This is my opinion.
Daisy Jones & The Six is one of the worst and downright silliest books you will ever read. For those who have spent time working in the music industry this book will be a significant head scratcher. The book is mundane, repetitive and wildly and completely unrealistic. With all of the great stories one could fathom this is what passes for modern day reading. Few people still read; and something this vain and shallow will not attract those with critical thinking skills.
Not one character rings true. Musicians? No musician in any genre can relate to this feebleness and absurdity and it is done in 333 pages. Even beyond the non-realities of this world one cannot gather enough in the expectation of human life to be consequently intrigued. Somehow, this book has managed to get produced into an upcoming ten part (ten parts??!!) mini-series. Fortunately, it's a one season series. Imagine turning this desperate mess into a book and then having the audacity of making it into filmed entertainment. In one of my day jobs I write television reviews. I better get the assignment of taking this one on. If not, I will write it and submit it. Who else would want to sit through this ten hour exodus into superficiality? I look forward to writing that review. The series is set to premiere in March, 2023. When you deal with source material this weak and stretched you cannot possibly expect to create a worthwhile endeavor willing to be seen by millions. Well, our dumbed-down society might just like it.
Daisy Jones & The Six takes place in the guarded halls of the smiley face era - the 1970's. On the surface who doesn't love the 1970's? Probably, the single most significant, yet insignificant decade of the 20th century. The Vietnam War ended during the 1970's and the U.S. had three Presidents - Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. Those three men couldn't have been more different from one another and that alone makes for an intriguing time in the West. Bell bottoms. I wish I could wear a pair of bell bottoms. Everyone was slender. That's all gone. Films were magnificent (The Godfather, The French Connection, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and I could keep going for multiple paragraphs) and of course, the music. Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Doobie Brothers, Chicago, Bob Seger, Bruce Springsteen, Linda Ronstadt and I could keep going...
One thing is for certain...The 1970's provided a backdrop of superbly crafted music and most especially in the rock music realm. Daisy Jones & The Six is supposed to be one of the great bands of the decade. The band starts out as a group of six members. Somehow, the most inane, superficial, selfish, self-involved, drug-addicted groupie becomes one of the great songwriters of the era. Daisy Jones makes Pam Courson (the late girlfirned of Jim Morrison) look like Mother Theresa. No one in their right mind would like Daisy Jones. She's always high and absorbed in self. She doesn't like wearing clothes and she sleeps around with just about anyone. Okay, she was a groupie, but groupies aren't interesting and this one makes other groupies look near smart.
With that you are supposed to believe Billy Dunne (this is not a rock star from any world in which we have lived) falls madly in love with Daisy Jones. If that would be the case in real life you would hate Billy Dunne as much as you loathe Daisy Jones. Billy Dunne is a former substance abuser (original, we know) who is in love with the girl (his now wife, Camilla) he knew before he became famous. Clearly, this is a great love story. He writes for Camilla (the wife) and he loves his daughters. He manages to stay free of booze and drugs for the love of his family, but you are supposed to buy that he loves the twit - Daisy Jones. Why take a man of this character and then drip him in the vast waste of someone as damaging as Daisy Jones? This isn't love. At its core it is lust. Lust is not love. By the way, Daisy and Billy never shag in the book. That's great that the author kept him clean. That's the best aspect of the book. Thankfully he didn't, but if you are going to write this steamroller of trespassing you should make it be what you clearly wanted it to be.
In some contrived way and the whole enterprise is contrived - the author sort of wants to take you down a Fleetwood Mac path. Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie were two of the most gifted songwriters of the rock era and needless to say they were nothing like Daisy Jones. If Miss Jones were real she would have been dead long before she got to perform in a band.
Billy Dunne is portrayed as the leader of the group. He may be the chief songwriter, arranger and quasi-producer, but he was willing to allow the name of his band to become Daisy Jones & The Six. As soon as that happens in the book you know it's over. No one and I mean no one who has ever been around a musician in a band would ever and I mean ever have allowed that to happen.
The single worst book I've read in the last three years. I will definitely look forward to my day job when I have the opportunity to write on the series.
The author of the book is Taylor Jenkins Reid. One can only hope she will never write about the music industry ever again.
Camilla dies at the end of the book. She is 63 years old and she dies with Billy Dunne and her children surrounding her. Oh, and she leaves a note telling her daughters to have daddy call the now reformed Daisy Jones. If you learn something in life, learn this...men aren't nesters. Women are nesters. Men aren't. If they were, Paul McCartney somehow would have ended up with Jane Asher. If you know your rock history you will know the story.
COPYRIGHT READ ON READ NOW 2022
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