Daisy Jones & The Six(71)

When I was onstage, I was singing with intention. Which I hadn’t done in a long time. I cared about the show. I cared about making it good. I cared about …

I cared about who I was singing with.

Rod: Daisy high is fun and carefree and a good time. If she’s having fun, you’re having fun. But if you want to rip people’s hearts out of their chests, bring Daisy back down to earth and have her sing her own songs. There’s nothing like it.

Daisy: I was drunk at the Grammys. But it barely mattered.

Billy: Before the award for Record of the Year was announced, sometime earlier in the night, Rod told me that Teddy didn’t want to speak. It’s sort of a producer’s award, but Teddy preferred to be the guy behind the guy, so Rod asked if I wanted to be the one to do it and I said, “It doesn’t matter. We aren’t gonna win.”

He said, “So it’s okay if I give it to Daisy?”

I said, “You’re giving her a big fat bowl of nothing but sure.”

Look, you can’t be right all the time.

Karen: When we won Record of the Year for “Turn It Off,” we were all standing up there, the six of us and Teddy. Pete wore a goddamn bolo tie. Hideous. I was so embarrassed for him. I thought, for certain, that Billy would be the one to give the acceptance speech. But Daisy went up to the mike instead. I thought, I hope she says something coherent. And then she did.

Billy: She said, “Thank you to everybody who listened to this song and understood this song and sang it along with us. We made it for you. For all of you out there hung up on somebody or something.”

Camila: “For everyone hung up on somebody or something.”

Daisy: I didn’t mean anything by it except to give a voice to people feeling desperate. I was feeling desperate about a lot of things. I was feeling desperate and also, somehow, more myself.

It’s funny. At first, I think you start getting high to dull your emotions, to escape from them. But after a while you realize that the drugs are what are making your life untenable, they are actually what are heightening every emotion you have. It’s making your heartbreak harder, your good times higher. So coming down really does start to feel like rediscovering sanity.

And when you rediscover your sanity, it’s only a matter of time before you start to get an inkling of why you wanted to escape it in the first place.

Billy: When we walked off the stage, with that award, I caught her eye. And she smiled at me. And I thought, She’s turning it around.

Elaine Chang: Daisy accepting the Grammy for Record of the Year, where her hair is disheveled and she’s wearing the bangles up to her elbows and she’s got on this thin cream silk slip dress and she seems entirely in control of that band and confident in her talent … that night alone might be why she’s considered one of the sexiest rock singers of all time.

Shortly after that, they recorded the famous video of the band performing “Impossible Woman” at Madison Square Garden—where she’s singing deep from her gut and fearless about even the highest notes, where Billy Dunne can’t seem to keep his eyes off her.

All of this was during those months just after she had left Niccolo Argento. That’s when she was fully self-actualized, fully in command of herself. All the magazines were talking about her, everybody knew who she was. All of rock ’n’ roll wanted to be her.

Spring of ‘seventy-nine is the Daisy Jones we all talk about when we talk about Daisy Jones. You would have thought she was on top of the world.





Karen: There’s something I haven’t mentioned.

Graham: Did Karen tell you about it? It’s not my place to say anything if she hasn’t told you already. But … I guess if she did, then it’s okay.

Karen: We were in Seattle, I think, when I realized what was going on.

Eddie: I never brought it up with Graham and Karen, that I knew they were sleeping together. But I did think it was odd they kept it so quiet. People would have been happy for them. Maybe it was just a one-time thing between them. Sometimes, my memory is so hazy I wonder if I imagined it. But I don’t think I did. I don’t think I would make up something like that.

Karen: I was taking a shower in the hotel and Graham had the adjoining room and he came in. And then he got in the shower with me. I pulled him into me, put my arms around him. That’s part of what I liked about Graham so much, was how big he was, how strong he was. He was hairy and bulky and I liked all of that. I liked how gentle he was, too. But this time, as he pressed his chest into mine, my boobs felt swollen. They felt sore. And I knew. I just knew.

I’d heard women talk about being able to sense when they were pregnant. But I thought it was some Flower Power shit. But it’s true. At least for me. I was twenty-nine. I knew my body. And I knew I was pregnant. This dread just seeped into me. It was like it started at my head and filled my whole body. I remember being so thankful when Graham heard Warren knocking on his door because he rushed out of the shower.

I was so relieved to be alone. To not have to pretend to be human, in that moment. Because I felt … gone. I felt like my soul had left my body and I was just a shell. I stayed in the shower for I don’t even know how long. I just stayed in there, under the showerhead, staring off into space until I could muster the energy to step out.

Graham: You know how sometimes you can tell that something is off with somebody? But you can’t put your finger on it? And you ask what’s wrong and they seem to have no idea what you’re talking about? You feel crazy. You feel like you’re going crazy. This feeling in your gut that the person you love isn’t okay. But they look okay. They look okay.