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Daisy Jones & The Six was a rockin' roller coaster ride through the 70s. Was Stevie Nicks the inspiration behind leading lady Daisy Jones?
Daisy Jones & The Six is a Taylor Jenkins Reid novel about a musical group that rises to astronomical fame in the 70s when a new female lead singer joins the band. The book follows the group's meteoric rise and subsequent breaking up and provides a glimpse into the personal lives of each band member.
TJR has written several other books (The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Malibu Rising, etc.) that tell stories from different California decades, and she has even mentioned that she has been inspired by real people when writing her novels. In our previous post, we analyzed the inspiration behind her character Evelyn Hugo. TJR's next novel was Daisy Jones & The Six and many readers began drawing parallels between Daisy Jones and some famous bands from the 70s right away.
One band with notable similarities to Daisy Jones & The Six was Fleetwood Mac, a band that exploded after Stevie Nicks joined as lead singer. I've done some research and put together the similarities and differences I could find between Stevie Nicks and Daisy Jones.
Daisy Jones & The Six is such a great book! The story follows it-girl Daisy Jones in late 60s LA and her journey to joining a band that then becomes hugely popular. If you like historical fiction or just really The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, you'll probably like Daisy Jones & The Six.
The book is written in the format of an oral history, or a series of interviews with the band and people adjacent to the band describing how they remember the events surrounding their success and downfall.
Daisy Jones is the main character of Daisy Jones & The Six. She is described as an it-girl of the late 60's when she discovers she likes to write music. She decides to pursue a musical career and is recommended to do a duet with an up-and-coming musical group named The Six.
When Daisy joins the duet, she meets Billy Dunne, the lead singer of The Six. They clash over song lyrics, which starts their complicated and contemptuous relationship. When the song becomes a success, a reporter from Rolling Stone recommends that Daisy join the band more permanently. She does, and the name of the band is changed to Daisy Jones & The Six.
Daisy struggles with substance abuse and a roller coaster of a relationship with her bandmate Billy Dunne. They both write songs about their feelings for each other, but it's complicated as each of them are in other relationships at different times. They also have to perform these songs together and it affects how they feel about each other.
Daisy's vocal performances are untamed and transfixing, adding raw emotion to the songs that they've written and contributing to the success of the group.
The band becomes a huge success, their songs climbing up the charts, but as they gain popularity, fractures are starting to form within the group. All of the members of The Six have their own personal struggles and their struggles within the band.
Daisy marries an Italian prince, which further exacerbates her drug problems. She eventually hits rock bottom and decides to leave the band, canceling the rest of their hugely popular tour.
Stevie Nicks is a singer/songwriter who eventually joined the band Fleetwood Mac and became a huge success.
Stevie Nicks was born on May 26, 1948 and enjoyed writing songs and making music with a guitar that she received for her 16th birthday. In high school she met future musical and romantic partner, Lindsay Buckingham who was a musician in a band called Fritz. She joined the band and recorded an album with Buckingham that was not considered a success.
Stevie started using cocaine and stated that she didn't believe it was addictive at the time. She was working multiple jobs and kept writing songs like "Rhiannon" and "Landslide". Meanwhile, Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac was played a song off of Buckingham Nicks, the album Stevie and Lindsay created together, and kept Lindsay's guitar work in mind when a guitarist in their band left to pursue a solo career. Lindsay insisted that he would not join the band without Stevie so Fleetwood Mac decided to add them both.
Once Lindsay and Stevie joined the band, the next album "Fleetwood Mac" became wildly popular. Two of the most popular songs on the album were written by Nicks herself, "Rhiannon" and "Landslide". Stevie's live vocals on "Rhiannon" in particular were transfixing and added to the imagery of the song and the popularity of the band's live performances.
Although they achieved career success in joining Fleetwood Mac, Buckingham and Nicks' romantic relationship was souring, culminating in Nicks ending the relationship. They both wrote songs about their relationship for Fleetwood Mac and had to continue working and performing together.
At this time, Stevie was rumored to be upset with the band's decision to exclude some of her songs on the next album. She was briefly romantically involved with Mick Fleetwood who was married to Jenny Boyd at the time.
Stevie had a backlog of songs to put out, so she released a solo album in 1981. Shortly after, one of her good friends was diagnosed with leukemia while pregnant. After she died, Stevie married her friend's husband in her grief and to help raise her friend's baby. She later said it was a mistake.
Before going on her solo tour, a plastic surgeon told Nicks that if she took one more hit of cocaine she could die. She decided she wanted to be around for the young musicians that would have wanted her to beat substance abuse and entered a rehab facility.
Due to her solo career and her stint in rehab, Stevie was unable to contribute to what would be the final Fleetwood Mac album. Allegedly there was a verbal altercation between Nicks and Buckingham which culminated in Buckingham quitting the band.
The band replaced Buckingham and continued to tour until Nicks decided to leave the band over a disagreement between her and Mick Fleetwood about the release of a song that Nicks wanted to add on one of her solo albums.
There seem to be a lot of similarities between Stevie Nicks and Daisy Jones. Both are female songwriters that joined bands in the 70's that then became smash hits in large part due to their contributions.
They both had romantic interests within the band that they joined, while Stevie was involved with Lindsay prior to joining Fleetwood Mac, she also had some involvement with the creator of the band that she joined, Mick Fleetwood. Daisy's complicated romantic interest was Billy Dunne, who had a wife and child at home.
They both wrote songs about things that were happening in their own lives, and had unique stage presences and the vocal ability to inject emotion into their music.
Daisy and Stevie both had impulsive and short marriages that ended up teaching them something about themselves.
Both Stevie and Daisy experienced a struggle with substance abuse, which in part contributed to the downfall of both of their respective bands.
Both Daisy Jones & The Six and Fleetwood Mac skyrocketed into fame and ended up crashing down due to complicated band member relationships and personal struggles.
Daisy Jones & The Six and Fleetwood Mac continue to fascinate people who are curious about the epic rise and fall of a rock-and-roll band from the 70's!
TJR has stated that she was inspired by watching Fleetwood Mac performances and thinking about what it would be like to perform a song over and over again with the person who the song was written about. She wanted to explore what it would be like to reopen old wounds and what it would do to a band's dynamic.
I think it's pretty clear that Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac inspired the story of Daisy Jones & The Six. What do you guys think?
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