“I had absolutely no interest in being somebody else's muse.
I am not a muse.
I am the somebody.
End of f****** story.”
This book made me feel powerful. It felt so much bigger than life that I forgot I was reading the same combination of 26 letters in a couple hundred pages. I was in awe that I got an opportunity to witness Daisy and the band’s journey. Set in the mid 60s, late 70s, It transports us to the most iconic age of rock and roll.
“She's blues dressed up like rock n roll
untouchable, she'll never fold.”
It's from every single character’s perspective, side characters included, and is written unlike any book I've ever read before. It felt timeless and even after I finished the book it stayed with me. The quotes come back to me. The heartbreaking loss comes back to me. The music and songs and lyrics and era comes back to me. The scandals and love and sacrifices and tears come back to me.
It made me think and want and hate and love. It was everything. Daisy was everything.
“It scared me that the only thing between this moment of calm and the biggest tragedy of my life was me choosing not to do it.”
What I loved most about this book was the realness of it. The rawness. The lack of a filter. The imperfect characters and plot and choices and lifestyles.
“I don't like putting it that way - you're never not yourself. You're always you. It's just, sometimes, who you are . . . who you are is a shitty person.”
“When you have everything, someone else getting a little something feels like they're stealing from you.”
Taylor didn't give us what we wanted. She made us want what she gave to the point where I wanted to be Daisy. I wanted to be in their group. Despite her pains and her struggles and the utter devastation they all faced. I wanted to be them if only to feel the extent of life they lived because not one moment felt wasted. Not one moment was left to irrelevance. The emotions hit me every second and nearly none of them were simple satisfaction. They were agony and passion and crossing all the lines.
“It’s the ones who never loved you enough that come to you when you can’t sleep. You always wonder what the future might have held and you’ll never know. Maybe you almost don’t want to know.”
Not one of the characters was perfect. They made mistakes and were childish, mean and downright toxic sometimes but they were all just s u r v i v i n g in a world full of other selfish, greedy people. The life behind the scenes of famous bands and musicians is more than anyone can ever think and Taylor Jenkins Reid illustrated it fantastically. It reminds us of life and that we don't always win in the end.
“Sometimes I wonder if addicts aren't all that different from anybody else, they are just better at lying to themselves. I was great at lying to myself.”
Another thing that makes this book absolutely intoxicating and unforgettable is the music. Personally, music is a huge part of my life. It has the power to save me and ruin me and the lyrics in the songs of this book did exactly that. The music was pure emotion.
“Art doesn't owe anything to anyone.
Songs are about how it felt, not the facts. Self-expression is about what it feels to live, no whether you have the right to claim any emotion at any time. Did I have a right to be mad at him? Did he do anything wrong? Who cares! Who cares? I hurt. So I wrote about it”
I could hear their voices. Their breaths. Their emotions. The chemistry between Daisy and Billy when they sang set a fire in me I never wanted to extinguish. Everything in the world could be wrong but when Daisy and Billy sang together.. It was right. It couldn't have been wrong because nothing that beautiful is wrong.
“I really felt like I understood him. And I think he understood me. You know, things like that, that kind of connection with a person, it is sort of like playing with fire. Because it feels good to be understood. You feel in sync with a person, you feel like you're on a level that no one else is.”
“Everything that made Daisy burn, made me burn.”
I don't know the words to describe the utter wholeness and realness of Daisy but what I can say is she took the words “god is a woman” and made it “woman is a god”. She came from nothing and became someone known. Someone respected and wanted. An icon. And underneath all of that she was still broken. Still hurting. Still loving and wanting. She was untouchable but at the same time she felt too much. She felt everything and to drown it all she gave in to her vices.
“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 more obviously broken and more classically beautiful than Daisy Jones.”
Her battles against how women were treated in those years and her indifference to what men wanted but didn't deserve and general message to the public was what won my respect for her.
“Men often think they deserve a sticker for treating women like people.”
“I am not going to sit around sweating my ass off just so men can feel more comfortable. It’s not my responsibility to not turn them on. It’s their responsibility to not be an asshole.”
This review is words taken from my soul and heart because Daisy Jones and The Six means the world to me. After finishing it I felt empty. Smaller. Because the book made me part of something larger. Part of a life that is grand and real and whole. Read this book. Everyone deserves to feel the way I felt.
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