I said, “It seems more obvious that a man would be singing this about a woman.”
Billy said, “It’s more interesting if a woman is singing it. It gives it a haunting kind of quality.”
I said, “All right, I’ll take a stab at it.”
I took some time with it while everybody was lining out their parts. A few days later, I went in. I listened as everybody laid their tracks down. Just trying to find a way into it.
When it was my turn to get in there, I gave it my best. I tried to make it feel a little sad, maybe. Like I missed this woman. I was thinking, Maybe this woman is my mother, maybe this woman is my lost sister, maybe there is something I need from this woman. You know?
I thought, It’s wistful, it’s ethereal. That kind of a thing. But I was doing take after take and I could tell it wasn’t working.
And I kept looking to everybody, thinking, Somebody get me out of this mess. I’m flailing over here. And I didn’t know what to do. And I started getting angry.
KAREN: Daisy has absolutely no formal training. She does not know the names of chords, she does not know various vocal techniques. If what Daisy does naturally doesn’t work, then you have to take Daisy off the song.
DAISY: I’m just hoping somebody saves me from myself. I say I want to take five. Teddy suggests I go for a walk, clear my head. I walk around the block. But I’m only making it worse because I just keep thinking I can’t do it and Of course I can’t do it and all that. And I finally just give up. I get in my car and I drive away. I couldn’t deal with it, so I left.
BILLY: I wrote the song for her. I mean I wrote it for her to sing. So that made me mad. Her giving up like that.
Obviously, I understood why she was frustrated. I mean, Daisy is shockingly talented. Like it will shock you, to be near it. Her talent. But she didn’t know how to control it. She couldn’t call on it, you know? She just had to hope it would be there.
But giving up wasn’t cool. Especially not after trying for, you know, a couple of hours, tops. That’s the problem with people who don’t have to work for things. They don’t know how to work for things.
DAISY: That night, somebody knocks on my door. I was with Simone making dinner. I open the door and there’s Billy Dunne.
BILLY: I went there with the express purpose of getting her to sing the damn song. Did I want to go back to the Chateau Marmont? No, I did not. But that’s what I had to do, so I did it.
DAISY: He sits me down and Simone is in the kitchen making Harvey Wallbangers and she offers Billy one.
BILLY: And immediately Daisy blocks me and says, “No!” As if I was going to take the drink from Simone’s hand.
DAISY: I was embarrassed that Simone had offered it to him because I knew he already felt like I was a scummy boozehound drug addict. And if Billy thought I was going to knock him off the wagon, I was going to do everything in my power to make sure that wasn’t true.
BILLY: It…surprised me. She had actually been listening to me.
DAISY: Billy said to me, “You have to sing this song.” I told him that I just didn’t have the right voice for it. We talked back and forth for a while, about what the song meant and whether there was a way into it for me and finally Billy just said that it was about me. That he had written it about me. That I’m the impossible woman. “She’s blues dressed up like rock ’n’ roll/untouchable, she’ll never fold.” That was me. And something kind of clicked in my head.
BILLY: I absolutely never told Daisy the song was about her. I wouldn’t have done that because the song wasn’t about her.
DAISY: That felt like a breaking point into it. But I still said to him that I wasn’t sure I was the right sound.
BILLY: I told her that the song needed a raw energy. It needed to feel like it crackled under the needle. It needed to feel electric. Like she was singing to save her life.
DAISY: That’s not my voice.
BILLY: I said, “You need to go into the studio tomorrow and try again. Promise me that you will try again.” And she agreed.
DAISY: So I go in there the next morning and they had cleared out the place. The rest of the band wasn’t there. It was just Billy, Teddy, Rod, and Artie at the board. I walked in and I just…I knew this was going to be different.
ROD: I went out to smoke a cigarette as Billy pulled Daisy into the booth and started giving her a pep talk.
BILLY: I knew how the song was supposed to sound and I just kept trying to think of how to explain it to her. What I realized, eventually, was that Daisy’s all about effortlessness. And this had to be a song that sounded like it hurt to sing, like it was taking all the effort in her body. I wanted Daisy to feel, after she was done singing it, that she had run a marathon.
DAISY: There is a grit to my voice but it’s not a deep-in-your-gut kind of grit. And that’s what Billy wanted.
BILLY: I said something like “Sing it so hard, so loud, that you can’t control where your voice goes. Let your voice crack. Lose control of it.”
I gave her permission to sound bad. Think of how you sing when you’re singing to the radio at full volume. When you can’t hear yourself, you’re not afraid to really belt it out because you won’t have to cringe when your voice breaks or you veer off-key. Daisy needed that kind of freedom. That takes a crapload of confidence. And Daisy didn’t actually have confidence. She was always good. Confidence is being okay being bad, not being okay being good.
I said, “If you sing this song in a way where you sound good the entire time, you’ve lost.”
DAISY: He said, “This song isn’t meant to be pretty. Don’t sing it like it is.”
ROD: I came back in and Billy’s got Daisy in the booth with the lights dimmed, a Vicks inhaler, a steaming mug of tea next to her, a pile of lozenges and some tissues, a huge pitcher of water, I don’t know, you name it, it was in there with her.
And then Daisy sat down in a chair and Billy got right back up, jumped out of the control room, went into the booth with her again. He took the chair away, raised the mike. He said, “You need to stand up and sing so hard your knees buckle.”
Daisy looked terrified.
DAISY: He wanted me to shed every inhibition I had. Billy was saying that he wanted me to be willing to fail spectacularly in front of him—and Teddy and Artie. But I knew there was no moving past my own ego stone sober.
I said, “Can we get some wine in here?”
Billy said, “You don’t need it.”
I said, “No, you don’t need it.”
BILLY: Rod goes right in there with a bottle of brandy.
ROD: I’m not about to take away the easy stuff and have her running that much faster for the hard stuff.
DAISY: I took a few swigs and I looked at Billy through the window and I said, into the mike, “All right, you want it to sound a little ugly, right?” He nodded. And I said, “And no one’s gonna judge me if I end up sounding like a screeching cat?”
And I’ll never forget, Billy leaned onto the button, and said, “If you were a cat, your screech would bring every cat running to you.” And I liked that. The idea that just by being me, I was doing all right.
So I opened up my mouth and I breathed in deep and then I went for it.
BILLY: None of us told Daisy this and I…I hesitate in even saying it now but…her first two takes were god-awful. I mean, wow. I was starting to regret what I’d told her. But we just kept encouraging her.
When someone is out on a ledge like that, especially when you’re the one that coaxed them out there in the first place, you don’t dare do anything to unbalance them.
So I said, “Great, great.” And then eventually after, I think, the third take, I said, “Go one octave deeper.”
ROD: It was either Daisy’s fourth or fifth take. I think maybe fifth. And it was fucking magic. I mean, magic. I don’t use that word l
ightly. But it felt like you were witnessing something that only happened a few times in a lifetime. She just wailed. The record that you hear, that was Daisy’s fifth take, start to finish.
BILLY: She started so assured in the first verse, not quiet, necessarily, but even. Leveled. “Impossible woman/let her hold you/let her ease your soul.”
And she let that simmer a little bit, grew in intensity in this really subtle way through the next, you know, “Sand through fingers/wild horse, but she’s just a colt.” And on “colt” is where you really felt her start to amp up.
She went through another verse and then the first time she sang the chorus, I could see it in her eyes, she was looking right at me, and you could feel it building in her chest, “She’ll have you running/in the wrong direction/have you coming/for the wrong obsessions/oh, she’s gunning/for your redemption/have you headed/back to confession.” And it was when she repeated “confession,” then she really just let it fly.
Her voice breaks, in the middle of the word, it cracks just a little. And then she goes through most of the verses again. When she gets to the chorus a second time, she just unleashes her voice on it. It’s rocky and gritty and breathy and there’s so much emotion in it. It’s like she’s pleading.
And then she closes in on the end. “Walk away from the impossible/you’ll never touch her/never ease your soul.” Then she added a couplet. And it was great. It was perfect. She sang, “You’re one more impossible man/running from her/clutching what you stole.”
She sang the entire song with such a heartbreaking lament. She made that song so much more than what I’d given her.
DAISY: I opened my eyes after that take and I barely remembered doing it. I just remember thinking, I did it.
I remember realizing I had even more power in me than I had originally thought. That I had more to give, more depth and range, than even I knew about myself.
ROD: She was looking right at Billy the whole time she sang. And he was staring at her, nodding along with her. When she finished the song, Teddy started clapping. And the look on her face, the delight she felt, it was like watching a kid on Christmas. Truly. She was so proud of herself.
She pulled the headphones off and threw them down and ran out of the booth and—I kid you not—ran directly into Billy’s arms. He picked her up, just off the floor, and kind of swung her back and forth for a moment. And I could have sworn to you he smelled her hair before he put her back down.
DAISY: We were all in the studio recording one afternoon when Camila came in with the girls.
GRAHAM: I had said to Camila, “Why don’t you bring everybody here more often?” Because Camila would stop by occasionally but it was always for a minute to drop off something to Billy. She never came and hung out. But we had so many people hanging out back then.
Of course, the time she comes in to hang out for a little while, one of the twins starts crying for what seemed like no reason. Wouldn’t stop. I don’t remember if it was Susana or Maria but Billy took her and held her and tried to shush her and she would not calm down. I took her, Karen took her. It didn’t matter what we all did.
Camila ended up taking both of the twins outside.
CAMILA: Babies and rock ’n’ roll don’t really go hand in hand.
KAREN: I went for a walk with Camila and the girls one day at the studio. I said, “How are things going?”
And she just…opened up. Talking and talking like the words were tumbling out of her. The twins weren’t sleeping and Julia was going through a jealous period and Billy was never home. And then she stopped in place, as she was pushing the girls along with the stroller, and she said, “Why am I complaining? I love my life.”
CAMILA: What is it they say? The days are long but the years are short? Whoever said that was a mom with three kids under the age of three. Tired and cranky on an hourly basis, bursting with joy when you put your head on the pillow. Raising kids is hard work. It was work I was happy to do, though.
Everybody is good at something. I was good at motherhood.
KAREN: Camila had said to me that day, something like “I’m living the life I want to live.” And there was an ease about her, as she said it.
GRAHAM: While Camila and the twins were outside, Billy set Julia up in the control booth. She was there hanging out with Artie and Teddy and everybody while we all laid something down.
She had such a fun time in there. She was so cute with the cans on her ears and her tiny little dress. Her hair was still blond then. Her legs were so short, they didn’t even bend at the knee when she sat, just stuck straight out.
KAREN: I decided to tell Camila about Graham. I needed her help figuring out what to do.
I had…I never told him this, but I saw a letter from his mom on his nightstand one morning. And I hadn’t meant to pry but it was right there and a few lines stood out. His mom was telling him that if he really loved this girl he was with then he should make it official. And that freaked me out.
GRAHAM: I wanted a family. Not right then. But sure, I wanted what my brother had.
KAREN: I said to Camila, “What would you think if I was sleeping with Graham?”
She took off her sunglasses and looked me right in the eye. She said, “If you were sleeping with Graham?”
I said, “Yeah, if.”
CAMILA: He’d been in love with her since God only knows how long.
KAREN: We kept talking in hypotheticals. Camila said I would have to be taking into account the fact that Graham had had feelings for me for quite a while. Which…I knew but I didn’t know, I guess.
CAMILA: I told her that if she was sleeping with Graham and wasn’t feeling about him the way I knew he felt about her…well, I think I told her to stop.
KAREN: I believe she said, “Don’t hurt Graham or I’ll kill you.”
I said, “Aren’t you worried about Graham hurting me?”
And she said, “If Graham broke your heart, I’d kill him, too. You know that. But we both know Graham’s not going to break your heart. We both know which way this is going to go.”
I got a little defensive but Camila never really backed down from too much. She was very good at knowing what everybody else should do and she had no problem telling you. It was really annoying. How right she always was. And she would tell you “I told you so.” You’d do something she told you not to do and it wouldn’t work out and you’d find yourself bristling around her, just waiting for that “I told you so” to come. And she’d always land it right when your defenses were down.
CAMILA: If you come to me and ask me for advice, and then you don’t take my advice, and it blows up in your face exactly like I told you it would, what do you expect me to say?
KAREN: I told her, “Graham’s an adult. He can handle whatever he gets himself into. It’s not my job to make his decisions.”
Camila said, “Yes, it is.”
And I said, “No, it’s not.”
CAMILA: I told her, “Yes, it is.”
KAREN: And we just kept going on like that until I gave up.
DAISY: We were recording and Julia was in the booth. They had all come to visit Billy that day. And there was something wrong with my mike so I was sitting it out while everyone tried to fix it.
I went into the control booth and asked Julia if she wanted to get a cookie. She took her headphones off her head and said, “Does my dad say it’s okay?” It was so sweet.
Teddy leaned on the talkback button and said, “Julia would like to know if she may have a cookie.”
Billy leaned in and said, “Yes, she may.” And then he added, “Just make sure it’s a…normal one.”
I took Julia by the hand and we went to the kitchen and we split a peanut butter cookie. She told me she liked pineapples. I remember that because I love pineapples and I told her that. She got really excited, that we had that in common.
I told her we should split a pineapple sometime. And then Karen came into the kitchen and Camila was calling out for Julia and I brought her to her. Julia waved goodbye to me and Camila thanked me for watching her.
CAMILA: The whole way home, [Julia was] saying, “Can Daisy Jones be my best friend?”
DAISY: As soon as they left, Eddie called me and Karen back into the booth. And somebody, I don’t remember who, said I was good with kids. And then Eddie said, “I bet you’d make a great aunt.”
You don’t think to tell someone they will be a good aunt if you think they will be a good mom. But I knew as well as anybody, I wouldn’t be a good mom. I had no place thinking of being anybody’s mom.
I wrote “A Hope Like You” soon after that.
BILLY: When Daisy showed me “A Hope Like You,” I thought, This could work as a piano ballad. It was such a sad love song. About wanting somebody you can’t have and knowing you’re going to want them anyway.
I said, “How do you hear it?”
She sang a tiny little bit of it and I just…I heard it. I heard what it should be.
DAISY: Billy said, “This is your song. It should be just you and the piano on the track, that’s it.”
KAREN: That was a great song to record. I was really proud of it. Just Daisy singing and me on the keys. That’s it. Just two bitches playing rock ’n’ roll.
BILLY: Daisy and I wrote a lot of good stuff after that. We’d be working in the lounge at the studio or back at Teddy’s pool house if we needed some peace and quiet.
I would come in with something I was working on and Daisy would help me refine it. Or vice versa. We’d work on one of Daisy’s ideas.
ROD: It seemed like there was a period of time where Daisy and Billy were coming in with new stuff every day.
GRAHAM: It’s really exciting, when you’re constantly creating. We’d be working on tracks for “Midnights” or adding some layers to “Impossible Woman” and then Daisy and Billy would come in with a new one we were all excited about.
KAREN: It felt a little manic, that period of time. So many people in the studio. So many songs coming in and out. Recording and recording and recording. Playing things a thousand times, always trying to improve upon the last one.
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