Daisy Jones & The Six(44)

And, look, it’s my fault. I told everybody it was an equal opportunity band. And I shouldn’t have done that. Because that is just not a sustainable system. Look at Springsteen. Springsteen knew how to do it. But me? I had to sit there and pretend people like Eddie Loving knew better than me how to play guitar on the songs I wrote on my guitar.

Karen: I didn’t see any of the tense stuff between Billy and Eddie on that song. I heard about it later from both of them but at the time I was … preoccupied.

Graham: You know what’s a good time? Giving your girl a roll in the closet at the studio while everybody else is recording and the two of you have to be so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

That was making love, man. It felt like love. It felt like we were the only two people in the entire world who mattered. Me and Karen. It felt like I could show her how much I loved her, right there in that tight space, not saying anything at all.

Warren: When we were messing around on that song, on “Midnights,” Daisy came up to me and suggested that I hold the drums on the bridge and I thought for a moment and I said, “Yeah, that’s a great idea.” Daisy and I always got along really well in that regard. We were about the only two people who could manage not to have too much ego with each other.

I once told her I thought she sang “Turn It Off” like she was in heat and she said, “I see what you mean. I think I’ll pull back on the chorus.” Just like that.

Some people just don’t threaten each other. And other people threaten everything about each other. Just the way it is.

Rod: I started to do some calculations. Could we replace Eddie if we needed to? Would Pete leave with him? What would that mean for us? I’m not gonna lie. I started putting feelers out for other guitarists. Started planning out whether Billy could just take over Eddie’s parts. I saw the writing on the wall.

Turns out I wasn’t reading exactly right. But I saw the writing on the wall.

Warren: Being proud that you predicted Eddie would leave the band is like saying, “I predicted the sun would come out today,” the day before a nuclear disaster. Yeah, man. Great guess. But you didn’t exactly notice the world was ending?

Daisy: At the end of that day, when Billy was going home, he said, “Thank you for what you did with this song.”

And I said something like “Yeah, of course.”

But then Billy stopped in place. He put his hand on my arm. He made a real point of it. He said, “I’m serious. You made the song better.”

I … That meant a lot. That meant a lot. Maybe meant too much.

Billy: I was starting to see, as Teddy had pushed me to, that sometimes you get to more complex places, artistically, when you have more people contributing. That’s not always true. But with Daisy and I … it was true.

I had to recognize that. With her, then, it was true.

Daisy: I really felt like I understood him. And I think he understood me. You know, things like that, that kind of connection with a person, it is sort of like playing with fire. Because it feels good, to be understood. You feel in sync with a person, you feel like you’re on a level that no one else is.

Karen: I think people that are too similar … they don’t mix well. I used to think soul mates were two of the same. I used to think I was supposed to look for somebody that was just like me.

I don’t believe in soul mates anymore and I’m not looking for anything. But if I did believe in them, I’d believe your soul mate was somebody who had all the things you didn’t, that needed all the things you had. Not somebody who’s suffering from the same stuff you are.





Rod: The band was recording “Chasing the Night.” They had worked on it earlier in the day and it got toward the afternoon and Daisy wasn’t needed anymore so she went home.

Daisy: I decided to have some people over to my cottage. Some actress friends and a couple guys from the Strip. We were just going to hang out by the pool, a bit.

Rod: I had told Daisy to come back later. Because we were going to record her and Billy’s vocals on it a few times that night. I should have done a better job setting boundaries of when everyone was working or not working. We didn’t have set hours, really. It was just sort of a free-for-all.

But she was supposed to be at Heider at nine.

Billy: Graham and I were working on some licks. Laying down a few and going back over them, seeing what we liked better.

Artie Snyder: Billy and Graham were fun to work with when it was just the two of them together. They had a language all to themselves, sometimes. But I felt like I understood what they were going for. I did wonder, back then, though … I didn’t know how they could stand it. If I had to work with my brother I’d lose my mind.

Billy: I always felt really lucky that Graham was as good as he was. So talented, always had good ideas. He made it easy. People would often say, “I don’t know how you can work with your brother.” But I never knew how to do it any other way.

Daisy: It got later into the night and somehow Mick Riva shows up. He’d been staying at the Marmont, too. He was in his forties by then, I think. Married however many times, had like five kids. But partied like he was nineteen. He was topping the charts even then. Everybody still loved him.

I’d partied with him a few times. He was always decent to me. But he was a real … There were always a lot of groupies with Mick. He could really get a party out of control.