Daisy Jones & The Six(32)

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.