Daisy Jones & The Six

Few have been as vocal as this critic in deriding the output of Amazon Prime, a streaming service whose wholesale treatment of old and new product can be best described as careless. Shoddy prints, wrong metadata, frequently having no subtitles and generally dumping product as if the quality or presentation didn’t matter a jot. That’s a frustrating contradiction given how deep Amazon’s pockets are, but praise where praise is due; from producer Reese Witherspoon amongst others, new series Daisy Jones & The Six is a very accomplished winner, a roman a clef that looks back to the sixties and seventies and the early development of the folk-rock super-group that would go on to, erm, mirror the story of Fleetwood Mac.

Of course, if your central characters are meant to be mega rock stars, then you need a high-falutin’ cast to play them, and this adaptation of the bestselling book by Taylor Jenkins Reid isn’t sold short by the casting. Taking on the role of powerhouse rocker Daisy Jones, Riley Keough shouldn’t need too much introduction; she’s film and musical royalty as a precious nepo-baby, the grand-daughter of Elvis Presley no less, and is hardly dining out on family connection here. ‘No-one wants to hear your voice,’ she’s told in episode one, but Daisy Jones won’t settle for that, and doesn’t want to be anyone’s muse; she wants it all for herself, and that sets up plenty of conflict in the uber-male 70’s. Sam Claflin also does himself a lot of good with his portrayal of Billy Dunne, an ego-centric front man who struggles to make way for the headstrong Daisy in his band as they strive for chart glory. “Don’t put down roots in bad-ass’ is a savvy line that tells you were we’re going somewhere complex and emotionally dank, and its going to be fun getting there.

I’m all in with Daisy Jones, there’s six episodes online at the time of writing, and it’s working for me; the sixties atmosphere is well caught with early references to Linda Ronstadt and Burt Lancaster in The Swimmer that land, then Barry Manilow and Rollerball also get a mention, and for once, it’s a pleasure to see a rock biopic that isn’t officially licenced and has the freedom to make the characters more than just advertising shills. It’s also a bonus that there’s no murder and tragedy involved (for now), and the usual striving of meaning in a rock biopic is replaced by wide-eyed gawking at the romantic disagreements of the soon-to-be-famous. The cast are seen in two time frames, and distractingly look younger in their later years than they do in the main narrative, but it’s a relief to see performers aged up rather than down, and the original songs in the style of Fleetwood Mac are absolutely choice, Look At Us Now is a winner, and so is Aurora.

I interviewed the late Peter Green from Fleetwood Mac a few years back; a complicated procedure involving a flurry of faxes sternly warning me that no discussion of firearms, drugs or other germane topics would be tolerated. Green, with some moral support on the other end of the phone, managed to pass on two revived rock truisms over the course of a 15 minute interview slot – ‘Don’t be disappointed in disappointment’ and “Have a good time, all the time.’ If nothing else, this series probably has more of a take on what happened to Fleetwood Mac as the surviving members do. When so many rock films are stymied as dramas by their adherence to the wishes of the singer’s estate, it’s refreshing to see Daisy Six take the Velvet Goldmine approach; change the names and say whatever you damn well want. ‘Sometimes the back of somebody is the best way to see them’ seems like the moral here; Daisy Jones & The Six turns a backwards look into a fresh perspective on rock and roll stardom in the steely glam fashion of the A Star is Born reboot.