Daisy Jones & The Six - Taylor Jenkins Reid Page 0,6

saying it was a self-pity thing. I wasn’t sitting there asking, “Why doesn’t he love me?” It was more … Oh, okay, this is how dark the world can be. Some fathers don’t love their sons.

It was a lesson in what not to be, I’ll tell you that much.

Graham: Seemed like he was a drunk asshole anyway. So good riddance to him.

Billy: After the wedding had ended, and everyone was packing up, I had a few too many beers … and I saw this woman working as a cocktail waitress at the hotel bar. [Smiles] Gorgeous girl. Real long brown hair, down to her waist, and big brown eyes. I’m a sucker for brown eyes. I remember she was wearing a tiny little blue dress. She was short. And I liked that.

I was standing there in the hotel lobby, on my way to the van. And she was waiting on a customer over at the bar. You could tell, just watching her, that she wasn’t taking shit from anybody.

Camila Dunne (wife of Billy Dunne): Oh my word, was he good looking.… Slim but still muscular, which has always been my type. And he had these thick eyelashes. And so much confidence. And a really big smile. And when I saw him in the lobby, I remember thinking, Why can’t I meet a guy like that?

Billy: I walked right up to her, in that bar, holding, you know, an amp in one hand and a guitar in the other. I said, “Miss? I’d like your number, please.”

She was standing up at the register. She had one hand on her hip. She laughed at me and kind of looked at me sideways. I don’t remember exactly what she said but it was something like “What if you’re not my type?”

I leaned over the bar and said, “My name is Billy Dunne. I’m the lead singer of the Dunne Brothers. And if you give me your number I’ll write a song about you.”

That got her. That doesn’t get every woman. But it usually gets the good ones.

Camila: I went home and told my mom I met somebody. And she said, “Nice boy?”

And I said, “I don’t know about that.” [Laughs] Nice never did much for me.

Over the summer and fall of 1969, the Dunne Brothers started to book more shows in Pittsburgh and the surrounding towns.

Graham: When Camila started coming out with us, I’ll admit I didn’t think she’d last much longer than the others. But I should have known she was different. I mean, first time I met her, she came to a gig of ours wearing a Tommy James shirt. She knew good music.

Warren: The rest of us were really starting to get laid, man. And Billy was taking himself off the market. We’d all be with chicks and he’d be sitting there, smoking a joint, having a beer to keep himself busy.

I came out of a girl’s room one time, zipping my pants up, and Billy was sitting on the sofa, watching Dick Cavett. I said, “Man, you gotta ditch that girlfriend.” I mean, we all liked Camila, she was foxy and she’d tell you your business right to your face, which I liked. But c’mon.

Billy: I’d been infatuated before, called it love. But when I met [Camila], it was something different altogether. She just … made the world make sense to me. She even made me like myself more.

She’d come watch us practice and listen to my new stuff and give me really good notes on it all. And there was a calmness to her that … nobody else had. It felt like when I was with her, I knew everything would be fine. It was like I was following the North Star.

You know, Camila was born content, I think. She wasn’t born with whatever chip on her shoulder some of us are born with. I used to say I was born broken. She was born whole. That’s where the lyrics to “Born Broken” came from.

Camila: When Billy met my parents for the first time, I was a little nervous. You only get one chance to make a first impression, especially with them. I picked out his outfit, down to his socks. Made him wear the only tie he had.

They loved him. Said he was charming. But my mom was also worried about me putting my trust in some guy in a band.

Billy: Pete was the only one who seemed to understand why I’d have a girlfriend. Chuck, one