Daisy Jones & the Six was practically custom-made for a small screen series. But, before it existed as this beautiful, time-travelling, thrilling and heartbreaking drama helmed by an all-star cast, it was a novel.
Bestselling author Taylor Jenkins Reid's 2019 novel of the same name captured the unlikely foundations of this tempestuous 1970s Los Angeles rock band, the love affairs, betrayals, fame, failure and addiction. The story is told through diary-style entries, giving readers a direct and immediate sense of being right there with singer/songwriter and wild-child Daisy Jones, and ambitiously independent singer/guitarist Billy Dunne.
Four years later, the series was realised with the support and consultation of Jenkins Reid, who was thrilled with the adaptation. The screen industry and the public were thrilled too, resulting in a raft of nominations for the Emmy Awards, recognising Riley Keough for her exceptional portrayal of Daisy Jones, and Camila Morrone's role as Billy Dunne's long-suffering wife, raising their young child as her rockstar husband flirts and flings with the most wanted woman on Earth.
Keough has outshone her initial headline role of being Elvis Presley's granddaughter to prove - time and again - her immense skill at portraying independent, troubled, yearning, romantic and rebellious women across comedy (Under the Silver Lake, Zola), sci-fi (Mad Max: Fury Road), and dark drama (The Girlfriend Experience, Under The Bridge). Considering the cult fanaticism around Jenkins Reid's book, bringing Daisy - such an iconic character - to life was always going to be a heavy cross to bear. Arguably, Keough was the penultimate Daisy. With no professional singing experience, she nailed the vocals for the original soundtrack by super-producer Blake Mills (a fantastic listen in its own right). Sam Claflin, likewise, went in with some amateur guitar skills and little else. As the handsome, industrious Billy Dunne, Claflin's portrayal of a burgeoning rock god is priceless.
What kept me up until 3am while reading the book was a desperate need to know whether Daisy's relentless desire for Billy would be reciprocated; would their bandmates sabotage any affair out of envy; would the band get fleeced by fraudulent managers and producers; would audiences 'get' their pioneering, original rock-folk-ballad-stomp formula; and would the band member's various habits result in a career or life-ending emergency any minute now?
Those same urgent thrill-a-minute questions pepper the narrative arc of the series, making it nearly impossible to shut off and wait for the next episode (you don't have to, suffer not readers).
Real-life musician Suki Waterhouse is great as the determined keyboardist Karen Sirko, who gets sidelined by tour roadies, engineers and producers as a pretty distraction with no creative acumen. Nabiyah Be, also a singer-songwriter-musician, is outstanding as the up-and-coming disco queen Simone Jackson, a friend and mentor to Daisy in the early days. Other standouts are Sebastian Chacon as drummer Warren Rojas, Josh Whitehouse as bassist Eddie Roundtree, and Will Harrison as Billy's jealous, sometimes-reckless brother, guitarist Graham Dunne.
The storyline, the cast, the pacy narrative and knockout soundtrack are all reason enough to catch this series for the first or fiftieth time, but for icing on the cake (of the substantial, thick, creamy icing variety), this series is divine to look at. Every scene pops with colour, movement, texture and detail. Whether it's Daisy's inimitable boho-style auburn hair tumbling over her low-cut peasant blouse, or the rich, desert-brown motorcycle boots, deep denim blue, open blue skies, cigarette-hazed, paisley carpet recording studios, washed out vinyl touring bus seats, fur-lined coats, wrists and fingers covered in silver and turquoise bands.
The 1970s were a treasure chest of cultural riches. Musically, the respective punk, funk, disco, and folk stylings of Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, Carole King, the Sex Pistols and the Ramones still impact on music today. For better or worse, it was a decade for flared corduroy pants, crochet crop-tops, patchwork denim and oversized aviator sunglasses. It was the drugs, sex, and rock'n'roll of the 1960s youth movement on overdrive, abrasively clashing with second-wave feminism that iconised Ms.Magazine founder Gloria Steinem, and Aussie author and activist Germaine Greer, closer to home.
The rock gods of Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, in all their bare-chested, machismo glory were ruling stadiums, but women refused to be simply magazine cover girls or "the girl in a band" (as Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon titled her memoir). Patti Smith's spoken word, livewire poetry-punk rock stunned and thrilled New York, while Debbie Harry's doll-like beauty belied her phenomenal skill for crafting a chart-making pop song, while bands like The Runaways revealed the joyful pugnaciousness of teenage rockers Joan Jett and Lita Ford.
In this masterful adaptation, which deservedly pumped up the profiles of Keough, Claflin, Morrone, and Waterhouse particularly, a truthful and respective Daisy Jones & the Six has been realised. It isn't a word-for-word adaptation, and justifiably. This is a different medium, and storytelling must translate for screen accordingly. Daisy Jones never wanted to be a cover girl, a groupie, a muse, the "girl in a band". She wanted to be the creator, the eye of the storm and the chaos surrounding it. This is a story of compromise, how love and power are indiscriminate saboteurs, and how we are deeply, messily vulnerable and fascinating whether scribbling diary entries at 16 and dreaming of future fame or headlining a national stadium tour.
Daisy Jones & The Six is now streaming at SBS On Demand.
