Daisy Jones and the Six

I’d spotted this book in the shops with the cover you see at the bottom of the text. To me it suggested a story about 1960s jet-setters in Monaco – practically the last thing I ever want to read about. So I passed it by.

Big mistake.

Daisy Jones is a fictional oral history of a fictional 1970s rock group and the events leading up to the recording and release of a fictional mega-selling album. Everyone involved – from musicians to managers and producers and relatives – is ‘interviewed’ and their words stitched together to paint a picture of how the band met, how they evolved and how they came to write and record what would be their biggest success.

The author has admitted that it’s all inspired – not based; she’s adamant about that – on Fleetwood Mac’s album Rumours. And though there are drugs and rehab and groupies and private jets, to me the book is less an exercise in 70s nostalgia than a cleverly constructed illustration of the creative process: everything it takes and everything it needs, whether wanted or not.

Because these characters argue. They fight and break up. They’re self-centered and charming, infuriating and funny, sometimes admirable and then the last people in the world you’d ever want to spend time with. Yet together they combine to create something truly memorable. And when it’s done, there they all still are: people with lives to live in a world we all recognize.

For a moment the star shines. Then it fades. As all stars do.