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What is about musical bands that makes them all have the same highs and lows? Musicians who saw This is Spinal Tap 40 years ago actually believed it was true because a lot of the events had happened to them or those they had played with. Fame, money and power does crazy things to people especially when those who get too much of it too quick it can be destructive.
That being said Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid seems to go down the same avenue that has happened in other stories, both true and fictional about musical groups. I mean, what’s a good story about a band that’s been together for decades? You have The Rolling Stones who have outlasted a lot of people who bought their albums back in the day. The Beatles didn’t stay together long. And they still tell stories about Paul and John, George and Ringo.
Egos clash together. One or two members feel the songs are the style they want to play. The managers and lawyers lock you into contracts that you can’t get out of. It’s a crazy business. And when you have people who aren’t business savvy it can very easily spell some major drama.
Reid says she based the book on Fleetwood Mac and the tumultuous relationship between Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. Even the cover of the novel the titular character seems like Nicks from back during the 1970s, which most of the book is set. It’s mainly a focus on the relationship both on and off stage of Daisy and Billy Dunne, the lead of the six.
Jenkins Reid styles the novel as a oral history format which both helps and hurts the novel. It gives more depth to the main characters, but instead it reduces the rest of the band members to one-dimensional characters that seem to be hard to tell about. Daisy is the daughter of a wealthy parents in southern California who becomes famous for being a groupie before she begins to start her own recording career as a singer.
On the other side of the country in Pittsburgh, Billy and his brother, Graham, form the band The Dunne Brothers, with some other musicians, Eddie Roundtree on bass guitar, and Warren Rojas on drums. They get a keyboardist, Karen Sirko, and Graham is the lead guitarist. They both work their ways around becoming famous through the early 1970s.
Finally while recording their album, Seven Eight Nine, Daisy is brought in to sing with Billy on a song “Honeycomb.” And from there the band explodes. Also, at the same time, it becomes apparent that there might be some romantic tension between Billy and Daisy. At the same time, Billy is trying to maintain his marriage to his wife, Camilia, and build a family.
Eventually, the band splits up during the summer of 1979. This is not a spoiler as it is referenced early on in the book. While it does seem a little too dramatic at times, Jenkins Reid does an okay job of building it up. I felt the character of Eddie was too overblown as he doesn’t want Daisy in as it will make it more of a pop band. At the same time, Graham and Karen start a relationship that they keep silent from the other band members. However, this I think is because Reid just wanted to give the other characters something to do. But they really don’t exist much to the story outside their secret relationship.
There’s also a little anti-climatic ending from what you’ve been expecting. A lot of band members have tension but some of them are able to stay together regardless of how they are in their private/personal lives. I guess the moral of the story is next mix business and pleasure which is an older moral. You never really should hang out too much with the people you work with.
The novel was turned into a 10-episode series on Amazon Prime with Riley Keough, granddaughter of Elvis Presley, as Daisy. I haven’t seen it. But I have seen Spinal Tap, The Dirt, Almost Famous, Eddie and the Cruisers, That Thing You Do, The Doors, Straight Outta Compton, Rock Star and others more that I can’t recall at this time. There’s also a four-hour documentary on The Grateful Dead, Long Strange Trip, that is also on Amazon Prime. It’s a different story about a band that I recommend.
What do you think? Please comment.