DAISY: The crowd went crazy. The whole place started rumbling.
BILLY: I could feel my microphone vibrating as they screamed and stomped their feet and I thought, Holy shit, we’re rock stars.
By the end of 1976, “Honeycomb” had peaked at number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. The band, along with Daisy, had performed the song on Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. They had finished up their North American tour dates and were gearing up for the short European leg of the tour. Camila Dunne, now six months pregnant, returned with Julia to Los Angeles.
BILLY: I couldn’t make Camila and Julia stay out on the road with me indefinitely, I had to take control of it myself.
CAMILA: I knew him well enough to know when I needed to stay and when it was okay to go.
BILLY: The first night without them was hard. I remember sitting on my suite balcony after the show, hearing all the chaos outside, wanting to be a part of it. There was this voice in my head saying, You can’t do this, you can’t stay sober for much longer.
I ended up calling Teddy. It was the early hours of the morning but it was only about dinnertime for him. I made up something to talk to him about. [Laughs] I think we ended up discussing whether he should marry Yasmine. He was worried he was too old for her. I told him to go for it anyway. And by the end of the call, I was feeling tired. I knew I could go right to sleep. Live to see another day. When we got off the phone Teddy said, “You feeling all right now, Billy?” And I said, “Yeah, I am.”
After I had that first night under my belt, I felt a bit better. I stuck to my routine. I stayed away from the partying. When the show was over, I went back to my hotel room and I’d listen to some records or I’d go get a decaf coffee and read the paper at a diner. Sometimes Pete or Graham would join me. Although, most of the time, God knows Graham was just trailing after Karen somewhere.
But I just kept on like I’d been doing when Camila and Julia had been with me. Toeing the line.
GRAHAM: It was the same when Camila was there as when she wasn’t there. Billy was with the band when there was work to be done. And Daisy was with us when there was partying to be done. And never the two shall meet, or whatever it is they say.
ROD: Right before we were heading out to Sweden, I’d told Billy and Graham that Runner was considering extending their tour once the European leg was done. I asked them what they thought of tacking on a couple more weeks once they got back to the States.
It was a nonstarter. Camila was due around when we’d be getting back. Billy felt like he was cutting it close as it was.
GRAHAM: It was a two-second conversation. Would I have liked to have continued the tour? Of course. Did it put us in a tough spot that Billy had to go home? Yeah. But he had to go home. End of discussion.
WARREN: All of us wanted to do more dates but we couldn’t perform without Billy. You can plug in some guitarists for a few shows, a keyboardist. But you can’t replace Billy.
DAISY: We were doing sold-out shows. And a lot of that was my doing.
Meanwhile, the band’s album was selling a lot more than mine. Theirs was better than mine, so it made sense, but when it came to the live show, a lot of people really were coming to see me. And even some of the ones that didn’t care who I was before they got there left with a Daisy Jones T-shirt.
I had real buzz. And I’d been working on some good songs of my own. I had one—super simple melody, not very complex—but it was good. It was called “When You Fly Low.” I’d written it about selling yourself short, how some people try to keep you small. “They want you humble/want to atrophy that muscle/want to stunt the hustle/get you to call uncle/to keep you flying low.”
I’d been saying to Hank that it was time to talk to Teddy about a new album. And Hank kept saying that I should slow down. I got the impression that he thought I was asking too much. Like I thought I deserved more than I did.
Our relationship was not in a good place. I should never have been with a guy like that.
That’s one thing they don’t mention when they tell you to stay away from drugs. They don’t say, “Drugs will have you sleeping with some real jerks.” But they should.
And I had let Hank into every part of my life: He often stood between me and Teddy, he was the one who hired my entire band, my money was funneling through him. And he was in my bed.
KAREN: When we were heading out to Stockholm, we went out on Runner’s private jet.
DAISY: Hank and some of the crew had flown out the day before but I waited and hitched a ride with the band. I made it seem like I wanted to hang out with them on the plane but I just didn’t want to fly over with Hank.
EDDIE: It was on the flight out that I overheard Graham talking to Karen about turning down the extension. Man, that was the first I’d heard of it. No one had told me or Pete.
We had a hit song, we were selling out shows with Daisy. Lots of people making a lot of money. The band, the roadies, everybody working on our tour and at the venues—we all have to pack it in because Billy got his wife pregnant?
And it’s not even put up to a vote. We have to find out about it after the decision has already been made.
KAREN: That was an interesting flight. I think that was the flight Warren got slapped by the stewardess. I only heard the slap, I didn’t see it.
WARREN: I asked her if she was a natural blonde. Lesson learned. Not all women think that’s funny.
KAREN: Daisy and I were in the back minding our business the majority of that flight. We had these two chairs facing each other, a couple of cocktails, looking out the window. I remember Daisy pulled out a pillbox and knocked back two pills, washed ’em down with a sip of her drink.
She’d started wearing all of those bangles by then, as many as would fit on her arms. Everything clinked when she moved. So as Daisy is putting her pillbox back in her pocket, her bangles start clanging and I made a joke about how they were built-in tambourines. And she thought that was cool. She took a pen and wrote it down on her hand.
And then when she put the pen away, she took out the pillbox again and took two pills from it and put them in her mouth.
I said, “Daisy, you just took two.”
She said, “I did?”
I said, “Yeah.”
She just shrugged and swallowed them.
I said, “C’mon, don’t be one of those people.”
DAISY: I was irritated by that. I shoved the pillbox in her hand. I said, “Take them if you’re so worried about it. I don’t even need them.”
KAREN: She threw the pills at me.
DAISY: But the moment I handed the pillbox over to her and I saw her put it in her back pocket, I started panicking. The dexies were one thing. That was fine. I could snort coke if I needed to.