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1980, September
Billy Dunne
Billy has gotten used to not opening envelopes unless they have the purple "private and confidential" stamp across the top left of the manila. He knows then that they contain the cheques. He can't really remember signing up to the collection societies but they come in as well, twice a year with enough to live a fairly comfortable life. He hasn't considered what would happen if they stopped because he's fundamentally aware of how unstoppable those songs he and Daisy wrote seem to be.
Three years he's been ignoring it all now.
His time is mostly spent building and repairing. He sometimes thinks that he will never be able to atone for whatever the amount of misery he has left in his wake, even when he's not sure what it is he's genuflecting towards on any given day. Last night for instance, after a day of dealing with a dipshit electrician who managed to blow almost every fuse in the place, he had sat dutifully on the couch with Camila and watched TV. There's a middling comedy on and one of the characters had red hair, like copper. Camila stiffens and moves to the edge of the couch, and there he's left, no idea of whether it'll be like this every time somebody with red hair pops on a screen. Camila had mentioned casually that in the next year they may try for another child. Billy wonders silently if the child had red hair, if prison life would be preferable to the fights that would inevitably occur.
Every letter that doesn't have that mark across it goes into a pile that is never opened. It grows like a hydra. For every royalty statement there are four legal documents that mean nothing. On top of that, every letter is a reminder of the sheer chaos that was the Six and their lack of a manager. He forgets he was in a band a lot. They've moved away from the temptations and the memories, cutting a California house that is now almost fully formed from the shell that the royalties of 1978 brought.
Billy has no idea what to do with the money. It comes in and it comes in and it just keeps coming. It’s a source of wonderment that these songs, these tiny birds that left the nest have returned with gifts so extravagant that he’s almost ashamed every time he makes a deposit. He’s spent it on his Mother, Camila’s parents. He went to see some slimy bastard in a suit who Teddy had said was the best in the business and set up the trusts for Julia that would mean a stress free life for her. The thought of Julia getting older, the future laid out before her and he wondered often what kind of guide he would be.
And then there are the letters forwarded on from the label, the fan mail. There is no fucking chance he is opening that. The first year was staggering, four sackfuls arrived one March alone. He had actually opened the first handful and they were desperate.
‘Your music means more to me than anything’
‘What’s your favourite colour?’
‘What is Please about?’
‘Will the band ever get back together?’
‘What’s Daisy’s favourite song?’
He burned the first sack out back and then felt bad, remembering himself at thirteen listening to the Beatles and The Who and The Byrds and how crushed he would be if they were sitting burning anything he would send them in a letter. He eventually forwarded them onto his Mother. There was less guilt in that strangely enough. She had always been amazed at their success and liked to brag to her friends at their bridge nights.
He’s not sure where he is going. ‘Is this it?’ he finds himself saying. He’s happy, as happy as he can be. There’s security, peace, plenty to do in an ever expanding house. And yet he feels like he is sometimes walking through a minefield in the dark. The last time he was in LA to sort out land deeds and other boring crap, there was graffiti on the way that said
‘IF YOU'RE NOT IN LOVE WITH LOVE YOU'RE NOT ALIVE’
Did he feel alive? What did he feel? There was a hollowness sometimes that just shattered him. Perhaps he was having a midlife crisis earlier than normal. Maybe his entire life had been a midlife crisis.
Camila had been selling her photographs and taking commissions, disappearing during the day with a bag of lenses and spending hours at labs and chemists. He knows that she feels more confident in herself. He knows that she loves him. He’s also not sure that he’s worth the amount of love she gives. He takes Julia out to parks and malls, watching her press her head against the car window as they pull into enormous car parks. She loves the movies and he takes her once a month, sitting in the dark smiling as her mouth opens in shock or excitement. She looks more like her mother every passing day, all dark eyes and tilting mouth but she’s quick to temper like him and shuts herself off against anything she doesn’t want to face. He loves her with something he never knew existed within him, a gaze that can’t be turned away from.
The truth though is he had expected it to have moved on by now. The slight nervousness at anything that may bring back bad memories, the disappearing conversations before bed.
It’s September when the second quarter cheque hits the mat. There’s another in the envelope. It’s for an enormous sum. It almost makes him fall back into the seat, he feels faint. He just sits there looking at it, turning it over in his fingers as if it may be a mistake. It’s an eternity until he sees the other envelope that is behind the others. He recognises the writing and something inside of him falls on its side.
The cheque and the unopened letter sit goading him for over a week. He says nothing to Camila. He says very little. It’s a constant battle between them. She craves the right words and he has always had few to bestow. Back in the days when they were in the studio he could speak all night. But he had no interest in anything else to allow for conversation, no matter how polite.
‘Why don’t you speak to me?’
“I don’t have much to say right now, I don’t do much Cam. it’s all really boring stuff like building swings and fixing toilets or trips to that new mall.’
And she looks at him for a moment then swings her head gently from side to side and huffs a little. And he can’t say to her that he has no hobbies anymore, that she shares none of his excitement for the music he has buried. It’s cruel, because they know that Daisy did have that excitement.
He curses himself every time her name arrives in his mind, not because of any betrayal or guilt but because for a month after it, all he dreams of or thinks of or sees is her. He would think it would be over by now. Now this fucking envelope, this fucking thing sitting there goading him for a reaction has turned everything to shit. Every morning Cam remarks on how badly he slept. He blames the odd heat for the time of year and doesn’t mention the dream of himself as a teenager meeting Daisy Jones who propositions him with a trip to the beach, or the one about him meeting her in Greece. What the fuck was that about? He had never been abroad for Christ’s sake. And why Greece where she married that scumbag?
Is this what it’s always going to be?
Salvation of a form comes when Camila and Julia head to Pittsburgh for her parent’s anniversary. He’s about as welcome as food poisoning there and always will be, so he volunteers to stay behind. He can take that. He drops them at the airport and heads home, pulls the envelopes down. It’s the closest he’s wanted to drink for years. He looks at the cheque and wonders what the hell he can do with all that money. He looks at the envelope with the writing and smells it. There’s nothing. He imagines the saliva, her licking the envelope closed. He’s about to open it and then he hears it on the TV, low, all murmuring, unobtrusive dominance. A fucking cereal advert and it’s his music, their music playing over it. His voice.
Her voice.
They had used Aurora to sell a fucking frosted cereal. He could cry. His favourite song that started as a prayer to his wife but ended up a burning devotion to his bandmate. The cheque made sense then, but how the fuck that had happened was beyond him. He thought back, it was credited to him and Daisy even though she hadn’t added much to the words or music her performance and encouragement had made it. And he had sung it to her in the studio when they were recording it. Who allowed that shit to happen?
He kicked a chair over in frustration. Camila would ask why it was broken. He didn’t give a fuck. He grabbed at the letter like he used to grab a bottle.
1980, June
Daisy Jones
Daisy Jones remains famous. The newspapers all say it, the magazines all say it and the TV certainly says it. It was now two years since her return to music without the Six and in those two years it seemed like every month there was a striking new controversy; a new man, a new venture. Most of it was crap. What sobriety had brought Daisy Jones was a desire for control, a control she had never had before.
With control though, came boredom. Like, for example, this meeting. So here she sits on a boiling hot late June morning (even that says something, she thinks), in this air conditioned four hundred feet office signing documents that are placed precisely in front of her, one after the other, a conveyor belt of promises. The pens lined up like implements of torture.
The first is the new publishing deal that has been negotiated since the previous one she had signed with the rest of the Six had elapsed. She has no memory of signing the original, she thinks perhaps it was a day that involved some form of psychedelic which would no doubt make it invalid anyway. The new company had been one of three chasing her signature, the other two had taken her out for ever more expensive dinners with wild promises, while the winner had talked to her about music and her plans for the future without referring to the Six. It had been ‘the future, the future, the future’ and Daisy considered that the only way to live. They had done their homework well and she had chosen them.
The second raft of paper is the renegotiation of her contract with Warners. Another three LPs over the next five years is the term and so clear is her mind and purpose now with regards to music and songwriting, that she feels she could produce those in the next year without blinking. As long as she has control over what she does and who she works with she doesn’t care about time. She rushes the signature, remembering her old strong one from her early touring days. She doubts whether ‘stay solid, Daisy J x’ would stand up in court now.
The next is the tour contract for management and session work. She signs them off. Rod took some convincing, Warren none. The others came recommended by Teddy during the recording sessions; the bass player who could swing better than Eddie, the hammond player who could harmonise better than Karen. The guitarists who could play better than her and do the things she couldn’t. Like Graham. Like Billy.
She’s surprised that it has only been a few hours today before the name re-enters her brain like an alarm call. “Good morning! You’ve not thought about the guy that wrecked your life this week, have a nice day!’ Simone once pointed out she was lucky that Billy had disappeared. If he read the papers on the other hand then he would be reminded of her on a weekly basis. She sometimes wished it was the opposite way.
“Is this it all?” she asks, suddenly irritated. She wants to be home, sitting at the piano with the out of tune D key, drinking tea and thinking of metaphors.
“It is,” says the lawyer. “Oh apart from this.”
She hands over some documents.
“What’s this?’
“Your old publishing company and Ellemar have OK’d one of your old songs for use in advertising. There’s a lot of money in it for you. I think it was their last hurrah before you changed label and publishers. You don’t need to sign anything, just that you’re aware of it.” She says the last part dismissively as if it means nothing.
Daisy looks up and can feel herself flushing.
“Can they do this? Without my permission?”
“Pretty much. I’m surprised nobody did this before. The contracts you signed…..weren't that great. If you had better advice at the time….”
She’s reading it now, the first thing she notices is that the song is Aurora. Straight away the old anger comes back, the anger and impulsiveness that it took a year to control. She runs through the triggers and mantras and every fucking thing she can think of to compose herself. It lasts two seconds.
“A fucking CEREAL?!’ she explodes, and the lawyer starts glancing at who is in the waiting room through the frosted glass barrier. “No, fuck this Juliette. This isn’t happening. I want you to stop this.” Her finger snaps down on the desk to emphasise her point. She can feel herself getting upset. Those songs were holy relics to her, memories, keepsakes. For the fans who bought it and listened to it, until they wore it out. She remembers her words to Teddy, it feels like a lifetime ago.
“There’s not much we can do. The contract…’
“Fuck the contract. Who has agreed to this? Does Teddy know about this?” She can feel herself getting upset and she doesn’t like to do that in front of other people or in public. There’s always some photographer sitting in a bush ready to press the shutter.
“No, it has nothing to do with him. He never really had much of a contract with you. Nobody has been able to get in touch with Mr. Dunne, the other author. He doesn’t respond to mail or phone calls. He signed for a few things but didn’t respond.”
She closes her eyes, thinks of him then getting handed a wad of legalities. His face, his eyes. The bin they go into without thinking.
“I mean if he won’t do anything Daisy there isn’t much we can do. I don’t know what his contracts were like. He would have had a different publishing contract as he signed it before you joined.”
Daisy jumps on that like she’s drowning and reaching for the raft. “Step on it just now. Anything.’ She’s up and at the door, ignoring the protests. By the time she’s driving across LA, she is more certain than ever that this would be an affront to everything they shared, everything they created. She spends the afternoon drinking tea by the gallon, meditating and playing the same four chords over and over on the guitar. It’s odd that the news of a Six song and Billy has pushed her off the piano and back onto the guitar, she feels it like the early onset of a virus, the taste in the back of her throat. The chords rotate but go absolutely nowhere. “Fuck this,” she mutters.
Teddy answers on the third ring.
“Did you know some fucking breakfast company is going to use Aurora to advertise their shitty product?”
“Well Daisy it’s good to hear from you as well. How are you doing Teddy? I’m doing fine thanks, it’s been much better since I’m not getting my ass sued off again for not delivering another album, but how are you? Oh I’m fine Teddy you know….”
She sighs. “I’m sorry it’s just fucking annoyed me beyond belief.”
“It must be worth a lot?”
“That’s not the point Teddy,” she’s exasperated. “Remember what we talked about? About how the music means something to people? This just….shits on it from a great height.”
Teddy sighs and shifts the phone to his other ear. “Are you sure it’s just that?”
Daisy looks up to the ceiling and bites her lip. “It’s a part of my life. All of our lives. What we did, it just takes all of the pain and hurt and the joy and….I didn’t want to think about all of this again Teddy.”
He does his best but he can’t give her anything but words. An hour later after she’s shouted obscenities at the CEO of Ellemar, she dials a number and closes her eyes.
“Hello?”
“Graham. It’s Daisy.”
He’s naturally wary, if delighted to hear from her. He listens politely when he realises it’s all business.
“Daisy,” he sighs. “I’ve not spoken to him since my birthday. We don’t really speak much, he’s out in the woods in California. I think he’s holding it all together but he doesn’t know what he’s holding. He’s not going to listen to me talk about anything to do with the band. My girlfriend innocently asked him about the band at Christmas dinner and it was like somebody accused him of robbing an orphanage. I’ll do my best but I can’t promise.” He sighs down the phone. “It’s good to hear from you anyway”
“Yeah,” she says, unsure if she welcomes any of this. “Do you miss it, Graham?”
He hums for a moment, considering. “Most of it, yes. The obvious shit, no. Hey, tell Warren to give me a call? I miss his ludicrous tales of high life in LA.”
They laugh and put down the phone with vague promises to keep in touch that they both know they have no intention of really keeping except potentially meeting at future ceremonies.
Daisy is now tired to her bones. She realises that she’s been either talking about or thinking about her past for most of the day. She considers an early night (the irony of which isn’t lost in her), but is honest enough to understand that she’ll never sleep with this weight on her mind. She will not phone him. She has her lines in the sand, and no matter how faint they become she can still trace their outline. At the same time, she needs him to know that this isn’t what she wants. She fills the kettle and takes down some writing paper and her favourite pen, and looks at the address she managed to squeeze out of Graham. It’s a beautiful night, the light breeze comes through the windows. She sighs, sips and starts to write.
1980, September
Billy Dunne
The envelope is open and he's holding the paper in his hands. It’s folded neatly, in three bold lines. He wants a drink for the first time in years, but rubs the thought away, curses his stupidity. He remembers speaking to Graham on the phone last month to discuss Julia’s birthday wishes (a cuddly toy Miss Piggy and an actual puppet) and Graham spent the entire call humming and stammering.
“What is it Graham?”
“Eh, listen, I didn’t want to bring this up Billy, but I spoke to Dais….”
“Graham…..don’t. Just don’t”
He had changed the subject then to his new girlfriend. He wondered now was Graham telling him something horrendous had happened? Had she fallen back into old ways? Worse, was something seriously wrong with her? He banished that, if there had been something like that, Teddy would have told him, no sweetener or any of Graham’s pained hesitation.
So now he’s sitting trying to remember what her touch was like.
“Stupid bastard,’ he mutters to himself and opens the letter. The first thing he notices is there’s no return address. That settles him somewhat, it’s not an invitation to something immeasurable.
‘Billy,
I hope this finds you well. It’s June in LA and all is good.
I didn't want to write this, but I found out today that our music is going to be used in some shitty advertisements. My lawyer tells me there is nothing I can do about this but perhaps your contracts may prohibit it - you haven't responded to that however. I don’t know how you feel about this, they’re talking about a lot of money, but I never joined the band for money. I never wrote the songs with you for money. We never went through what we went through for money.
You may not read this letter. I hear you have pretty much cut yourself off from the past, I can understand that. I have as well until today. I feel this would demean everything we did together. If you can, Billy, please look at any contracts you have and if you have anything that can help then send them to my lawyers (address below). Even if it’s too late for this one I can’t imagine this will be the last attempt to rob us of the special thing we created.
I hope you do not abandon music forever Billy. What it cost us earlier, well that won’t be repeated. I find it helps me deal with everything and it would be a shame if we didn’t hear any more Billy Dunne music, shit lyrics about the weather or not.
Best wishes
Daisy’
It doesn’t hurt like he thought it would. He’s happy that she seems happy, that she’s playing again, writing again. He remembers Aurora on the TV and calls himself all the names under the sun for his stupidity. He spends an hour searching through folders and drawers, rifling through papers and contracts. He stuffs Daisy’s letter into his pocket and picks up his car keys and is driving, driving fast along back roads onto highways heading towards LA. He has the top down and is listening to the radio. The new music is earnest and sterile on the whole, it says nothing to him. It obviously says things to someone though. Teddy has told him more than once that when he needs to get back into something to do with music, he just needs to say the word. Billy isn’t sure what the word is though, his tongue doesn’t seem to work the way it did.
By the time he hits LA he has time to do two things, one is to stop off at Tower records where he picks up a lot of vinyl, asking the wide eyed kids behind the counter to recommend a few bands. He spends a fortune and has to get them to help carry them out to the car. The second is to stop off at the lawyers office who seems bewildered at his presence. He drops off contracts and paperwork and everything he has. He leaves a note and drives back. He has a lot of work to do.
1980, October
Daisy Jones
The first rehearsal for the tour is going well. The new songs are sounding almost lithe, they seem to straddle the turn of the decade in terms of tone and idea. The old and the new. She gives the band space to create their own ideas, only pulling back if they threaten to overwhelm the overall concept. The band are enjoying it, there is freedom in their performances and they are playing with sensitivity and they watch her and listen to her as she faces them. This is why she loves a band. It’s a gang striving for the best they can be.
One of the new songs, however, is a struggle. She wrote it as a letter song, corny as hell but there’s a reason they work in music. She just can’t seem to get the inflection and it is pissing her off. They do take after take. It doesn’t feel right.
“Why don’t we try something else?” suggest Stan, the bassist. “Can we come back to it?”
In the old days she would just ask and would get the answer about how to fix it. She shakes that memory off. Warren is looking at the list of potential songs which stretch over two pages. He looks up suddenly. “Are you sure about this?”
She knows what he’s talking about, a couple of Six songs. She’s not sure herself but when she had discussed it with Teddy and Simone they had both been adamant. It would be madness not to play any old ones. “If they work, they work,” she says. Warren shrugs and returns to the song list. She’s not looking forward to playing them. What if they are too raw? She remembers back when she was 15 and she snuck in to see the Byrds at the Whiskey, desperate to see them play Feel a Whole Lot Better . The whole gig she stood there, just waiting and they left the stage and she knew they wouldn’t play it. It went from the best gig ever to just alright.
“Warren, add Feel A Whole Lot Better to that will you?”
“Who sang that?”
“Consider yourself fired.”
He does a comedy protest and they’re all laughing when she spots her lawyer entering the room and beckoning her over. She excuses herself and tells the band to keep going.
“What is it?” she asks, irritated at the interruption.
The lawyer hands her over a folded piece of paper.
“I’ve been trying to get in touch with you but you won’t return my calls.’
“I was in New York. What is it?”
“Billy Dunne came in.”
She stops opening the paper. It’s like someone has just told her something a minute ago but she can’t hear properly and caught only the first word.
“Excuse me?”
“Billy Dunne came into the office in September and dropped off all of his contracts. What a fucking mess that was. I trust that was your doing?”
Daisy just nods, trying to calm the rising tension in her stomach, hoping her voice doesn't jump an octave. “Did he say anything?”
“No, not really. He just remarked it was a big office.”
She smiles at that. A tiny barb taken in the right way.
“The good news is his original contract didn’t have those required clauses. I’ve contacted the company and told them it’ll cost them a fortune to renegotiate, so they……”
“Tell them to pull every advert immediately. No more money unless they even think about doing it again. If they do, I want them sued off the face of the earth. We don’t advertise.”
The lawyer is plainly confused but has learned that her advice is not always what Daisy Jones requires. She simply nods and leaves. Daisy holds the paper like a communion wafer. She finds an empty office at the studio they are renting and takes deep breaths before opening it carefully. She recognises the handwriting, slanting to the right all confusing cursive and old fashioned letter ‘r’s.
‘ Daisy
I heard the song on the advert before I read your letter. Like you, I’m not a fan of using any of those songs for something so….mundane? Anyway, I’ve given your lawyer everything I have in the hope there is something there that may help. I’ll engage a new lawyer soon just to get on top of all of that, who knew that rock and roll was so…..fucking boring?
I’m glad you are working, It wouldn’t be right for you to stop, the world needs your songs. Remember, you made Honeycomb better - always remember that.
Keep strong
Billy Dunne’
Once she’s read it twice, she goes back into the rehearsal.
“Warren, let’s start with Kill You To Try”
1980, September
Billy Dunne
Billy gets back late after stopping for a burger. He transfers the records carefully to the small room he uses as an office/workshop, and sets up his old record player and amp. The speakers are in the loft and he almost puts his back out carrying them down on his own. Once he has it all set up, he gets his favourite chair and places the first solo Daisy Jones album on the platter. The arm comes down softly and then the satisfying quiet crackle, the promise before the magic. Her voice comes out of the speakers, loud and acapella before the band joins in.
He listens to it four times back to back. In the morning he listens to it again and gets his guitar from the cupboard.