On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever

Sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll. Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Daisy Jones & the Six (Ballantine, digital galley) has it all. Think of it as your fun, flashy ride back to the 1970s. Just put Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours” on shuffle, shift into cruise control and off you go. Sure, yesterday’s gone, but that doesn’t stop the characters in Reid’s novel from talking about the past.

The talk is essential because Reid structures the book as an oral history of a ubiquitous ’70s band that mysteriously combusted 40 years ago at the height of its popularity. Imagine a Rolling Stone cover story expanded into a book, a mockumentary charting the early rise of Billy Dunne’s blues-rock band, the Six, which really takes off when a producer suggests adding aspiring singer and songwriter Daisy Jones. Free-spirited Daisy — tall, blonde, gorgeous, with a distinctive raspy voice — has been hanging around the Sunset Strip since her early teens, popping pills and sleeping around with rockers and roadies. She and Billy — dark, denim-clad, sober after rehab — have both creative and physical chemistry. But he’s married to high school sweetheart Camila, who keeps him grounded after he went off the rails on the Six’s first tour. Bandmate Warren remembers those days: “I was getting laid, Graham was getting high, Eddie was getting drunk, Karen was getting fed up, Pete was getting on the phone to his girl back home, and Billy was all five, at once.”

If Daisy Jones & the Six were just a compilation of cliched memories, it would be pretty boring. Fortunately, Reid offers soapy drama, star-crossed romance, bad-band behavior and a lot of authentic-sounding details about making a hit album. The stock male characters play second fiddle to the more complicated women in their lives — Daisy, Camila, keyboardist Karen. There’s a photo shoot in the desert for an album cover that sounds so familiar as to be iconic. There are all-night sessions in the recording studio  and sold-out, weed-hazed gigs in anonymous cities. Reid also provides the lyrics to the songs that underscore Billy and Daisy’s rollercoaster of yearnings and regrets.

What she can’t provide is the music itself, which is why I’ve been listening to Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac, and why I’ll probably add Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt and The Eagles to my playlist for the book. But Daisy Jones & the Six may yet get a soundtrack of its own. Reese Witherspoon is reportedly working with Amazon on a 13-part streaming series, and someone’s got to write those songs. I hear Lindsey Buckingham might be available.