OPAL CUNNINGHAM: A large part of the growing budget was accounting for what damages they would leave behind. It was always Daisy’s room that cost the most. We were paying hand over fist for broken lamps, broken mirrors, burnt linens. A lot of busted locks. Hotels expect a certain amount of wear and tear, especially when a band is coming through. But this was enough that they were demanding more than just keeping the security deposit.
WARREN: I think it was around the southern leg of the tour that you could tell Daisy was…I don’t know. Losing it. She was forgetting some of the words to the songs.
ROD: Before the show in Memphis, everyone’s getting ready to go out onstage and no one could find Daisy. I was searching all over for her. Asking everyone about her. I finally found her in one of the bathrooms in the lobby. She’d passed out in one of the stalls. Her butt was on the floor, one of her arms over her head. For a second—a split second—I thought she was dead. I shook her and she woke up.
I said, “You’re supposed to go onstage.”
She said, “Okay.”
I said, “You need to get sober.”
And she said, “Oh, Rod.” And she stood up, walked to the mirror, checked her makeup, and then walked backstage to meet the rest of the band like everything was right as rain. And I thought, I don’t want to be in charge of this woman anymore.
EDDIE: New Orleans. Fall of ’seventy-eight. Pete finds me at sound check and says, “Jenny wants to get married.”
I say, “All right, so marry her.”
Pete says, “Yeah, I think I will.”
DAISY: If you’re fucked up all the time, you piece things together slower than you should. But I started to realize that Nicky never paid for anything, that he didn’t have any of his own money. And he kept buying us more blow. I’d say, “I’m good. I’ve had enough.” But he always wanted more. Wanted me to have more.
We were on the bus one morning, maybe December or so. We were laying down in the back, while everyone else was up front. I think we were stopped somewhere around Kansas because when I looked out the window all I saw were plains. No hills, not much civilization, even. I woke up and Nicky was there with a toot, right there. I just had this fleeting thought, What if I didn’t? So I said, “No, thanks.”
And Nicky laughed and said, “No, c’mon.” And he put it right in my face and I snorted it.
And as I turned my head, to look down the aisle, I saw that Billy had stepped onto the bus for some reason, was talking to Warren or something. But…he saw the whole thing. And I caught his eye for a moment and I just got so sad.
BILLY: I made it a point to stay off the white bus. Nothing good for me happened on the white bus.
GRAHAM: We all went home for Christmas and New Year’s.
BILLY: I was so happy to go home to my girls.
CAMILA: There was so much more to my life, so much more to my marriage, than the fact that my husband was in a band. I’m not saying that The Six wasn’t a major factor, of course it was. But we were a family. Billy was expected to leave his work at the door when he came home. And he did that.
When I think back to the late seventies, I do think a lot about the band and the songs and…everything that we were going through with that. But I mostly think about Julia learning to swim. And Susana’s first word sounding like “Mimia,” and how we couldn’t tell if she meant “Mama” or “Julia” or “Maria.” Or Maria always trying to pull Billy’s hair. And how he used to play a game with the girls called Who Gets the Last Pancake? As he was making pancakes, and the girls were eating them, he’d suddenly yell, “Who gets the last pancake?” And whichever girl put her hand up first got to eat it. But somehow, no matter what happened, he’d make them split the pancake.
That’s the kind of thing I remember more than anything.
BILLY: Camila and I had just closed on our new house in Malibu, in the hills. Bigger than any house I ever thought I’d live in. With this long driveway and trees shading every part except the deck. The deck was totally unobstructed. You could see all the way out to the ocean. Camila used to call it “the house ‘Honeycomb’ built.”
The two weeks that I was home for the holidays, we spent most of it moving in and getting settled. The first night we brought the girls, I said to Julia, “Which room do you want?” She was the oldest, so she got first pick. Her eyes went wide and she went off running down the hall, looking at each one. And then, she sat down on the floor in the middle of the hallway and she deliberated. And then she said, “I want the one in the middle.”
I said, “Are you sure?”
She said, “I’m sure.” She was just like her mom. Once she knew what she wanted, she knew.
ROD: That Christmas was the first time in a long time—a long, long time—that I didn’t have to do any work. That I could just enjoy myself. That I didn’t have to save some rock star from some crisis or make sure their rider was fulfilled or whatever I was doing.
I rented a cabin with this guy Chris. He and I moved in the same circles and I’d been seeing him whenever I was in town. We spent the holidays together in Big Bear. We made dinners together and went in the hot tub and played cards. For Christmas, I gave him a sweater and he gave me a day planner. And I thought, I want to be normal.
DAISY: Nicky and I flew to Rome for Christmas.
EDDIE: Over the holiday, Pete asked Jenny to marry him and she said yes. I was real happy for him, you know? I gave him a big hug. He said, “I have to figure out when I’m going to tell everybody. I don’t know how they are gonna take it.”
I said, “What are you talking about? Nobody cares if you’re married.”
He said, “No, I’m leaving.”
I said, “Leaving?”
He said, “At the end of the tour, I’m quitting the band.”
We were at our parents’ house in the den. I said, “What are you talking about? Quitting the band?”
He said, “I told you I didn’t want to do this forever.”
I said, “You never said that.”
He said, “I’ve said that a thousand times to you. I told you this stuff doesn’t matter.”
I said, “You’re talking about giving all of this up for Jenny? Really?”
He said, “Not really for Jenny. For me. So I can get on with my life.”
I said, “What does that mean?”
He said, “I never wanted to be in a soft rock band. C’mon. You know that. I got on the train, I rode it for a little while. But my stop’s coming up.”