So authentic, you won’t believe it’s fictional.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The blurb
Everyone knows DAISY JONES & THE SIX, but nobody knows the reason behind their split at the absolute height of their popularity . . . until now.
Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it’s the rock ’n’ roll she loves most. By the time she’s twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things.
Also getting noticed is The Six, a band led by the brooding Billy Dunne. On the eve of their first tour, his girlfriend Camila finds out she’s pregnant, and with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little wild on the road.
Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer realizes that the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend.
The making of that legend is chronicled in this riveting and unforgettable novel, written as an oral history of one of the biggest bands of the seventies.
The Review
This was my first audiobook and boy, did I manage to start with a humdinger. I can’t think of a higher accolade for this book then that on several occasions I was convinced I was listening to real music documentary. I’m not the first person to say that this book is so achingly realistic, that I was sorely tempted to Google the band and look up their songs, so convinced was I that they had to be real.
The audiobook is EXCELLENT. The story of the band’s formation, success and sudden demise, is narrated through interviews with everyone that was involved at the time and each character’s part is read by individual voice actors. And kudos to the casting for the audiobook, because the characterisation is amazing. They aren’t just reading the words, they are living and breathing them. This book completely lends itself to audio format and I can’t recommend listening to it that way highly enough.
As you would expect in a nostalgic look back at a rock bands’ success from the 70s, there’s a lot of focus on the music. We are treated to the characters reminiscing about the creative process, in which we learn many of the lyrics to the songs. Even just hearing these read aloud made me want the songs to be real! So thank God Reese Witherspoon has bought the option for this to be made into a TV series. Those songs are going to actually be made and I can’t wait. (Although I don’t envy the musicians that have to do justice to those amazing words)
I loved the female characters in this story. It really explore the difficulties a woman faced at that time, let alone those in the music industry. And the interactions between the female characters felt so true to life, not snide and one dimensional like in so many books. Karen is awesome, with her staunch belief that she has to be just ‘one of the guys’ to be taken seriously in the industry. The strength of Billy’s wife - to be basically married to a rock n‘ roll band and reading him the riot act when he needed to hear it. And Daisy, ah Daisy Jones. Such a deeply flawed character and yet so immensely likeable that your heart breaks for her as you experience her struggle with the world and her demons, willing her raw talent to somehow just see her through. Daisy, who will wear what she wants to wear (even though most of the time that’s not very much) because it’s her body and she doesn’t care what you think, you can take her seriously or get bent. You find yourself rooting for both her and Billy, even though you KNOW they can’t both get what they want in the end.
The author captures the atmosphere of the 70s music scene absolutely and you feel like you are right there in the audience watching them rock out every night. Not only does it feel so authentic, but it explores the really gritty issues - love, obsession, jealousy, addiction, feminism, sacrifice and fame. Done as a compilation of interviews, the story is teased out by all the narrators -and it was so intriguing how they remember events unfolding differently depending on their viewpoint. You are left to interpret who might be remembering events accurately and who is looking back through rose-tinted glasses.
This book is brilliant and the audiobook is spectacularly done. This is especially one for those that love musical backstories and want to indulge in some faux- nostalgia!