Daisy Jones & The Six(65)

Jonah Berg: I absolutely would not have agreed to let Daisy rescind her comments. People have asked it before. I’ve always said no. That’s why I’m very clear at the beginning, when I start recording. I make sure people understand what they are doing when they talk to me.

I gave Daisy plenty of outs. She moved forward. At that point, the question of integrity shifts from being my problem to her problem.

Billy: So we rehearse for the morning and Daisy and I just can’t get the harmony right in the last verse of the song but I don’t want to get into a fight with her in front of Jonah. I also don’t want to be performing this poorly in front of him either. The last thing I want is an article that says that we don’t have what it takes live. So when we break, I ask Graham to talk to her and he agrees. And Daisy and I, for at least the rest of that session, just sort of communicated through Graham.

Graham: I mean, how was I supposed to keep track of their bullshit? Who’s not talking to who when and for what goddamn reason? I’ve got my own problems. I’ve got my own heart cracking, man. I’m in love with a woman that I am starting to think doesn’t love me and I’m not telling a single soul about it and you don’t see me asking for intermediaries to save me from my own brand of crap, do you?

Billy: After we call it a day, I go out with Jonah and I’m sitting there, banging the 57 on a bottle of ketchup, when he says, “Daisy says you spent your first tour cheating on your wife and dealing with alcoholism and drug addiction, possibly a heroin addiction. She says you’re in recovery now but that you missed the birth of your first daughter because you were in rehab.”

Warren: I don’t consider myself to be very high on the list of good people. But you don’t tell other people’s stories.

Daisy: I did so many stupid things back then. Basically for all of the seventies. I did a lot of things that hurt people or hurt myself. But that one has always stuck out to me as one I particularly regret. Not just because of Billy. Although, I did feel badly that I shared something he told me in confidence. But I regret it more because I could have hurt his family.

And I just … [pauses] I would never want to do that. Truly.

Billy: You know, one of the things you learn in recovery is that self-control is the only control we have. That all you can do is make sure your own actions are sound because you can’t control the actions of others. That’s why I didn’t do what I wanted to do, which was take the bottle of ketchup and throw it at the window. And I did not reach across the table and wring Jonah Berg’s neck. And I did not get in the car, find Daisy, and start screaming at her. I did not do any of those things.

I stared right at him, and I could feel my breath growing really hot. I could feel my chest expanding up and down. I felt like a lion, like I was capable of destroying him. But I closed my eyes and I stared at the back of my own eyelids and I said, “Please do not print that.”

Jonah Berg: That confirmed for me that it was true. But I said, “If you can give me something else to write about, then I won’t.” I mean, I told you. I don’t like printing secrets when they’re sad. I got into journalism to tell rock ’n’ roll stories. Not to tell depressing ones. Give me rock stars sleeping with groupies, give me the crazy shit you did on PCP. Great. But I’ve never liked publishing depressing shit. People’s families falling apart and all that. I said, “Give me something rock ’n’ roll.” That felt like a win-win.

And Billy said, “How about this? I can’t fucking stand Daisy Jones.”

Billy: I will tell you exactly what I said. It’s right there in the article. I said, “She’s a selfish brat who’s been given everything she wants her entire life and thinks it’s because she deserves it.”

Jonah Berg: When he said, “Talent like Daisy’s is wasted on people like Daisy,” I went, Oh, wow. Okay. Here is a great article. It was a way more interesting story to tell, in my opinion. What’s gonna sell more copies? Billy Dunne used to be an alcoholic and now he’s reformed? Or the two lead singers in this hip new band loathe each other?

It was no contest. The world was filled with Billy Dunnes. So many men in this world missed their daughters’ births or stepped out on their wives or whatever else he did. Sorry to say it but that’s the world we live in. But not many people are so creatively in sync with someone they despise. That was fascinating.

My editor loved the idea. He couldn’t have been more amped about it.

I told the photographer what I wanted for the cover and he said it would be easy enough to splice together from the photos he had taken. So I went back to New York and I wrote that article in forty-eight hours. I never write articles that fast. But it was just so easy. And those articles are always the best ones—the kind you swear wrote themselves.





Graham: The entire point of having Jonah Berg out with us was so that he could write an article about what a smart move it was to have Daisy join the band. And, instead, he writes about Billy and Daisy hating each other.

Eddie: It felt like those two assholes let their own personal crap taint the band and the music and all the hard work we’d all put into it.

Rod: It all landed so perfectly. The band just couldn’t see it. They couldn’t see how great it was.

We released “Turn It Off” as the first single. We booked the band on Midnight Special. We had them doing radio spots all over the country leading up to the album dropping. And then, the same week Aurora hits the shelves, so does the Rolling Stone cover.