Daisy Jones and The Six
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Even if Riley Keough doesnt look like the Daisy Jones of your minds eye, shes got thefeelof her.
Because Reid didnt just write the book forDaisy Jones & The Six she wrote music.
(Phoebe Bridgers, Marcus Mumford, and Jackson Browne are among the musicians to write on it.)
The novel is admittedly cheesy, though the oral-history format made the cheese digestible.
The musicians were speaking for themselves about themselves, and so any artistic pretension belonged to the characters.
But the series does more than flesh out the spine of the novel.
It vaguely adopts a documentary structure (with an offscreen interviewer) but mostly tells its story in flashbacks.
In episode one, lots and lots of flashbacks.
And the flashbacks eat away at the storys subtlety.
If you havent read the book yet, dont rush out and buy it.
Thats the forward action.
Everything else is character.
Lets start with Billy, the bands lead singer, lead songwriter, and, well, leader.
Billy and Graham, the bands lead guitarist, were raised in Pittsburgh by a single mom.
Daisy the bands eventual lead singer and co-songwriter is given her own unambiguous story.
The neglected daughter of a wealthy father and gorgeous mother, she keeps only records for close company.
So she grows up fast, ditches her bra, and starts sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip.
Soon, hardly a scene goes by without her bumping or popping or smoking something.
I was a baby.
Its all inputs and outputs, the simple mathematics of life.
This is the kind of self-mythologizing that works when people are just sitting around and talking about themselves.
And this is why the flashbacks started to grate for me.
Thats just a story he and Graham tell about that day.
It helps them make sense of why something so unlucky and cruel could happen to them.
Its all-in-nothings-going-to-stop-us puppy love.
We meet a few other characters, but barely theyre essentially bookmarked for future use.
In the latter-day interviews, hell say he saw in Billy Dunne the worlds next Mick Jagger.
Shes why Daisy never bottoms out, even when struggling most.
Simone pushes her to pursue her music.
They dont meet, but the juxtaposition augurs whats bound to happen when they do.
Daisys a Strip-famous groupie in the fashion of Penny Lane, and the Dunne Brothers are noobs.
We know theyll somehow form a band and make great music, but the harmony wont come easy.
