If you lurk around the bookish community, without a doubt you have seen Daisy Jones & The Six around. It is one of the hottest books in 2019 and is going to be adapted into a TV series (!!!). I decided to pick the audiobook version of the book at around October last year and fell right into the world of Rock N Roll during the ‘70s.
If you are not yet familiar with the plot, Daisy Jones & The Six is a fictional oral biography of the biggest rock group in the ‘70s of the same name. I think the format of the book is one of the reasons why it works so well as an audiobook. The audiobook itself is narrated by more than 10 narrators. It was told in interview format and you get many different POVs of the same event.
“I had absolutely no interest in being somebody else’s muse.
Daisy Jones
I am not a muse.
I am the somebody.
End of fucking story.”
The book began with Daisy Jones. Daisy Jones was always the center of the attention – whether she wanted to be or not. She was born to a wealthy family and surrounded by money, drugs, you name it, except love and attention from her parents. What entails is Daisy’s journey from a young girl to a star, albeit a messed up one.
“I can’t think of any two things that make you quite as self-absorbed as addiction and heartbreak. I had a selfish heart. I didn’t care about anyone or anything but my own pain. My own need. My own aching. I’d have made anyone hurt if it could have taken some of mine away. It’s just how sick I was.”
Billy Dunn
The lead vocal of The Six, Billy Dunn was a rock star who is also a husband and a father. Despite seemingly having it all, Billy struggled with addiction and staying loyal to his wife. His addiction and cheating had almost broken his marriage one. After that, he sobered up – with the support of his wife – and tried hard to not ruin his family.
The Six themselves were starting to rise. When they were recording for a new album, their manager suggested that they record a song with an up and coming new singer, Daisy Jones. While Billy was against the idea at the beginning, it was no denying that they and Daisy made a good team; that having Daisy joined the band brought the band to a new level.
As the band rocketed to stardom, problems start to come up. Each member of the band was dealing with something of their own. You get everything you imagined the rock n roll lifestyle was like back then – sex, drugs, and everything in between.
Beyond that, the story also touches on feminism – on how hard it was for women during that time to make it. I personally find Karen’s (the keyboardist of the band) part in the book always highlights what it was like to be a woman in a successful band back in the ’70s.
Based on the synopsis, we know that the story talks about the band’s breakup. It’s no surprise that Daisy and Billy’s love hate relationship was at the forefront. However, you also get many stories beyond that; romance between other members of the band and outsider perspectives on the band. The outsider perspectives were a great addition to the book because it gave us a sense of how big the band truly was.
As I listened to the audiobook version, I have to talk about the narration because BLOODY. HELL. IT. WAS. SO. GOOD. I believe that the narration is one of the reasons I enjoy the book. Even if you choose to read the book, giving the audiobook a listen will give you a very different experience. I’ve talked about narration that brings a story to life but this one? It was whole another level! Definitely worth the listen!
There’s not much I can say without spoiling the story, but listening to Daisy Jones and The Six was one hell of a ride. It toys with your emotions – I cried so much toward the end of the book!! The characters are morally grey, which for me always makes a book so much more interesting. They may make questionable decisions from your point of view, but at the end of the day, it was the best decision they could have chosen for themselves and I think that’s life. I have to say that after I finished the book, I was in a withdrawal for a while. I truly wished Daisy Jones and The Six was real. I want to listen to the songs and I wish there is a documentary about them. That’s why I was super happy when I heard that they are going to make a TV series based on the book because I NEED IT (and I know many who reads the book also agree that it should be a TV series). Fingers crossed it lives up to everyone’s expectation. All in all, so glad I decided to give this book a listen because it deserved all the hype.
Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Everyone knows Daisy Jones & The Six: The band’s album Aurora came to define the rock ‘n’ roll era of the late seventies, and an entire generation of girls wanted to grow up to be Daisy. But no one knows the reason behind the group’s split on the night of their final concert at Chicago Stadium on July 12, 1979 . . . 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 ‘n’ 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.
The making of that legend is chronicled in this riveting and unforgettable novel, written as an oral history of one of the biggest bands of the seventies. Taylor Jenkins Reid is a talented writer who takes her work to a new level with Daisy Jones & The Six, brilliantly capturing a place and time in an utterly distinctive voice.
Leave a Reply