Daisy Jones & The Six - Taylor Jenkins Reid Page 0,49
had tried to keep quiet most of the discussion but he finally piped in and said, “You’ll be Daisy Jones & The Six.” And no one was happy but everyone was kind of equally dissatisfied.
Daisy: I think Teddy wanted to make sure my name was prominent. I brought attention to the band. My name needed to be front and center.
Billy: Teddy was trying to protect the sanctity of The Six. We didn’t want to promise anything to Daisy.
Daisy: I don’t think Billy actually resented anything I asked for. All of it was reasonable. He was just pissed because I knew how much power I had and he would have preferred I either not know it or not use it. I am sorry but that is not my style. I mean, it shouldn’t be anybody’s, really.
Billy had been riding a bit too comfortable on the fact that everybody let him do what he wanted. And I was the first person to say, “You’re only in charge of me as much as I’m in charge of you.” And that opened the floodgates for Pete and Eddie and, well, everybody.
Rod: Teddy told the band that Runner wanted the album toward the top of ‘seventy-eight. It was already August. Creative differences and ego checks and all of that aside, it was back to the salt mines.
Karen: After we walked out of there that night, I thought, Holy shit. Daisy had just joined our band with top billing and fundamentally changed the dynamics of the group in a way that none of us had done before.
Billy: Everyone always acted like I was such a difficult guy. But Daisy asked for an equal say and billing and I gave her both. What more did she want?
I mean, I wasn’t even sure it was the right thing to do. But I did it to keep her happy, to keep everybody happy.
Graham: We became a democracy instead of an autocracy. And democracy sounds like a great idea, but bands aren’t countries.
Billy: To be honest, I thought Daisy’d get tired of trying to write an album pretty quickly. I underestimated her.
Let me tell you this. Don’t ever doubt Daisy Jones.
Aurora
1977–1978
In August 1977, the seven members of the band entered Wally Heider’s Studio 3 to begin the process of writing and recording their third album.
Graham: Karen and I left her place that morning, heading over to Heider. I said to her, just as we walked out of the door, “Can’t we just drive over together?”
She said she didn’t want people thinking we were sleeping together.
I said, “But we are sleeping together.”
She still made us take two cars.
Karen: You know how easy it is to screw up your entire life by sleeping with somebody in your own band?
Eddie: Pete and I drove over that morning. By that point, I think he and I were the only two still staying at the place in Topanga Canyon. Before he’d gotten back from the East Coast, I’d had the place all to myself.
I said to Pete on the way there, I said, “This should be interesting.”
And he told me to not take it all so seriously. He said, “It’s just rock ’n’ roll. None of this really matters.”
Daisy: When we all met up at the studio that first day, I brought this basket of cakes that someone had sent over to my place at the Marmont and my notebook full of songs. I was ready.
Eddie: Daisy showed up in a thin tank top and these tiny cutoff shorts. Barely covered anything.
Daisy: I run hot and I always have. I am not going to sit around sweating my ass off just so men can feel more comfortable. It’s not my responsibility to not turn them on. It’s their responsibility to not be an asshole.
Billy: I had written about ten or twelve songs so far. All of them in great shape. But I knew I couldn’t go in there and tell them that I’d written the album already. Like I did with the other two albums. I couldn’t say that.
Graham: It was kind of funny, to be honest. Watching Billy put on this act like he gave a shit what anyone else wanted on the album. God bless him. You could see the effort he was putting in. Talking all slow, thinking about his words.
Daisy: We were sitting around and I handed over my notebook. I said, “I’ve got a lot of good stuff in here to start from.” I thought maybe everyone could read