Daisy Jones & The Six - Taylor Jenkins Reid Page 0,54

face, he knew it sounded good.

Billy: We went back and forth a lot on that song. Just hours of talking it out, playing with the melodies on the guitar.

Daisy: I don’t think any of our original lines made it into the final version.

Billy: But when we sang it—when we worked out the lyrics and who should sing what, and refined the melody of the vocal and that interplay between those two things—we started singing it together and fine-tuning it. You know what? I’ll tell you, it was a great little song.

Daisy: Teddy came in the door and he said, “What the hell are you two still doing here? It’s almost midnight.”

Billy: I did not realize how late it was.

Daisy: Teddy said, “Also, did you break into my house and use Yasmine’s bathing suit?”

I said, “Yeah.”

He said, “I’d love it if you didn’t do that again.”

Billy: I was going to leave then but I thought, You know what, let’s show Teddy what we’ve come up with. So Teddy sat down on the couch and we sat across from him.

I was saying, “This isn’t the final” and “We just came up with this.” And all that.

Daisy: I said, “Stop, Billy. It’s a good song. No disclaimers.”

Billy: We played it for Teddy and when we were done, he said, “This is what you two come up with when you’re on the same team?”

And we looked at each other and I said, “Uh, yeah?”

And he said, “Well, then, I’m a genius.” He sat there laughing, real proud of himself.

Daisy: It was like we all agreed not to discuss that Billy needed Teddy’s approval like a son needs his father’s.

Billy: I left Teddy’s that night and I rushed home because it was late and I was feeling guilty about it. I walked in the door and the kids were asleep and Camila was sitting in the rocking chair watching the TV on low volume and she looked up at me. I started apologizing and she said, “You’re sober, right?”

And I said, “Yeah, of course. I was just writing and I lost track of time.”

And that was it. Camila didn’t care that I hadn’t called her. She just cared that I hadn’t relapsed. That was all.

Camila: It’s hard to explain, because I really do think it defies reason. But I knew him well enough to know that he could be trusted. And I knew that no matter what mistakes he made—no matter what mistakes I might make, too—that we would be fine.

I don’t know if I would have believed in that type of security before I had it. Before I chose to give it to Billy. And by giving it to Billy, I gave it to myself, too. But saying to someone, “No matter what you do, we’re not over …” I don’t know. Something about that relaxed me.

Billy: All those weeks that Daisy and I worked on songs together, I’d work as late as I needed. I’d stay out with Daisy as long as we needed. And every night when I came home, Camila was in that chair. She’d get up when I got home and I’d sit down and then she’d sit in my lap and put her head on my chest and say, “How was your day?”

I’d tell her the highlights and I’d hear about her day and I’d hear about the girls. And I’d rock us back and forth until we went to sleep.

One night, I picked her up out of the rocking chair and I put her in bed and I said, “You don’t always have to wait up for me.”

She was half-asleep but she said, “I want to. I like to.”

And you know … no crowd cheering, no magazine cover ever made me feel even remotely as important as Camila. And I think the same goes for her. I really do. She liked having a man who wrote songs about her and carried her to bed.

Graham: When Billy was off writing with Daisy, it was the first time that the rest of us could be composing on our own.

Karen: “Aurora” was a great song with a great spine to it and we all had a lot of fun building it out.

Billy tended to want a more spartan keyboard. But I wanted to get into more atmospheric, lush sounds. So when we started working on “Aurora,” I came in with those sustained roots and fifths. I kept some of the melodic chords broken up a bit, to keep it moving. But