How Elvis’s granddaughter made the 70s sexy again! Inspired by Fleetwood Mac’s feuds, the chemistry between a rock princess and a ‘shower singer’ from Norfolk has made Daisy Jones & The Six a TV hit
- Daisy Jones & The Six loosely inspired by the antics of rock band Fleetwood Mac
- Within 24 hours of its release, the ten-part series soared to No 1 in Amazon chart
The moment in any drama where the fighting stops and the warring couple turn to one another and admit ‘I’d no idea we were so alike’ is a heart-stoppingly powerful one.
It happens in episode five of Amazon Prime’s hit series Daisy Jones & The Six, and by then I was already hooked on this intoxicating ten-part series charting the highs and lows of a fictional rock band in 1970s Los Angeles. Clearly, I’m not alone.
Within 24 hours of its release, the series roared to No 1 in the Amazon Prime Video charts, while the show’s accompanying debut album also made it to the top of the iTunes charts.
Based on a bestselling book of the same name by Taylor Jenkins Reid, the series is loosely inspired by the antics of the British-American rock band Fleetwood Mac, famous for their affairs, bust-ups, drug-fuelled dramas and the tumultuous relationship between lead singers Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham.
Within 24 hours of its release, Daisy Jones & The Six roared to No 1 in the Amazon Prime Video charts. Pictured: Riley Keough as Daisy
Early on in the series it becomes obvious that Daisy and Sam see themselves in each other and the love songs they have been writing have been coded messages to each other. Pictured: Camilla Morrone, Sam Claflin and Riley Keough (L-R)
Now, I think it’s only fair at this point to confess that I am a Fleetwood Mac obsessive, having followed the band since I was a schoolgirl and first read an article in a Sunday supplement about the complex dynamic between Stevie and Lindsey.
Tribute to the King’s guitar
As Elvis Presley’s granddaughter, Riley Keough was born to play the role of a charismatic, troubled, singer-songwriter fronting the world’s biggest band, one would assume.
But the 33-year-old has revealed that when she auditioned for the role she lied about being able to sing.
‘After they hired me, I remember [the producers] saying, ‘OK, well, Riley has a long way to come,’ said Keough, whose mother Lisa Marie Presley died in January aged just 54. ‘I didn’t even know how one gets to be able to sing loud. I went to a vocal coach and I was like, ‘They need me to belt.’ I sounded so bad that I started crying.’ The rigorous training to give her a voice worthy of Stevie Nicks clearly paid off, with Variety magazine observing: ‘Daisy Jones & The Six excels when it lets Riley Keough sing.’
As well as her vocal ability, eagle-eyed viewers may spot another nod to her famous grandfather. Daisy’s patterned guitar strap in episode two is a replica of the one that Elvis Presley used in a 1968 concert.
While Keough may be new to singing roles, she made her feature film debut aged 20 and five years later landed her first big-budget release with Mad Max: Fury Road, on the set of which she met her stuntman husband Ben Smith-Petersen.
And the Daisy Jones ‘counterparts’ — Elvis’s granddaughter Riley Keogh as Daisy, and Sam Claflin as Billy Dunne — are every bit as charismatic and, dare I say it, narcissistic as the originals.
Early on in the series it becomes obvious that Daisy and Sam see themselves in each other and the love songs they have been writing have been coded messages to each other.
As a celebrity interviewer, I’ve been lucky enough to meet Stevie several times and I even have the words ‘Stevie Nicks’ on Google alert on my mobile, which is probably why a ‘ping’ directed me to the Daisy Jones series in the first place.
It was only ever a matter of time before the show became my guilty pleasure, my fast-food fix of TV drama, and a winning combination of storyline, location, wardrobe and, of course, music!
Stevie once told me she was the June Carter to Lindsey’s Johnny Cash, and their compelling relationship produced some of the greatest love songs ever written: Landslide earned her £7 million alone.
She and Lindsey were musically competitive and they knew how to wind each other up . . . and probably still do.
‘I was never rivalrous with him but he was with me,’ Stevie confessed to me. ‘I ironed his jeans and sewed moons and stars on them. But as soon as we joined Fleetwood Mac and people started to single me out . . . I think he just wanted a nice woman and children and that was not me.’
She believed that if they hadn’t followed their musical dreams they would have married and had kids.
She said Lindsey told her: ‘I don’t care how much money we made and how famous we were, all Fleetwood Mac did was break us up and that was the thing I held most dear.’
Music fans like me will devour this series and find themselves transported back to rock’s heyday, but not everything has hit the spot.
The series is loosely inspired by the antics of the British-American rock band Fleetwood Mac
Riley Keough (left), who plays Daisy in the new ten-part series, and Stevie Nicks (right) in 1981
If, like me, you loved Stevie’s iconic dress sense (I even named some of my own floaty tops after her and still boast a ‘shimmering Stevie’ in my wardrobe), you will probably find Daisy’s dress sense not quite feisty enough.
No lip-syncing allowed
Lip-syncing was banned and the actors had to learn not just to look like a band, but perform like one, too, with a stage presence as magnetic as that of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. So before filming started they found themselves standing in front of a packed crowd at a club in Los Angeles.
But it was all a Hollywood mirage. The audience was a group of Amazon Prime executives and the venue was a studio. Show co-writer and producer Scott Neustadter said: ‘A week before we started shooting, my wife [producer Lauren Neustadter] was like, ‘They’ve never performed for a group, for a crowd. And I need to know that they can do that. Because if they can do it, they’ll be fine into a camera.’ We wanted to seem as authentic as we could, so we made them do a concert. And they killed it.’
Sam Claflin said: ‘It was a strange experience. It was the first time we were all in costume together, and we were on a stage. And at the last minute, they were like, ‘Oh, can you also introduce each song and do some banter between each number?’ ‘
There’s too much leg on display and too much material in the sleeves of many of her costumes. And while the Afghan fur collars and hotpants evoke the glamour of the era, they’re not quite Stevie.
Once, when I was interviewing her in her LA home (incidentally, somewhat similar to her dress sense, an explosion of plush seats and velvet cushions which managed to be both comfortable and over the top at the same time), she told me how she created her style.
The beguiling combination of witchy/fairy floaty stuff on top teamed with granny boots was something she thought she could wear as an old lady, as long as there was good lighting.
Luckily for all of us, she did. And watching Daisy Jones just reminds me how much I adore her and how huge the band’s contribution to our cultural life was.
So what are the other key ingredients turning Daisy & The Six into the nation’s guilty pleasure?
FROM BRIDGET . . . TO DAISY JONES
American author Taylor Jenkins Reid fell in love with books at the age of 13 when she read Bridget Jones’s Diary, by British novelist Helen Fielding.
But her best-selling 2019 novel Daisy Jones & The Six was inspired by the real-life story of Fleetwood Mac, a band whose creative output in the 1970s was intertwined with, and hugely complicated by, the members’ relationships with one another.
Jenkins Reid says she was captivated after watching the interaction between Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham at a reunion concert in 1997, many years after the couple’s tumultuous personal relationship had ended.
‘I kept coming back to that moment when Lindsey watched Stevie sing Landslide, how it looked so much like two people in love, yet, we’ll never truly know what lived between them,’ said Jenkins Reid.
‘I wanted to write a story about how the lines between real life and performance can get blurred, about how singing about old wounds might keep them fresh.’
Daisy and Billy pictured in the new series (left) and Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham (right)
Music fans like me will devour this series and find themselves transported back to rock’s heyday, but not everything has hit the spot, writes Chrissy Iley
Riley Keough (pictured as Daisy) has revealed that when she auditioned for the role she lied about being able to sing
THE MIDAS TOUCH
Oscar-winner Reese Witherspoon’s production company Hello Sunshine bought up the rights to adapt the novel before it even hit the bookstores.
The Legally Blonde star (worth £322 million) has also overseen the screen adaptation of bestsellers Little Fires Everywhere and Where The Crawdads Sing.
She has joked that if there is a sequel it will be called Daisy Jones & The Seven — with Reese playing on the tambourine.
As she said: ‘One prerequisite for every project that we do is: ‘Would I want to be in it?’ I desperately wanted to be in this project, but there’s nothing for me to play.’
Piano lessons for Suki
Practising for the role of Karen Sirko nearly drove model-turned-actor Suki Waterhouse’s boyfriend — Twilight and Batman star Robert Pattinson — round the bend. ‘He had ear muffs on in the corner, he was about to leave me,’ she says of her attempts to learn Light My Fire, by The Doors.
London-born Waterhouse plays an English keyboard player, loosely based on Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie, who died in November.
Although the 31-year-old had released a number of her own singles previously, she had never played the keyboards and had to take lessons. She said: ‘I bought a lot of stickers off Amazon and had C, D, stuck all the way up the piano.’
Suki Waterhouse plays an English keyboard player, loosely based on Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie, who died in November
Waterhouse was spotted by a modelling scout in London aged 16 and went on to appear in a lingerie campaign for M&S and on the cover of Vogue before dating Hollywood star Bradley Cooper and being photographed with Prince Harry, Cara Delevingne and Margot Robbie.
She released her first solo album last year. She said: ‘I’ve done 70 shows and two tours and have a label, so I have a lot to be really grateful to the show for.’
MAKING SWEET MUSIC
The idea was to create not just a soundtrack for the series but a collection of songs that could pass as a hit album — Aurora — from the 1970s.
Producers assembled a crack team of LA’s finest, including songwriter Blake Mills, who has performed with Joni Mitchell, and his creative partner Tony Berg, who has produced records by Bob Dylan. With help from British musician Marcus Mumford, Phoebe Bridgers and Jackson Browne, a total of 25 tracks were written — 11 of which made it on to Aurora. Bernie Taupin, Sir Elton John’s long-time collaborator, also offered advice.
Released on vinyl and to stream online, Aurora has become a huge hit in the real world, reaching No 1 in the U.S. iTunes chart. There is now talk of the band going on a real-life concert tour.
PLAYING A BLINDER
A self-described ‘shower singer’ from Norfolk, 36-year-old Sam Claflin’s performance as the good-looking boy from small-town America who follows his dreams to front a band has won him a legion of new fans.
He bagged the role after singing Elton John’s Your Song, which he joked was ‘the most un-rock ‘n’ roll song you’ve ever heard!’. He has also revealed that he couldn’t play the guitar at all but was saved by the Covid lockdowns, which pushed back production, giving him time to master the instrument.
Suffering two broken ankles as a child stalled his hopes of becoming a professional footballer, and he studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Two years later he landed the role of Philip Swift in Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and then appeared in the Hunger Games films.
More recently he appeared in the BBC series Peaky Blinders playing Oswald Mosley. Claflin has two children with the British actress Laura Haddock, from whom he separated in 2019.
BOHO FASHION SHOW
The series required 1,500 main costume changes, overseen by costumier Denise Wingate. Many of the clothes came from charity shops. Wingate has revealed that Daisy’s look was inspired by Linda Ronstadt and Stevie Nicks, and bandmate Karen Sirko (Suki Waterhouse) by Patti Smith and Chrissie Hynde.
She also recruited Love Melody — who made jumpsuits for Elvis back in the 1970s — to design two coats for Daisy Jones. ‘I thought it was nice to have a little bit of that history, Wingate said.
The show has inspired a boho resurgence on the High Street — denim flares, short-shorts, crochet halter tops — and online shopping platform Etsy reported a surge in searches for 1970s fashion.
THE WRIGHT STUFF
Actor Tom Wright plays music producer Teddy Price, who discovers both Daisy Jones and The Six — putting them together to build a chart-topping band.
His depiction in the series is said to have been inspired by record producers Quincy Jones and Tom Wilson, who produced albums by Bob Dylan, The Velvet Underground and Frank Zappa.
Wright’s acting career began almost 50 years ago and includes films and television shows such as Seinfeld and Star Trek.
By Tom Rawstorne
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