BITTERSWEET TRAGEDY-DAISY JONES AND THE SIX

015: one last goodbye

ROD: The next morning, I see Daisy's gone and she's left a note saying she's left the band and would never come back.

WARREN: I woke up in the morning and Daisy had left. Graham and Karen didn't want to be in the same room with each other. Then Billy comes onto the white bus and announces he's taking a break from touring. So Rod has to cancel the rest of the tour.

ROD: I can't fulfill a tour without Billy or Daisy.

WARREN: Eddie got mad—flew off the handle.

EDDIE: There's only so long you can live your life while it's being dictated to you by somebody else, you understand? And I don't care how much money is in it for me, I'm not somebody's lackey. I'm not some indentured servant. I'm a person. And I deserve a say in my own career. I was done, it was time for me to be with my girls and just live the life I always yearned for.

GRAHAM: It all just started crumbling down.

ROD: Daisy was MIA. Billy wanted to shut the whole thing down himself. Pete was out. Eddie refused to work with Billy. Graham and Karen wouldn't speak to each other. I went to Graham and I said, "Talk some sense into Billy."
And Graham told me he wouldn't "say shit to Billy." And I thought, If the bottom falls out here, what am I going to do? I thought about signing other bands and doing this all over and taking another set of screwed-up people and trying to make their careers and I just...I don't know.

ARACELY: Eddie called me saying it was over, that shit went bad. I didn't realize how bad it had actually gotten. Personally I was glad it was ending, I was ready for him to be home with me. To enjoy life together with our children.

WARREN: I appeared to be the only person who didn't have his panties in a twist about something. But we'd had a good ride. And if it was over...I guess, there wasn't much I could do about that, was there? So, so be it. Besides if tour was over that meant I could go home to Marissa.

BILLY: I never knew why Daisy left, exactly. What it was about that night, that show, that made her leave. But the way I saw it: I didn't know how to write a good album without Teddy. And I didn't know how to write a hit album without Daisy. And I couldn't do it with either of them. And I wasn't willing to let any of it cost me a fraction of what it had already cost me.
I turned to everybody on the bus and I said, "It's over. The whole thing. It's over." And not one person in the band—not Graham, not Karen, not Eddie, not even Warren or Rod—tried to convince me otherwise.

KAREN: When Daisy left, it was like the Ferris wheel stopped turning and we all got off.

DAISY: I left the band because Camila Dunne asked me to. And it was the very best thing I've ever done. It is how I saved myself. Because your mother saved me from myself. I may not have known your mother very well. But I promise you, I loved her very much.

CAMILA: Daisy always says I saved her life, but I think she saved mine. She changed my life for better and for worse. I'm forever thankful for her.

NICK HARRIS: Daisy Jones & The Six have never played together, never been seen together, since their show at Chicago Stadium.

✦

DAISY: When I left Chicago, I made my way straight to Simone and I told her everything and she got me into rehab. I've been sober since July 17, 1979. And when I left the facility, I changed my life. All of the things I've achieved since then have been because of that decision. When I left the music business, when I published my books, when I started meditating, when I started traveling the world, when I adopted my sons, and opened the Wild Flower Initiative, and changed my life for the better in ways that I could never even fathom in 1979—it was all possible because I got clean.

WARREN: I married Marissa two years later. We have two kids, Carla and Henry. She made me sell the houseboat. Now I live in Tarzana, California, in a huge house surrounded by strip malls, my kids are in school, and no one asks me to sign their tits anymore. I mean, occasionally Marissa does. Just to be nice. And I take her up on it. Because there are about a million different guys who would have loved to sign Marissa's tits at some point in their lives. And I try to never lose sight of that.

MARISSA: Sometimes I question why I married that weirdo, but man I love him.

GRAHAM: When the band split, Karen and I...we were over. Our friendship was gone. We might run into each other once in a while but that's about it. 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. Don't tell your aunt Jeanie that I'm talking like this. I don't want her to get the wrong idea. I love her. I love your cousins.
And I'm damn glad your dad and I don't work together anymore but we have fun playing around now and again. He still tries to tell me how to play my own guitar. [Laughs] But that's just Billy. He taught both my kids piano, built the tree house in the backyard. I guess I'm saying I feel lucky we had the band and we survived the band. Him and me. Anyway, if you're doing one of those where-are-they-now things, make sure you tell everybody that I have my own hot sauce. Dunne Burnt My Tongue Off.

EDDIE: I'm a record producer now. Probably what I should have been all along. I have a recording studio over in Van Nuys. I do all right. Ended up on top. Aracely and I have been married for about twenty years I would say. We have four kids now, three girls and one boy. Man do they drive me crazy.

ARACELY: I began writing again but not lyrics I wrote novels. Who would have known I was a pretty good writer. I wrote about five books so far, some about my life some being fiction. Overall I love my life, I really do. I got to watch my kids grow up, Mara is actually trying to start her singing career. While my other three are still in high school. Life is good, really good.

MARA (lead singer of Harmony): My parents flipped when I started a band with my friends. But what can I say, I learned from them. We are pretty good, or many my dad is just saying that because he's our producer. Either way, I love making music. It must be in my DNA.

KAREN: After I left The Six, I took gigs playing in one touring band or another for twenty years. Retired in the late nineties. I did what I wanted with my life and I don't regret any of it in the slightest. My whole life, I have been a person who loves to sleep in a bed alone. And Graham is a guy who likes to wake up next to somebody. If he had had it his way, I'd've conformed to what everybody else did, to what everybody else wanted for their lives. But it wasn't what I wanted. Maybe if I was of the younger generation, marriage would have been more attractive to me. I see the way a lot of younger marriages are these days, truly egalitarian, nobody serving anybody else. But that wasn't the mold I saw. That wasn't a mold most of us even had back then. What I wanted didn't fit in with having a husband. I wanted to be a rock star. And then I wanted to live alone. In a house in the mountains. And that's what I've done.

BILLY: I packed it all in, signed a publishing deal with Runner Records and I've been writing songs for pop singers since 'eighty-one. It's a good life. It's been quiet and stable even though I spent the eighties and nineties in a noisy house with three screaming girls and a great woman.
Somebody said the other day that I gave up my career for my family. And I suppose I did, though I think that makes it sound like it was more noble than it was. It was just a man hitting his limit. Not sure how much nobility there really is in that. It's more that I knew that if I was going to hit that bar Camila had set for me, I had to walk away from that band. You know, I didn't talk to you very much about all of this when you were growing up. Never wanted to bog you down with my own issues, my own stories. Your life isn't about me, honey, my life is about you. But I will say that I'm thankful to you for asking these questions and giving me something to do. I hope this sheds some light on all of it for you, sweetheart. I really do. About your mom and me and the band. Sometimes I'm surprised people still care. I'm surprised they still play us on the radio. Sometimes I listen. The other day, they were playing "Turn It Off" on the classic rock station. I sat in the car in the driveway and listened. [Laughs] We were pretty good.

DAISY: We were great. We were really great.

NIK SPEAKS: THANK YOU FOR ALL THE LOVE ON THIS BOOK IT MEANS SO MUCH. SO SAD TO END IT BUT I PLAN ON WRITING ANOTHER ONE HOWEVER WITH A MALE OC. THIS WAS MAINLY BASED OFF THE BOOKS BUT FOR MY NEXT ONE I WILL BASE IT OFF THE SHOW!! MUCH LOVE!!