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Rock 'n' RollIs ‘Daisy Jones & The Six’ Based Off of Fleetwood Mac? See What the Author Has Said
Daisy Jones & The Six, first released as a novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid in 2019, and now an Amazon Prime series in 2023, follows an iconic (make-believe) ’70s rock ‘n’ roll band at the height of their fame right before their infamous breakup in 1979. Since the book’s release, fans can’t help but notice the similarities between Daisy Jones and the (very real) ’70s rock ‘n’ roll band, Fleetwood Mac. So, what does the author have to say on the matter?
Keep reading to uncover the similarities between Fleetwood Mac and Daisy Jones and The Six.
What Is ‘Daisy Jones & The Six’ About?
While Daisy Jones & The Six revolves around a rock ‘n’ roll band’s rise to fame, the story mostly centers around the relationship between the band’s frontwoman and frontman, Daisy Jones (Riley Keough) and Billy Dunne (Sam Claflin).
Daisy is an up-and-coming singer-songwriter who can’t quite find her voice yet, until already-established ’70s band The Six, consisting of members Billy, Karen Sirko (Suki Waterhouse), Graham Dunne (Will Harrison), Warren Rhodes (Sebastian Chacon) and Eddie Roundtree (Josh Whitehouse), start recording music after their first (and disastrous) U.S. tour. That’s when producer Teddy Price (Tom Wright) decides that Daisy is the missing piece to the band.
Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll are already the quintessential heart of the show, but the will-they, won’t-they chemistry between Daisy and Billy are what makes the series shine. Split between his attraction to Daisy and his loyalty to wife Camila Dunne (Camila Morrone), Billy battles his impulsive desires and addiction along with Daisy, who is attempting to find her voice and finally be the “somebody” she is destined to be.
Who Is Fleetwood Mac?
Fleetwood Mac is an iconic ’70s rock ‘n’ roll band whose music is almost as well-known as its frontwoman, legendary rock star Stevie Nicks. First formed in 1967 by member Mick Fleetwood, members John McVie and Christine McVie, who were married at the time, joined a few years later. Already an established English rock ‘n’ roll band, Mick soon discovered folk-rock duo (and high school sweethearts), Lindsey and Stevie, who joined the band in 1974.
The drama behind Fleetwood Mac is notorious. With two couples in the band, things turned sour in 1976 as the group recorded their legendary album Rumours. During the recording, John and Christine were finalizing their divorce while Lindsey and Stevie were going through their own breakup. Songs like “Dreams” and “Go Your Own Way,” were written by Stevie and Lindsey, respectively, about one another. The track “The Chain” was written by all members of Fleetwood Mac, desperately singing about keeping the band together, despite the impending doom of the relationships within it.
“You can still hear me saying, ‘You will never break the chain,'” the group sings in the chorus. Unlike Daisy Jones & The Six, who break up in the novel in 1979, Fleetwood Mac stayed together despite all of its drama well into the 2000s, releasing albums and performing shows together.
Mandatory Credit: Photo by AP/Shutterstock (6596350a)
Nicks Buckingham McVie Fleetwood Members of Fleetwood Mac, from left, Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, Christine McVie, Mick Fleetwood, wearing sunglasses, and John McVie, pose with their Grammys at the annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, Ca.,. The group won in the category of Album of the Year for “Rumours
GRAMMYS FLEETWOOD MAC, LOS ANGELES, USA
Was Fleetwood Mac the Inspiration Behind ‘Daisy Jones’?
The author behind Daisy Jones & The Six has said time and again that the inspiration behind her book was a Fleetwood Mac performance of “Landslide” from 1997.
In the video, you can see Stevie singing the song she wrote about Lindsey all those years ago, with her ex-lover watching her with love and longing in his eyes.
“When I decided I wanted to write a book about rock ‘n’ roll, I kept coming back to that moment when Lindsey watched Stevie sing ‘Landslide,'” Taylor wrote in a blog post on Hello Sunshine in March 2019. “How it looked so much like two people in love. And yet, we’ll never truly know what lived between them. I wanted to write a story about that, about how the lines between real life and performance can get blurred, about how singing about old wounds might keep them fresh.”
And that was when the relationship between Daisy Jones and Billy Dunne was born.
“Even after copious amounts of research about Fleetwood Mac and a host of other duos and bands, I’m still taken with that moment between them,” the author continued. “I can’t help but marvel at the idea that, despite everything they’d been through, Stevie and Lindsey still loved each other then. Or how, despite what it looked like to us all, they no longer did.”
