Review: Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
There are some books which deal with subjects which are seemingly so niche that you sound a bit incredulous even to your own ears when you recommend them to others (Where The Crawdads Sing, anyone? It’s about … marshes. And birds. And a loner girl … look, just read it). And then there are others that sound a bit too crowd-pleasing and predictable, books that you reckon you could probably sketch out the plot well before you pick it up. Daisy Jones & The Six sounds at first blush like one of the latter; perhaps the antithesis of Crawdads. It’s the story of a real-life* 1970s rock-and-roll band, featuring moody musicians and a man who wants his own way. So far, so formulaic.
Hutchinson, 2019
However, Daisy Jones & The Six is something different. Told in the format of a journalist or music historian picking apart the rise and fall of the people behind the most successful album of 70s, it takes the reader from the early days of the band - two brothers, Billy and Graham (I’m sure the stadium tour nods with the over-excited fans is a total coincidence) - and the others they gather around them along the way, all the way to their sell-out world tours. Jenkins Reid builds a world that you feel an integral part of. The story takes a more-or-less linear path, but is told in a mixture of emails, excerpts, transcripts and lyrics. The bulk of the tale jumps between narrators - mostly the various members of the band, but also their management and production team, one of the band’s spouses, and a music journalist. Some narrators are more reliable than others, and that sense of having to read between the lines, of having to working to understand what’s really going on, took the book from good to great for me. I loved soul singer Simone - Daisy’s only real friend; unwavering Warren; and kick-ass Karen (well before her name became a by-word for spoilt indignation and umbrage). Each character feels rounded, accessible - and above all, real.
The characters the book revolves around, though, are Billy and Daisy. They are both musicians, songwriters, singers - and both utterly convinced that their way of doing things is The Right Way. Their musical direction, their lyric, their set list - each is fighting a constant battle for what they passionately believe in, and so often diametrically opposed to what the other wants. There is such a rawness in their interactions that you can feel the tension vibrating in the air. These battles generate both the genius and the potential destruction of the band’s success.
“I think you have to have faith in people before they earn it. Otherwise it's not faith, right?”
It’s not only Daisy and Billy whose story we learn, though. Along the way we fall in and out of love, discover new places, feel the pull of addiction, hit the highs and fall into the deepest lows, right alongside the band and those around them. Love, death, sex, drugs and rock-and-roll - it’s all here. None of it’s prurient though, and the success and adulation the band begin to find are almost afterthoughts - the real beauty of this book is in the sheer human-ness, the normality and relatability of lives where people come together and apart again, in all their brokenness and perfection.
And that is why you should read Daisy Jones & The Six. If you love music and have always harboured ambitions of releasing a Number One album and singing to adoring crowds - you’ll probably love the book. If you are just A Normal, though, and have loved and lost - you’ll likely find yourself here, too.
Reese Witherspoon’s production company Hello Sunshine - known for developing great content that tells women’s stories - is leading the charge in bringing the novel to Amazon Prime for a 13-show series. Filming was disrupted due to covid-19 so no release date as yet, but that just gives you time to read this first so you can tell people you knew it was good before you saw it.
Buy Daisy Jones & The Six at Amazon
Buy Daisy Jones & The Six at bookshop.org
*It’s not real. Not even a little bit. But the author admits that the novel owes more than a little to the legend of Fleetwood Mac, and to the glorious Stevie Nicks
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