EDDIE: By the time the article came out, the tour was over. The seven of us, Rod, the engineers, the roadies…we were all headed home.
WARREN: We had to take a commercial flight, back to the States. I felt like a pauper.
BILLY: I got out of my seat pretty soon after we took off. I walked over to Graham and Karen. I said, “What would it look like, do you think? Letting Daisy join the band?”
KAREN: I thought the article was right. She was an honorary part of the group. Why not make it official? Why not have her on all our songs?
GRAHAM: I told Billy to let her join.
BILLY: They were no help.
WARREN: At one point in the flight, Billy was sitting next to me making a list of pros and cons, you know, whether Daisy should join the band or not. And I see Karen coming out of the bathroom looking like somebody’s balled her. All flushed and her hair messed up. So I turn around and who’s mysteriously gone from his seat? Bones.
EDDIE: I’m sitting in the back of the plane and I could see Graham getting up, Karen’s walking around, Billy’s talking to them. I’m watching, trying to figure out what the hell’s going on. I turn to Daisy and I say, “What do you think they’re doing up there?”
But she’s got her nose in some book and she goes, “Shut up, I’m reading.”
WARREN: I looked over when Billy was writing his little list about whether Daisy should join the band, and he didn’t have that many cons and it seemed like he was really searching his brain for some.
I said, “Make sure you write ‘Gives you a hard-on you’d rather not have’ in the cons section.”
He told me I didn’t know what I was talking about. I said, “All right, you don’t want my opinion.”
He said, “Yes, I do.” And I looked at him and he said, “Fine, I don’t.”
So I sat back, sipped my Bloody Mary, and went back to reading the instructions on the barf bag.
KAREN: Billy came back to where Graham and I were with this list. He’d slowly come to the conclusion that he wanted more hits and Daisy would bring us more hits.
I said, “You know, she might turn us down.” That thought never occurred to Billy or Graham. But Daisy had more hype than even we did.
GRAHAM: We decided we’d do one album with Daisy. See how it went.
BILLY: I was making a decision that affected a lot of people. What is good for me might not necessarily be good for everybody else. I had to weigh that. Warren, Graham, Karen, Rod. They all wanted to get bigger, to top the charts. We all did. I had to take that into account.
No matter how much I may have preferred to keep a healthy distance from her personally.
WARREN: I wasn’t sure why Billy was stressing about it so much. He was just going to do whatever Teddy told him to do anyway.
KAREN: People have said Billy didn’t want Daisy to join the band because he didn’t want to share the spotlight but I don’t think that was the case. Billy wasn’t really an insecure guy in that way. That was sort of the problem with him, really. Was that he wasn’t intimidated by anyone else’s talent.
I think she just…unsettled him. However you want to interpret that.
BILLY: By the time we landed at LAX, I decided that it was a good idea to at least float the idea by Teddy. If he thought we should do an album with Daisy, then I’d ask her.
ROD: When we landed, I caught up to Billy and checked in, asked him what he was thinking. He said he wanted to talk to Teddy about whether Daisy should join the band. So I pulled Billy over to a pay phone and I called Teddy and I said, “Teddy, tell Billy what you told me this morning.”
GRAHAM: Of course Teddy was on board with Daisy joining the band!
BILLY: Teddy reminded me that when we first met, I’d told him I wanted to be the biggest band in the world. He said, “You two singing together is how you do that.”
EDDIE: When we landed, Pete and I caught up with Warren and Graham and Karen and they said, “We’re gonna ask Daisy to join the band,” and I couldn’t believe it.
Once again, No. One. Fucking. Asked. Me.
DAISY: They were all whispering and huddled up and I caught Rod’s eye and he winked at me and I knew.
BILLY: I got off the phone with Teddy and I said to Rod, “All right, tell her she’s in.” And then I got in a cab and went straight home to my girls.
KAREN: When we all left the airport that day, we all headed in our own directions. It was like school was out for the summer.
BILLY: The moment I walked in the door of my home, it was like Daisy and my band and the music and the gear and the tour…none of it existed. I was ready to get Camila strawberry ice cream at any hour of the night and to play any tea parties Julia wanted. My family was all that mattered.
CAMILA: Billy came home and he needed a day or two, to decompress. But then there he was. With us when he was with us. And happy. And I thought, Wow. Okay. We’re figuring this out. We’re doing this right.
ROD: I gave it a few days. I let the dust settle a little bit, made sure Billy wasn’t going to change his mind. And then I called Daisy.
DAISY: I’d checked back in to my favorite cottage at the Marmont.
SIMONE: When Daisy got back from the road, I was back, too. And I think it is important to mention that after that tour, Daisy was jacked up. I mean, she was higher than all get-out, all the time. I thought, What happened to you out there? She could barely handle being alone. Always calling people to come over, always begging me not to get off the phone. She didn’t like being home by herself. She didn’t like things being calm.
DAISY: I was having a few people over when Rod called. It was the day I’d shot my Cosmo cover. I’d done an interview while we were in Europe and that afternoon I’d done the photo shoot.
Some of the girls from the shoot came over to my place afterward and we were drinking pink champagne and about to go for a swim when the phone rang. I picked it up and I said, “Lola La Cava speaking.”
ROD: Daisy’s pseudonym was always Lola La Cava. She had too many men trying to corner her. We had to start deflecting about where she was at any given time.
DAISY: I remember the phone call exactly. I had the bottle of champagne in my hand and there were two girls on the couch and another one doing a line off my vanity. I remember being irritated because she was getting coke in the spine of my journal.
But then Rod said, “It’s official.”
ROD: I said, “The band wants you to do a full album with them.”
DAISY: I was through the roof.
ROD: I could hear Daisy doing a bump as I talked to her. I always struggled with that when it came to my musicians—and it never got easier. Should I monitor their drug use or not? Was it any of my business? If I knew they were using, was it my place to determine how much was too much? If it was my place, then how much was too much?