DAISY: Before I even really knew what I was doing, I leaned in to kiss him. I was so close to him I could feel his breath. And when I opened my eyes, his were closed. And I thought, This makes sense. It made sense in this deeply gratifying way.
BILLY: I lost myself, I think. For a moment, at least.
DAISY: My lips barely grazed his. I could feel them only in the sense that I was aware of having almost felt them. But then he pulled back.
Billy looked at me. And his eyes were so kind when he said it.
He said, “I can’t.”
My heart dropped in my chest. I don’t mean that figuratively. I could actually feel it sinking in my chest.
BILLY: I shudder thinking about it. About that time. How I could have made one small mistake that would have thrown my whole life away.
DAISY: After he turned me down, he sort of looked back at the keys, and I could tell he was trying to pretend that what had just happened hadn’t just happened. Probably for my sake. Although, I think a lot for his sake, too. It was excruciating. This lie he was trying to tell us both. I’d much prefer someone screaming at me than tensing up and staying still.
BILLY: When Graham and I were kids, our mom used to take us to this community pool during the summer. And this one time, Graham was sitting on the edge of the pool, toward the deep end. And this was before he could swim.
And I stood there next to him, and my brain went, I could push him in. And that terrified the hell out of me. I didn’t want to push him in. I would never push him in but…it scared me that the only thing between this moment of calm and the biggest tragedy of my life was me choosing not to do it. That really tripped me out, that everyone’s life was that precarious. That there wasn’t some all-knowing mechanism in place that stopped things that shouldn’t happen from happening.
That’s something that had always scared me.
And that’s how it felt being around Daisy Jones.
DAISY: I said to him, “I should go.”
And he said, “Daisy, it’s okay.”
BILLY: We both just wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened. I desperately hoped that one of us would stand up and walk away.
DAISY: I grabbed my coat and I grabbed my keys and I said, “I’m really sorry.” And I left.
BILLY: Finally, I had to be the one to go. I told Daisy we’d pick it back up later in the week and I got in my car and I drove home to Camila.
She said, “You’re home early.”
And I said, “I wanted to be with you.”
DAISY: I drove to the beach. I don’t know why. I just had to drive somewhere, so I drove until the road ended. I drove until I hit the sand.
I parked my car and I was feeling so ashamed and so embarrassed and so stupid and so alone and lonely and pathetic and dirty and awful. And then, I got really mad.
I got mad at everything about him. That he’d pulled away, that he’d made me embarrassed, that he didn’t feel the way I wanted him to feel. Or, maybe it was that I suspected he did feel that way and he wasn’t admitting it. But any way you wanted to spin it, I was angry. It wasn’t rational. I mean, what ever really is? But as irrational as it was, I was livid. I was furious. There was rage in my chest.
We are talking about probably the first man in my life who really saw me, who ever really understood me, who had so much in common with me…and he still didn’t love me.
When you find that rare person who really knows who you are and they still don’t love you…
I was burning.
BILLY: It was early enough in the day, I looked at Camila and I said, “What if we get in the car and drive somewhere?”
Camila said, “Where?”
I turned to Julia and I said, “If you could do anything right now, what would you do?”
And she didn’t hesitate. She screamed, “Disneyland!” So we packed up the car and drove the kids to Disneyland.
DAISY: My car was parked along the PCH and I heard this line in my head. Regret me.
All I had in my car to use as paper was the back of my registration and a gas station napkin. And I searched high and low for something to write with. There was nothing in the door compartment. Nothing in the glove box. I got out of the car and I searched under the seats and under the passenger’s seat was a stick of eyeliner.
I started writing. Lightning fast, maybe ten minutes. Beginning to end I had a song.
BILLY: I was watching Julia in the teacups with Camila and I’m watching them go around and around. And the twins are asleep in the stroller. And I’m trying to put the morning out of my head. But I’m losing my mind because…well, it was complicated, obviously.
And then, you know what I realized? It wasn’t very important. How I felt about Daisy. History is what you did, not what you almost did, not what you thought about doing. And I was proud of what I did.
DAISY: Did Billy’s actions really warrant the song? Probably not. I mean, no. They didn’t. But that’s the thing. Art doesn’t owe anything to anyone.
Songs are about how it felt, not the facts. Self-expression is about what it feels to live, not whether you had the right to claim any emotion at any time. Did I have a right to be mad at him? Did he do anything wrong? Who cares! Who cares? I hurt. So I wrote about it.
BILLY: We left Disneyland really late. I mean, they were shutting down the park.
Julia fell asleep on the way home. The twins had been asleep for a while. As we were driving back up the 405, I put KRLA on low volume and Camila put her feet up on the dashboard and her head on my shoulder. It felt so good, her head on my shoulder. I held my back straight and didn’t move an inch, just so she’d keep it there.
There was this unspoken thing between Camila and I back then.
I mean, she knew Daisy was…She knew that things were…[pauses] I guess what I’m saying is that in some marriages you don’t need to say everything that you feel.
I think saying everything that you think and feel…well, some people are like that. Camila and I weren’t. With Camila and I, it was much more…we both trusted each other to handle the details.
I’m trying to think of how to explain it. Because when I say it now, it seems crazy, that Camila and I never discussed the fact that I…It seems crazy that Camila and I didn’t have this open conversation about Daisy. Because clearly, she was a big factor in our lives.
I know it might seem like maybe it was a lack of trust. That either I didn’t trust her to know just what was going on with Daisy or that she didn’t trust me enough to have been able to handle that. But it’s really the opposite.
Right around this same time—give or take a few years, I can’t remember—Camila got a call from this guy from her high school. Some guy that was on the baseball team and took her to the prom and all that. I think his name was Greg Egan or Gary Egan? Something like that.
She said to me, “I’m gonna go get lunch with Gary Egan.” And I said, “Okay.” And she went and got lunch with him and she was gone for four hours. No one eats lunch for four hours.
When she got back, she gave me a kiss and she, you know, started doing the laundry or something and I said, “How was your lunch with Greg Egan?” And she said, “Fine.” And that’s all she said.
In that moment, I knew that what happened between her and Gary Egan—whether she still felt anything for him, how he felt about her, anything that might have taken place—all of that wasn’t my business. It wasn’t anything she wanted to share. That was a singular moment for her and it had nothing to do with me.
I’m not saying that I didn’t care. I cared a lot. I’m saying that when you really love someone, sometimes the things they need may hurt you, and some people are worth hurting for.
I had hurt Camila. God knows I had. But loving somebody isn’t perfection and good times and laughing and making love. Love is forgiveness and patience and
faith and every once in a while, it’s a gut punch. That’s why it’s a dangerous thing, when you go loving the wrong person. When you love somebody who doesn’t deserve it. You have to be with someone that deserves your faith and you have to be deserving of someone else’s. It’s sacred.
I have no tolerance for people that waste other people’s faith in them. None at all.
Camila and I promised to put our marriage first. To put our family first. And we promised to trust each other in how best to do that. Do you know what you do with that level of trust? When someone says, “I trust you so much I can tolerate you having secrets”?
You cherish it. You remind yourself how lucky you are to have been given that trust every day. And when you have moments when you think, I want to do something that would break that trust, whatever that is—loving a woman you shouldn’t be loving, drinking a beer you shouldn’t be drinking—do you know what you do?
You get your ass up onto your two feet, and you take your kids to Disneyland with their mother.
CAMILA: If I’ve given the impression that trust is easy—with your spouse, with your kids, with anybody you care about—if I’ve made it seem like it’s easy to do…then I’ve misspoken. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.
But you have nothing without it. Nothing meaningful at all. That’s why I chose to do it. Over and over and over. Even when it bit me in the ass. And I will keep choosing it until the day I die.
DAISY: I called Simone that night, when I got back to my place. She was in New York. I hadn’t seen her in a month or so, maybe more, by that point.
And it was one of the first nights in a really long time that I spent alone, not hanging out with anybody, not partying with somebody somewhere. It was just me in my cottage. It was so quiet it hurt my ears.
I called her and I said, “I’m all alone.”
SIMONE: I could hear this deep sadness in her voice. Which is rare with Daisy if only because she’s usually hopped up on something. Do you realize how sad you have to be to be sad on coke and dexies? I knew, if she knew how often I was thinking about her, she wouldn’t feel lonely.
DAISY: Simone said, “Do me a favor. Picture a map of the world.”
I was not in the mood. She said, “Just picture it.” So I did.
And she said, “And you’re in L.A. You’re a blinking light, you with me so far?”
And I said, “Sure.”
“And you know you blink brighter than anybody. You get that, don’t you?”
And I said, “Sure.” Just humoring her.
And then she said, “And then in New York today, and London on Thursday and Barcelona next week, there’s another blinking light.”
“And that’s you?” I said.
She said, “That’s me. And no matter where we are, no matter what time of day it is, the world is dark and we are two blinking lights. Flashing at the same time. Neither one of us flashing alone.”
GRAHAM: Billy called me at three in the morning one night. Karen was with me. I only answered the phone because I thought somebody must have died if I’m getting a call at three in the morning. Billy didn’t even say hello, he just said, “I don’t think this is gonna work.”
And I said, “What are you talking about?”
And he said, “Daisy’s gotta go.”
And I said, “No. Daisy is not gonna go.”
But Billy said, “I’m asking you, please.”
And I said, “No, Billy. C’mon, man. We’re almost done with the album.”
And he hung up the phone and that was the end of it.
CAMILA: In the middle of the night one night, I heard Billy get up and pick up the phone. I was pretty sure he was talking to Teddy. I wasn’t sure.
I heard him say, “Daisy’s gotta go.”
And I knew. I mean, of course I knew.
GRAHAM: I just thought he was freaking out because he wasn’t the star of the album anymore. I mean, I knew things between Billy and Daisy were dicey. But back then I thought music was just about music.
But music is never about music. If it was, we’d be writing songs about guitars. But we don’t. We write songs about women.
Women will crush you, you know? I suppose everybody hurts everybody, but women always seem to get back up, you ever notice that? Women are always still standing.
ROD: Daisy wasn’t scheduled to be in that day.
KAREN: We were sweetening “Young Stars.” I was in the lounge when I saw Daisy come in. You could tell she was whacked out.
DAISY: I was drunk. In my defense, it was five o’clock. Or close to it. Isn’t that the international drinking time? No, I know. I’m aware it was absurd. Give me a little credit. I know how crazy I am.
BILLY: I was in the control booth, listening to Eddie’s overdubs, trying to get him to slow his stuff down a little when Daisy whips open the door and says she needs to talk to me.
DAISY: He tries to pretend he has no idea why I want to talk to him.
BILLY: So I say okay and I step out into the kitchen with her. She hands me a napkin and the back of a bill or something. And she’s scrawled all over it in black smudges.
DAISY: Eyeliner pencil smears easily.
BILLY: I said, “What is this?”
She said, “This is our new song.”
I looked at it again and I couldn’t figure out what I was looking at.
She says, “It starts on the paper and then goes over to the napkin.”
DAISY: He reads it one time and then he says, “We’re not recording this.”
And I say, “Why not?”
We are talking by a window and it’s open and Billy leans over and he shuts the window. Just like, slams it shut. And then he says, “Because.”
BILLY: When you write a song that may or may not be about someone, you can be pretty sure they aren’t going to ask. Because no one wants to sound like a jerk who thinks everything is about them.
DAISY: I said, “Give me one good reason why we shouldn’t record this song.”
He started talking and I interrupted him.
I said, “I’ll give you five good reasons we should.”
BILLY: She put up her fist and then started counting her fingers off.
“One, you know it’s good. Two, you were just saying the other day we need something hard, something less romantic. This is that. Three, we need at least one more song. Did you want to write another one together? Because I’ll tell you right now, I sure don’t feel like writing together. Four, it’s written to the melody of that blues shuffle you’ve been working on so it’s already on its way to a finished song. And lastly, five. I relooked at the track list. This album is about tension. If you want it to have movement, thematically, you need something to break. So here you go. It’s all broken now.”
DAISY: I had rehearsed my speech on the way over.
BILLY: It was hard to make a case against it but I still tried.
DAISY: I said, “There’s no reason not to record this song. Unless, there’s something else bothering you?”
BILLY: I said, “There’s nothing bothering me, but I just say no.”
DAISY: “You aren’t the boss of the band, Billy.”
BILLY: I said, “We write together, and I’m not writing that with you.” Daisy grabbed the papers and stomped out of the room and I thought that was that.
DAISY: I pulled everybody in the lounge. Everybody that was there.
KAREN: Daisy literally dragged me by the sleeve.
WARREN: I’m standing at the back door with a joint in my hand and I feel Daisy’s hand on my shoulder and she’s pulling me back into the studio.
EDDIE: Pete was in the booth with Teddy. I’d been in the john. When I came out, Pete had come out, too. To see what was going on.
GRAHAM: Pete and I were sitting in the lounge, wo
rking on something when suddenly, everyone’s standing in front of us.
DAISY: I said, “I’m going to sing you all a song.”
BILLY: I found them all in the lounge. I was thinking, What the fuck is going on?
DAISY: I said, “And then we’re going to vote on whether it should get recorded and put on the album.”
BILLY: I was so angry it was like I surpassed hot and went cold. Just frozen there, stunned. I could feel the blood drain out of me, like someone pulled the stop on a tub.
DAISY: I just went for it. Nothing accompanying me, just singing the song the way I heard it in my head. “When you look in the mirror/take stock of your soul/and when you hear my voice, remember/you ruined me whole.”
KAREN: Her voice was guttural. Part of it was that she was clearly drunk or buzzed or something. And her voice was scratchy. But the combination of the two. It was an angry song. And she was angry singing it.
EDDIE: It was rock ’n’ roll! It was rage, man. She thrashed. When I tell people what it’s like to make a rock album, I tell them about that day. I tell them about standing there in front of the hottest chick you’ve ever seen in your life, while she’s singing her guts out, and everybody’s feeling like she’s about to lose her goddamn mind. In the best way possible.
WARREN: You know when she had me? When I knew that song was fucking great? When she said, “When you think of me, I hope it ruins rock ’n’ roll.”
BILLY: When she finished, everyone was dead quiet. And I thought, Okay, good. They don’t like it.
DAISY: I said, “Who thinks the song should be on the album, raise your hand?” And Karen’s hand went straight up.
KAREN: I wanted to play on that song. I wanted to rock out onstage with a song like that.
EDDIE: It’s a scorned-woman song but it was a great one. I put my hand straight up. And Pete did, too. I think he liked that it really felt like dangerous stuff, you know? So much of what we were doing on that album sounded so soft.
WARREN: I said, “Put me down as a yes,” and then I put my joint back to my lips and went back to the parking lot.
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