"I had absolutely no interest in being somebody else's muse. I am not a muse. I am the somebody. End of fucking story."
Side One
Track One: "Intrigue"
I wasn't drawn to Daisy Jones & The Six by hype. I enjoyed what Taylor Jenkins-Reid did with 2016's The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo as it was smarter than the beach read label it was stamped with. It began as a frothy, fictionalized champagne swig of 1950s Hollywood, but unfurled into a layered and sensitive narrative of women and men navigating the rigid sexual and social expectations of the film industry, and the era at large, all of this entertaining, keeping me turning pages. For Daisy Jones & The Six, Reid takes a detour to the 1970s California rock music scene to focus on the quick rise and crashing fall of a fictional rock group, and with that synopsis alone I was expecting such a tale to be in capable hands.
As a music fan, I'm also a fool who believes writing about music isn't akin to "dancing about architecture". That there is more to music, its impact on our culture than just an infectious melody and it should be written as so. Still, so few can capture the pulse and flow of music in text, and so few do it within fiction, so whenever I see a book associated to music on such a level, I'm a moth to a flame, hoping that someone will get it 'right'.
Track Two: "The Shape Of You"
Instead of a straight shot of a biography, Daisy Jones is akin to reading the transcript of a (disjointed) Behind The Music episode. Nestling into a documentary series binge session is how I spend my dross weekends, so this wasn't a deal breaker, in fact, I found it a rather interesting way to set up a story and it fit realistically with the usual payoff of interviewing of a rock band: how everyone would view a person or a situation differently, adding to band lore. As I read thorough Daisy Jones, I began to notice that such a structure lent to some prose limitations.
A cardinal sin of telling instead of showing leaves this book in a limbo of character development. We don't feel these characters, we're told how to feel about them. Motivations for particular actions with our central characters aren't clear, as external characters are just named dropped without much explanation as to who they are. Each voice tends to blend together, they could all be the same person if we weren't told. Without exposition or sensory details, we speed through the band's formation and their rise to fame, all without feeling the struggle. One day they're playing at weddings, the next they have a hit album. The whole thing feels like an thin outline of an idea, a gimmick. None of it feels natural.
Oh, and that weird 'twist' to discover who the interviewer is? Unnecessary.
Track Three: "You're The Inspiration"
Daisy Jones is a captain obvious veiled ode to the turbulent ride of the band Fleetwood Mac with numerous characters that resemble choice band members. Stevie Nicks' drug-addled wild child sprite is reincarnated in Daisy Jones. Lindsey Buckingham begat Billy Dunne as a disgruntled visionary artist who's in an emotional tug-of-war with its enigmatic lead singer. Christine McVie will see herself in Karen Karen, the frustrated keyboardist who has pulled back her femininity to exist in the man's world known as rock n' roll. The easy-going drummer that is Warren Rhodes is Mick Fleetwood. All well and good, but it's lazy as TJR isn't bringing anything of interest to the table with these characters to where we can excuse the striking resemblances.
Not to say one can't be entertained when following the follies of a fictional band. Almost Famous (what this book wants to be) didn't just follow a fictional '70s rock band and its groupies, but had a young man's coming of age nestled in its story. Bette Midler growls, gripes, and guzzles booze and pills to give off Janis Joplin vibes in an Oscar-nominated performance in The Rose. Eddie and the Cruisers follows a pub band whose moody lead singer goes MIA, and its wrapped up in an intriguing mystery about lost master tapes, and the transition of rock n' roll from the '60s into the '70s. The Five Heartbeats recall the Motown era with a band that echoes the harmonies and hardships of The Temptations. All these films had a neat twist, a change-up that made them familiar, yet different. In short, Daisy Jones is just pure Fleetwood Mac fan fiction that feels more like wish-fulfillment than an actual nuance approach to anatomy of a band.
Track Four: "Message In The Music"
I admit it's a nice touch that at the end of the book we're treated to the full lyrical layout of Aurora, the fictional 'seminal' album of the band that causes them much artistic and personal grief, but big problem: we don't know how these songs are supposed to sound. As someone who has listened to their fair share of 1970s era rock and owns a few of the albums Reid was inspired by, I know of the sound and vibe of the time, but for someone who hasn't a clue the way the music is described would be confusing. Once again a limitation towards writing a book such as this. Music is something you have to hear, feel. These are just words on a page.
Of course, the sound of silence may be resolved when Daisy Jones is given the screen time it was warbled to be from jump since Reese Witherspoon has taken the reigns of an upcoming Amazon Prime streaming project (of course, she wrote the praising cover blurb...🙄), but while Reid does takes great pains to tell us how taxing the album was to create, it's just dead air. At the end, who cares about Aurora when you have Rumours?
Turn me over...
Side Two
Track Five: "Is This Real Life or Is This The Seventies?"
The 1970s can be summed up with some basic terms: drugs, Vietnam War, Watergate, disco, and drugs again. Still, what fascinating avenues to drive down, avenues that we don't get fully immersed in. Reid will insert a detail (Halston, types of drugs, and the Vietnam War) every once in awhile to let us know it's the 1970s, but the way the characters are recounting things this could've been a band from the 1980s, the 1990s, the 2000s...it just doesn't feel apart of the era it's touted to be.
A frustrating triangle if there ever was one.
Daisy is defined solely on her drug usage and erratic behavior. Since we're told she is this bad-ass-drop-dead-beautiful-sexy-spirited-party-queen-complex-musical-genius, the worship of her rings hollow every time someone praises her. For all the allusions to Stevie Nicks (who is a fascinating person in her own right), Reid manages to do the complete opposite of her intention to make Daisy into a female character who gets to sing her song in a male-dominated space. Daisy is just cheapened to cardboard.
Daisy's tussles with Billy are irritating considering how directionless they become. Once again, we're told there's sexual tension, and since TJR was inspired by naughties folk duo Civil Wars, the tension is never consummated --- which doesn't align to the sex, drugs, and rock n' roll of the 1970s. TJR draws these rock n' rollers too clean. We needed serious cheating, some tawdry beer-soaked sex, someone to kick in some doors. Billy and Daisy are rock stars, not pious clergymen who are trying to grapple with their sins, rock stars enact on such sins. Graham and Karen are much more involving characters due to the complications of bringing sex (and parenthood) into a unique professional situation, its why their side of the story shines, and feels complete.
Camila, Billy's always dependable wife, is written as a Christ-like figure, tacking herself up on a cross, sacrificing herself for others constantly. Her 'strength' is in how she forgives and handles being the wife of a immature and self-absorbed rock star. How is this admirable? It's also weird that Reid wrote a strong Latina character with Evelyn Hugo, but with Camila her entire personality is whittled down to being a "magic Latina", saving the messed-up white people while popping out babies. How she doles out advice to everyone is strange, her tone being part smug and part delusional. This line she tells Daisy bothers me the most: "Daisy, he loves you. You know that he loves you. I know he loves you. But he's not going to leave me." Who talks like this? Talk to your husband, Camila, and stop grinning and bearing shit. Also her "final say" at the end...just unreal.
I agree with sullen band member, Eddie: "It was a long day, and I was getting sick of these fucking people."
Track Seven: "Rehab...No...No...No"
Centering a story around addiction takes some sensitivity, some tact, and in an unfortunate series of events, Daisy Jones manages to simplify substance abuse. No addict gets 100% clean with one trip to rehab, with one conversation at a bar with a total stranger. No addict can just up and leave their situation with the ease these characters do. We have countless famous musicians to prove that substance abuse is a continuous struggle, a struggle that some never get out of, that some even die of. It's also a struggle that doesn't define them as a person. Reid walks a thin line between being misinformed and insulting in her approach to addiction here, and it rubbed me the wrong way.
Track Eight: "A Glimmer Of Hope"
What Daisy Jones has going for it is that it's a rock n' roll book from a woman's perspective. Well, sorta. Considering how (white) male-dominated the rock industry (grossly) is, Daisy Jones is refreshing in that a woman is allowed to assert her viewpoint and control the narrative, not the other gender around. Such a refreshing take amplifies the incongruity that is rock music and those dramatizations of its culture (its why the fifth take of A Star Is Born was a disappointing vanity sausage fest).
Always the subjects of rock anthems yet considered afterthoughts in real time, most women are left out of the history of rock entirely (and please do not get me started on the lack of color in such a genre too...). If represented, women are viewed as groupies or cling-on naive wives and fuck partners. Having Daisy, Karen, Camila, and Simone take their time at the mic to voice their narratives in a male-dominated sphere is a nice gesture, but still its a gesture, as the opportunity is squandered on how they do come off as the devices they were always presented as. To add, at story's end once we learn who the interviewer is, it doesn't seem it was much of Daisy's story after all, which defeats the entire purpose of laying the groundwork for her to be more than the muse.
Track Nine: "In Conclusion"
Daisy Jones has the feel and depth of a Wikipedia entry. Its lack of direction and heartlessness recalled the disappointment I had sitting through 2018's Bohemian Rhapsody. No Academy Awards can convince me how botched a job that film was as it managed to dilute an iconic charismatic front man into a cardboard caricature, whilst lying about particulars to paint a rosier narrative to put surviving band members at ease. Bio-dramas carry the appeal of fan service, a chance to relive iconic moments and the personal memories tethered to them, but for a book to deliver similar experience, there is a challenge.
Music is all about the feeling and the experience, to come up with a fictional band that we cannot hear, much less even see requires imagination of a high sense. It's why we require rich sensory details, and lead characters (Daisy and Billy) that are bold and believable enough to climb out of the shadows of their real-life inspirations. Unfortunately, Reid never delivers such within Daisy Jones & The Six, making surface level reading that just doesn't carry a tune.
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from the margins
368 pages // Published March 5th, 2019 // Rating: *
Recommends It For... For those who aren't counting calories and can handle some fabricated cheese-whiz drama, this till the real Fleetwood Mac film is made
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