Daisy Jones & the Six Page 10

  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 ask
ing 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.”