarities is in a Silver Springs performance from 1997. Even Stevie Nicks commented on how similar the show was to her experience in the band on her Instagram post saying, “It brought back memories that made me feel like a ghost watching my own story.” Reid states in a 2019 interview with Penguin Books UK that she originally started with the inspiration of Fleetwood Mac while brainstorming, and then added her own twist as she went. She makes sure that the audience knows that it is not just a rip-off of their lives.
The element that I think made the show is that all of the actors are actually musically talented. At the end of the book, Reid wrote out all the lyrics to Daisy Jones & The Six’s fictional songs and we got to see them produced in the show. Some of my favorites are Look At Us Now (Honeycomb), The River, and Regret Me. Many also compare the style and sound of these to Fleetwood Mac’s songs. The actors had a plan to go on tour in the summer of 2023 if it weren’t for the writer’s strike. Had I known about the show at that time, I would’ve raced to get tickets. Although there’s no sign of it right now, fans still ask if it’s a possibility in the future.
I absolutely loved both the book and the on-screen adaptation of “Daisy Jones & The Six.” I had never been an avid Fleetwood Mac listener, but once I knew about the comparison between both bands I started to put on Fleetwood Mac whenever I had the chance. If you’re searching for a new book to read or a show to watch as a Fleetwood Mac fan, you need to turn to “Daisy Jones & The Six,” and I promise you’ll take away a new favorite book, show, or band to listen to.
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