Page 3 of Daisy Jones & The Six

There’s this peace that comes with knowing you have a person in the world who would do anything for you, that you would do anything for. She was the first time I ever had that. I got a little bit teary, in the car listening to that song. I turned to Simone and I opened my mouth to talk but she just nodded and said, “Me too.”

SIMONE:It was my mission to make Daisy do something with her voice. But Daisy wasn’t gonna do a single thing she didn’t want to do.

She’d really come into herself by then. When I met her, she was still a bit naïve but[laughs]let’s just say she’d gotten tougher.

DAISY:I was seeing a couple guys back then, including Wyatt Stone of the Breeze. And I didn’t feel the same way about him that he felt about me.

This one night we were smoking a joint up on the roof of this apartment over on Santa Monica and Wyatt said, “I love you so much and I don’t understand why you don’t love me.”

I said, “I love you as much as I’m willing to love anybody.” Which was true. I wasn’t really willing to be vulnerable with anybody at that point. I had felt too much vulnerability too young. I didn’t want to do it anymore.

So that night after Wyatt goes to bed, I can’t sleep. And I see this piece of paper with this song he’s writing and it’s clearly about me. It says something about a redhead and mentioned the hoop earrings that I was wearing all the time.

And then he had this chorus about me having a big heart but no love in it. I kept looking at the words, thinking,This isn’t right.He didn’t understand me at all. So I thought about it for a little while and got out a pen and paper. I wrote some things down.

When he woke up, I said, “Your chorus should be more like ‘Big eyes, big soul/big heart, no control/but all she got to give is tiny love.’ ”

Wyatt grabbed a pen and paper and he said, “Say that again?”

I said, “It was just an example. Write your own goddamn song.”

SIMONE:“Tiny Love” was the Breeze’s biggest hit. And Wyatt pretended he wrote the whole thing.

WYATTSTONE(lead singer, the Breeze):Why are you asking me about this? This is water under the bridge. Who even remembers?

DAISY:It was starting to be a pattern. Once, I was having breakfast at Barney’s Beanery with a guy—this writer-director. Now, back then I always ordered champagne with breakfast. But I was also always tired in the morning because I wasn’t sleeping enough. So I needed coffee. Of course, I couldn’t orderjustcoffee because I’d be too amped from the pills I was taking. And I couldn’tjusthave the champagne because it would put me to sleep. You understand the problem. So I used to order champagne and coffee together. And at the places where servers knew me, I used to call it an Up and Down. Something to keep me up, something to keep me down. And this guy thought it was hilarious. He said, “I’m going to use that in something one day.” And he wrote it down on a napkin and put it in his back pocket. I thought to myself,What the hell makes you thinkI’mnot going to use it in something one day?But, of course, there it was in his next movie.

That’s how it was back then. I was just supposed to be the inspiration for some man’s great idea.

Well, fuck that.

That’s why I started writing my own stuff.

SIMONE:I was the only one encouraging her to make something of herself with her talent. Everybody else just tried to make something ofthemselveswith what she had.

DAISY:I had absolutely no interest in being somebody else’s muse.

I am not a muse.

I am the somebody.

End of fucking story.

The Six started out as a blues-rock band called the Dunne Brothers in the mid-sixties out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Billy and Graham Dunne were raised by single mother, Marlene Dunne, after their father, William Dunne Sr., left in 1954.

BILLYDUNNE(lead singer, The Six):I was seven when Dad left, Graham was five. One of my first memories was when Dad told us he was moving to Georgia. I asked if I could come with him and he said no.

But he left behind this old Silvertone guitar and Graham and I would fight over who got to play it. Playing that thing was about all we did. Nobody taught us, we taught ourselves.

Then, when I got older, sometimes I’d stay late after school and mess around on the piano in the chorus room.

Eventually, when I was about fifteen or so, Mom saved up and bought Graham and I an old Strat for Christmas. Graham wanted that one so I let him have it. I kept the Silvertone.

GRAHAMDUNNE(lead guitar, The Six):Once Billy and I each had a guitar, we started to write new songs together. I wanted the Silvertone but I could tell it meant more to Billy. So I took the Strat.

BILLY:Everything grew from there.

GRAHAM:Billy got really into songwriting, really into the lyrics. All he’d talk about was Bob Dylan. Me, I was more of a Roy Orbison guy. I think we both had these stars in our eyes—wanted to be the Beatles. But everybody wanted to be the Beatles. You wanted to be the Beatles and then you wanted to be the Stones.

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