Daisy Jones and the Six is a rock'n'roll story that's neither rock nor unfortunately, roll
This show is all about saying sorry for party rocking
Amazon’s new series Daisy Jones and The Six is a classic rock’n’roll story, about a starry eyed band navigating the LA music scene during the 60s/70s and making it big. It’s unabashedly inspired by the messy interpersonal romantic dynamics of Fleetwood Mac, and consequently features love and desire, and heartbreak and betrayal at the heart of the band and the narrative.
**insert guitar lick here, like neeedly needly neeedly neeeee**
Billing it the show like this, it’s absolutely the intersection of my interests – I’m a fan of the music from that era, and adore stories about the culture and history and personalities - but after reading the book and watching (most) of the show screeners now, I was surprised to find that while I enjoyed the story, it didn’t quite deliver what I wanted, what I was looking for. And that surprised me, and I couldn’t quite work out what was failing to deliver for me.
I adored Taylor Jenkins Reid’s other book, the Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, as it’s queer and fabulous and deeply immersive and surprising. I expected to enjoy Daisy Jones in the same way – I did still enjoy it, it was a good read. Likewise the show is great, made pretty special by how spectacularly they’ve done the music and the songs (as good as the Nashville soundtrack imho). They also made the show more queer, with more time given to a lesbian character.
I don’t think the book or the show are bad art, or made artistic mistakes (do NOT come for me stans) - rather I think that what bugged me is that if you scratch the rock’n’roll surface, it’s actually a surprisingly conservative, even puritanical message. It’s deeply straight. And that surprised me, because it’s the opposite of the kind of fabulous I appreciate, and the opposite of what I wanted. It’s not a bad story, it’s just kind of sneaky.
**a couple of minor spoilers follow, but nothing that isn’t flagged in the trailer**
If Exile on Main Street was about the rolling stones having a nice holiday in france
The foundation of Daisy Jones and The Six is the long history of not just the rock’n’roll memoir, but the rock’n’roll oral history. The book is presented as a fictionalised form of an oral history like Exile on Main Street, the legendary recount of The Rolling Stone’s time in France recording the album of the same name, or Meet Me In The Bathroom, an immersive journey through the New York City music scene of the early 2000s. My favourite is Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, which I have read multiple times, and which my friend Simon borrowed off me a long time ago and never gave back (Simon!!!!).
Both show and book follow the stories, often told through other people, of the rise and grind of The Dunne Brothers, a Pittsburgh local band who go to LA to make big, and rebrand to The Six - and Daisy Jones, a California native who takes the old groupie narrative (young girl who loves music and immerses herself in the whirlwind culture of the strip at a supremely young age) and empowers it so that SHE becomes the rock success story, the it girl. As she says, “I had absolutely no interest in being somebody else's muse. I am not a muse. I am the somebody. End of fucking story.”
The other main character is the frontman from The Six, Billy Dunne, who gives us a Jim Morrison style figure - messy, charismatic, brilliant.
Their narratives eventually entwine, magic happens, and then like all good rock stories, the band falls apart - but not before a complicated series of romances and desires occur.
The best parts of the story are when it’s about artistic struggle - there’s a strong narrative of working hard, committing to the art, that I enjoy. My one quibble with the show is that they simplify this storyline from the books to a couple of key moments or relationships, so that success comes quickly and more smoothly and is based on getting the attention of one guy, or one venue, or one reviewer. Its simplified.
But like with the decision to take a classic trope of rock’n’roll narrative (the groupie archetype) and empower it, many of the other tropes from this kind of story are focused upon, given power and weight - and it strangely turns the story into a kind of censorious judgement of this kind of lifestyle.
The whirlwind party lifestyle that came with music at this time, the sex and drugs and tour buses of it all, is judged and deemed unworthy - which, you know, is probably correct. But it also feels like a bit of a punish to me.
Sex (for procreation), drugs (are bad) and rock’n’roll
What this story mainly does is take the sex and drugs part of the rock narrative triangle, and explores it critically through a 2023 lens - ie, this isn’t about the carefree, freewheeling hedonism of the era, but rather it’s an addiction narrative, focusing on Billy. In the book at least, more time is devoted to Billy and his addiction than to Daisy and her music. Daisy is treated as being the comparison to Billy - someone who isn’t “battling” with her addiction, but rather has leaned into it.
They say in the TV version - “we didn’t know what addiction was back then”
- so I don’t think this is an accidental choice, or a mistake. Addiction narratives are worthwhile stories, although I’m not partial to them myself. What distanced me from loving this story is the fact that we’re served up all the tropes of the rock narrative, and then served addiction memoir instead, which as a result, passes a kind of implied judgement on those stories.
Daisy Jones and The Six leans so heavily into an addiction narrative that it becomes a story of choice: sobriety, family, responsibility, peace, contentment - or drugs and music and rock and death and childishness, irresponsibility. It’s clearly served to us as an ethical choice. The music is deemed important, even brilliant, but it’s also seductive, the devil’s siren-call.
From the second episode, Billy is shown his choices - he can be sober and be a father, commit to his long-suffering wife Camilla (who, as the cheated upon yet loyal wife, is another female rock story archetype who they attempt to give some power back to, but I’m not sure if it works), or he can continue his journey into rock and roll ruin. Its vomiting on the side of the road and joyless groupies that we see - we’re always served the consequences of party rocking, always the apologies, rarely the joy. This whole book is saying sorry for party rocking.
Daisy is a “mess”, who is also shown to be joylessly addicted to pills and booze and casual sex, and her doomed crush on a married man is alway juxtaposing her against the nuclear perfection of Camilla and the babies. For her, the lifestyle detracts from her art - and every moment of near downfall for her comes from her vices.
Once again - I’m not saying this is accidental, this is explored in multiple ways in the story, it’s on purpose and it’s told well. Even the songs are pitted against each other - with Billy being chastised for only writing songs about how much he loves his wife (an original wife guy), with the more sexually fraught and dangerously yearning duets with Daisy seen as more rock’n’roll, even when they’re ballads.
The allure of the rock and roll narrative is always treated as something foundational, as something we understand inherently, as something already explored - but then cast as the sin, as the destruction, with the glowing picket fence fantasy of wife and family and normality contrasted as the saviour.
Rock music is the corrupting One Ring, and marriage and family values and the Shire of it all the thing to return to. But unlike Frodo, who can never live that way again and must go across the sea to elf heaven, Billy is the Samwise, who gets to come back from his adventures and settle down.
What is it with america and puritanism
Even sex is treated with the same tinge of puritanism – the other woman in the band, Karen, is given more agency to just be a rockstar. She’s given the kind of cool-girl detachment vibe, saying that she doesn’t want a relationship like Billy and Camilla (who once again are used as the comparison, the guide, even though their relationship is… i would say deeply flawed). “I want this life, I want travelling and seeing the world and playing music with my friends until I drop dead on stage,” she says, before going to find someone to fuck. They treat her much more sympathetically in the show than in the book.
**Some spoilers in this section**
Hell yeah! But once again - the validity and joy of that lifestyle is never shown to us, and instead we only see the consequences. After she has a FWB style relationship with a fellow bandmate Graham, she of course falls pregnant, and then decides to get an abortion. Once again - all consequences, never the joys.
There’s no expressed judgement of Karen and her abortion - in fact she’s almost served as an example of female independence and bodily autonomy - but once again you have to look at what’s being juxtaposed. You have to look at what she’s choosing to “walk away from” - a stable monogamous relationship with someone named GRAHAM. You can’t give me a straighter story. Luckily, she kills his baby and therefore their relationship.
All these tropes are so readily identifiable from american tv. If people sleep together casually, an “unwanted” pregnancy and abortion story is often the inevitable narrative result - especially if you’re a teen. Sex, it is shown, is risky. Likewise, once you see a pill on american television - even a painkiller - it’s addiction, out of control addiction that is the expected next step. Every time I see a scene of someone with a pill bottle, sighing and tapping out yet another one, we’re trained to think: out of control.
And don’t even get me started with depictions of drinking. The much lampooned episode of Buffy, Beer Bad, where cursed beer turns her into a literal Neanderthal is such a good example of how “risky” drinking is seen by default puritanical American stories. All these roads can, and will, lead to ruin.
The obvious thing here is that those consequences, and that ruin, is real, and is an inherent part of a rock and roll narrative in the real world. Half of the stories mentioned in the oral histories I referenced earlier end in overdose, suicide. The risk is real for musicians, especially in history. It’s a valid thing to focus a story on – and perhaps this is a story about a band that didn’t die from their lifestyle?
A love letter to being normal
What cemented my dislike of the moral of this story is that Daisy Jones commitment to an artistic lifestyle is contrasted to Billys nuclear family - with, somehow, Daisy coming off as the more selfish, more lonely, loser. She maintained her career, her artistic sensibility… but at what cost? (the cost is a family, a normal life).
I was saying the other day to my partner that I have no clue what motivates most people in the world. I’m a deeply, feverishly motivated person, who loves my work and my lifestyle. There is an inherent connection with my artistic goals, my career desires, and the life I want to live. I often say that I just want to live an interesting life - not for other people - but for myself. I want there to be stories I can tell.
I don’t think a family or a baby stops you from having this, or is necessarily an inherent roadblock (I think it often IS because it’s an inherent priority shift, unless you’re a fucking monster). But that priority shift is explored as the main ethical concern in this story, and considering as we’ve discussed, this is an addiction narrative, it’s given a clear binary - family, monogamy, baby, the saviour from ruin, from drugs and drink, from addiction.
It’s not a bad story, and it’s told with flair and commitment - but it’s so heteronormative and straight and un rock’n’roll that I feel like washing down some quaaludes and having meaningless group sex in a van and ENJOYING EVERY MOMENT OF IT on principal.
I won’t because I’m old and tired, but that’s why I love a good rock’n’roll story. Let me harmlessly live through hedonism, without having to experience the slap on the wrist from the universe afterwards, let me enjoy the rock and roll lifestyle from the comfort of my living room, bundled up in a robe, drinking a cup of tea.
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