Daisy Jones & The Six - Taylor Jenkins Reid Page 0,69

the same time, singing into the same mike, harmonizing in real time together.

Eddie: Billy and Daisy on the same mike in one of those small booths … I mean, we’d all kill to be stuck up that close to Daisy.

Artie Snyder: It would have been a lot easier for me to have them in two different booths so I could isolate their vocals. Them singing into the same mike made my job about ten times harder.

If Daisy had an area where she was soft, I couldn’t overdub it without losing Billy’s. It made cutting back and forth between takes almost impossible.

We’d have to record over and over and over again to get a take where they both sounded good at the same time. The band would go home for the night and Daisy and Billy and Teddy and I would still be there, burning the midnight oil. It really limited how polished I could make the tracks. I actually was pretty pissed off. But Teddy wasn’t backing me up.

Rod: I thought Teddy made the right call. Because it showed on the track. You could feel they were breathing the same air as they sang. It was … I mean, there’s no other word for it. It was intimate.

Billy: You know, when you have music that has all the knots sanded down and the scratches buffed out … where’s the emotion in that?

Rod: I heard this secondhand, from Teddy. So I can’t vouch for how true it is. But there was a night when Billy and Daisy pulled an all-nighter doing overdubs on “This Could Get Ugly.”

Teddy said during one of the takes, late at night, Billy didn’t take his eyes off Daisy for the whole take. And they finished and Billy caught Teddy watching. And Billy immediately stopped—tried to pretend he hadn’t been looking at all.

Daisy: Just how honest do we have to get here? I know I told you I’d tell you everything but how much “everything” do you really want to know?

Billy: We were at Teddy’s pool house. Daisy was wearing a black dress with the thin straps. What are those called?

We were working on a song called “For You.” We didn’t have much at first but it was about me getting sober for Camila. I mean, I never expressly stated that, because I knew Daisy would give me a hard time that I was writing about Camila. So I said it was about being willing to give up something for someone else.

Daisy had reminded me we had wanted to write something a bit harder and I had said we could do that later. Because I really liked this idea. I might have said, “This one has really been on my mind.”

Daisy: It was only about eleven in the morning but I was buzzed already. Billy was playing a song on the keyboard and I sat next to him. He was showing me the notes, I was playing a few with him. We were trying to figure out the right key. The few lines Billy had written already … I remember them exactly. “Nothing I wouldn’t do/to go back to the past and wait for you.” He sang that, sitting right next to me.

Billy: Daisy put her hand on mine, to stop me from playing. I looked her and she said, “I like writing with you.”

And I said, “I like writing with you, too.”

And then I said something I shouldn’t have said.

Daisy: He said, “I like a lot about you.”

Billy: Daisy smiled when I said it, she lit up. This wide smile and this girlish laugh and I could see her eyes started to water just the littlest bit. Or maybe I was imagining it. I don’t know. It … it feels good to make Daisy smile. It’s … [pauses] I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m saying.

Daisy: I like a lot about you.

Billy: She was dangerous. And I knew that. But I don’t think I could recognize that the safer she felt to me, the more dangerous she was.

Daisy: Before I even really knew what I was doing, I leaned in to kiss him. I was so close to him I could feel his breath. And when I opened my eyes, his were closed. And I thought, This makes sense. It made sense in this deeply gratifying way.

Billy: I lost myself, I think. For a moment, at least.

Daisy: My lips barely grazed his. I could feel them only in the sense that I was aware of