Everyone knows Daisy Jones & The Six, but nobody knows the reason behind their split at the absolute height of their popularity . . . until now.
Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it’s the rock and roll she loves most. By the time she’s twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things.
Also getting noticed is The Six, a band led by the brooding Billy Dunne. On the eve of their first tour, his girlfriend Camila finds out she’s pregnant, and with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little wild on the road.
Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer realizes that the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend.
A very different story, yet one that feels like it will be played out time and time again.
On the surface it’s a story about a band forged and manipulated in a way we’re all too familiar with now, watching them rise to the giddy heights and then implode. It’s also a love story – played out with a number of characters – that everyone can identify with in some way.
While I spent the first part of the book trying desperately to work out if this was a real band or not, it felt as if it could have been. The passion for music shone through, and it was fascinating to see the way Reid chronicled the art of writing and producing music. However, it also had a seedier side – the chronicling of people at their very worst, driven by demons they have little to no control over and feeling it was a precarious tight-rope that could have gone either way.
I found the interview format rather disconcerting initially, but as I settled into the story it allowed us to see many facets to the characters and their interactions.
I’ve heard great things about the audio version of this, and definitely want to listen to it at some point. I’m also curious to see the TV adaptation of the story – and can’t wait to see who plays Daisy who was not always the most likeable character, but from the moment we’re introduced to the vulnerable child Daisy she was someone I was rooting for.