GRAHAM: Karen Karen was a great addition to the band. Made everything better. And she was beautiful, too. I mean, in addition to being talented. I always thought she looked a little like Ali MacGraw.
KAREN: When I said that I dug the fact that the boys in the Dunne Brothers weren’t trying to get with me, that doesn’t go for Graham Dunne. But I knew he liked me for my talent just as much as my looks. So it didn’t faze me much. It was sweet, actually. Plus, Graham was a sexy guy. Especially in the seventies.
I never got the whole “Billy is the sex symbol” idea. I mean, he had the dark hair, dark eyes, high cheekbones thing. But I like my men a little less pretty. I like it when they look a little dangerous but are actually very gentle. That’s Graham. Broad shoulders, hairy chest, dusty brown hair. He was handsome but he was still a little rough around the edges.
I will admit that Billy knew how to wear a pair of jeans though.
BILLY: Karen was just a great musician. That was all there was to it. I always say I don’t care if you’re a man, woman, white, black, gay, straight, or anything in between—if you play well, you play well. Music is a great equalizer in that way.
KAREN: Men often think they deserve a sticker for treating women like people.
WARREN: That was around the time Billy’s drinking seemed like it was getting a little over the edge. He’d party like the rest of us but when we all went off with the chicks we met, he’d stay up drinking.
But he always seemed fine in the morning, and we were all kind of going crazy out there. Except for maybe Pete. He’d met this girl Jenny in Boston and was always on the phone with her.
GRAHAM: Anything Billy does, he goes hard. He loves hard, he drinks hard. Even the way he spends money, like it’s burning a hole in his pocket. It was part of the reason why, with Camila, I was telling him to take it slow.
BILLY: Camila came out with us sometimes, but a lot of the time she waited at home. She was still living with her parents and I would call her every night from the road.
CAMILA: When he didn’t have a dime to make a call, he’d call collect and when I answered he’d say, “Billy Dunne loves Camila Martinez,” and then hang up before the charge kicked in. [Laughs] My mom always rolled her eyes but I thought it was sweet.
KAREN: A few weeks after I joined the band, I said, “We need a new name.” The Dunne Brothers didn’t make sense anymore.
EDDIE: I’d been saying we needed a new name.
BILLY: We had a following with that name. I didn’t want to change it.
WARREN: We couldn’t decide what to call ourselves. I think somebody suggested the Dipsticks. I wanted us to go by Shaggin’.
EDDIE: Pete said, “You’re never going to get six people to agree on this.”
And I said, “What about The Six?”
KAREN: I got a call from a booker in Philly, where I’m from. And he said that the Winters had pulled out of a festival there, asked if we wanted to play. I said, “Right on, but we aren’t called the Dunne Brothers anymore.”
He said, “Well, what do I put on the flyer?”
I said, “Not sure yet but I’ll get the six of us there.”
And I liked how it sounded, “The Six.”
WARREN: Part of the brilliance of the name was how close it was to “the Sex.” But I don’t think any of us ever talked about that. It was so obvious there was no need to put a finer point on it.
KAREN: I was not thinking about it sounding like anything.
BILLY: “The Sex”? No, that wasn’t a part of it.
GRAHAM: It sounded like sex. That was a big part of it.
BILLY: We played that show in Philly as The Six and then we got an offer to do another show in town. Another in Harrisburg. Another in Allentown. We got asked to play New Year’s Eve at this bar in Hartford.
We weren’t making much money. But I’d spend my last dollar taking Camila out whenever I was home. We’d go to this pizza joint a few blocks from her parents’ place or I’d borrow money from Graham or Warren to take her out somewhere nice. She always told me to cut it out. She’d say, “If I wanted to be with a rich guy, I wouldn’t have given my number to the singer of a wedding band.”
CAMILA: Billy had charisma and I fell for all that. I always did. The smoldering, the brooding. A lot of my girlfriends were looking for guys that could afford a nice ring. But I wanted somebody fascinating.
GRAHAM: Around ’seventy-one, we booked a few shows in New York.
EDDIE: New York was…it was how you knew you were somebody.
GRAHAM: One night, we’re playing a bar over in the Bowery and out on the street, smoking a cigarette, is a guy named Rod Reyes.
ROD REYES (manager, The Six): Billy Dunne was a rock star. You could just see it. He was very cocksure, knew who to play to in the crowd. There was an emotion that he brought to his stuff.
There’s just a quality that some people have. If you took nine guys, plus Mick Jagger, and you put them in a lineup, someone who had never heard of the Rolling Stones before could still point to Jagger and say, “That’s the rock star.”
Billy had that. And the band had a good sound.
BILLY: When Rod came up to us after that show at the Wreckage…that was the watershed moment.
ROD: When I started working with the band, I had some ideas. Some of which were well received and others…not so much.
GRAHAM: Rod told me I needed to cut out half of my solos. Said they were interesting for people that loved technical guitar work but boring for everyone else.
I said, “Why would I play to people who don’t care about good guitar?”
He said, “If you want to be huge, you gotta be for everybody.”
BILLY: Rod told me to stop writing about stuff I didn’t know about. He said, “Don’t reinvent the wheel. Write about your girl.” Hands down, best career advice I ever got.
KAREN: Rod told me to wear low-cut shirts and I said, “Dream on,” and that was about the end of that.
EDDIE: Rod started getting us gigs all over the East Coast. Florida to Canada.
WARREN: Let me tell you the sweet spot for being in rock ’n’ roll. People think it’s when you’re at the top but no. That’s when you’ve got the pressure and the expectations. What’s good is when everybody thinks you’re headed somewhere fast, when you’re all potential. Potential is pure fuckin’ joy.
GRAHAM: The longer we were out on the road, the wilder we all got. And Billy wasn’t exactly…Look, Billy liked attention. Especially from women. But, at least at that point, that’s all it was. Just attention.
BILLY: It was a lot to balance. Loving somebody back home, being out on the road. Girls were coming backstage and I was the one they wanted to meet. I was…I didn’t know what a relationship was supposed to look like.
CAMILA: We’d started to get into fights, Billy and I. I will admit I wanted something impractical, back then. I wanted to date a rock star but I wanted him available at all times. I’d get mad when he couldn’t do exactly what I wanted. I was young. So was he.
Sometimes it would get so bad that we’d stop talking for a few days. And then one of us would call the other and apologize and things would go back the way they were. I loved him and I knew he loved me. It wasn’t easy. But as my mother used to remind me, “You’ve never been interested in easy.”
GRAHAM: This one night, Billy and I were back home and getting in the van to head out to Tennessee or Kentucky or somewhere. Camila came to see us off. And when Rod pulled up in the van, Billy was saying goodbye.
He moved the hair out of Camila’s face and put his lips on her forehead. I remember that he didn’t even really kiss her. He just held his lips there. And I thought, I’ve never cared about anyone like that.
BILLY: I wrote “Señora” for Camila and, let me tell you, people liked that song a lot. Pretty soon, at our best
shows, people were getting up out of their seats, starting to dance, singing along.
CAMILA: I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I was technically a “señorita.” I mean, choose your battles. Besides, once I listened to it…“Let me carry you/on my back/the road looks long/and the night looks black/but the two of us are bold explorers/me and my gold señora.”
I loved it. I loved that song.
BILLY: We cut a demo of “Señora” and “When the Sun Shines on You.”
ROD: My real contacts were all out in L.A. by then. I said to the band, I think it was maybe ’seventy-two…I said, “We gotta go out west.”
EDDIE: California was where the cool shit was happening, you know what I mean?
BILLY: I just thought, There’s something inside me that needs to do this.
WARREN: I was ready to go. I said, “Let’s get in the van.”
BILLY: I went to Camila’s parents’ house and I sat her down on the edge of her bed. I said, “Do you want to come with us?”
She said, “What would I do?”
I said, “I don’t know.”
She said, “You want me to just follow you around?”
I said, “I guess.”
She took a moment and then she said, “No, thank you.”
I asked her if we could stay together and she said, “Are you coming back?” And I told her I didn’t know.
And she said, “Then, no.” And she dumped me.
CAMILA: I got mad. That he was leaving. And I blew up at him. I didn’t know how else to handle it.
KAREN: Camila called me, before we left on tour. Told me she’d broken up with Billy. I said, “I thought you loved him.”
And she said, “He didn’t even try to fight me on it!”
I said to her, “If you love him, you should tell him.”
And she said, “He’s the one leaving! It’s on him to fix this.”
CAMILA: Love and pride don’t mix.
BILLY: What could I do? She didn’t want to come with me and I…I couldn’t stay.
GRAHAM: We packed up and said goodbye to Mom. She’d married the mailman by then. I mean, I know his name was Dave but until the day he died, I called him the mailman because that’s what he was. He delivered the mail at her office. He was the mailman.
Anyway, we left Mom with the mailman and got in the van.
KAREN: We gigged everywhere along the way from Pennsylvania to California.
BILLY: Camila made her choice and there was a big part of me that felt like, All right, I’ll be single then. See if she likes that.
GRAHAM: Billy straight up lost his mind on that trip.
ROD: It wasn’t the women I was worried about, with Billy. Although there were a lot of women. But Billy would get so messed up after shows that I’d have to wake him up the next afternoon by slapping him across the face, he was that far gone.
CAMILA: I was sick to my stomach without him. I was…kicking myself. Every day. Waking up in tears. My mom kept telling me to track him down. To take it back. But it felt like it was too late. He’d gone on without me. To make his dreams come true. As he should have.
WARREN: When we got to L.A., Rod hooked us up with a few rooms at the Hyatt House.
GREG MCGUINNESS (former concierge, the Continental Hyatt House): Ah, man, I’d love to tell you that I remember The Six coming in and staying with us. But I don’t. There was so much going on, so many bands back then. It was hard to keep track, I remember meeting Billy Dunne and Warren Rhodes later, but back then, no.
WARREN: Rod called in his favors. We started playing bigger gigs.
EDDIE: L.A. was a trip. Everywhere you looked, you were surrounded by people who loved playing music, who liked to party. I thought, Why the hell didn’t we come here sooner? The girls were gorgeous. The drugs were cheap.
BILLY: We played a few shows around Hollywood. At the Whisky, the Roxy, P.J.’s. I had just written a new song called “Farther from You.” It was all about how much I missed Camila, how far I felt from her.
When we hit the Strip, that felt like we were really coming into our own.
GRAHAM: All of us started to dress a bit better. You really had to step up your game in L.A. I started wearing my shirts unbuttoned halfway down my chest. I thought I was sexy as hell.
BILLY: That was about when I got really into…what is it that people call it now? A Canadian tuxedo? I was wearing a denim shirt with my jeans, pretty much every day.
KAREN: I felt like I couldn’t focus on playing if I dressed in miniskirts and boots and all that. I mean, I liked that look, but I wore high-waisted jeans and turtlenecks most of the time.
GRAHAM: Karen was so fucking sexy in those turtlenecks.
ROD: Once they were starting to get some good attention, I set up a show for them at the Troubadour.
GRAHAM: “Farther from You” was a great song. And you could tell Billy felt it. Billy couldn’t fake anything. When he was in pain or when he was joyful, you could feel it.
That show at the Troubadour that night, as we were playing, I looked over at Karen and she was in it, you know? And then I looked at Billy, and he’s singing his heart out and I thought, This is our best show yet.
ROD: I saw Teddy Price standing in the back, listening. I hadn’t met him before but I knew he was a producer with Runner Records. We had a few friends in common. After the show, he came up and found me, said, “My assistant heard you guys at P.J.’s. I told him I would come listen.”
BILLY: We get offstage and Rod comes up to me with this real tall, fat guy in a suit and he says, “Billy, I want you to meet Teddy Price.”
First thing Teddy says is—and you have to remember he had this real thick upper-crust British accent—“You’ve got a hell of a talent for writing about that girl.”
KAREN: Watching Billy, it felt a little bit like watching a dog find a master. He wanted to please him, wanted the record deal. You could feel it dripping off him.
WARREN: Teddy Price was ugly as sin. A face only a mother could love. [Laughs] I’m just messing around. He was ugly, though. I liked that he didn’t seem to care.
KAREN: That’s the glory of being a man. An ugly face isn’t the end of you.
BILLY: I shook Teddy’s hand and he asked me if I had any more songs like the ones he’d heard. I said, “Yes, sir.”
He said, “Where do you see this band in five years? Ten years?”
And I said, “We’ll be the biggest band in the world.”
WARREN: I signed my first pair of tits that night. This girl comes up to me and unbuttons her shirt and says, “Sign me.” So I signed her. Let me tell you, that’s a memory you have for a lifetime.
* * *
—
The following week, Teddy visited the band at a rehearsal space in the San Fernando Valley and listened to the seven songs they had prepared. Shortly after, they were invited to the Runner Records offices, introduced to CEO Rich Palentino, and offered a recording and publishing deal. Teddy Price, personally, would be producing their album.
GRAHAM: We signed the deal around four in the afternoon and I remember walking out onto Sunset Boulevard, the six of us, the sun hitting us right in the eyes and just feeling like Los Angeles had opened its arms and said, “Come on in, baby.”
I saw a T-shirt a few years ago that said, “I Got My Shades on Cuz My Future’s So Bright,” and I thought the little shit that was wearing it doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He never stood on Sunset Boulevard, sun blinding his eyes, with his five best friends and a record contract in his back pocket.
BILLY: That night, everybody was out partying over at the Rainbow and I walked away, walked down the street to a pay phone. Imagine achieving your wildest dream and feeling empty inside. It didn’t mean anything unless I could share it with Camila. So I called her.
My heart was beating so fast as the phone rang. I put my fingers to my pulse and it was throbbing. But when Camila answered, it was like laying down in bed after a long day. I felt so much better, just hearing her voice. I said, “I miss you. I don’t think I can live without you.”
She said, “I miss you, too.”
I said, “What are we doing this for? We’re supposed to be together.”
And she said, “Yeah, I know.”
We were both quiet on the line and I said, “If I had a record contract, would you marry me?”
She said, “What?”
CAMILA: I was just so excited for him if it was true. He’d worked so hard for it.
BILLY: I said it again. “If I had a record contract, would you marry me?”
She said, “You got a record contract?”
That’s when I knew, right then. That Camila was my soul mate. She cared more about the record contract than anything else. I said, “You didn’t answer my question.”
She said, “Did you get a record contract, yes or no?”
I said, “Will you marry me, yes or no?”
She didn’t say anything for a while, and then she said, “Yes.”
And then I said, “Yes.”
She started screaming, so excited. I said, “Come on out here, honey. Let’s get hitched.”
Determined to make a name for herself outside of the Sunset Strip, Daisy Jones started writing her own songs. Armed only with a pen and paper—and no musical training whatsoever—Daisy created a songbook that soon grew to include rough sketches of over a hundred songs.
One night during the summer of ’72, Daisy attended a Mi Vida show at the Ash Grove. She was dating Mi Vida front man Jim Blades at the time. Toward the end of the set, Jim invited Daisy onto the stage to do a cover of “Son of a Preacher Man” with the band.
SIMONE: Daisy had grown her hair out really long by then, gotten rid of her bangs. She always wore hoop earrings and she never wore shoes. She was just very cool.
That night at the Ash Grove, she and I were sitting in the back and Jim tried to get her to go up there and she kept saying no. But he kept at it most of the night and eventually, Daisy got on that stage.
Daisy Jones & the Six Page 3