AUTHOR’S NOTE
This book is an attempt to piece together a clear portrait of how the renowned 1970s rock band Daisy Jones & The Six rose to fame—as well as what led to their abrupt and infamous split while on tour in Chicago on July 12, 1979.
Over the course of the last eight years, I have conducted individual interviews of current and former members of the band, as well as family, friends, and industry elite who surrounded them at the time. The following oral history is compiled and edited from those conversations, as well as relevant emails, transcripts, and lyrics. (The complete lyrics to their album Aurora can be found at the back of the book.)
While I have aimed for a comprehensive approach, I must acknowledge that this proved impossible. Some potential interviewees were difficult to track down, some were more forthcoming than others, and some, unfortunately, have passed on.
This book serves as the first and only time members of the band have commented on their history together. However, it should also be noted that, on matters both big and small, sometimes accounts of the same event differ.
The truth often lies, unclaimed, in the middle.
Daisy Jones was born in 1951 and grew up in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles, California. The daughter of Frank Jones, the well-known British painter, and Jeanne LeFevre, a French model, Daisy started to make a name for herself in the late sixties as a young teenager on the Sunset Strip.
ELAINE CHANG (biographer, author of Daisy Jones: Wild Flower): Here is what is so captivating about Daisy Jones even before she was “Daisy Jones.”
You’ve got a rich white girl, growing up in L.A. She’s gorgeous—even as a child. She has these stunning big blue eyes—dark, cobalt blue. One of my favorite anecdotes about her is that in the eighties a colored-contact company actually created a shade called Daisy Blue. She’s got copper-red hair that is thick and wavy and…takes up so much space. And then her cheekbones almost seem swollen, that’s how defined they are. And she’s got an incredible voice that she doesn’t cultivate, never takes a lesson. She’s born with all the money in the world, access to whatever she wants—artists, drugs, clubs—anything and everything at her disposal.
But she has no one. No siblings, no extended family in Los Angeles. Two parents who are so into their own world that they are all but indifferent to her existence. Although, they never shy away from making her pose for their artist friends. That’s why there are so many paintings and photos of Daisy as a child—the artists that came into that home saw Daisy Jones, saw how gorgeous she was, and wanted to capture her. It’s telling that there is no Frank Jones piece of Daisy. Her father is too busy with his male nudes to pay much attention to his daughter. And in general, Daisy spends her childhood rather alone.
But she’s actually a very gregarious, outgoing kid—Daisy would often ask to get her hair cut just because she loved her hairdresser, she would ask neighbors if she could walk their dogs, there was even a family joke about the time Daisy tried to bake a birthday cake for the mailman. So this is a girl that desperately wants to connect. But there’s no one in her life who is truly interested in who she is, especially not her parents. And it really breaks her. But it is also how she grows up to become an icon.
We love broken, beautiful people. And it doesn’t get much more obviously broken and more classically beautiful than Daisy Jones.
So it makes sense that Daisy starts to find herself on the Sunset Strip. This glamorous, seedy place.
DAISY JONES (singer, Daisy Jones & The Six): I could walk down to the Strip from my house. I was about fourteen, sick of being stuck in the house, just looking for something to do. I wasn’t old enough to get into any of the bars and clubs but I went anyway.
I remember bumming a cigarette off of a roadie for the Byrds when I was pretty young. I learned quickly that people thought you were older if you didn’t wear your bra. And sometimes I’d wear a bandanna headband like the cool girls had on. I wanted to fit in with the groupies on the sidewalk, with their joints and their flasks and all of that.
So I bummed a cigarette from this roadie outside the Whisky a Go Go one night—the first time I’d ever had one and I tried to pretend I did it all the time. I held the cough in my throat and what have you—and I was flirting with him the best I could. I’m embarrassed to think about it now, how clumsy I probably was.
But eventually, some guy comes up to the roadie and says, “We gotta get inside and set up the amps.” And he turns to me and says, “You coming?” And that’s how I snuck into the Whisky for the first time.
I stayed out that night until three or four in the morning. I’d never done anything like that before. But suddenly it was like I existed. I was a part of something. I went from zero to sixty that night. I was drinking and smoking anything anybody would give me.
When I got home, I walked in through the front door, drunk and stoned, and crashed in my bed. I’m pretty sure my parents never even noticed I was gone.
I got up, went out the next night, did the same thing.
Eventually, the bouncers on the Strip recognized me and let me in wherever I was going. The Whisky, London Fog, the Riot House. No one cared how young I was.
GREG MCGUINNESS (former concierge, the Continental Hyatt House): Ah, man, I don’t know how long Daisy was hanging around the Hyatt House before I noticed her. But I remember the first time I saw her. I was on the phone and in walks this crazy tall, crazy skinny girl with these bangs. And the biggest, roundest blue eyes you ever saw in your life, man. She also had this smile. Huge smile. She came in on the arm of some guy. I don’t remember who.
A lot of the girls around the Strip back then, I mean, they were young, but they tried to seem older. Daisy just was, though. Didn’t seem like she was trying to be anything. Except herself.
After that, I noticed she was at the hotel a lot. She was always laughing. There was nothing jaded about her, ’least when I knew her. It was like watching Bambi learn how to walk. She was real naïve and real vulnerable but you could tell there was something about her.
I was nervous for her, tell you the truth. There were so many men in the scene that were…into young girls. Thirty-something rock stars sleeping with teenagers. Not saying it was okay, just saying that’s how it was. How old was Lori Mattix when she was with Jimmy Page? Fourteen? And Iggy Pop and Sable Starr? He sang about it, man. He was bragging about it.
When it came to Daisy—I mean, the singers, the guitarists, the roadies—everybody was looking at her. Whenever I saw her, though, I’d try to make sure she was doing all right. I kept tabs on her here and there. I really liked her. She was just cooler than anything else happening around her.
DAISY: I learned about sex and love the hard way. That men will take what they want and feel no debt, that some people only want one piece of you.
I do think there were girls—the Plaster Casters, some of the GTOs—maybe they weren’t being taken advantage of, I don’t know. But it was a bad scene for me, at first.