Daisy Jones & The Six - Taylor Jenkins Reid Page 0,87

births or stepped out on their wives or whatever else he did. Sorry to say it but that’s the world we live in. But not many people are so creatively in sync with someone they despise. That was fascinating.

My editor loved the idea. He couldn’t have been more amped about it.

I told the photographer what I wanted for the cover and he said it would be easy enough to splice together from the photos he had taken. So I went back to New York and I wrote that article in forty-eight hours. I never write articles that fast. But it was just so easy. And those articles are always the best ones—the kind you swear wrote themselves.

Graham: The entire point of having Jonah Berg out with us was so that he could write an article about what a smart move it was to have Daisy join the band. And, instead, he writes about Billy and Daisy hating each other.

Eddie: It felt like those two assholes let their own personal crap taint the band and the music and all the hard work we’d all put into it.

Rod: It all landed so perfectly. The band just couldn’t see it. They couldn’t see how great it was.

We released “Turn It Off” as the first single. We booked the band on Midnight Special. We had them doing radio spots all over the country leading up to the album dropping. And then, the same week Aurora hits the shelves, so does the Rolling Stone cover.

Billy’s profile shot on one side, Daisy’s on the other, their noses almost touching.

And it says, “Daisy Jones & The Six: Are Billy Dunne and Daisy Jones Rock ’n’ Roll’s Biggest Foes?”

Warren: I saw that and I just had to start laughing. Jonah Berg always thinks he’s one step ahead when he’s two steps behind.

Karen: If there was any chance that Billy and Daisy were going to put the pettiness behind them and work together, really work together, over the course of the tour, I think that magazine interview ended it. I don’t think there was much coming back from it.

Rod: Is there any headline that is going to make you want to see Daisy Jones & The Six perform live more than that?

Billy: I didn’t care if Daisy was mad at me. I didn’t care one bit.

Daisy: We both did things we shouldn’t have. When someone says your talent is wasted on you and he says it to a reporter knowing full well it’s going to make it into print, you aren’t really inclined to mend fences.

Billy: You can’t claim the high ground when you go around throwing other people and their families under the bus.

Rod: There’s no diamond record without that Rolling Stone article. That article was the first step in their music transcending the limits of music. It was the first step toward Aurora not only being an album, but an event. It was the last kick it needed to blast off.

Karen: “Turn It Off” debuted at number 8 on the Billboard charts.

Rod: Aurora came out June 13, 1978. And we didn’t hit with a splash. We hit with a cannonball.

Nick Harris (rock critic): This was an album people had been waiting for. They wanted to know what would happen when you put Billy Dunne and Daisy Jones together for an entire album.

And then they drop Aurora.

Camila: The day the record hit the shelves, we took the girls down to Tower Records. We let Julia buy her own copy. I was a little wary of it, to be honest. It wasn’t exactly child-friendly. But it was her dad’s album. She was allowed to have her own copy of it. When we left the store, Billy said, “Who’s your favorite member of the band?”

And I said, “Oh, Billy …”

And Julia pipes up and goes, “Daisy Jones!”

Jim Blades (lead singer of Mi Vida): I was playing the Cow Palace the day Aurora came out, I think. And I had a roadie go down to the record store and get it so I could listen to it. I remember sitting there, before we were about to go on, listening to “This Could Get Ugly,” smoking a cigarette thinking, Why didn’t I think to get her to join my band?

The writing was on the wall. They were gonna eclipse all of us.

With that cover, too. That cover was perfect California summer rock ’n’ roll.

Elaine Chang (biographer, author of Daisy Jones: Wild Flower): If you were a teenager in the late seventies, that