Alexa, play Rumours by Fleetwood Mac … followed by Aurora by Daisy Jones & the Six.
Years before Daisy Jones & the Six became a series for Amazon, author Taylor Jenkins Reid opened up about the inspiration behind her beloved characters, giving credit to former Fleetwood Mac band members Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham.
In a post for production company Hello Sunshine, Reid recalled seeing a performance of “Landslide” when Fleetwood Mac: The Dance (a TV special) re-aired on MTV when she was 13 years old.
“As the song was coming to an end, Stevie and Lindsey moved closer to one another, smiling tenderly, maybe even a little bit wistfully. Lindsey stopped strumming for a moment and Stevie let it fly as he watched from the sideline. And for one split second — truly, a slice of a moment — Lindsey put his fist under his chin and looked at Stevie as if she was a miracle,” Reid wrote. “And I thought, ‘Oh, they’re in love with each other.’ I did not think it in any sort of revelatory way. It didn’t even seem like that big of a realization. It just seemed obvious.”
When Reid learned that the two musicians hadn’t been in a relationship for decades at the time of the performance, she was shocked. Years later, she watched the full Fleetwood Mac: The Dance TV special on YouTube and sought a better understanding of the complicated dynamic between Nicks and Buckingham.
“When I decided I wanted to write a book about rock ‘n’ roll, I kept coming back to that moment when Lindsey watched Stevie sing ‘Landslide.’ How it looked so much like two people in love. And yet, we’ll never truly know what lived between them,” she explained about her 2019 novel. “I wanted to write a story about that, about how the lines between real life and performance can get blurred, about how singing about old wounds might keep them fresh.”
Nicks and Buckingham inspired Reid to create Daisy Jones (played by Riley Keough in the TV adaption) and Billy Dunne (Sam Claflin). Those aren’t the only two characters that can be tied to the real-life band, however. Suki Waterhouse, who plays keyboardist Karen Sirko on the series, named late Fleetwood Mac keyboardist and vocalist Christine McVie as inspiration.
“Karen Sirko is English onscreen so obviously I looked at Christine. An absolutely legendary woman. I was completely enamored with her,” Waterhouse told NME in March 2023.
Graham Dunne’s portrayer, Will Harrison, also pulled from Buckingham. “Graham is Billy’s little brother. He’s kind of the peacemaker in the group,” Harrison explained to the outlet. “Lindsey Buckingham’s [inspiration] can’t be ignored. There was a lot of fingerpicking stuff for me to play on this show and a lot of that was inspired by him.”
Daisy Jones & the Six starts streaming on Amazon Friday, March 3.
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