Is Daisy Jones & the Six based on a true story?

Daisy Jones & the Six is a new musical drama heading to Prime Video this week, but is the eagerly anticipated series based on a true story?

Created by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber – with Reese Witherspoon executive producing – Daisy Jones and the Six stars Riley Keough, Sam Claflin, Camila Morrone, and Suki Waterhouse.

The show launches on Amazon this Friday (March 3), with the official synopsis as follows: “Daisy Jones & the Six follows the story of a 1970s band fronted by two feuding yet charismatic lead singers, Daisy Jones and Billy Dunne. Set to the soundtrack of original music, this is the story of how this iconic band imploded at the height of its power.”

But is the show based on a true story? Well, it’s complicated, as we’ll explain…

Is Daisy Jones & the Six based on a true story?

No, Daisy Jones & the Six is not based on a true story. Rather, it’s adapted from a fictional novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid. But, that novel is inspired by real-life music and people, most notably Fleetwood Mac.

The book was published in 2019, with Reid telling The Guardian at the time: “I’m fascinated by the people we make famous, and I’m drawn to the difference between what something looks like on the outside versus what it was like to live. So I wanted to write about the conflict between characters who have this amazing ability to create things together, but personal relationships that are much more fraught.

“We’ve seen many examples of that in rock, the most obvious being Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. Fleetwood Mac are a band and a soap opera.”

How Fleetwood Mac inspired both book and show

Taylor Jenkins Reid says she became enamoured with the Fleetwood Mac story while watching a reunion show called The Dance in 1997. Seeing the chemistry between Nicks and Buckingham touched a nerve in the writer, especially when she learned that they were no longer together.

Writing for the website Hello Sunshine, Reid says of that show: “Years later, once I understood the full story of Fleetwood Mac, I came across The Dance again, this time on YouTube. I watched it in its entirety. I saw that later on in the show, Stevie sung ‘Silver Springs,’ like a woman scorned, holding that microphone like a weapon, drilling holes into Lindsey’s head with her eyes as she sang that her voice would haunt him. I was savvier then, I understood that sometimes looking like you’re in love or in hate are things you ramp up a bit to make a good show. I also understood then what I could never have conceived of in 1997: Love makes no goddamn sense.”

So while Daisy Jones & the Six isn’t based on a true story, there’s a fair amount of Stevie Nicks in the titular Daisy (Riley Keough), and quite a bit of Lindsey Buckingham in the band’s other front-person, Billy Dunne (Sam Claflin).

Daisy Jones & the Six hits Prime Video on Friday, while you can read about more true (and untrue) stories here…

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