Daisy Jones is a force to be reckoned with, and The Six had no idea what it was getting into when they asked her to join the band. It all started out as an innocent co-writing session, and it ended in the best band of the era.
Daisy Jones & The Six is the oral history of the greatest band there ever was. Their time together was short, but their impact lasted for generations.
The story begins with Billy and his brother starting a band. They go through the regular crap a band does (members that quit, writing woes, etc), but eventually, they end up as The Six — Billy, Graham, Karen, Warren, Eddie, and Pete. The band is pretty successful, but then Daisy and Billy sing a song together, and everyone can tell it’s a hit. The only problem is Billy and Daisy hate each other. When Daisy joins the band on tour, and eventually joins the band for good, Billy and Daisy have to figure out how to work together because everything they produce is magic.
Billy is a recovering drug addict with a wife and kids at home. As if the world he lived in weren’t enough of a temptation, Daisy is a rampant drug abuser. It can be obvious at times why Billy doesn’t immediately fall at Daisy’s feet like the rest of the male population, but at other times, his hatred is more complex.
“We love broken, beautiful people.” — Daisy
Billy and Daisy are not the only characters with a complex relationship. Graham and Karen have a complicated love story of their own. Graham is head-over-heals for Karen, and Karen is terrified of falling in love because she doesn’t know what that is going to do for her career.
“I suppose everybody hurts everybody, but women always seem to get back up, you ever notice that? Women are always standing.” — Graham
Jenkins Reid is not afraid of breaking boundaries — of pushing the limit. She did it with The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and she did it again with Daisy Jones & The Six. Putting the blatant use of drugs aside, Daisy and Karen are some of the most headstrong female characters I have ever had the joy of experiencing. Both are determined to be stars of their own, will do anything to achieve their goals, and refuse to let a man get in the way. These are the types of characters I hope young women (and men) get to read about for years to come.
“I had absolutely no interest in being somebody’s muse. I am not a muse. I am the somebody.” — Daisy
The group, as well as their friends, significant others, and anyone related to the band at the time, are being interviewed years after their split by a surprising writer, but the reader feels like they are back in the 70s with the band during their rise to stardom. All the feelings and memories seem to be right on the surface like a day hasn’t passed.
One wouldn’t normally choose to tell this story as an oral history years after the fact, but Jenkins Reid knew what she was doing. The oral history aspect of it is what gives it such a punch. It allows everyone to tell their story. All the stories follow a general grain of truth, but everyone has their own version of how that story played out.
“However, it should also be noted that, on matters both big and small, sometimes accounts of the same event differ. The truth often lies, unclaimed, in the middle.” — Narrator/Interviewer
Daisy Jones & The Six is about passion. It’s about going after a dream until you have nothing left in you. It’s about saving yourself the only way you know how, even if it’s destroying you in the process. It’s about loving someone that is just out of reach even though they are right there in front of you. It’s a heartbreaking story told at the perfect time in the perfect format.
Happy reading,
Kimberly
