Taylor Jenkins Reid fans: you are not ready for this. Daisy Jones And The Six is finally here, landing on Prime Video on 3rd March. After months of anticipation, the adaptation has made its way to screens, and you'd be forgiven for having one big question after watching a few episodes: Is Daisy Jones and The Six based on Fleetwood Mac?
Here's everything the author and cast have said about the comparisons, as well as the factual similarities that can be drawn from one and the other.
How similar are Daisy Jones And The Six and Fleetwood Mac?
The bands
At the most basic level, the band make up is quite similar: Fleetwood Mac comprised of Lindsey Buckingham (lead guitarist and male vocalist), Stevie Nicks (female vocalist), Mick Fleetwood (drummer), Christine McVie (keyboardist and vocalist) and John McVie (bass guitarist.)
The Six is made up of Billy Dunne (male vocalist), Daisy Jones (female vocalist), Warren Rhodes (drummer), Karen Sirko (keyboardist and vocalist) and Eddie Roundtree (bass guitarist.) They also add Graham Dunne (lead guitar).
The story
The Prime Video show tells the story of fictional 1970s rock band The Six, who pair up with singer Daisy Jones. Together, they experience extreme success. But with the highs, come the lows. A journey of sex, drugs, excess and alcohol, frontman Billy Dunne and Daisy are also struggling with their feelings for one another, while his wife looks after their children elsewhere. Eventually, the band call it quits after a 1977 sold-out show in Chicago, and the series follows them looking back at the band's glory days decades later.
As for Fleetwood Mac? Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks met in high school, joining a band called Fritz in the late 1960s. They left the band and started dating around 1969, later releasing a folk-rock album in 1973 as a duo called Buckingham Nicks. In early 1975, they were approached by Fleetwood Mac - consisting then of Mick Fleetwood, John McVie and Christine McVie - to join the band. They said yes.
It's thought they were together for six years, eventually going through a messy break up while writing and recording 1977's 'Rumours', with Stevie eventually dating bandmate Mick. Band members John and Christine McVie, who had been married since 1968, also broke up around that time, and were thought to adopt the silence treatment for each other in the studio - the opposite of Lindsey and Stevie's shouting matches.
The band split up and went on hiatus multiple times over the years, disintegrating from the late 1980s onwards, though they have got back together over the years for various reunion events.
The looks
This is the 1970s, we're talking about: flares, big hair and double denim galore.
Check out Fleetwood Mac in 1973:
And the Daisy Jones and the Six gang:
What Taylor Jenkins Reid has said about Fleetwood Mac and Daisy Jones And The Six comparisons
In a 2019 blog for Hello, Sunshine, the author of the original novel revealed when she was a teenager in 1997, Fleetwood Mac's reunion show called The Dance was played constantly on MTV, and she was mesmerised by one particular performance of 'Landslide'.
"The lighting was dim, [Stevie] was in a gauzy black dress, her hair was big and blonde," Reid wrote. "She shared the stage only with Lindsey Buckingham, who was just off to the side, accompanying her. She sang with such fragility and yet she seemed so confident and strong — and as she did, she kept looking back at Lindsey, her expression warm and intimate, but cryptic."
While the teenager was convinced Stevie and Lindsey were in love, she was shocked to discover the pair had dated prior to the show, but were no longer together. Instead, her mother suggested, were ramping up the emotions to capture the audience.
She continued, "When I decided I wanted to write a book about rock ‘n’ roll, I kept coming back to that moment when Lindsey watched Stevie sing 'Landslide'.... I wanted to write a story about that, about how the lines between real life and performance can get blurred, about how singing about old wounds might keep them fresh."
We'll take that as heavily inspired, not fact.
GET PRIME VIDEO Daisy Jones and the Six is available to stream from 3rd March
