Is 'Daisy Jones & The Six' About Fleetwood Mac?
Fans of the legendary band are seeing a lot of overlap!
The streaming adaptation of the beloved book Daisy Jones & The Six will finally debut on Amazon Prime on March 3, 2023, and it seems like everyone has one major question on their minds: is the story based on the band Fleetwood Mac?
Fans aren't the only ones who have pondered the query—even author Taylor Jenkins Reid has admitted that Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks has been a major source of inspiration in her life. Read on to learn more about all the parallels between fact and fiction, and what the cast of Daisy Jones & The Six thinks.
Who is Fleetwood Mac?
Stevie Nicks was a teenager when she met Lindsey Buckingham in the 1970s and the pair began writing music together. They linked up with Mick Fleetwood a year later and joined his group, which also included Christine and John McVie, after guitarist Bob Welch left. The following decades included a lot of hit music and a lot of drama, and the band went through a number of ups, downs, departures, returns, and hiatuses. Despite all of that, Fleetwood Mac is responsible for some of the biggest rock ‘n’ roll songs of all time, including "Rhiannon," "The Chain" and "Go Your Own Way."
Related: Everything You Want To Know About Daisy Jones & The Six
What is Daisy Jones & The Six?
Written by Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones &The Six is a book about a rock ‘n’ roll band in the 1970s that breaks up when they are experiencing the peak of their success. The streaming adaptation stars Riley Keough, daughter of the late Lisa Marie Presley and Sam Claflin.
Is Daisy Jones & The Six really about Fleetwood Mac?
Listen: there are a lot of similarities between the real-life story of Fleetwood Mac and the fictional one of Daisy Jones & The Six. Both bands begin with three men and two women, including a woman as the lead singer (Nicks in real life and Keough in the show). Daisy Jones and her group also contend with many of the same highs and lows that Stevie Nicks and the rest of Fleetwood Mac did, namely ego, drugs, money, intense and rapid success, and excess in all its forms.
Ultimately, Daisy Jones & The Six crack under pressure, splitting up in 1977. Fleetwood Mac made it longer than that, going on their first serious hiatus in the 1980s, though members of the band have continued to sporadically perform and record together in the decades that have followed.
The show also draws plenty of inspiration from the styles of the 1970s, though it's as yet unclear if Daisy Jones will don Nicks' signature layers of black chiffon on stage. But flare jeans, long locks, and all things denim certainly dominate the vibe in both the show and in Fleetwood Mac's photo archives from the time period.
What has Taylor Jenkins Reid said about the comparisons?
Similarities between the book and the band haven't escaped those closest to production, including the author herself. Following the book's release in March 2019, Reid shared a story from her adolescence in the late 1990s that appears to have everything to do with her inspiration for the novel.
In a piece titled "How Fleetwood Mac Influenced Daisy Jones & The Six" on the blog Hello, Sunshine, Reid explains that the band's reunion show documentary The Dance was playing on MTV or VH1 throughout the summer of 1997, and it was then that she saw Nicks sing "Landslide" for the first time.
Reid writes, "The lighting was dim, she was in a gauzy black dress, her hair was big and blond. She shared the stage only with Lindsey Buckingham, who was just off to the side, accompanying her. She sang with such fragility and yet she seemed so confident and strong—and as she did, she kept looking back at Lindsey, her expression warm and intimate, but cryptic."
She eventually revisited the reunion show years later, this time around with an understanding she had gleaned from adulthood. Reid adds, "... two years ago, 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. 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."
From there, the book Daisy Jones & The Six was born—and viewers will have to begin streaming the show on March 3, 2023, to find out just how close the comparisons will be.
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