Daisy Jones & The Six(19)

I kept working, every day, to get closer to being that man.

Graham: The day Billy was coming out of rehab, I picked up Camila and the baby and we drove over together.

Now, Julia was the fattest baby you ever saw. [Laughs] It’s true! I said to Camila, “Are you feeding her milkshakes?” Biggest cheeks in the world, beer belly. Couldn’t have been cuter.

There was a tiny little picnic table and an umbrella outside the facility. So Camila sat there with Julia on her lap. I went in and got Billy. He was wearing the same thing he was wearing the last time I’d seen him, in Hartford. But he had gained some weight, his face looked healthier.

I said, “Are you ready?”

He said, “Yeah,” but he seemed kind of unsure.

I put my arm around him and I said what I figured he needed to hear. I said, “You’re gonna be a great dad.” I think I should have told him that sooner. I don’t know why I didn’t.

Billy: Julia was sixty-three days old when I met her. It’s hard, even now, to … to not hate myself for that. But the second I met her, my God. [Smiles] Standing there at that picnic table with them, it was like someone just took an ax to me, just shattered all the crust. I felt raw. In the way where you can feel everything, feel it deep down into your nerves.

I had … I’d built a family. By accident and without thinking and without so many of the qualities that you should have to deserve a family, I think, but I had built one. And here was this tiny, new person—who had my eyes, who didn’t know who I used to be, who only cared who I was now.

I fell to my knees. I was just so grateful for Camila.

I … I couldn’t believe what I put Camila through and I couldn’t believe that she was still standing there, giving me another shot. I didn’t deserve it. And I knew it.

I told her then that I would spend the rest of our life together trying to be twice as good as she deserved. I don’t know that I’ve ever promised anyone anything as humbly and with as much gratitude in my heart as I promised her that that day.

I know I technically married her almost a year before but I submitted myself to her then. Forever and always. My daughter, too. I dedicated myself to both of them, to raising this girl with my whole heart into it.

As we got in the car, Camila whispered, “It’s us, forever and always. Don’t go forgetting that again, all right?”

And I nodded and she kissed me. And Graham drove us home.

Camila: I think you have to have faith in people before they earn it. Otherwise it’s not faith, right?





First




        1974–1975





By 1974, Daisy Jones had refused to show up to any of her recording sessions at the Record Plant in West Hollywood and was in breach of contract with Runner Records.

Meanwhile, Simone Jackson, now signed with Supersight Records, was finding international success with her R & B dance hits, which would come to be seen as classics of the protodisco genre. With her songs “The Love Drug” and “Make Me Move,” Simone was topping the dance club charts in France and Germany.

As Simone set out to tour Europe the summer of ’74, Daisy was growing more and more restless.



Daisy: I was spending my days getting sunburns and my nights getting high. I’d stopped writing songs because I didn’t see a point to it if no one would let me record them.

Hank was checking on me every day, pretending he was doting on me but really just trying to convince me to get to the studio, like I was some sort of prize horse that wouldn’t race.

Then one day, Teddy Price shows up at my door. He was put in charge of me, I guess. He was supposed to convince me to show up to the studio. Teddy was probably in his forties or fifties around then, British guy, really charming, kind of paternal.

I open the door to see him on my doorstep and he doesn’t even say hello. He says, “Let’s cut the crap, Daisy. You need to record this album or Runner’s taking you to court.”

I said, “I don’t care about any of that. They can take their money back, get me kicked out of here if they want. I’ll live in a cardboard box.” I was very annoying. I had no idea what it meant to truly suffer.

Teddy said, “Just get in the studio, love. How hard is that?”

I told him, “I want to write my own stuff.” I think I even crossed my arms in front of my chest like a child.

He said, “I’ve read your stuff. Some of it’s really good. But you don’t have a single song that’s finished. You don’t have anything ready to be recorded.” He said I should fulfill my contract with Runner and he would help me get my songs to a point where I could release an album of my own stuff. He called it “a goal for us all to work toward.”

I said, “I want to release my own stuff now.”

And that’s when he got testy with me. He said, “Do you want to be a professional groupie? Is that what you want? Because the way it looks from here is that you have a chance to do something of your own. And you’d rather just end up pregnant by Bowie.”

Let me take this opportunity to be clear about one thing: I never slept with David Bowie. At least, I’m pretty sure I didn’t.

I said, “I am an artist. So you either let me record the album I want or I’m not showing up. Ever.”