Yahoo News Is Daisy Jones & The Six based on a true story?
Daisy Jones & The Six spoilers follow.
Daisy Jones & The Six, based on Taylor Jenkins Reid's best-selling novel of the same name, is finally here – and it's giving us all the '70s rock-nostalgia feels.
The story follows the rise and abrupt fall of the titular rock band, whose members catapult from obscurity to fame only to go their separate ways after one tour and a sold-out show in 1977.
Using a docuseries format similar to VH1’s Behind the Music, the series jumps back and forth between the '70s and '90s, as an unseen filmmaker interviews the former band members in an attempt to figure out what really led to their split.
But how exactly did Reid create this story? Are these characters merely works of fiction, or are they based on something far more real?
Is Daisy Jones & The Six a true story?
While Daisy Jones & The Six is not completely a true story, Reid has explained that her book is loosely inspired by Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, whose infamously complex and rocky relationship materialised in the band's seminal album, 'Rumours'.
After stumbling across a video of the band performing their 1975 hit 'Landslide' during a reunion concert as a teen, Reid had been convinced that Nicks and Buckingham were head-over-heels in love with each other.
"Lindsey stopped strumming for a moment and Stevie let it fly as he watched from the sideline," she wrote in a blog for Hello Sunshine.
"And for one split second – truly, a slice of a moment – Lindsey put his fist under his chin and looked at Stevie as if she was a miracle. And I thought, 'Oh, they’re in love with each other.'
The author, however, was shocked to learn that the pair had previously dated but were no longer together – and that there had been a whole lot of tension in between.
"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'," she continued. "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."
This complicated dynamic between Nicks and Buckingham is, of course, reminiscent of that between Daisy Jones (Riley Keough) and Billy Dunne (Sam Claflin), but there are some other similarities between Fleetwood Mac and Reid's fictional band.
Fleetwood Mac was made up of Lindsey Buckingham (lead guitarist and male vocalist), Stevie Nicks (female vocalist – and sometimes tambourine), Mick Fleetwood (drummer), Christine McVie (keyboardist and vocalist) and John McVie (bass guitarist).
Similarly, Daisy Jones & The Six is made up of Billy Dunne (male vocalist), Daisy Jones (female vocalist – and sometimes tambourine), Warren Rhodes (drummer), Karen Sirko (keyboardist and vocalist) and Eddie Roundtree (bass guitarist). Although they also add Graham Dunne (lead guitar) to the mix.
The showrunnners clearly took Fleetwood Mac as the inspiration and ran with it too, because the bridge in the The Six's song 'Look At Us Now' (which is arguably their best), sounds very similar to the one in Fleetwood Mac's 'The Chain'.
Have a listen for yourself, at about 2 minutes 20 seconds in.
What happened between Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham?
Buckingham and Nicks first met in college and went on to join the psychedelic rock band Fritz – though it wasn't until the band split up in the early '70s that the two became romantically involved.
They later moved to LA and formed their own band, Buckingham & Nicks, but when they were asked to join Fleetwood Mac in 1974, they were on the verge of breaking up.
"When we joined Fleetwood Mac, I said, 'OK, this is what we’ve been working for since 1968," Nicks told Billboard in 2014. "And so Lindsey, you and I have to sew this relationship back up. We have too much to lose here. We need to put our problems behind us.'"
The 'Edge of Seventeen' singer continued: "I got an apartment on Hollywood Boulevard, he moved back in with me, and we kind of put our relationship back together. We weren’t fighting about money, we had a really nice place, and we were going to work with these hysterically funny English people every day, making great music."
However, their relationship began to crumble once again when Fleetwood Mac were writing their 1977 album 'Rumours'.
Buckingham and Nicks' relationship ultimately ended, as did John and Christine McVie's after nearly ten years of marriage. Mick Fleetwood's divorce from his partner Jenny Boyd was also in the final stages.
This is what inspired Buckingham to write 'Go Your Own Way,' which Nicks later admitted had a clear message for her, albeit "not a very nice one".
Nicks wrote 'Silver Springs' in response, which was released as the B-side to 'Go Your Own Way'.
"It was me realising that Lindsey was going to haunt me for the rest of my life, and he has," she said of the song.
Unlike Daisy Jones & The Six, however, Nicks stated that they would never "let love affairs break Fleetwood Mac up," so she and Buckingham continued to fire "eye daggers at each other" throughout the years while performing songs about their fraught relationship and breakup (via LA Times).
The first three episodes of Daisy Jones & The Six are available to watch on Prime Video.
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