He said, “Too hard rock.”
I kept naming songs and Teddy kept saying that Rich was right. The songs were good but we needed something with crossover appeal. He said we had to aim for number one. Our first album had done well but if we wanted to grow, we needed to aim higher.
I said, “Sure, but we aren’t trying to get to number one, necessarily. That’s for lowest common denominator stuff.”
Teddy said, “You should be aiming to be number one because you’re making the greatest fucking music out there.”
It was a fair point.
BILLY: I don’t remember whose idea it was to do a duet. I know I wouldn’t have come up with it.
EDDIE: When Teddy said he thought we should make “Honeycomb” a duet, I was even more confused. He was going to take the softest song on the album, add a female vocal to it, and that was going to fix the problem? That just made it even more of a Top 40 thing.
I said to Pete, “I will not be in a fucking soft rock band.”
BILLY: “Honeycomb” is a romantic song, but it’s also kind of wistful. I’d written it about the life that I promised Camila. She wanted to move to North Carolina one day, when we were old and settling down. Her mother had grown up there. She wanted to get a place close to the water. Have a big lot of land with the closest neighbor a mile away.
It was a pledge I’d made her. That I would give her that one day. A big farmhouse, lots of kids. Some peace and quiet after all the storms I’d put her through. That’s what “Honeycomb” was about. It didn’t make any sense to have someone else come in on it.
Teddy disagreed. He said, “Write a part for a woman in it. Write what Camila would say back to you.”
GRAHAM: I thought we should give Karen a shot at the duet. She had a great voice.
KAREN: I don’t have the kind of voice that can carry a lead part. I can do you a solid and back you up in the chorus but I can’t hold my own.
WARREN: Graham was always tripping over himself to pay Karen a compliment. I was always thinking, It’s not gonna happen for you, man. Get over it.
BILLY: Teddy had all these ideas about bringing in a woman from the dance club scene. I did not like that.
KAREN: Teddy named about ten girls until Billy finally relented. I watched it happen.
Billy was going down the list Teddy had written just going, “No. No. No. Tonya Reading? No. Suzy Smith? No.” And then Billy goes, “Who is Daisy Jones?”
And Teddy got all amped up, said he was hoping Billy would ask that because he thought Daisy was the one.
GRAHAM: Now, I’d heard Daisy sing at the Golden Bear a few months back. I thought she was sexy as hell. Her voice was so raspy and cool. But I didn’t think she fit on the record. She was younger, poppier. I said to Teddy, “Why can’t you get us Linda Ronstadt?” Everybody had a thing for her back then. But Teddy said it should be someone from our label. He said Daisy had a more commercial vibe that we could benefit from.
I had to admit I saw where Teddy was coming from.
I said to Billy, “If Teddy is trying to bring in a different demographic, Daisy makes sense.”
BILLY: Teddy wasn’t letting up. Daisy Daisy Daisy. Even Graham started in on me. I said, “Fine. If this girl Daisy wants to do it, then we’ll try it.”
ROD: Teddy was a good producer. He knew people in town were just starting to get excited about Daisy Jones. If this song turned out well, it could make a splash.
DAISY: I had heard of The Six, obviously, being on the same label and everything. And I’d heard their singles on the radio.
I hadn’t bothered to listen to their debut album that much but when Teddy played me SevenEightNine, I was blown away. I loved that album. I must have listened to “Hold Your Breath” about ten times in a row.
I loved Billy’s voice. There was something so plaintive about it. So vulnerable. I thought, This is the voice of a man who’s seen things. I thought it was so evocative to sound broken the way he did. I didn’t have that. I sounded like a cool new pair of jeans and Billy sounded like the pair you’ve had for years.
I could see the potential of how we could really complement each other. So I kept listening to their cut of “Honeycomb,” and I could feel something missing. I read the lyrics and I…I really got that song.
This felt like my shot to offer something up, to add something. I was excited to get in the studio because I thought I could really be of use.
BILLY: We were all there in the studio that day when Daisy came in and I thought everybody but me and Teddy should have gone home.
DAISY: I was going to wear one of my Halstons. And then I woke up late and lost my keys and couldn’t find my pill bottle and the morning got away from me.
KAREN: When she showed up, she was wearing a men’s button-down shirt as a dress. That was it. I remember thinking, Where are her pants?
EDDIE: Daisy Jones was the most gorgeous woman I ever laid eyes on. She had those big eyes. Those super-full lips. And she was as tall as I was. She looked like a gazelle.
WARREN: Daisy had no ass, no tits. A carpenter’s dream as they call ’em. Flat as a board, easy to nail. Well, I don’t know if she was easy to nail. Probably not. The way men reacted to her, she held all the cards and she knew it. When Pete saw her, he might as well have let his tongue roll out of his mouth.
KAREN: She was so pretty that I worried I was staring at her. But then I thought, Hell, she’s probably been stared at her whole life. She probably thinks looking means staring.
BILLY: I saw her and I introduced myself, and I said, “Glad to have you here. Thanks for helping us out.” I asked if she wanted to talk about the song a bit, practice what she was gonna lay down.
DAISY: I’d been working on it all night. I’d been in the studio with Teddy a few days before, listening to it over and over. I had a good idea of what I wanted to do.
BILLY: Daisy just said, “No, thanks.” Like that. Like I had nothing of value to offer.
ROD: She went right into the booth and started warming up.
KAREN: I said, “Guys, we don’t all need to be here watching her.” But nobody moved.
DAISY: I finally had to say, “Can I have some room to breathe, please?”
BILLY: Finally everybody started funneling out except me, Teddy, and Artie.
ARTIE SNYDER: I miked her up in one of the iso booths. We did a couple test runs and for whatever reason, the mike wasn’t working.
It took me about forty-five minutes to get that mike going. She was standing there, singing into it on and off, going, “Testing, testing, one two three.” Helping me out. I could feel Billy getting more and more tense. But Daisy was so calm about it. I said, “I’m sorry about this,” and she said, “It takes as long as it takes and you’ll get it when you get it.”