novelxo Chapter : The Numbers Tour
SevenEightNine was released on June 1, 1976. “Honeycomb” debuted at number 86 but was headed up the charts at a steady clip. The band, playing an unofficial residency of sorts at the Whisky, was gearing up to headline their own national tour.
GRAHAM: We hung out in L.A. for a while, perfecting our set. The songs were coming together onstage. I say that but I guess I don’t mean “Honeycomb.” Billy did a rendition of it without Daisy. He just lifted her half of it and sang it as he originally intended on the album.
It was good, but you could feel a hole in it. It was missing something.
The rest of the album was playing great, though. We were playing tight, every song, every note. We had it down. We were putting together a great show.
BILLY: We had the same people coming to see us two or three nights a week sometimes. And the crowds were growing the more we played.
ROD: Billy should have invited Daisy to some of those L.A. shows. I told him that. But it was in one ear out the other with him.
SIMONE: Daisy was frustrated they were excluding her. At least I got that impression, when we talked. Which wasn’t as often anymore, with all my touring. But I still made sure I knew what was going on with her. She did the same with me.
KAREN: Daisy knew everybody at the Whisky. She was more connected on the Strip than we were. So it was only a matter of time before she showed up.
DAISY: I wasn’t trying to crash anything. If Billy didn’t want to invite me to sing with them, that was fine. But I wasn’t going to stay away just because they were playing my single without me.
Also, I’d started sleeping with Hank, which wasn’t a great move on my part, but, to be blunt, I was drunk or high a lot of the time back then and it’s a bit hazy. I don’t even think I was attracted to Hank or even liked him all that much. He was a little short, had a square jaw, but he had a nice smile, I guess. Really, he just seemed to be there all the time.
Anyway, Hank and I had been out at the Rainbow and as we were walking, some of his friends were standing outside the Whisky, so we went in.
KAREN: Graham nodded at me and pointed with his eyes to where she was on the floor. And then we saw Billy spot her, too.
EDDIE: The whole time we were playing the Whisky back then, almost every night, Billy’d have some sort of note on how I was playing. He was such a control freak. But Daisy showing up, he couldn’t control that.
And man, she looked good. She had on a tiny little dress. Girls didn’t wear bras back then and it’s a crying shame that ever ended.
BILLY: What was I going to do? Not invite her to sing the song with me while she was standing right there? She forced my hand.
GRAHAM: Billy said, into the mike, “Ladies and gentlemen, we have Daisy Jones here tonight. What do you all say we sing a song called
‘Honeycomb’ for you?”
DAISY: I walked up to the mike as Billy was facing the audience, and I thought, Does Billy Dunne ever wear shirts that aren’t denim?
BILLY: She came on the stage barefoot and I just thought, What is this girl doing? Put some shoes on.
DAISY: The band all kicked in, and I stood at the mike, waiting. The first line is Billy’s so I just watched the people in the crowd as he started singing. I watched the way they watched him. He was a real showman.
I don’t know if he gets enough credit for that. People now talk about how good we were together but I’ve seen Billy when he’s just on his own and that man is talented. He was born to be in front of a crowd.
BILLY: When Daisy’s part came in, I turned and looked at her and watched her sing. We hadn’t rehearsed it, we had never sung together.
I was half-expecting it to be a disaster. But after a second or two, I just watched her.
She really did have a dynamite voice. She smiled almost the entire time she was singing. I think you can tell that, when you’re listening. It comes through. That’s something Daisy was great at. You could hear her smile in her words.
DAISY: I thought about changing the lyrics back, on the second reprise.
I knew Billy hated the way I had changed it to the questions. But just before I was about to start singing those lines I thought, I’m not here to make Billy like me. I’m here to do my job, and I sang it the way it was on the track.
BILLY: I cringed as I heard her sing it.
KAREN: Daisy and Billy were standing right next to each other, singing into the same mike. And…the way Billy would watch her as she sang…
The way she’d watch him…It was intense.
DAISY: We harmonized at the end together. It wasn’t that way on the record. It just sort of happened that way.
BILLY: I could tell, as we were singing it, that we had everybody. When the song finished, the crowd started screaming. I mean actually screaming.
DAISY: I just knew, at that show, that we had something special. Just knew it.
And it didn’t matter how much of an asshole I thought Billy was.
When you can sing like that with someone, there’s a small part of you that feels connected to them. That sort of thing that gets under your skin and doesn’t easily come out.
Billy was like a splinter. That’s exactly what he was like.
On the heels of their thrilling performance at the Whisky, Runner announced that Daisy Jones would be the opening act on The Six’s world tour, dubbed the Numbers Tour.
Billy appealed to Rod, Teddy, and Rich Palentino to change their minds and drop Daisy from the ticket, but he was finally forced to agree to the billing when Teddy showed him that ticket sales were climbing rapidly. Holdover dates were being added to the itinerary.
As the band and Daisy set out on tour, “Honeycomb” had just hit the Top 20.
BILLY: I wasn’t focused on who was opening for us. I was focused on how to stay sober on the tour. It was my first time out on the road since rehab.
CAMILA: Billy was telling me how he was going to call me three times a day and keep a journal of everything he did and I explained to him that I didn’t want him proving himself to me. That would just add more pressure, which was the last thing he needed. He needed to know that I believed in him. I said, “Tell me what I can do to make it easier, not harder.”
BILLY: I decided to bring Camila and Julia out on the road with me.
Camila was about two months pregnant with the twins by that point.
We knew that, once she got further along, she wasn’t going to be able to be there as much. But I wanted her there to start off on the right foot.
DAISY: I was excited to get out on the road. I’d never toured before. My album was doing all right. I was getting some good attention. And
“Honeycomb” was helping my album sell a bit better, too.
GRAHAM: We were all happy to have Daisy with us. Daisy could do the hang. Daisy was a cool chick.
We were in that period of time when you’re doing radio spots and photo shoots and your song just keeps climbing higher and higher, selling better and better. I got recognized a few times. People had been recognizing Billy for a while but now they were starting to know me and Karen a bit, too. I’d be walking down the street and see somebody with a Six shirt on.
So I didn’t care who they put me out on tour with as long as things kept going the way they were going.
BILLY: We played our first show in Nashville at the Exit/In. And my attitude was to include Daisy as I would include anybody else that was opening for us. We were used to being the opening band and now we were the headliner. So I wanted to be as inclusive to her as other bands had been to us. Personal feelings aside.
KAREN: We were all backstage before our first show, before Daisy’s supposed to go out there. And Daisy’s snorting a few lines. Warren’s getting a massage from some groupie that somehow worked her way back with us. Eddie and Pete are doing whatever. Billy’s off by himself.
Graham and I are talking. I think it was that show…Graham had trimmed his beard and you could see how handsome he was underneath all that scruff.
And then there’s a knock at the door and it’s Camila and Julia.
They had come to say good night to Billy.
The second Daisy sees Camila and Julia, she puts the dope in a drawer, cleans her nose, puts down her glass of brandy or whiskey or whatever she’s drinking. It was the first time I saw any awareness from her. Like maybe she didn’t live on another planet. She shook Camila’s hand and she waved at Julia. I remember she called her “chickadee.”
And then it was time for Daisy to go on and she said, “Wish me luck!”
Everyone else was too busy doing their own thing to even pay attention but not Camila. She wished her luck and she was so sincere about it.
CAMILA: The first time I met Daisy Jones, I did not know what to think of her. She seemed really scattered but also very sweet. I knew Billy didn’t like her, but I also didn’t think his opinion meant I couldn’t have my own.
But, I mean, undeniably gorgeous. Just as pretty, maybe even prettier, than in the magazines.
DAISY: I went out onstage first, opening up in Nashville, and I was nervous. I’m not normally a very nervous person but I could feel it in my body, my nerves. And I was maybe too coked up. I walked out onto that stage expecting to see all these people waiting for The Six. But a lot of the crowd was excited just to see me. They were there for me.
I was wearing a black halter dress and my gold bangles and my gold hoops.
Except for rehearsals, that was the first time I went onto a stage by myself, with just my backing band that Hank had put together. It was the first time I heard a crowd that big roar for me. All these people, coming together, looking and sounding like a living being. This booming, bellowing, living thing.
Once I felt that, I wanted to feel that all the time.
GRAHAM: Daisy played a good show. She had a great voice, her songs weren’t bad. She was somebody that could hold a crowd. And by the time we got out there, the audience was excited. They were already having a good time.
WARREN: You could smell the grass in every corner of the place. Could barely see the back of the crowd through the smoke.
KAREN: The moment we stepped foot onto the stage, you could tell the people that were there…it was a different group of people than our first tour. There were a lot more of them, for starters. The original fans were still there but now we had teenagers and parents, now we had a lot of women.
BILLY: I stood there in front of that crowd, stone sober, feeling their excitement, knowing “Honeycomb” was heading for the Top 10. And I knew I had those people in the palm of my hand. I knew they wanted to like us. They already liked us. I didn’t have to win them over. I stood on that stage and…we’d already won.
EDDIE: We really pulled out the stops that night, put it all out there on the floor for ’em.
BILLY: At the end of the show I said, “What do you all say I bring Daisy Jones back out here and we play ‘Honeycomb’ for ya?”
DAISY: The crowd went crazy. The whole place started rumbling.
BILLY: I could feel my microphone vibrating as they screamed and stomped their feet and I thought, Holy shit, we’re rock stars.
By the end of 1976, “Honeycomb” had peaked at number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. The band, along with Daisy, had performed the song on Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. They had finished up their North American tour dates and were gearing up for the short European leg of the tour. Camila Dunne, now six months pregnant, returned with Julia to Los Angeles.
BILLY: I couldn’t make Camila and Julia stay out on the road with me indefinitely, I had to take control of it myself.
CAMILA: I knew him well enough to know when I needed to stay and when it was okay to go.
BILLY: The first night without them was hard. I remember sitting on my suite balcony after the show, hearing all the chaos outside, wanting to be a part of it. There was this voice in my head saying, You can’t do this, you can’t stay sober for much longer.
I ended up calling Teddy. It was the early hours of the morning but it was only about dinnertime for him. I made up something to talk to him about. [Laughs] I think we ended up discussing whether he should marry Yasmine. He was worried he was too old for her. I told him to go for it anyway. And by the end of the call, I was feeling tired. I knew I could go right to sleep. Live to see another day. When we got off the phone Teddy said, “You feeling all right now, Billy?” And I said,
“Yeah, I am.”
After I had that first night under my belt, I felt a bit better. I stuck to my routine. I stayed away from the partying. When the show was over, I went back to my hotel room and I’d listen to some records or I’d go get a decaf coffee and read the paper at a diner. Sometimes Pete or Graham would join me. Although, most of the time, God knows Graham was just trailing after Karen somewhere.
But I just kept on like I’d been doing when Camila and Julia had been with me. Toeing the line.
GRAHAM: It was the same when Camila was there as when she wasn’t there. Billy was with the band when there was work to be done. And Daisy was with us when there was partying to be done. And never the two shall meet, or whatever it is they say.
ROD: Right before we were heading out to Sweden, I’d told Billy and Graham that Runner was considering extending their tour once the European leg was done. I asked them what they thought of tacking on a couple more weeks once they got back to the States.
It was a nonstarter. Camila was due around when we’d be getting back. Billy felt like he was cutting it close as it was.
GRAHAM: It was a two-second conversation. Would I have liked to have continued the tour? Of course. Did it put us in a tough spot that Billy had to go home? Yeah. But he had to go home. End of discussion.
WARREN: All of us wanted to do more dates but we couldn’t perform without Billy. You can plug in some guitarists for a few shows, a keyboardist. But you can’t replace Billy.
DAISY: We were doing sold-out shows. And a lot of that was my doing.
Meanwhile, the band’s album was selling a lot more than mine.
Theirs was better than mine, so it made sense, but when it came to the live show, a lot of people really were coming to see me. And even some of the ones that didn’t care who I was before they got there left with a Daisy Jones T-shirt.
I had real buzz. And I’d been working on some good songs of my own. I had one—super simple melody, not very complex—but it was good. It was called “When You Fly Low.” I’d written it about selling yourself short, how some people try to keep you small. “They want you humble/want to atrophy that muscle/want to stunt the hustle/get you to call uncle/to keep you flying low.”
I’d been saying to Hank that it was time to talk to Teddy about a new album. And Hank kept saying that I should slow down. I got the impression that he thought I was asking too much. Like I thought I deserved more than I did.
Our relationship was not in a good place. I should never have been with a guy like that.
That’s one thing they don’t mention when they tell you to stay away from drugs. They don’t say, “Drugs will have you sleeping with some real jerks.” But they should.
And I had let Hank into every part of my life: He often stood between me and Teddy, he was the one who hired my entire band, my money was funneling through him. And he was in my bed.
KAREN: When we were heading out to Stockholm, we went out on
DAISY: Hank and some of the crew had flown out the day before but I waited and hitched a ride with the band. I made it seem like I wanted to hang out with them on the plane but I just didn’t want to fly over with Hank.
EDDIE: It was on the flight out that I overheard Graham talking to Karen about turning down the extension. Man, that was the first I’d heard of it. No one had told me or Pete.
We had a hit song, we were selling out shows with Daisy. Lots of people making a lot of money. The band, the roadies, everybody working on our tour and at the venues—we all have to pack it in because Billy got his wife pregnant?
And it’s not even put up to a vote. We have to find out about it after the decision has already been made.
KAREN: That was an interesting flight. I think that was the flight Warren got slapped by the stewardess. I only heard the slap, I didn’t see it.
WARREN: I asked her if she was a natural blonde. Lesson learned. Not all women think that’s funny.
KAREN: Daisy and I were in the back minding our business the majority of that flight. We had these two chairs facing each other, a couple of cocktails, looking out the window. I remember Daisy pulled out a pillbox and knocked back two pills, washed ’em down with a sip of her drink.
She’d started wearing all of those bangles by then, as many as would fit on her arms. Everything clinked when she moved. So as Daisy is putting her pillbox back in her pocket, her bangles start clanging and I made a joke about how they were built-in tambourines.
And she thought that was cool. She took a pen and wrote it down on her hand.
And then when she put the pen away, she took out the pillbox again and took two pills from it and put them in her mouth.
I said, “Daisy, you just took two.”
She said, “I did?”
I said, “Yeah.”
She just shrugged and swallowed them.
I said, “C’mon, don’t be one of those people.”
DAISY: I was irritated by that. I shoved the pillbox in her hand. I said,
“Take them if you’re so worried about it. I don’t even need them.”
KAREN: She threw the pills at me.
DAISY: But the moment I handed the pillbox over to her and I saw her put it in her back pocket, I started panicking. The dexies were one thing. That was fine. I could snort coke if I needed to.
But I could not sleep without the Seconals.
KAREN: It surprised me how easy it was for her. To just hand it all over and stop.
DAISY: When we got to the hotel, Hank was already in my room. I said,
“I ran out of reds.” He just nodded and picked up the phone. By the time I wanted to go to sleep, I had another bottle in my hand. It depressed me, how easy it was. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted the pills.
I needed the pills. But it was just so boring, so repetitive. Having any narcotic I needed at any time, nobody really stopping me.
As I fell asleep that night—I think I was still holding a brandy glass
—I heard myself say, “Hank, I don’t want to be with you anymore.” At first I thought there was another woman in the room, saying those words, but then I realized I was saying them. Hank told me to go to sleep. And I didn’t so much fall asleep as feel like I was disappearing.
When I woke up in the morning, I remembered what had happened. I felt embarrassed but also sort of relieved, to have actually verbalized it. I said to Hank, “We should talk about what I said last night.”
And he said, “You didn’t say anything last night.”
I said, “I told you I didn’t want to be with you.”
He just shrugged and said, “Yeah, but you say that all the time when you’re falling asleep.”
I’d had no idea.
GRAHAM: It was pretty clear to everybody that Daisy needed to drop Hank.
ROD: There are a lot of slimy managers out there and they make the rest of us look bad. Hank was taking advantage of Daisy, clear as day.
Somebody needed to be looking out for her.
I said, “Daisy, if you need help, I’m here.”
GRAHAM: I think Daisy saw what Rod was doing for us—the way he made sure everything was taken care of. Rod was the first guy to tell anybody that we were going to rule the world. He wasn’t telling us to be happy with what we had and to keep our mouth shut. And, not to be a jerk but…he wasn’t sleeping with us and keeping us high as fuck so we didn’t know heads from tails.
I told Daisy, “Leave Hank and team up with Rod. He’s got you covered.”
ROD: I was already doing so much for Daisy anyway. I’d hooked up Rolling Stone to see the show. They were sending Jonah Berg out to come watch the set and then hang out afterward. It was a potential cover. I’d made a point of including Daisy in that. I didn’t have to. I could have pushed for it to be just a story on the band but I figured what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
KAREN: The day that Jonah Berg was coming, we were in Glasgow.
DAISY: I was stupid. I picked a fight with Hank right after sound check that day.
KAREN: Graham had come over to my room that afternoon to bring me one of my suitcases. Somehow my things had ended up with his stuff.
He was standing in the hotel hallway, at my door, holding a duffel bag of my bras and underwear. He said, “I believe this is yours.”
I grabbed it from him and rolled my eyes at him. I said, “Oh, I bet you just love having your hands on my panties.” I was just joking around.
But he shook his head and he said, “If I get my hands on those panties, I want to have earned it the old-fashioned way.”
I laughed and said, “Get out of here.”
And he said, “Yes, ma’am.”
And he walked back to his room. But when I shut the door, I…I don’t know.
DAISY: I broke it to Hank when it was just the two of us in my hotel room. He was putting his arms around me and I was done with it. I
kept snapping at him and he asked me what my problem was and I said, “I think it’s time we part ways.” Hank tried to ignore me a few times, kept telling me I didn’t know what I was saying. So I said it really clear. “Hank, you’re fired. You should leave.” Well, he heard it that time.
GRAHAM: Billy and I were planning on going out to grab a bite—I’d bet him he wouldn’t eat haggis.
DAISY: Hank got in my face. He was so angry and he was standing so close to me that as he spoke, his spit landed on my shoulder. He said,
“You’d still just be screwing rock stars if I hadn’t found you.”
When I didn’t say anything back to him, Hank cornered me, up against the wall. I didn’t know what he was going to do. I’m not sure he knew what he was going to do.
When you’re in a situation like that, when you have a man looming over you, it’s as if every decision you made to lead to that moment—alone with a man you don’t trust—flashes before your eyes.
Something tells me men don’t do that same thing. When they are standing there, threatening a woman, I doubt they count every wrong step they made to become the asshole they are. But they should.
My body was stick straight—I felt sort of shockingly sober—and I put my arms out in front of me, holding on to whatever space I could try to defend. Hank was staring right into my eyes. I don’t know if I was even breathing. And then Hank punched the wall and walked out of the room, slamming the door on his way out.
After he left, I triple-locked the door behind him. He yelled something in the hall but I couldn’t make it out. I just sat on the bed.
He never came back.
BILLY: I was walking out of my room to go meet Graham when I saw Hank Allen coming out of Daisy’s room muttering, “That fucking bitch.” But he seemed to be calming down so I was thinking I should let it go. Then I saw him stop and turn, like he was going to go back into Daisy’s room. I could tell he was trouble right then. You can see it in somebody’s gait, you know? Hands balled up into fists and jaw tight and all that. I caught his eye and he saw me. We looked at each other for a moment. I shook my head, to say, That would be the wrong move. He kept looking at me. And then he looked down at the ground and walked out.
When he was gone, I knocked on Daisy’s door. I said, “It’s Billy.”
It took a moment but she opened the door. She was wearing a navy dress—that kind where the sleeves are off the shoulders. I knew people always talked about how blue Daisy’s eyes were but that day was the first time I really noticed them. They were so blue. You know what they looked like? They looked like the middle of the ocean. Not the shoreline, not that light blue. They looked like the dark blue of the middle of the ocean. Like deep water.
I said, “Are you okay?”
She looked sad, which I’d never really seen before. And she said,
“Yeah, thank you.”
I said, “If you need to talk…” I wasn’t sure how I could really help but I figured I should offer all the same.
She said, “No, that’s all right.”
DAISY: I didn’t realize just how much of a wall Billy put up around himself when he was near me until that moment, when suddenly there was no wall. Like how you don’t register you’re hearing the hum of a car engine until it’s turned off.
But I looked him in the eye then and I saw the real Billy.
I realized I’d been looking at this guarded, cold version of him the whole time up until then. I thought, It might be nice to know this Billy.
But then it was over. Just one second of realness from him and then, poof, gone the way it came.
GRAHAM: I was waiting for Billy when my phone rang.
KAREN: I don’t know why it was that day that I decided to do it.
GRAHAM: I said, “Hi.”
And Karen just said, “Hi.”
KAREN: We were sort of quiet on the phone for a second. And then I said, “How come you’ve never made a move on me?”
I could hear him drinking a beer. I could hear him take a sip. He said, “I don’t take shots I know I’ll miss.”
It was out of my mouth before I’d decided to say it. I said, “I don’t think you’ll miss, Dunne.”
And then as soon as I said it, there was a dial tone.
GRAHAM: I have never run anywhere faster than down that hall to her room.
KAREN: Three seconds later—that’s not an exaggeration—there’s a knock on my door. I opened it and Graham was out of breath. A tiny run down the hall and he was out of breath.
GRAHAM: I looked right at her. She was so gorgeous. Those thick eyebrows. I’m a sucker for a girl with thick eyebrows. I said, “What are you saying to me?”
KAREN: I said, “Just go for it, Graham.”
GRAHAM: I stepped right into her room, I shut the door behind me, and I grabbed that woman and kissed her good.
You don’t usually wake up in the morning and think, This is going to be one of the most exciting days of my life. But that day was. That day with Karen…that was one of them.
WARREN: Here’s something I’ve never told anyone. No, this is good.
You’re gonna like this.
When we were doing our show in Glasgow, sometime after sound check, I’m taking one of my beer naps—which is what I would call having a beer and taking a nap—and I wake up because Karen is having sex with somebody in the next room! I can’t even sleep it’s so loud.
I never found out who it was but I did see her being a little flirty with our lighting tech so, anyway, I think Karen had a thing with Bones.
BILLY: After I left Daisy, I tried to find Graham for lunch but he wasn’t anywhere.
GRAHAM: When it was time to leave to get down to the venue, Karen made me sneak out her door, go to my room, change, and then meet her at the elevators.
KAREN: I didn’t want anyone to know anything.
BILLY: By the time we all got backstage, everybody was running around like chickens with their heads cut off because Daisy’s band was nowhere to be found.
EDDIE: Apparently, Hank went down to the Apollo on his way out of
town and took all five of Daisy’s band members out with him. They just up and left.
KAREN: It was such a low blow.
GRAHAM: Nothing was supposed to come before the music. Our job was to go out there and play for the audience. No matter what personal shit was going on.
DAISY: My band had walked out. Just walked out. I didn’t know what to do.
HANK ALLEN (former manager, Daisy Jones): All I care to say is that Daisy Jones and I had a strictly professional relationship from 1974 to 1977, which was mutually terminated due to differences of opinion regarding the trajectory of her career. I continue to wish her the best.
BILLY: I find Rod and he’s already in damage control mode. I said to him, “Is it really that bad if Daisy doesn’t play one night?”
And then I realized, as I said that, that he was probably her manager now. And so, you know, to him…yeah, it was.
ROD: Jonah Berg was in the audience. From Rolling Stone.
KAREN: Everybody was trying to figure out what to do. But Graham is trying to catch my eye every second no one’s looking. I was laughing to myself thinking, We are supposed to be trying to solve a problem here.
GRAHAM: I couldn’t stop looking at Karen.
KAREN: Graham was always the guy I would talk to about stuff. And that night I found myself wanting to tell him about this great afternoon I’d had. It was like I wanted to talk to him about him.
DAISY: I said to Rod, “Maybe I should go out there on my own.” I didn’t want to give up. I wanted to do something.
EDDIE: Rod had suggested that Graham go out there with Daisy and the two of them do a few acoustic versions of some of the songs from her album. But Graham wasn’t really paying attention. I said, “I can do it.”
ROD: I sent Daisy and Eddie out there with no idea what was going to happen and the whole time I’m watching them walk out to the mike like a cat on hot bricks.
DAISY: Eddie and I did a few songs. Really pared down. Just his guitar and me singing. I think we did “One Fine Day” and “Until You’re Home.” It was fine but we did not blow anybody away. And I knew Rolling Stone was out there and I needed to make a good impression.
So on the last song, I decided to go off script.
EDDIE: Daisy leaned over to me and she gave me this vague beat and a key and told me to come up with something. That was it. Just “Come up with something.” I did my best, you know what I mean? You can’t exactly make up a song on the fly like that.
DAISY: I was trying to get Eddie to play something I could sing my new song to. I wanted to sing “When You Fly Low.” He started and I sang a few bars, tried to get into a rhythm with him, but it wasn’t working. I finally said, “Okay, forget that.” I said it right in the mike. The audience was laughing with me. They were rooting for me. I could feel it. So I started singing it a cappella. Just me and my voice, singing this song I’d written.
I’d worked hard on it, I’d polished it up from beginning to end.
There wasn’t a stray word in the whole thing. And it was just me and my tambourine with the stomp of my feet.
EDDIE: I was there behind her, tapping a beat out on the body of the guitar for her, helping her out. The crowd was into it. They were watching our every move.
DAISY: It was such a rush, singing like that. Singing a song that I felt in my heart. Words that I had written that were all mine.
I watched the people at the front of the crowd listening to me, hearing me. These people from a different country, people I’d never met in my life, I felt connected to them in a way that I hadn’t felt connected to anyone before.
It is what I have always loved about music. Not the sounds or the crowds or the good times as much as the words—the emotions, and the stories, the truth—that you can let flow right out of your mouth.
Music can dig, you know? It can take a shovel to your chest and just start digging until it hits something. That night, singing that, just reaffirmed that I wanted to put out an album of my own songs.
BILLY: I was standing backstage watching Daisy and Eddie when she started singing “When You Fly Low.” She was good. Better than…
KAREN: Billy was staring at her.
DAISY: When I was done, the audience was hooting and hollering and I felt like I’d gone out there and done the very best with what I had. I felt like I’d really turned it around and put on a good show for them.
BILLY: After she finished the song, I heard her saying goodbye to the audience and I thought, We could do “Honeycomb” now. Just me and her.
GRAHAM: I was surprised to see Billy going out there.
DAISY: I used my usual line, “That’s it for me tonight! It’s time for The Six! Everybody get your hands together.” But in the middle of me talking, Billy walked out onto the stage.
Billy really shined onstage. Some people, you bathe them in those lights and they disappear. But some people, they glow. Billy was like that. I mean, offstage, no. Offstage, he was sullen and sober and he barely had any sense of humor that I could see. At that point, I thought he was sort of a bore, to be honest with you.
But onstage he looked like there was no place he’d rather be than standing right there with you.
EDDIE: I was sitting there with the guitar and Billy comes up to me. I said, “What do you want me to play?”
But instead, Billy put his hand out, asking for my guitar. I’m the fucking guitarist. And he’s trying to take my guitar.
He said, “Can I borrow it, man?”
I wanted to say, “No, you cannot borrow it.” But what could I do?
I’m standing up in front of thousands of people. I handed it over and Billy took it and walked right up to the mike with Daisy. I’m standing there with my dick in my hand, no reason to be on the stage. I had to slink off.
BILLY: I waved to the crowd and said, “How about this Daisy Jones, everybody?” And the audience cheered. “Do you all mind if I ask Daisy a question?” I put my hand on the mike and I said, “How about
‘Honeycomb’ now? Just me and you?”
DAISY: I said, “All right, let’s do it.” There was only one mike out there.
So Billy stood right next to me. He smelled like Old Spice and his breath smelled like cigarettes and Binaca.
BILLY: I started playing it acoustic.
DAISY: It was a bit slower than we normally played the song. It gave it a tender feel. And then he started singing, “One day things will quiet down/we’ll pick it all up and move town/we’ll walk through the switchgrass down to the rocks/and the kids will come around.”
BILLY: And Daisy sang, “Oh, honey, I can wait/to call that home/I can wait for the blooms and the honeycomb.”
KAREN: You know how sometimes people will describe other people and say they make you feel like you’re the only one in the room? Billy and Daisy could both do that. But they somehow did it with each other.
They each seemed like they thought the other one was the only person in the room. Like we were watching two people who didn’t realize thousands of people were watching them.
DAISY: Billy was a great guitar player. There was an intricacy, a delicateness when he played.
BILLY: At that slower tempo, the song started to seem even more intimate. It was gentler, softer. And I was sort of taken aback, in that moment, that Daisy could so easily go where I was taking us. If I played slower, she could bring a warmth to it. If I played faster, she’d bring the energy. She was so easy to be good with.
DAISY: When we finished, he put the guitar in one hand and he grabbed my hand with the other. All the skin on the soft side of his fingers was callused. Just by touching you, he’d scrape you.
BILLY: Daisy and I waved to the audience and they cheered and whooped and hollered.
DAISY: And then Billy said, “All right, ladies and gentlemen, we are The Six!” And the rest of the band came out onstage and went right into “Hold Your Breath.”
EDDIE: I came back out onto that stage and my guitar is sitting on the side there and I have to go and pick it up. And that chapped my ass. It’s not enough he tells me how to do my job, he controls when we can go on tour, now he’s taking my goddamn instrument from me and taking my place onstage. And he can’t even bother to hand it back to me when I get back up there? Do you understand where I’m coming from?
DAISY: As they were all walking out, I whispered into Billy’s ear.
“Should I leave?” And he shook his head no. So I joined in, started harmonizing when I could, banging my tambourine. It was such a fun show being up there with them the whole time.
BILLY: I don’t remember why Daisy stayed that night. I think I assumed she’d leave but when she didn’t, I thought, All right, then. I guess she’s staying. I mean, the whole night was a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of deal.
WARREN: I swear to you, Karen had this “I just got laid” vibe to her all night. And I was convinced Bones was lighting her special.
BILLY: I leaned over to Eddie, between one of the songs, and I was going to thank him for earlier but he wouldn’t even look at me. I couldn’t get his eye.
EDDIE: I was so over Billy’s nice-guy routine. He was an asshole. A complete and utter selfish prick. Sorry to say it but that’s how I saw it.
To be honest, I still see it that way now.
BILLY: I finally tapped Eddie on the shoulder, right before the finale, I said, “Thanks, man. I just wanted to really give ’em a good show since Rolling Stone is out there.”
EDDIE: He said he’d normally let me play but since it was Rolling Stone, he wanted to really do it right.
GRAHAM: Pete gave me a look between sets and I was trying to figure out what the problem was. He finally nodded toward Eddie.
Look, I got it. With Billy, it was easy to feel like a second-class citizen. But how we all feel about it doesn’t change the fact that people were paying money to see Billy. People liked his songs, the way he wrote them. They liked watching him up there. Billy was right to go out onto that stage and take Eddie’s guitar. It wasn’t respectful, necessarily. It certainly wasn’t flattering or nice. But it made for a better show.
The band was a meritocracy for the most part. Even though it functioned like a dictatorship. Billy wasn’t in charge because he was a jerk, he was in charge because he had the most talent.
I had told Eddie before….It’s a losing battle if you’re going to try to compete with Billy. That’s why I don’t. Eddie didn’t get that.
KAREN: We ended the show by playing “Around to You” with Daisy harmonizing with Billy for the whole song. We hadn’t done a pure vocal harmony song before. It sounded good.
It seemed like Daisy and Billy had a sort of unspoken language, they could pick up stuff quick with each other.
BILLY: When we ended that song, I thought that was the best show we’d ever played. I turned back to the band and I said, “Great job, everybody.”
WARREN: Eddie got really heated and he snapped. “So happy to please you, boss.”
BILLY: I should have read the situation and just backed away. But I didn’t. I don’t know what I said but clearly, whatever it was, I shouldn’t have said it.
EDDIE: Billy got up close to me and said, “Don’t be a dick to me just because you’re having a bad night.” And that was it for me. You know why? Because I’d had a great night. I played great that night.
So fuck him. And that’s what I said, I said, “Fuck you, man.”
And Billy said, “Take it down a notch, all right?”
BILLY: I probably told him to calm down or something.
EDDIE: Just because something doesn’t matter to Billy, doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter to me. And I was real sick and tired of people expecting me to feel exactly Billy’s way about something.
BILLY: I looked out to the crowd, thinking nothing was going on. And I said, “Thanks, everybody! We’re The Six!”
KAREN: Right before the lights went out, I looked over at Eddie and I saw him lift the guitar off his shoulders and I could just tell.
DAISY: Eddie took his guitar and lifted it into the air.
GRAHAM: It just came smashing down.
EDDIE: I smashed my guitar and walked off. I instantly regretted it. It was a ’sixty-eight Les Paul.
WARREN: The neck broke off of it and Eddie just swung it and let it land on the ground and he walked off. I thought about kicking my snare just to join the fun but it was a Ludwig. You don’t go kicking a Ludwig.
ROD: When they came off the stage, I was of two minds. On the one hand, they had just put on a crack fire show. On the other hand, I was afraid Eddie might slug Billy if given the chance. And Jonah Berg was about to come backstage.
So when I saw Eddie, I pulled him aside and gave him a glass of water and told him to take five.
EDDIE: Rod tried to get me to back off. I said, “You get Billy to back off.”
ROD: You know, some days, you’re just trying to get your job done.
And musicians can make that a lot of fun or a real drag.
Billy came off the stage as everybody else trickled down. I said to him, “Don’t start, all right? Just put it behind you. Jonah Berg’s coming back here any second and you need to keep the good show going.”
DAISY: It was a great show. A great show. I felt like dynamite after that show.
JONAH BERG (rock journalist, Rolling Stone, 1971–1983): When I first came back and met the band after the Glasgow show, I was surprised at the level of camaraderie. They were out there, rocking out, smashing guitars. But backstage, everything seemed really calm. They seemed completely normal. Which is weird for rock stars.
But The Six was never what you expect.
KAREN: It was so much pretending.
Billy and Daisy are pretending they normally hang out after shows, which they had never done. Eddie’s pretending he doesn’t hate Billy’s guts. I mean, obviously, we were all preoccupied with other things that night and we all just had to put it aside to show Jonah Berg a good time.
BILLY: Jonah was a cool guy. Kind of a shaggy look to him. We were hanging out for a few minutes backstage and I offered him a beer. I had a Coke.
He said, “You’re not drinking?”
I said, “Not tonight.”
I didn’t want my personal life to be any journalist’s business. I was very protective of that. Of what I’d put my family through. No need to air any of that type of dirty laundry.
WARREN: Somehow we all ended up at a piano bar a few blocks away.
It was the first time that all of us went out together. The six of us and Daisy, too.
Daisy was wearing this coat over her shorts and shirt. The coat was longer than her shorts and it had real deep pockets. And when we got into the bar, she pulled a few pills out of those deep pockets and threw ’em back with the beer.
I said, “What you got there?”
Jonah was up at the bar, ordering drinks.
Daisy said, “Don’t tell anybody. I don’t wanna hear about it from Karen. She thinks I quit.”
I said, “I’m not asking so I can rat on you. I’m asking so I can have one.”
Daisy smiled and handed me another one from her pocket. She put it in my hand and it had lint on it. They were just loose pills in her pockets. She had pills in all her pockets back then.
BILLY: I’m sitting down with Jonah and he’s asking me questions about how we got started and what’s next for us and all that.
JONAH BERG: When you’re interviewing a band, you’re interested in talking to everybody. Because a good story can come from anyone. But you’re also keenly aware that it’s people like Billy and Daisy—maybe Graham, Karen—that the readership is interested in.
EDDIE: Of course, Billy corners Jonah. Hogs his attention. Pete kept telling me to light a doobie and chill out.
KAREN: When everybody else was over talking to the guy at the piano, I pulled Graham into the ladies’ bathroom.
GRAHAM: I’m not about to go telling who did what where in public.
BILLY: I was surprised to find myself having a good time. I mean, I knew Eddie hated my guts but the rest of us were getting along well and it was fun, being out again. And we’d just played this great show.
DAISY: Some of my best nights back then were the nights I hit the dope just right. Perfect amount of coke, perfect timing on the pills, with just enough champagne to keep me bubbly.
KAREN: After Graham and I rejoined the party, I sat down with Daisy and split a bottle of wine. Or maybe it was that we each had our own bottle?
BILLY: One thing led to another.
JONAH BERG: I think it was me who suggested they play something.
DAISY: I ended up on top of the piano belting out “Mustang Sally.”
GRAHAM: You have not seen anything until you’ve seen Daisy Jones dancing on a piano in a fur coat with no shoes on singing “Mustang Sally.”
BILLY: I don’t remember how I ended up on the piano.
WARREN: Daisy pulled Billy onto the piano.
BILLY: The next thing I know, I’m singing with her.
KAREN: Would Billy have agreed to get on top of a piano with Daisy Jones if Jonah Berg wasn’t there? [Shrugs]
EDDIE: This was not a cool bar. Most places by that point, if you sang a few bars of “Honeycomb,” you’d get a “Oh man! That’s you?” These guys had no idea.
KAREN: When the song was over, Billy went to get down off the piano and Daisy grabbed his hand, held him up there. I said to the piano player, “Do you know ‘Jackie Wilson Said’?” When he shook his head, I said, “May I?”
He got up and let me sit down and I started playing.
GRAHAM: Daisy and Billy just nailed it. The whole place was excited, dancing and singing along. Even the guy Karen had kicked off the piano was singing the chorus with them. “Dang a lang a lang,” you know that whole thing.
JONAH BERG: They were magnetic. That’s the only word for it.
Magnetic.
BILLY: When the bar started to close, Daisy and I got down off the piano and this guy said to us, “You know, you two should take your thing on the road.”
Daisy and I looked at each other and laughed. I said, “That’s a great idea. I’ll think on it.”
KAREN: We all walked back to the hotel together.
DAISY: I was behind the rest of the group, putting my shoes on. And I thought I was alone until I saw that Billy hung back for me. He was standing there with his hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched, looking at me as I put my sandals on. He said, “I want to give the other guys time to talk to Jonah.”
The two of us walked a bit slower behind the rest of them, talking about how much we both loved Van Morrison.
BILLY: We got to the hotel lobby and said goodbye to Jonah.
JONAH BERG: I excused myself and went back to my hotel. I knew what I wanted to write about and I was eager to get started.
KAREN: I told everybody I was going to bed.
GRAHAM: I got off the elevator and acted like I was going to my room and then I went straight to Karen’s.
DAISY: Billy and I walked back to our rooms, still talking.
KAREN: I’d left the door open a crack for Graham.
EDDIE: I was so glad to be rid of Jonah and not have to pretend I could stand Billy anymore. I smoked a bowl with Pete and went to bed.
DAISY: Billy and I were walking down the hall and as we got to my door I said, “Do you want to come in?”
I was just enjoying the conversation we were having. We were finally getting to know each other. But when I said it, Billy looked down at the floor and said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
When I shut the door behind me, alone in my room, I felt so stupid. It was so obvious that he thought I was hitting on him and that made me so sad.
BILLY: When she took her key out of her pocket, she also took out a bag of coke. She was going into her room, and she was gonna, at the very least, have a bump. I…I didn’t want to be around it.
I couldn’t go into that room.
DAISY: I had thought for a moment that he and I could be friends, that Billy could see me as an equal. Instead, I was a woman he shouldn’t be alone with.
BILLY: I knew myself. And it just wasn’t an option. So it all had to stop right there.
Daisy and I had just put on this great show together. And we’d had a great night together. She was a knockout. She really was. There was no denying it. Her eyes were big and her voice was gorgeous. Her legs were long. Her smile was…it was infectious. You’d see her smile and then you’d watch smiles open up on the faces of the people around her like a virus passing through.
She was fun to be around.
But she was… [pauses]
Look, Daisy was barefoot when it was cold, wearing jackets when it was hot, sweating no matter the temperature. She never thought before she spoke. She seemed sort of manic and half-delusional sometimes.
She was a drug addict. The type of addict that thinks that other people don’t know she’s using, which is maybe the worst type of addict of all.
There was no way—no matter what was happening, even if I wanted to—that I could let myself be around Daisy Jones.
DAISY: I didn’t know why he insisted on rejecting me time and again.
BILLY: When someone’s presence gives you energy, when it riles up something in you—the way Daisy did for me—you can turn that energy into lust or love or hate.
I felt most comfortable hating her. It was my only choice.
JONAH BERG: From my vantage point, the biggest part of what made that band original and first-rate was the combination of Daisy and Billy. Daisy’s solo album was nothing compared to what The Six was doing. And The Six without Daisy wasn’t anything near what they were with her.
Daisy was an integral, necessary, inescapable part of The Six. She belonged in the band.
So that’s what I wrote.
DAISY: Rod brought us the article before it came out and when I saw the headline I was so excited. I loved it.
JONAH BERG: I knew the headline before I even finished writing it.
“The Six That Should Be Seven.”
ROD: It was a great cover. A clear shot of all of them onstage together, Billy and Daisy singing into the same mike, Graham and Karen looking at each other. Everybody else really rocking out. In the foreground were about four or five people holding up lighters in the audience. And then there was the headline.
WARREN: We were on the cover of Rolling Stone. Rolling Goddamn Stone. I mean, you get jaded about a lot of things when you’re ascending. But not that.
BILLY: I grabbed the paper from Rod.
GRAHAM: I don’t think Billy was happy about it.
BILLY: “The Six That Should Be Seven.”
ROD: I believe Billy’s exact words were “Are you fucking kidding me?”
BILLY: I mean, are you fucking kidding me?
DAISY: I knew not to say a single thing about that article. None of us acknowledged it except Rod and I when no one else was around. Rod told me that if I wanted to officially join The Six, I should just hang tight and the opportunity might present itself.
ROD: Billy started to calm down after a few days. By the time we all got back on the plane to head to L.A., he was downright reasonable.
BILLY: I wasn’t trying to be…ignorant. I was aware of the fact that our biggest hit had been with Daisy. And Teddy had been floating the idea of another song or two with Daisy in the future. I knew that we were more mainstream, more marketable, with Daisy—obviously I was aware enough to see that. But I was taken by surprise at the idea of having her formally join the band….And also that the suggestion was made so publicly.
GRAHAM: The article was about how good we were with Daisy. Sure, it was with Daisy but I really felt like the takeaway was how good we were.
EDDIE: By the time the article came out, the tour was over. The seven of us, Rod, the engineers, the roadies…we were all headed home.
WARREN: We had to take a commercial flight, back to the States. I felt like a pauper.
BILLY: I got out of my seat pretty soon after we took off. I walked over to Graham and Karen. I said, “What would it look like, do you think?
Letting Daisy join the band?”
KAREN: I thought the article was right. She was an honorary part of the group. Why not make it official? Why not have her on all our songs?
GRAHAM: I told Billy to let her join.
BILLY: They were no help.
WARREN: At one point in the flight, Billy was sitting next to me making a list of pros and cons, you know, whether Daisy should join the band or not. And I see Karen coming out of the bathroom looking like somebody’s balled her. All flushed and her hair messed up. So I turn around and who’s mysteriously gone from his seat? Bones.
EDDIE: I’m sitting in the back of the plane and I could see Graham getting up, Karen’s walking around, Billy’s talking to them. I’m watching, trying to figure out what the hell’s going on. I turn to Daisy and I say, “What do you think they’re doing up there?”
But she’s got her nose in some book and she goes, “Shut up, I’m reading.”
WARREN: I looked over when Billy was writing his little list about whether Daisy should join the band, and he didn’t have that many cons and it seemed like he was really searching his brain for some.
I said, “Make sure you write ‘Gives you a hard-on you’d rather not have’ in the cons section.”
He told me I didn’t know what I was talking about. I said, “All right, you don’t want my opinion.”
He said, “Yes, I do.” And I looked at him and he said, “Fine, I don’t.”
So I sat back, sipped my Bloody Mary, and went back to reading the instructions on the barf bag.
KAREN: Billy came back to where Graham and I were with this list.
He’d slowly come to the conclusion that he wanted more hits and Daisy would bring us more hits.
I said, “You know, she might turn us down.” That thought never occurred to Billy or Graham. But Daisy had more hype than even we did.
GRAHAM: We decided we’d do one album with Daisy. See how it went.
BILLY: I was making a decision that affected a lot of people. What is good for me might not necessarily be good for everybody else. I had to weigh that. Warren, Graham, Karen, Rod. They all wanted to get bigger, to top the charts. We all did. I had to take that into account.
No matter how much I may have preferred to keep a healthy distance from her personally.
WARREN: I wasn’t sure why Billy was stressing about it so much. He was just going to do whatever Teddy told him to do anyway.
KAREN: People have said Billy didn’t want Daisy to join the band because he didn’t want to share the spotlight but I don’t think that was the case. Billy wasn’t really an insecure guy in that way. That was sort of the problem with him, really. Was that he wasn’t intimidated by anyone else’s talent.
I think she just…unsettled him. However you want to interpret that.
BILLY: By the time we landed at LAX, I decided that it was a good idea to at least float the idea by Teddy. If he thought we should do an album with Daisy, then I’d ask her.
ROD: When we landed, I caught up to Billy and checked in, asked him what he was thinking. He said he wanted to talk to Teddy about whether Daisy should join the band. So I pulled Billy over to a pay phone and I called Teddy and I said, “Teddy, tell Billy what you told me this morning.”
GRAHAM: Of course Teddy was on board with Daisy joining the band!
BILLY: Teddy reminded me that when we first met, I’d told him I wanted to be the biggest band in the world. He said, “You two singing together is how you do that.”
EDDIE: When we landed, Pete and I caught up with Warren and Graham and Karen and they said, “We’re gonna ask Daisy to join the band,” and I couldn’t believe it.
Once again, No. One. Fucking. Asked. Me.
DAISY: They were all whispering and huddled up and I caught Rod’s eye and he winked at me and I knew.
BILLY: I got off the phone with Teddy and I said to Rod, “All right, tell her she’s in.” And then I got in a cab and went straight home to my girls.
KAREN: When we all left the airport that day, we all headed in our own directions. It was like school was out for the summer.
BILLY: The moment I walked in the door of my home, it was like Daisy and my band and the music and the gear and the tour…none of it existed. I was ready to get Camila strawberry ice cream at any hour of the night and to play any tea parties Julia wanted. My family was all that mattered.
CAMILA: Billy came home and he needed a day or two, to decompress.
But then there he was. With us when he was with us. And happy. And I thought, Wow. Okay. We’re figuring this out. We’re doing this right.
ROD: I gave it a few days. I let the dust settle a little bit, made sure Billy wasn’t going to change his mind. And then I called Daisy.
DAISY: I’d checked back in to my favorite cottage at the Marmont.
SIMONE: When Daisy got back from the road, I was back, too. And I think it is important to mention that after that tour, Daisy was jacked up. I mean, she was higher than all get-out, all the time. I thought, What happened to you out there? She could barely handle being alone.
Always calling people to come over, always begging me not to get off the phone. She didn’t like being home by herself. She didn’t like things being calm.
DAISY: I was having a few people over when Rod called. It was the day I’d shot my Cosmo cover. I’d done an interview while we were in Europe and that afternoon I’d done the photo shoot.
Some of the girls from the shoot came over to my place afterward and we were drinking pink champagne and about to go for a swim when the phone rang. I picked it up and I said, “Lola La Cava speaking.”
ROD: Daisy’s pseudonym was always Lola La Cava. She had too many men trying to corner her. We had to start deflecting about where she was at any given time.
DAISY: I remember the phone call exactly. I had the bottle of champagne in my hand and there were two girls on the couch and another one doing a line off my vanity. I remember being irritated because she was getting coke in the spine of my journal.
But then Rod said, “It’s official.”
ROD: I said, “The band wants you to do a full album with them.”
DAISY: I was through the roof.
ROD: I could hear Daisy doing a bump as I talked to her. I always struggled with that when it came to my musicians—and it never got easier. Should I monitor their drug use or not? Was it any of my business? If I knew they were using, was it my place to determine how much was too much? If it was my place, then how much was too much?
I never came up with an answer.
DAISY: When we got off the phone, I screamed into the room and one of the girls asked what I was so excited about and I said, “I’m joining The Six!”
None of them cared very much. In general, when you have drugs to spare and a nice cottage to do them in, you’re probably not attracting people that care about you.
But I was so happy that night. I danced around the room for a bit.
I opened another bottle of champagne. I had more people over. And then, around three in the morning, when the party died down, I was too amped to go to bed. I called Simone and I told her the news.
SIMONE: I did worry. I wasn’t sure being on tour with a rock band was turning out to be good for her.
DAISY: I told Simone I was going to go pick her up and we were going to celebrate.
SIMONE: It was the middle of the night. I’d been sleeping. I had my hair wrapped, my sleep mask on. I wasn’t going anywhere.
DAISY: She told me that she would come meet me in the morning for breakfast but I kept insisting. She finally told me I didn’t sound safe to drive. I got mad and got off the phone.
SIMONE: I thought she was going to bed.
DAISY: I had too much energy running through me. I tried to call Karen but she didn’t answer. I finally decided I had to tell my parents.
For some reason, I thought they would be proud of me. Not sure why.
After all, I had the number 3 song in the country just a few months prior and they hadn’t so much as tracked me down to send a note.
They didn’t even know I was back in town.
Suffice it to say, heading to their house at 4:00 A.M. was not the smartest idea. But you don’t get high for smart ideas.
Their place wasn’t far—a mile down the road, a world away—so I decided to walk. I started up Sunset Boulevard and into the hills. I got to my parents’ about an hour later.
So there I was, standing in front of my childhood home, and somehow I decided that my old room looked lonely. So I climbed over the fence and up the gutter pipe, smashed the window of my bedroom, and got in my own bed.
I woke up to see the cops standing over me.
ROD: I do wonder what I should have done differently with Daisy.
DAISY: My parents didn’t even know it was me in the bed. They heard somebody and called the police. Once it was straightened out, they weren’t going to press charges. But by that point, the bag of coke in my bra, the joints in my change purse—it didn’t look good.
SIMONE: I got a call that morning from Daisy from jail. I bailed her out and I said, “Daisy, you gotta stop all this.” And she just let it go in one ear and out the other.
DAISY: I wasn’t in jail long.
ROD: I saw her a few days later and she had this cut on her right hand, from the outside edge of her pinkie all the way down past her wrist. I said, “What happened here?”
She looked at it like it was the first time she’d seen it. She said, “I have no idea.” She started talking about something else. And then out of nowhere, about ten minutes later, she goes, “Oh! I bet it’s from when I smashed the window to break into my parents’ house.”
I said, “Daisy, are you okay?”
She said, “Yeah, why?”
BILLY: A few weeks after the tour ended, I woke up at four in the morning to Camila shaking my shoulders and telling me she was in labor. I grabbed Julia out of bed and raced Camila to the hospital.
When she was lying in that bed, sweating and screaming, I held her hand and I put a cold cloth on her head and I kissed her cheeks and I held her legs. Then we found out she had to have a C-section, and I stood right there—as close as they’d let me—and I held her hand as she went in and I told her she didn’t need to be scared, that everything was going to be okay.
And then there they were. My twin girls. Susana and Maria.
Squooshed little faces, heads full of hair. But I could instantly tell them apart.
I realized, looking at them… [pauses] I realized that I’d never seen a newborn. I’d never seen Julia as a brand-new baby girl.
I handed Maria over to Camila’s mom for a moment and I went into the bathroom and I shut the door and I broke down. I…I needed some time to deal with my own shame.
But I did deal with it. I didn’t try to bury it in something else. I went into that bathroom and I looked at myself in the mirror and I faced it.
GRAHAM: Billy was a good father. Yes, he’d been a drug addict who missed the first few months of his daughter’s life. And yeah, that’s shameful. But he was fixing himself. For his kids. He was making it right and doing better every single day. It was a hell of a lot more than any man in our family had ever done.
He was sober, he put his kids first, he would and did do anything for his family. He was a good man.
I guess I’m saying…if you redeem yourself, then believe in your own redemption.
BILLY: I had this moment there in the hospital, when it was just me, and Camila, and my three girls, and I thought, What am I doing out on the road?
I went on this long epic speech to Camila, I said, “I’m giving it all up, honey. I don’t want anything but this family. The five of us. That’s all I want or need.” I really meant it. I probably went on for ten minutes. I said, “I don’t need rock ’n’ roll. I just need you.”
And Camila—keep in mind she’s just had a C-section—I will never forget it, she goes, “Oh, shut the hell up, Billy. I married a musician.
You’ll be a musician. If I wanted to drive a station wagon and have a meatloaf ready at six o’clock, I would have married my father.”
CAMILA: Billy would sometimes make these grand proclamations. And they sounded good, because he’s an artist. He knows how to paint a picture. But he was almost always on some flight of fancy. I’m the one that often had to say, “Yoo-hoo, hi, hello, come back down to the earth now, please.”
KAREN: Camila knew who Billy was better than he did. A lot of women would have said, “You’ve had your fun, but we’ve got three kids now.”
Camila loved Billy exactly as he was. I dug that about her so much.
And I really think Billy loved her the same way she loved him. I really do. When they were in the same place at the same time, you could tell he was just so taken with her. He’d stay quiet and let her be the one to talk. And I always noticed that he used to squeeze the lime into her drink before he handed it to her whenever we were all out somewhere. He’d take his own lime and squeeze it into her glass, too.
He’d squeeze the two wedges in and then throw them in with the ice. It seemed like a beautiful thing to have, somebody giving you their lime wedge. I mean, I hate lime, actually. But you get the point.
GRAHAM: Karen hated all citrus because she said it felt sticky on her teeth. That’s why she hated soda, too.
BILLY: Teddy came and visited us in the hospital. He brought this big bouquet for Camila and stuffed animals for the girls. As he was leaving, I walked him down to the elevators and he told me he was proud of me.
He said I’d really turned it all around. I said, “I did it all for Camila.”
And Teddy said, “I believe that.”
CAMILA: When the twins were just a few weeks old, my mom had taken them for a walk one afternoon and Billy asked me to sit down. He said he’d written another song for me.
BILLY: It was called “Aurora.” Because Camila…she was my aurora.
She was my new dawn, my daybreak, my sun peeking over the horizon.
She was all of it.
It was just a piano melody at that point, but I had all the lyrics. So I sat down at the piano and played it for her.
CAMILA: The first time I heard it, I cried. I mean, you know the song. It would have been impossible for me to not feel bowled over by those words. He had written me others but…this one…I loved it and I felt loved listening to it.
And it was pretty, too. I would have loved that song even if it wasn’t about me. It was that good.
BILLY: She got teary and then she said, “You need Daisy on it. You know that.”
And you know what? I did know that. Even as I was writing it, I had known it. I wrote it to be a piano and vocal harmony. Before we even got back into the studio, I was writing for Daisy.
GRAHAM: That period of time when Billy was with his girls and Daisy was coming on board…well, it was a great opportunity for me to step up and take more of a center role in things. I was coordinating getting us all back together to start talking about a new album. I was discussing time lines with Rod and Teddy. It was fun.
Actually, it wasn’t that fun, it was just that I was happy.
Everything seems fun when you’re happy.
KAREN: The money was rolling in. I wanted to make smart decisions with it so I went out with a realtor for one day, and found a pad in Laurel Canyon and bought it.
Pretty soon, Graham unofficially moved in. We spent that spring and summer just the two of us together. We’d grill on the patio for dinner and go see shows every night and sleep late in the mornings.
GRAHAM: Karen and I spent whole weekends high as shit, rich as hell, playing songs together, and not telling anybody where we were or what we were up to. It was our little secret. I didn’t even tell Billy.
People say that life keeps moving, but they don’t mention that it does stop sometimes, just for you. Just for you and your girl. The world stops spinning and just lets you two lie there. Feels like it, anyway.
Sometimes. If you’re lucky. Call me a romantic if you have to. Worse things to be.
BILLY: I trusted Graham to handle everything with the band. I knew it was in good hands and my head was elsewhere.
DAISY: Simone left to make the rounds on another tour.
SIMONE: I was hitting the road for the Superstar album. And in between shows, I was going to be based more in New York than L.A.
The disco scene was really about doing the Hustle at Studio 54. So that’s where I was going.
DAISY: She seemed worried about me. I told her, “Go on. I’ll see you soon.” I was excited about everything I had in front of me. I was joining a band.
GRAHAM: I had everything straightened out. I’d talked to Rod and Teddy. Billy said he was ready to get started. And I had come up with a date to reasonably deliver an album. So I called a meeting.
WARREN: I was starting to live large from the money coming in. I’d bought my boat by then. I had a one-bedroom Gibson that I docked in Marina del Rey. Lots of cool chicks hanging out around there. Kept my drums at the house in Topanga and wasted away my nights and weekends drinking beers on the water.
EDDIE: Pete had spent our downtime with Jenny back in Boston. They were getting really serious.
Me, I didn’t like being home. I liked being on the road, you know what I mean? So I was ready to get back to work. I didn’t even mind the idea of dealing with Billy that much. Now, that’s saying something.
When Graham called to say it was time for us all to get together, I couldn’t get there fast enough. I called up Pete and said, “You got to get on the first flight back out here. Vacation’s over.”
DAISY: We all met up at the Rainbow—the band, me, Rod, Teddy—and everybody was catching up. Warren was talking about his boat and Pete was talking about Jenny Manes and Billy was showing Rod pictures of his twins. Everyone was really getting along. I mean, even Eddie and Billy seemed like they were doing all right. And Rod got up and he had his beer in his hand and he gave a toast about me joining the band.
ROD: I think I said, “The seven of you are only headed higher and higher,” or something like that.
BILLY: I thought, Boy, seven people in a band sounds like a lot.
DAISY: Everyone was clapping and Karen hugged me and I felt really welcomed, I really did. So I stood up as everyone was talking and I picked up my brandy and I held it out for a toast and I said, “I am so glad you all invited me to join you on this album.”
GRAHAM: Daisy starts doing this little speech and at first I think it’s nothing major.
DAISY: It was tough to get a read on Billy. He hadn’t called me since I’d been offered a spot in the band. I hadn’t heard much from anyone about how this was all going to go or how he was feeling about it. I just wanted to make sure everything was clear. I said, “I’m coming on board officially because I want to be a member of this team. An important member. I hope you all see this album as mine just as much as it’s anybody’s. Graham’s or Warren’s or Pete’s and Eddie’s or Karen’s…”
KAREN: “Or Billy’s,” she goes. I looked right to Billy to see his reaction.
He was sipping a soda out of a beer stein.
BILLY: I thought, Why does she need to start trouble already?
DAISY: I said, “You all brought me on because when we work together, we make better music than what we do apart. So I want a say in what music we’re putting out. I want to write this album with you, Billy.”
Teddy had told me I could write my second album and this felt like that chance. And I wanted to be clear out of the gate, that’s what I was chasing. I wanted to stand up in front of a crowd, like I had that night singing “When You Fly Low” a cappella. I wanted to sing songs from my heart right to the people in front of me.
If The Six didn’t want me for that, I didn’t want whatever second prize they were offering.
GRAHAM: Daisy didn’t want Billy throwing a temper tantrum every time she tried to contribute something of her own. She was laying down the law early. Probably the way the rest of us should have from the beginning. If we wanted any sort of meaningful say.
Certainly if Eddie had half of Daisy’s balls, he would have solved his issues with Billy like that years ago.
BILLY: I said, “That’s fine, Daisy. We’re all in this together.”
WARREN: I didn’t bother getting riled up about it because what was the point? But Billy was acting like this was one big hippie commune where everyone had a say. And that was a lie.
KAREN: Billy did have a way of making you think you were crazy for even thinking things were unfair when, in fact, they were completely unfair. He wasn’t even aware of the way everyone revolved around him.
ROD: The Chosen ones never know they are chosen. They think everyone gets a gold carpet rolled out for them.
GRAHAM: Pete chimed in at one point and said, “While this is all out on the table, I’m taking full control over my own bass lines from here on out.”
BILLY: I told Pete I was fine with him writing his bass lines. He’d been writing most of his bass lines for a while.
KAREN: I said, “I’d like to step it up a bit. I think we can use me more often to round out songs. Maybe even do a song just keys and vocals.”
EDDIE: I wanted a say in what I was playing. Everyone’s chiming in like Billy’s trying to control them—and he did. But he was really controlling me. I said, “I write my own riffs from here on out.”
BILLY: I just kept thinking, Of course Eddie’s throwing a fit. I started to say something and Teddy put his hand out, kind of gave me a look like Don’t talk right now. Just hear them out.
Teddy and I both knew that some people needed to feel heard whether or not you actually listened to them.
EDDIE: Look, I really liked Daisy. And I liked Karen, I wanted her to be able to contribute more. But a female vocalist on the whole album and more keys? Karen’s keys were softening us too much as it was, if you asked me.
I said, “I want to make sure we’re still a rock band.”
Graham said, “What do you mean?”
I said, “I don’t want to be in a pop band. This isn’t Sonny & Cher over here.” Billy bristled at that.
BILLY: I was just getting shit on all night. I’m thinking, What did I ever do to you people except take us this far?
GRAHAM: I thought Eddie’s point was well made. How was our music going to change with Daisy coming in? Especially if she was writing.
But, of course, Billy felt like it was just people attacking him.
When you have everything, someone else getting a little something feels like they’re stealing from you.
KAREN: Everything that was happening, it was all really undefined.
Was Daisy a permanent part of The Six? I didn’t know. I know Daisy didn’t know. I don’t even think Billy knew.
DAISY: I had been mulling this over for a while, of how the billing would work and what I felt I deserved.
I said, “If you all will commit to this and you want me to join as a member of The Six, then I’ll be a member of The Six. My name doesn’t need to be featured. But if it’s temporary, then we need to discuss some other type of billing.”
GRAHAM: You could just tell that Daisy was expecting us to say she was a member of The Six.
KAREN: Billy said, “How about The Six featuring Daisy Jones?”
ROD: That’s how “Honeycomb” was billed. So I understood what Billy was trying to do.
DAISY: I thought, Wow, okay, he didn’t even give it a second thought.
BILLY: She gave me two options. If she didn’t want me to have two options, she shouldn’t have given two options.
WARREN: I just thought, Let the girl join the band, man.
ROD: Teddy could see that things were headed in a tense direction. He had tried to keep quiet most of the discussion but he finally piped in and said, “You’ll be Daisy Jones & The Six.” And no one was happy but everyone was kind of equally dissatisfied.
DAISY: I think Teddy wanted to make sure my name was prominent. I brought attention to the band. My name needed to be front and center.
BILLY: Teddy was trying to protect the sanctity of The Six. We didn’t want to promise anything to Daisy.
DAISY: I don’t think Billy actually resented anything I asked for. All of it was reasonable. He was just pissed because I knew how much power I had and he would have preferred I either not know it or not use it. I am sorry but that is not my style. I mean, it shouldn’t be anybody’s, really.
Billy had been riding a bit too comfortable on the fact that everybody let him do what he wanted. And I was the first person to say,
“You’re only in charge of me as much as I’m in charge of you.” And that opened the floodgates for Pete and Eddie and, well, everybody.
ROD: Teddy told the band that Runner wanted the album toward the top of ’seventy-eight. It was already August. Creative differences and ego checks and all of that aside, it was back to the salt mines.
KAREN: After we walked out of there that night, I thought, Holy shit.
Daisy had just joined our band with top billing and fundamentally changed the dynamics of the group in a way that none of us had done before.
BILLY: Everyone always acted like I was such a difficult guy. But Daisy asked for an equal say and billing and I gave her both. What more did she want?
I mean, I wasn’t even sure it was the right thing to do. But I did it to keep her happy, to keep everybody happy.
GRAHAM: We became a democracy instead of an autocracy. And democracy sounds like a great idea, but bands aren’t countries.
BILLY: To be honest, I thought Daisy’d get tired of trying to write an album pretty quickly. I underestimated her.
Let me tell you this. Don’t ever doubt Daisy Jones.