Book Review: Daisy Jones & The Six

Spoilers!

Books can dig; they can take a shovel to your chest and just start digging until they hit something. Taylor Jenkins Reid’s 2019 book, Daisy Jones & The Six hit about as well as any book I’ve read. That line about digging comes from the book and is applied to music, but it’s just as true about books and Reid’s book. Daisy Jones & The Six is wholly unique, enthralling, bone marrow-deep, and electric. Like the best songs, I want to go back and relive it again, taking in the flow of Reid’s words, feeling her shovel clank again and again against what it’s found.

Daisy Jones & The Six is unlike anything I’ve read in fiction because it’s presented as a true oral history of the fictional titular band’s rise and fall in 1970s Los Angeles. The oral history features all the band members, as well as a few secondary characters, telling the history of the band as they remember it and experienced it — the pitfalls of memory included. As unique as the structure is as a way of plotting a story and developing characters, what stands out about Reid’s accomplishment is that the oral history format still hits deep and resonates. Oral histories read fast, but Reid found a way to allow the reader to catch their breath and feel. I know I’m reading a book that’s resonating with me when I’m making a point of stopping and noting where a particularly poignant line was in the book. Reid can write, and the bottle-in-a-lightning aspect of the band’s meteoric rise and fall feels wholly authentic. From the macro level of drugs, sex, and rock ‘n’ roll set in the backdrop of the seedy 1970s Sunset Strip, of course, but also at the micro level with the fascinating machinations of songwriting and the magic of music-making. The reason art feels like magic at a certain level is because no matter how close Reid zooms in on Daisy and Billy Dunne’s collaborative songwriting — the two lead stars in the band — there is something intangible about good art that no level of observance and detail can capture. Such is the case with books like Reid’s, too.

Like many rockers of that age, Daisy and Billy both go through the sex and drugs of rock ‘n’ roll. Fortunately, early on, Billy is able to kick his addictions and philandering, so he can be with Camila, his pregnant wife. Addictions are a roller coaster of cringe and apprehension because I’m just waiting — but hoping against! — Billy to fall off the wagon in both regards, his sobriety and his monogamy. Fortunately, he never does, albeit, he gets close the night of the band’s last performance. And of course, Daisy’s own addictions are heartbreaking to see detailed because you worry, aside from it killing her, obviously, that it’ll ruin this meteoric rise she’s experiencing.

Billy’s married to Camila, and as I said, once he’s clean and reformed, he’s committed to staying sober and monogamous with her, but Daisy’s quite the compelling “test” for him. First, musically, because he’s the lead of a rock ‘n’ roll band, and then the record label and producers want to bring in Daisy to help propel them to stardom and mainstream status. Reid gives a great line to Billy’s point-of-view, which can apply to so much more than music, “When you have everything, someone else getting a little something feels like they’re stealing from you.” Billy saw Daisy as “stealing” from him and ruining the vibe of The Six. Alas, she was the missing piece all along.

So, they work together to make music magic. The next test, then, is their potent bond over their love of music, songwriting, and singing, and there is an undeniable chemistry when they are sharing a microphone. But Billy can’t love her despite this evident passion because he has Camila. He likens Daisy to fire (passion), and Camila to water (necessity). This crushes Daisy, though. Many of her songs (and his, too) are written about their unstated relationship. Daisy says of Billy and her love for him in their collaborative songwriting process, “Everybody wants somebody to hold up the right mirror.” Indeed, we all want to be truly seen and validated for who we are. Their collaborative songwriting makes for their smash hit one-and-done album, Aurora.

A meteoric rise necessarily means a calamitous fall, and that’s what happens. The Daisy/Billy relationship is volatile; Graham and Karen can’t work together anymore after Karen had an abortion after being impregnated by Graham (another unrequited love situation where Karen doesn’t feel the way he does); Eddie can’t stand Billy’s tyrannical stewardship of the band; their brilliant producer, Teddy, died; and Pete, Eddie’s brother, doesn’t want to be in a rock ‘n’ roll band anymore. Graham is also fed up with Billy because Billy is so in his own world about the band, Camila, Daisy, and his sobriety, that he is inattentive to Graham’s distress over Karen. The band ends and everyone moves on, nobody with any regrets it seems.

One of my favorite characters was Warren, the drummer, because he was the epitome of a chill rock ‘n’ roller. He was there for the ride and if it was going to end, okay, he’ll go do something else. No sweat. He was the balm to the heartache, addictions, and pressure cooker Billy and Daisy existed within. But you also have to love Daisy, despite her selfishness and pitfalls at times, including being a rather crappy friend to Simone, because she was wholly herself, unapologetically so, and especially to do that in the 1970s in the male-dominated rock ‘n’ roll scene is epic and why she’s remembered 30-some years after the band’s demise.

Reid got me at the end, too, because I had wondered early on why we weren’t getting more of Camila’s side of dealing with Billy, who she admits is imperfect, but she didn’t want perfect. She chose him, warts and all. Then, we find out why we weren’t getting Camila’s side as much: The oral history is curated by Julia, Camila and Billy’s oldest daughter, and Camila died of lupus, so, the story is bereft, largely, of her perspective. I thought that was a nice touch and wrapped everything in a bow well.

I can’t say enough good things about Reid’s book, including his nascent songwriting! I really liked her songwriting sprinkled throughout the book and then at the end, the full lyrics from a few of the songs are available. Lines such as this one from the song, “This Could Get Ugly”: Oh, we could be lovely/If this could get ugly. Or from “Regret”: When you look in the mirror/Take stock of your soul/And when you hear my voice, remember/You ruined me whole. Oof.

Music is where I turn when my heart is asunder because, as Reid said at the top, music (art) has a way of digging into you until it hits something. To hear the ache in someone else’s voice — to know they ache, too — reveals how deeply human, and connected, we all are. To read, and to read Reid’s book, is a similar experience.