Daisy Jones and The Six - 70's music era brought to life

Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Genre: Historical Fiction

Published 2019, 355 pages

This book was better than I expected but I didn't find it as great as the reviews led me to believe. Maybe because music isn't really my thing and, even as a teenager, I was never a band groupie of any sort. The book is about the rise and fall of a rock band in the 70s, from playing locally to being a national sensation. The band of 6 adds Daisy Jones as a co-vocalist at the recommendation/pushing of the manager which introduced discord of various kinds but also brought huge success. At times I felt like it was a pretty cliche` plotline of the common stereotype of a band's rise and fall - what set it apart is the format Reid used to present the story.

I really enjoyed the interview format and how you instantly got different perspectives on a situation or memory instead of waiting for another chapter. It could easily have been written in the format of a chapter per character and jumping around, but the interview style was much more immediate and believably showed how memories vary from person to person.

At first I had a bit of trouble keeping the characters straight, but that eventually resolved itself. The long interview style included the band members, of course, but also managers, promoters, critics, etc. though thankfully most of those had small parts. It was interesting to piece together the characters' personalities via an interview process and how other people saw them or saw the situation. Clever.

I enjoyed the behind the scenes view of making music....writing a song, recording a song (over and over and over), mixing a song. I'm not "music aware", so never pay attention to the details of a song - this was very interesting. I don't know anything about drug use or addiction, but the conversations about those topics felt real.

This sat on my shelf for a year (I was practicing some kind of avoidance), but I'm glad to have read it. If you're interested in a slice of musical history from the 70s, you'll enjoy this.