By Taylor Jenkins Reid; Random House, March 2019
Before the internet and social media made it impossible to hide anything you’ve ever done, being famous involved an often impervious layer of secrecy. If you saw bad behavior in the press, it was either because you were meant to see it, or that it had gotten to levels that even professionals couldn’t hide. When the real stories were told, lifting that veil of mystery made scandals feel juicier; break-ups more shocking; deaths more crushing. So it is fascinating to read Daisy Jones & The Six, a book that is able to hook into that behind-the-scenes phenomena and take you along for the ride.
Taylor Jenkins Reid’s new book centers on the titular band, a fictional 70s group made up of The Six, a fledgling rock band with a couple of albums under their belt; and Daisy Jones, a singer-songwriter who duos with the band for a song and then, due to suggestion of an influential producer, ends up staying. All of the different band members and supporting characters tell their perspective on the history of the band to a (mostly) invisible author, documentary-style. The resulting story may be a familiar tale of drugs, sex, and rock-and-roll, but it reads like a transcript of an amazing lost episode of VH1’s Behind The Music. You’ve got humble beginnings rising to fame; with music that starts in garages and house parties and ends up in stadiums. There are charismatic-but-troubled lead singers, sibling band mates, jealousies, rivalries; love stories and love triangles, weddings and breakups, births and deaths. There may be a tad too much reliance on classic tropes, but the band—the people and their personalities—feel real. The details that don’t always match up from the overlapping accounts, the hard truths told by some and avoided by others; these touches effortlessly mimic the reality of a story told over 30 years later but remembered like yesterday.
It isn’t surprising that there is already an Amazon web series based on Daisy Jones being developed. The fact that Reese Witherspoon selected it for her book club (and is producing the Amazon series) was probably enough to put it on the pop culture radar. The casting of the series will probably be hotly debated in online forums long after the shows are broadcast. Heck, even the audiobook has drawn an amazing pool of Hollywood talent. Honestly, though, it makes sense; you can’t read the book without visualizing it in your head, imagining the characters, and wanting to hear the songs performed. But whether the attention the book is getting attracts or repels you, do yourself a favor and read the book regardless. Like Daisy Jones & The Six themselves, this is something that lives up to the hype.
