Daisy Jones & the Six

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

  BILLY: When the record was about to be pressed, I said to Teddy, “You made me hate my own song.”

  And Teddy said to me, “You’re going to need to work really hard at getting over yourself. Something tells me hitting the top of the charts is going to ease the sting a bit.”

  NICK HARRIS (rock critic): On “Honeycomb,” Billy and Daisy and the way they play off each other was the beginning of what worked so well about Daisy Jones & The Six.

  The chemistry between their voices—his vulnerability, her fragility—it grabs you and doesn’t let you go. With his voice deep and smooth, and her voice higher and raspier, they somehow still meld together effortlessly, like two voices that have been singing together for ages. They created a deeply heartfelt call and response—a story of this romantic and idealized future that may never come to pass.

  The song verges on being a bit saccharine. But the end undercuts the sweetness just enough. It could have been the kind of song teens play at prom. Instead, we have a passionate testament to the fact that things don’t always work out.

  SevenEightNine was a good album, in some ways a great album. It was more explicitly romantic than their debut—fewer allusions to sex or drugs. It still rocked, though. It had that driving rhythm section, those piercing riffs.

  But “Honeycomb” was the clear standout. “Honeycomb” showed the world that The Six could put out a first-class pop song. It was a pivot, to be sure, but it’s the beginning of their rise to the top.

  SevenEightNine was released on June 1, 1976. “Honeycomb” debuted at number 86 but was headed up the charts at a steady clip. The band, playing an unofficial residency of sorts at the Whisky, was gearing up to headline their own national tour.

  GRAHAM: We hung out in L.A. for a while, perfecting our set. The songs were coming together onstage. I say that but I guess I don’t mean “Honeycomb.” Billy did a rendition of it without Daisy. He just lifted her half of it and sang it as he originally intended on the album. It was good, but you could feel a hole in it. It was missing something. The rest of the album was playing great, though. We were playing tight, every song, every note. We had it down. We were putting together a great show.

  BILLY: We had the same people coming to see us two or three nights a week sometimes. And the crowds were growing the more we played.

  ROD: Billy should have invited Daisy to some of those L.A. shows. I told him that. But it was in one ear out the other with him.

  SIMONE: Daisy was frustrated they were excluding her. At least I got that impression, when we talked. Which wasn’t as often anymore, with all my touring. But I still made sure I knew what was going on with her. She did the same with me.

  KAREN: Daisy knew everybody at the Whisky. She was more connected on the Strip than we were. So it was only a matter of time before she showed up.

  DAISY: I wasn’t trying to crash anything. If Billy didn’t want to invite me to sing with them, that was fine. But I wasn’t going to stay away just because they were playing my single without me.

  Also, I’d started sleeping with Hank, which wasn’t a great move on my part, but, to be blunt, I was drunk or high a lot of the time back then and it’s a bit hazy. I don’t even think I was attracted to Hank or even liked him all that much. He was a little short, had a square jaw, but he had a nice smile, I guess. Really, he just seemed to be there all the time.

  Anyway, Hank and I had been out at the Rainbow and as we were walking, some of his friends were standing outside the Whisky, so we went in.

  KAREN: Graham nodded at me and pointed with his eyes to where she was on the floor. And then we saw Billy spot her, too.

  EDDIE: The whole time we were playing the Whisky back then, almost every night, Billy’d have some sort of note on how I was playing. He was such a control freak. But Daisy showing up, he couldn’t control that.

  And man, she looked good. She had on a tiny little dress. Girls didn’t wear bras back then and it’s a crying shame that ever ended.

  BILLY: What was I going to do? Not invite her to sing the song with me while she was standing right there? She forced my hand.

  GRAHAM: Billy said, into the mike, “Ladies and gentlemen, we have Daisy Jones here tonight. What do you all say we sing a song called ‘Honeycomb’ for you?”

  DAISY: I walked up to the mike as Billy was facing the audience, and I thought, Does Billy Dunne ever wear shirts that aren’t denim?

  BILLY: She came on the stage barefoot and I just thought, What is this girl doing? Put some shoes on.

  DAISY: The band all kicked in, and I stood at the mike, waiting. The first line is Billy’s so I just watched the people in the crowd as he started singing. I watched the way they watched him. He was a real showman.

  I don’t know if he gets enough credit for that. People now talk about how good we were together but I’ve seen Billy when he’s just on his own and that man is talented. He was born to be in front of a crowd.

  BILLY: When Daisy’s part came in, I turned and looked at her and watched her sing. We hadn’t rehearsed it, we had never sung together. I was half-expecting it to be a disaster. But after a second or two, I just watched her.

  She really did have a dynamite voice. She smiled almost the entire time she was singing. I think you can tell that, when you’re listening. It comes through. That’s something Daisy was great at. You could hear her smile in her words.

  DAISY: I thought about changing the lyrics back, on the second reprise. I knew Billy hated the way I had changed it to the questions. But just before I was about to start singing those lines I thought, I’m not here to make Billy like me. I’m here to do my job, and I sang it the way it was on the track.

  BILLY: I cringed as I heard her sing it.

  KAREN: Daisy and Billy were standing right next to each other, singing into the same mike. And…the way Billy would watch her as she sang…The way she’d watch him…It was intense.

  DAISY: We harmonized at the end together. It wasn’t that way on the record. It just sort of happened that way.

  BILLY: I could tell, as we were singing it, that we had everybody. When the song finished, the crowd started screaming. I mean actually screaming.

  DAISY: I just knew, at that show, that we had something special. Just knew it.

  And it didn’t matter how much of an asshole I thought Billy was. When you can sing like that with someone, there’s a small part of you that feels connected to them. That sort of thing that gets under your skin and doesn’t easily come out.

  Billy was like a splinter. That’s exactly what he was like.

  On the heels of their thrilling performance at the Whisky, Runner announced that Daisy Jones would be the opening act on The Six’s world tour, dubbed the Numbers Tour.

  Billy appealed to Rod, Teddy, and Rich Palentino to change their minds and drop Daisy from the ticket, but he was finally forced to agree to the billing when Teddy showed him that ticket sales were climbing rapidly. Holdover dates were being added to the itinerary.

  As the band and Daisy set out on tour, “Honeycomb” had just hit the Top 20.

  BILLY: I wasn’t focused on who was opening for us. I was focused on how to stay sober on the tour. It was my first time out on the road since rehab.

  CAMILA: Billy was telling me how he was going to call me three times a day and keep a journal of everything he did and I explained to him that I didn’t want him proving himself to me. That would just add more pressure, which was the last thing he needed. He needed to know that I believed in him. I said, “Tell me what I can do to make it easier, not harder.”

  BILLY: I decided to bring Camila and Julia out on the road with me. Camila was about two months pregnant with the twins by that point. We knew that, once she got further along, she wasn’t going to be able to be there as much. But I wanted her there to start off on the right foot.

  DAISY: I was excited to get out
on the road. I’d never toured before. My album was doing all right. I was getting some good attention. And “Honeycomb” was helping my album sell a bit better, too.

  GRAHAM: We were all happy to have Daisy with us. Daisy could do the hang. Daisy was a cool chick.

  We were in that period of time when you’re doing radio spots and photo shoots and your song just keeps climbing higher and higher, selling better and better. I got recognized a few times. People had been recognizing Billy for a while but now they were starting to know me and Karen a bit, too. I’d be walking down the street and see somebody with a Six shirt on.

  So I didn’t care who they put me out on tour with as long as things kept going the way they were going.

  BILLY: We played our first show in Nashville at the Exit/In. And my attitude was to include Daisy as I would include anybody else that was opening for us. We were used to being the opening band and now we were the headliner. So I wanted to be as inclusive to her as other bands had been to us. Personal feelings aside.

  KAREN: We were all backstage before our first show, before Daisy’s supposed to go out there. And Daisy’s snorting a few lines. Warren’s getting a massage from some groupie that somehow worked her way back with us. Eddie and Pete are doing whatever. Billy’s off by himself. Graham and I are talking. I think it was that show…Graham had trimmed his beard and you could see how handsome he was underneath all that scruff.

  And then there’s a knock at the door and it’s Camila and Julia. They had come to say good night to Billy.

  The second Daisy sees Camila and Julia, she puts the dope in a drawer, cleans her nose, puts down her glass of brandy or whiskey or whatever she’s drinking. It was the first time I saw any awareness from her. Like maybe she didn’t live on another planet. She shook Camila’s hand and she waved at Julia. I remember she called her “chickadee.”

  And then it was time for Daisy to go on and she said, “Wish me luck!”

  Everyone else was too busy doing their own thing to even pay attention but not Camila. She wished her luck and she was so sincere about it.

  CAMILA: The first time I met Daisy Jones, I did not know what to think of her. She seemed really scattered but also very sweet. I knew Billy didn’t like her, but I also didn’t think his opinion meant I couldn’t have my own.

  But, I mean, undeniably gorgeous. Just as pretty, maybe even prettier, than in the magazines.

  DAISY: I went out onstage first, opening up in Nashville, and I was nervous. I’m not normally a very nervous person but I could feel it in my body, my nerves. And I was maybe too coked up. I walked out onto that stage expecting to see all these people waiting for The Six. But a lot of the crowd was excited just to see me. They were there for me.

  I was wearing a black halter dress and my gold bangles and my gold hoops.

  Except for rehearsals, that was the first time I went onto a stage by myself, with just my backing band that Hank had put together. It was the first time I heard a crowd that big roar for me. All these people, coming together, looking and sounding like a living being. This booming, bellowing, living thing.

  Once I felt that, I wanted to feel that all the time.

  GRAHAM: Daisy played a good show. She had a great voice, her songs weren’t bad. She was somebody that could hold a crowd. And by the time we got out there, the audience was excited. They were already having a good time.

  WARREN: You could smell the grass in every corner of the place. Could barely see the back of the crowd through the smoke.

  KAREN: The moment we stepped foot onto the stage, you could tell the people that were there…it was a different group of people than our first tour. There were a lot more of them, for starters. The original fans were still there but now we had teenagers and parents, now we had a lot of women.

  BILLY: I stood there in front of that crowd, stone sober, feeling their excitement, knowing “Honeycomb” was heading for the Top 10. And I knew I had those people in the palm of my hand. I knew they wanted to like us. They already liked us. I didn’t have to win them over. I stood on that stage and…we’d already won.

  EDDIE: We really pulled out the stops that night, put it all out there on the floor for ’em.

  BILLY: At the end of the show I said, “What do you all say I bring Daisy Jones back out here and we play ‘Honeycomb’ for ya?”

  DAISY: The crowd went crazy. The whole place started rumbling.

  BILLY: I could feel my microphone vibrating as they screamed and stomped their feet and I thought, Holy shit, we’re rock stars.

  By the end of 1976, “Honeycomb” had peaked at number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. The band, along with Daisy, had performed the song on Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. They had finished up their North American tour dates and were gearing up for the short European leg of the tour. Camila Dunne, now six months pregnant, returned with Julia to Los Angeles.

  BILLY: I couldn’t make Camila and Julia stay out on the road with me indefinitely, I had to take control of it myself.

  CAMILA: I knew him well enough to know when I needed to stay and when it was okay to go.

  BILLY: The first night without them was hard. I remember sitting on my suite balcony after the show, hearing all the chaos outside, wanting to be a part of it. There was this voice in my head saying, You can’t do this, you can’t stay sober for much longer.

  I ended up calling Teddy. It was the early hours of the morning but it was only about dinnertime for him. I made up something to talk to him about. [Laughs] I think we ended up discussing whether he should marry Yasmine. He was worried he was too old for her. I told him to go for it anyway. And by the end of the call, I was feeling tired. I knew I could go right to sleep. Live to see another day. When we got off the phone Teddy said, “You feeling all right now, Billy?” And I said, “Yeah, I am.”

  After I had that first night under my belt, I felt a bit better. I stuck to my routine. I stayed away from the partying. When the show was over, I went back to my hotel room and I’d listen to some records or I’d go get a decaf coffee and read the paper at a diner. Sometimes Pete or Graham would join me. Although, most of the time, God knows Graham was just trailing after Karen somewhere.

  But I just kept on like I’d been doing when Camila and Julia had been with me. Toeing the line.

  GRAHAM: It was the same when Camila was there as when she wasn’t there. Billy was with the band when there was work to be done. And Daisy was with us when there was partying to be done. And never the two shall meet, or whatever it is they say.

  ROD: Right before we were heading out to Sweden, I’d told Billy and Graham that Runner was considering extending their tour once the European leg was done. I asked them what they thought of tacking on a couple more weeks once they got back to the States.

  It was a nonstarter. Camila was due around when we’d be getting back. Billy felt like he was cutting it close as it was.

  GRAHAM: It was a two-second conversation. Would I have liked to have continued the tour? Of course. Did it put us in a tough spot that Billy had to go home? Yeah. But he had to go home. End of discussion.

  WARREN: All of us wanted to do more dates but we couldn’t perform without Billy. You can plug in some guitarists for a few shows, a keyboardist. But you can’t replace Billy.

  DAISY: We were doing sold-out shows. And a lot of that was my doing.

  Meanwhile, the band’s album was selling a lot more than mine. Theirs was better than mine, so it made sense, but when it came to the live show, a lot of people really were coming to see me. And even some of the ones that didn’t care who I was before they got there left with a Daisy Jones T-shirt.

  I had real buzz. And I’d been working on some good songs of my own. I had one—super simple melody, not very complex—but it was good. It was called “When You Fly Low.” I’d written it about selling yourself short, how some pe
ople try to keep you small. “They want you humble/want to atrophy that muscle/want to stunt the hustle/get you to call uncle/to keep you flying low.”

  I’d been saying to Hank that it was time to talk to Teddy about a new album. And Hank kept saying that I should slow down. I got the impression that he thought I was asking too much. Like I thought I deserved more than I did.

  Our relationship was not in a good place. I should never have been with a guy like that.

  That’s one thing they don’t mention when they tell you to stay away from drugs. They don’t say, “Drugs will have you sleeping with some real jerks.” But they should.

  And I had let Hank into every part of my life: He often stood between me and Teddy, he was the one who hired my entire band, my money was funneling through him. And he was in my bed.

  KAREN: When we were heading out to Stockholm, we went out on Runner’s private jet.

  DAISY: Hank and some of the crew had flown out the day before but I waited and hitched a ride with the band. I made it seem like I wanted to hang out with them on the plane but I just didn’t want to fly over with Hank.

  EDDIE: It was on the flight out that I overheard Graham talking to Karen about turning down the extension. Man, that was the first I’d heard of it. No one had told me or Pete.

  We had a hit song, we were selling out shows with Daisy. Lots of people making a lot of money. The band, the roadies, everybody working on our tour and at the venues—we all have to pack it in because Billy got his wife pregnant?

  And it’s not even put up to a vote. We have to find out about it after the decision has already been made.

  KAREN: That was an interesting flight. I think that was the flight Warren got slapped by the stewardess. I only heard the slap, I didn’t see it.

  WARREN: I asked her if she was a natural blonde. Lesson learned. Not all women think that’s funny.

  KAREN: Daisy and I were in the back minding our business the majority of that flight. We had these two chairs facing each other, a couple of cocktails, looking out the window. I remember Daisy pulled out a pillbox and knocked back two pills, washed ’em down with a sip of her drink.