‘Daisy Jones & The Six’: First Three Episodes Set The Stage For Rock ‘n’ Roll’s Biggest Band (And Their Downfall)
Samantha Colleran, March 2023
Daisy Jones & The Six is a New York Times Best Seller that captured the hearts of thousands. With its unique interview style format, readers will find it hard to put down as you get deeper into the story of The Six and their ultimate split while at the peak of their career. The book has since been turned into a limited series on Amazon Prime, and the first three episodes are available to stream now (episodes 4-6 will be released March 10, 7-8 on March 17, and the final two episodes on March 24). I’ll be breaking down the releases weekly, so please don’t read further if you haven’t watched yet or plan on watching! Let’s get into it.
Introducing the incredible cast that brought the band to life: Riley Keough as Daisy Jones, Sam Claflin as Billy Dunne, Will Harrison as Graham Dunne, Suki Waterhouse as Karen Sirko, Sebastian Chacon as Warren Rhodes, and Josh Whitehouse as Eddie Roundtree. Other key characters include Camila Morrone as Camila Dunne, Nabiyah Be as Simone Jackson, Timothy Olyphant as Rod Reyes, Tom Wright as Teddy Price, and Nick Pupo as Jonah Berg.
Starting off with the most obvious change that people quickly pointed out when the show was first announced: the missing sixth member. In the book, a friend of Graham’s, Chuck, is an original member of The Dunne Brothers but is sent off to war and dies while serving the country; he is replaced by Pete Loving who remains with the band until their breakup. In the show, Chuck plays a brief part but ultimately decides to go to college to become a dentist, to which Billy tells Eddie to switch to bass and he begrudgingly takes on the role. When deciding on a band name, Billy says “The six of us will never agree on anything” and Karen suggests calling the band The Six. When it’s made obvious there’s only five people in the band, Karen notes there’s six people at the table; the sixth being Camila, Billy’s then girlfriend and photographer for the band.
In the book, the interviews take place when the band are in their seventies. The show has the interviews taking place 20 years since the band’s breakup; although a change that could potentially impact future events that take place in the book, it’s an interesting change that so far I’ve thoroughly enjoyed.
The show starts off with each member of the band sitting down preparing to be interviewed (by who, we don’t know- yet). We get flashbacks to the band in their younger years; Daisy growing up with wealth but not being shown proper love and turning to partying on ‘the strip’ in Los Angeles where she was exposed to sex and drugs at the young age of fifteen (“I wasn’t naive, I was a baby”), Billy and Graham growing up with a single mother and Graham convincing his school friends to start a band where they gigged graduations and weddings.
It’s at one of these gigs Billy and Graham notice their father dancing with a young girl in the crowd. This is the night where music becomes real for Billy; he decides that from that night forward they’ll get really good, and one day become the best band in the world. Meanwhile, Daisy is still on the strip partying, but is now writing songs which she describes as feeling better than the drugs she was taking.
Billy meets Camila in a laundromat, where he confidently introduces himself to her as Billy Dunne from a band when she was asking for his laundry basket. In an attempt to save the conversation, Billy says “You give me your number, and I’ll write you a song” (a fan favorite quote). Camila begins coming to band rehearsals and capturing photos and video footage of the band in their early days. Daisy begins seeing a guy named Wyatt who ends up taking one of her songs, “Stumbling On Sublime” (she pushes him into a pool at a party later on), and it’s around this time Daisy meets her lifelong best friend and fellow woman in music Simone Jackson. Simone understands Daisy on a level she’s never been seen by a person before, and it’s clear that their friendship will serve as an anchor throughout the series.
The Dunne Brothers are set to open for The Winters, their first gig without Chuck. Karen is the keyboardist for The Winters, and this is where they first meet and Graham takes an immediate interest in her. Rod Reyes is at the show, and he suggests to Billy to head out to L.A. because that’s where bands are really starting to get noticed. Billy suggests Camila come along, which she is hesitant about, but when the band begins packing up Warren’s van Camila catches them and decides to go with them.
We see Daisy coming into her own; after hearing “Stumbling On Sublime” on the radio at a gas station and talking to a movie writer about her “up and down” (coffee and champagne with a benny) who says he wants to use that in a script one day, she decides she doesn’t want to be inspiration for men’s ideas, “I’m not the muse, okay? I’m the somebody”. She walks into an empty bar with a piano and begins playing a song she wrote, “By Myself”, and she realizes that writing songs and making music is what she was destined to do. I’d be lying if I said there weren’t a few tears shed during this part, “I can do this with nobody else/ I can ruin this night by myself”.
The Dunne Brothers are in L.A. and find their way to Rod’s house and ask for gigs and to produce records with Teddy Price. He agrees to get them a gig at a bar called Filthy McNasty’s (“Filthy’s”, they end up playing here for a few months, unpaid, but they draw in a good crowd), and Graham convinces him to get them in contact with Karen so they can ask her to join the band. After talking to Camila, she’s convinced, and becomes an official member of The Dunne Brothers. The band moves into a cheap house in Laurel Canyon, while Daisy moves in with Simone. Simone plays a show at the Troubadour and invites Daisy out on stage for a song, “Two Against Three”, one of my favorite tracks so far. Teddy Price is in the audience and is beyond impressed by Daisy, she turns down his offer to work together because she doesn’t want her songs to be shaped by someone else. While stopping at a convenience store, Graham spots Teddy Price and Billy ends up talking to him, convincing him to listen to The Six for just one song. They play “Silver Nail”, and it knocks Teddy’s socks off. He works them to the bone for months, then books them some studio time and The Six so they can record an album. They record the album in less than a week then hit the road for a tour. Before leaving for tour Camila tells Billy she’s pregnant, and they get married that night. It sinks in for Billy that he’s going to be a father; this is where we start to see his drinking truly begin to spiral. He fears he won’t be able to show up for his child, just like his father couldn’t show up for him and Graham.
As the only sober person in the situation, Camila is the only one who has any sort of recollection of the events of the first tour. We see Billy truly begin to unravel the farther along Camila gets into her pregnancy, and the band works to hide his infidelity and excessive drinking from her as long as they can. Camila decides to surprise Billy, but instead finds him in the back of the van with two girls. “If you think that I’m going to let you ruin our life, my life… I don’t give a fuck what you do until this baby comes but when it does, you are going to show up for me… for this child, and you’re gonna keep showing up for the rest of your goddamn life.” During a rough performance where Billy is slurring his words on stage and can barely stand, Teddy is backstage waiting for him to let him know that Camila had the baby and it’s a girl, Julia. Billy gets emotional, saying he can’t meet his daughter in the state he’s in. He goes to rehab to get clean, and the rest of the tour is canceled.
Teddy doesn’t give up on Daisy. He finds her at work and tries to convince her to work together once again. Daisy eventually finds herself wanting to better her songs so she has more material to show him. He’s the only person who believed in her, and she wanted to prove to him that he was right. She records a demo for him and leaves it at his door. She tells Teddy her goal is to make an album that people listen to over and over until it breaks, and that’s where the deal is sealed; she’ll write more songs and release an album with Teddy’s help.
Graham picks Billy up from rehab and fills him in on everything they missed, and Billy breaks down when Graham talks about Julia smiling at him. We see Eddie’s rumblings of dislike toward Billy when in his interview he talks about how badly Billy going to rehab screwed the band over. Billy decides he wants to leave the band; the lifestyle is too much and he doesn’t want to become his dad, he would rather focus on taking care of his family and being a good father. The remaining four members begin the search for Billy’s replacement, but finding someone to fill Billy’s shoes is tough to do with the talent he possesses. Eddie steps up to the plate and suggests he take the lead position, and the band decide to let him fill in. Billy suggests going back home to Pittsburgh with Camila, and they get into an argument with Camila saying she moved to L.A. with Billy to make their life together work. Camila tells Billy to pick Julia up and to tell her what he’s so afraid of, and it’s there we see Billy’s walls come down a bit as he learns how to step up and be the father his daughter needs.
Simone gets offered a backing vocal position by Lee Parlin, who tells her she has a one of a kind voice and wants to work with her again. At a party afterward, Simone meets Bernice, or Bernie as most people call her, and they get to talking. Bernie works at a club in New York, and tells Simone to come by if she’s ever around. Simone is taken aback by how forward Bernie is, but there’s a little spark there that wasn’t in the book which I’m intrigued to see play out on screen. When recording with Lee, he tries to make a move on Simone which she puts a stop to.
While the band celebrates Christmas, Billy asks if he can play something for the band, and Eddie says no at first, until the band give him looks that say ‘Just let him play for us’. He plays them “Honeycomb”, and he records a demo for Teddy. Teddy plays it for the label, who have since dropped The Six after the tour had to be canceled, and the label doesn’t think the song is good enough. While talking with Daisy one night about her album, Teddy has the “Honeycomb” demo playing in the background, which piques Daisy’s interest. He asks her what she would do with it, and Teddy gets the idea to make the song a duet. He sneaks The Six into the studio and invites Daisy in for the session. This angers Billy; the song isn’t meant to be a duet, and her rewrites give the song a different meaning than he originally intended. Daisy challenges Billy, saying his original lyrics don’t sound honest and are too simple, “You wrote a speech, Billy, when at the very, I think it can be a conversation”.
When Billy reluctantly comes back to record, Teddy tells him there’s a rattle in his mic and he and Daisy have to share mics. He tells Daisy they’ll do her version, but then they’ll record the original. They never did record Billy’s version; we see the artistic chemistry between the two right off the bat, Billy can’t take his eyes off of Daisy and their voices blend perfectly together. He stays in the studio late to listen to Daisy’s vocals, getting lost in her voice. Daisy tells Simone that she had the best day of her life when she comes home. This is the beginning of The Six featuring Daisy Jones.
Overall, we have a pretty solid setup of who these characters are and a really great lead into the devastating chaos of Daisy Jones & The Six’s rise to fame and sudden crash. We understand the complexities of Billy’s troubled past, we get glimpses of Graham and Karen’s budding relationship, we see tension between Eddie and Billy, and we watch from the first introduction how Daisy completely unsettles Billy. I personally enjoyed every second of these first few episodes from the cast to the wardrobe and most importantly the music, and I can’t wait to see how the remainder of this story unfolds on screen.