Daisy Jones & The Six - Taylor Jenkins Reid Page 0,50

it all and we could discuss it from there.

Billy: Here I am, holding back my twelve great songs, so that no one thinks I’m trying to control things, and Daisy’s just walking into a band she’s brand new to, expecting everyone to read a whole journal of ideas.

Daisy: He didn’t even flip through it.

Billy: If Daisy and I were going to write an album together, it needed to be just the two of us. You can’t give seven people a say in the words. Somebody had to take charge and control the process.

So I said, “Look, I wrote this song ‘Aurora.’ It’s the one I really believe in out of everything I’m working on for this album. The rest is up to us all. Daisy and I will write some songs and everyone will take a crack at the arrangements and once we’ve got a slate of great songs that we all love, we’ll narrow it down to the best of the best.”

Karen: Maybe it’s revisionist history, but I think when Billy played “Aurora” it felt clear that we could build an album around it.

Graham: We were all on board with “Aurora” as a great place to start—it was a great frickin’ song. After that, Daisy started talking about ideas for the album as a whole.

Warren: I wanted no part in writing. That morning felt like a waste of my time. Everyone’s sitting around, talking about shit I don’t care about. I finally just said, “Don’t you all think that Daisy and Billy should go write the songs and come to us when they have them?”

Karen: Teddy was really decisive about it. He handed Billy the keys to his guesthouse and said, “You two pop on over to my place, set up in my guesthouse, and get to writing. Everyone else is going to get to work on this new one.”

Eddie: Billy didn’t want us composing anything for that song without him. But he also didn’t want Daisy writing songs without him. So he had to choose whether he went with Daisy and got started writing or stayed with us and worked on the arrangement for his new song.

And he chose Daisy.

Billy: I got to Teddy’s pool house first and so I got settled. Made myself a cup of coffee, sat down, looked through my notes trying to decide what to show Daisy.

Daisy: By the time I opened the door, Billy’s already there, he’s got his notebook out to show me. Not so much as a hello. Just “Here, read my stuff.”

Billy: I told her the truth, I said, “I’ve got a lot of the album written already. Do you want to take a look at it and see where we can make adjustments together? See if maybe there’s some gaps that we can fill in with some new stuff or the stuff you’ve written already?”

Daisy: I shouldn’t have been surprised. It was never gonna be easy with him, was it? I think I grabbed one of the bottles of wine I saw on Teddy’s counter and I opened it up and flopped myself down on the sofa and just started drinking it. I said, “Billy, that’s great that you’ve written a bunch of songs already. I have, too. But we’re writing this album together.”

Billy: The woman is drinking warm white wine before it’s even noon and trying to lecture me on how things should go. She hadn’t even read my songs yet. I handed my work over to her and I said, “Read it first before you go telling me I should throw it away.”

Daisy: I said, “Ditto then.” And I shoved my notebook in his face. I could tell he didn’t want to read it. But he knew he had to.

Billy: I read her stuff, and it wasn’t bad, but I thought it wasn’t The Six. She used so many biblical metaphors. So when she asked me what I thought, I told her that. I said, “We should start with my stuff as the backbone. We can refine it together.”

Daisy was sitting on the sofa with her feet up on the coffee table, which irked me. And then she said, “I’m not singing an entire album about your wife, Billy.”

Daisy: I really liked Camila. But “Señora” was about her. “Honeycomb” was about her. “Aurora” was about her. It was boring.

Billy: I said, “You’re writing the same song, too. We both know every song in this book is about the same thing.” Well, that got her upset. She put