This book Daisy Jones & The Six is real Rock&Roll. Every sentence, every word is imbued with the sounds of rock. While reading, I had the feeling, I was in the middle of the events.
Daisy Jones & The Six tells the story of a group from the seventies of the past century, which reached cult status and which surprisingly falls apart and no one knows why. Until now!
It all starts with Daisy. Daisy Jones is a groupie, a popular girl from Los Angeles, a muse in search of herself. She is intelligent, talented, beautiful and wayward. Internally she suffers. The love of relatives is also missing. She dulls the pain with drugs, alcohol and opiates. Nevertheless, she realizes that she has two talents: she has a particularly recognizable voice when singing and a subtle sense of writing songs. Combined with her suffocating beauty, her weapons are formed, which she applies in her own way. She wants to build a career in the music industry.
“I had absolutely no interest in being somebody else’s muse.
I am not a muse.
I am the somebody.
End of fucking story.”
– Daisy Jones
The other part is The Dunne Brothers, a rock band around brothers Billy and Graham Dunne. The charismatic Billy is the driving force, the heart and the head of the group. Attracting girls like magnet, talented and persistent to perfection when it comes to music. The band’s first album is liked by the fans, enters the charts and climbs headlong, which raises expectations.
Both aspiring to rise, the group of Billy and Daisy Jones, their managers and their music company, with which they are on contract, come up with what turns out to be a brilliant idea – to bring them together. One duet changes everything. From a backing artist, Daisy Jones, and a major band, the Dunne Brothers, it becames a band, Daisy Jones & The Six. The dashing, privileged Daisy meets Billy and compliments him in his compositions and lyrics. She perfects his art in what he has to express. Together, they test the limits of creativity, take risks, and finally reach the right measure.
Throughout the book, the characters of the protagonists change. Some of them reach the darkest depths of their souls, but thanks to their family, they manage to come back to the surface again like Billy Dunne. He is the creator and head of the group, a true leader. Success, responsibility and expectations weigh on his shoulders. Sudden fame does not reflect well on him, it prevails. He has different fears. Because of this he collapses, falls into the abyss. But next to him is his wife, Camilla, the love of his life, his support, a brave and admirable woman who helps him get out of this situation. And others fail to get out of this state, or it is way later, like it is for Daisy. She lacks the support of a person next to her.
Love bursts between the members of the group, expressed or not. This brings the book to a new level, adding additional drama and tragedy to the already existing one.
In interviews, in what form the book is written and the decision of the author Taylor Jenkins Reed that I welcome, the members of the band tell their version of the story, the constellation in the group, their truths, views and visions. They tell how it all begins and how it ends. And why. Each of them opens his heart, either admits their mistakes or not. We become part of them. You can feel the friction between them, the quarrels, and the struggles of competition. Also photographers, journalists from Rolling Stone-magazine, music agents, industry-renowned club keepers working for the record company, sound engineers, all those who had something to do with the band or at least had a point of contact with the work, express their impressions and arranges the story like a puzzle that forms the complete picture.
We get an impression of how intense and persistent the work on an album is, what to pay attention to, the arrangement of the songs and their interdependence. How important every tone, every note, every word in the text is, in order to convey the feelings that the artist wants and must reveal. The whole album is a work of art. You also need to skilfully choose the singles to distribute from the album.
“We were pretty good”
– Billy Dunn
“We were great. We were really great.”
– Daisy Jones
I developed a real respect and I can welcome the work of the musicians with even greater respect. I understand why some need 3-4 years until they release their next album. An album is a message, a chain reaction of songs that open feelings and paint pictures. Everything must be perfect.
Daisy Jones & the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reed contains the right dose of sex, drugs and Rock’N’Roll, and if reading gives the impression that this is a real band, this unfortunately is not the case. It is a fictional band/story in the real world. Because of the book, the author has studied the work of the Fleetwood Mack group, which still exists and which belongs to one of the most successful groups of all times. Their 1977 album “Rumors” is one of the best-selling albums in the music history.
And at the end as a conclusion, I will be taking Reese Witherspoon’s words:
This book is rock!
And as a professional in the media industry, she bought the film rights to the book and is currently in production for an Amazon-Prime mini-series.
- Title: Daisy Jones & The Six. The Story of the rock miracle of the seventies
- Author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
- ISBN: 978-1524798628
- Publisher: Intense Publishing House
- Date of publishing:
- Category: Novel, Biographical novel, popular music, Music history
