Daisy Jones and the Six

Daisy Jones and the Six

Taylor Jenkins Reid

Written as a series of interviews , Daisy Jones and the Six chronicles the rapid rise and fall of one of the most popular band of the Seventies. Taylor Jenkins Reid creates an entire band and their history from scratch, piecing it together through snippets of dialogue and creating a fully realized cast of characters. 

Billy Dunne, the charismatic frontman for a band called The Six, is destined to be a rock legend after two successful albums.  Daisy Jones is an up and coming name in the music industry with a raspy voice and a look that is uniquely her own. Tormented, soulful, and beautiful, she has that ‘it factor’ that draws attention like nothing else.  When the manager of The Six gets Daisy to feature on their album, the music is explosive. The albums that follow are the stuff of legend; however, after a few short years, the band dissolves and they are never heard from again. What happened to these rock gods and why did they quit at the peak of their career? Years later, the mysterious interviewer writing this book collects stories from all members involved in the band to tell their story.

I listened to this book as an audiobook and highly recommend that experience to anyone and everyone. It is recorded with a full cast for every band member, manager, family member, and fan on the street; as such, you really feel like you are listening to real people telling their story.  To top this off, they also recorded one of the songs written by the fictional band and played it at the end of the audiobook. It is so easy to forget that this band is a figment of Reid’s imagination with such a vivid cast of unique characters.

This book, though fictional, reads like a memoire. Similar books I have read and enjoyed include Joni Mitchell’s In Her Own Words, and Love Janis, a book of letters and personal stories written by Janis Joplin’s sister.