"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...
