Taylor Jenkins Reid, Hutchinson

There has been a lot of hype surrounding Taylor Jenkins Reid’s new novel, which purports to be a biography of the (fictional) band Daisy Jones & The Six. Sadly, rather like that difficult second album, it’s very patchy. It’s written as an aural history with all the main players (band members, sundry managers, etc) all being “interviewed” to give us their story. The musicians we’re concerned with are The Six, an outfit who come across like The Band or Fleetwood Mac. We hear about how they were formed and follow them as they try to make a name for themselves in the US in the early 1970s. They have limited success at first but things take off when they hook-up with the pill-popping Daisy Jones who is a mover and groover on the Sunset Strip. Aural histories of real bands can be illuminating but this novel hits a bum note because, among all the affairs and drug taking, we never actually know what the songs sound like.