Daisy Jones & The Six - Taylor Jenkins Reid Page 0,14
Nyro. Hell, she could have been Joni Mitchell. And they wanted her to be Olivia Newton-John.
Daisy: I went back to the Marmont. I’d been crying; I had mascara running down my face. Hank was waiting for me, sitting on my stoop. He said, “Why don’t you sleep it off?”
I said, “I can’t sleep. I’ve had too much coke and too many dexies.”
He said he had something for me. I thought he was going to hand me a quaalude, like that was going to do anything. But he gave me a Seconal. I was out like a light and I woke up feeling so much better. No hangover. Nothing. For the first time in my life, I was sleeping like a baby.
From then on, it was dexies to get through the day, reds to get through the night. Champagne to wash it all down.
The good life, right? Except the good life never made for a good life. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Debut
1973–1975
The Six settled into life in Los Angeles, renting a house in the hills of Topanga Canyon. They prepared to begin recording their debut album. Teddy, along with a team of technicians, including lead engineer Artie Snyder, set up shop at Sound City Studios, a recording studio in Van Nuys, California.
Karen: The day we moved into that house I thought, This place is a dump. It was this rickety old thing with the front door off the hinges and chipped stained-glass windows. I hated it. But about a week or two later, Camila got to L.A. She drove down the long driveway through the woods and she got out of the car and she went, “Wow. This place is bitchin’.” Once she said the house was cool, I started to dig it.
Camila: The house was surrounded by rosemary bushes. I loved that.
Billy: Man, it felt good to have Camila back. It felt so good to have that woman in my arms again. We were gonna get married and I was in L.A. and I was making a record with my brother and everything felt like it was gold.
Warren: Graham and Karen each had a bedroom off the kitchen. Pete and Eddie took the garage. Billy and Camila wanted the loft. So I got the only bedroom with a bathroom in it.
Graham: Warren’s bedroom had a toilet in it. He used to say he had his own bathroom but he didn’t. His room had a toilet. Just in the corner of the room.
Billy: Teddy was a night owl. So we would all head out to the studio in the afternoon and stay pretty late into the night, sometimes into the morning.
When we were recording, the rest of the world didn’t exist to us. You’re in that dark studio, thinking of nothing but the music.
Me and Teddy … we were knee-deep in it. Speeding up tempos and recording in different keys, trying out everything. I was playing around with new instruments. I was lost to it all at the studio. But then I’d come home and Camila would be asleep, the sheets around her. I’d be a little drunk, usually, and I’d slip into bed right next to her.
It was always the mornings that I got to spend with Camila back then. The way most couples go out to dinner at the end of a long day, Camila and I would go out to breakfast. Some of my favorite mornings were the ones where I wouldn’t even bother going to sleep. Camila would wake up and the two of us would drive on down to Malibu and have breakfast along PCH.
Every morning, she’d order the same thing: an iced tea, no sugar, three lemon slices.
Camila: Iced tea, three lemons. Club soda, two limes. Martini with two olives and an onion. I’m particular about my drinks. [Laughs] I’m particular about a lot of things.
Karen: You know, people think of Camila as following Billy everywhere, taking care of Billy all the time, but it wasn’t like that. She was a force to be reckoned with. She got what she wanted. Almost all the time. She was persuasive and kind of pushy—although, you never really realized you were being pushed. But she was opinionated and knew how to get her way.
I remember this one time she and Billy came down into the living room one morning, just a bit before noon, maybe. We were all in last night’s jeans, that kind of thing. We weren’t going into the studio until much later. Camila