NIGHTSTANDS & COFFEE TABLES

Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

REVIEW BY MEREDITH MCKINNIE

“We love broken beautiful people. And it doesn’t get much more obviously broken and more classically beautiful than Daisy Jones.”

It’s about a girl, it’s about a band, it’s about love, it’s about self-destruction. It’s the 70’s where sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll are supreme. The coveted musicians immerse themselves in all of it at once; the lucky ones find their way out, but with a nostalgia for the way it was when it could be. Daisy Jones is the girl that lights up the room for all the right and the wrong reasons. No one ever told her no, or even paid attention to her at all, until everyone did, and she couldn’t handle the pressure. She was too smart to know they loved her for what she refused to be rather than what she was: “There were a lot of teenage girls that wanted to grow up to be me in the late seventies. But the only reason people thought I had everything is because I had all the things you can see. I had none of the things you can’t.” She’s the icon who resents all the reasons people love her, the tragic girl in perfect packaging.

The Six is a band formed from the vision of Billy Dunne, the lead singer looking for something to say and a reason to say it. He’s battling addiction, but strong enough to recognize it. But he continues to battle the lifestyle that comes with making music. He has a good band, but when the manager suggests Daisy be the lead singer, he knows this cyclone, and all the mess she brings with her, can make the band legendary, and he foresees legendary status. The story is told via interviews with the band members and the road crew, all with their own perspectives of what happened, many times conflicting and other times substantiated. Jenkins takes readers on the road with The Six; she takes us in the head of Daisy Jones. The narrative is raw, emotions ripped to shreds and then written in eyeliner on the back of a napkin before becoming a hit song.

It’s a snapshot of the rock scene: “I think we both had stars in our eyes-wanted to the Beatles. You wanted to be the Beatles and then you wanted to be the Stones.” It showcases a band as a family, chosen only for their talent, not for their ability to mesh. Like any family, they fight, they make up, they recognize the best and the worst in each other: “Everything that made Daisy burn made me burn. Everything I loved about the world, Daisy loved about the world. Everything I struggled with, Daisy struggled with. We were two halves.” It’s about loving selflessly and about loving selfishly. It’s honest about how the heart can be in two places at once, and sometimes more so where it knows it shouldn’t. Jenkins writes simply, but with such powerful intuition about real people living in a fantasy. It’s a delicious dive into a decade and a world we didn’t know we needed.