The Big Picture

• Daisy Jones & The Six is heavily inspired by the real rock band Fleetwood Mac, capturing the tension and drama of their iconic Rumours era.
• The novel and Prime Video series reverse engineer the story of a dysfunctional band who created something beautiful together, exploring their break-up at the peak of success.
• While Fleetwood Mac released four studio albums, Daisy Jones & The Six only had one, Aurora, which propelled them to great heights but also led to their downfall.

When Daisy Jones & The Six premiered, a lot of viewers may have thought they'd seen the series' titular group play before. Well, they have seen (and heard) something very similar. That's because the band in Taylor Jenkins Reid's original novel was based on a real rock 'n' roll band, and a classic one at that. The trailer alone for the Emmy and Golden Globe nominated series shows off the tension between main characters Daisy Jones (Riley Keough) and Billy Dunne (Sam Claflin), a dynamic that mirrors that of Fleetwood Mac. The clothes, the attitude, and even the band logo are similar, right?

The 1970s were perhaps the greatest period for rock 'n' roll. It was the main music genre around, and being a rock star was the dream of almost every teenager and young adult. Few managed to achieve that, unfortunately, but we did get some great music made by great artists. One of those was Fleetwood Mac, a band that had been around since the 1960s, but got to reinvent themselves over and over until achieving their status as legends by the end of the 1970s. But why use them as inspiration for a whole novel, and then its own series?

'Daisy Jones & The Six' Is Loosely Based On Fleetwood Mac's Rumours Era

As we said, the 1970s were a great period for rock, but there was one group struggling to get by. Fleetwood Mac formed in the late 1960s by guitarists Peter Green and Jeremy Spencer, both deeply rooted in blues. Green was a genius composer, whose collaboration with rock isn't nearly as praised as it should be. Eventually, they recruited bassist John McVie and drummer Mick Fleetwood to the band, the only members to be part of Fleetwood Mac in all their formations (and to also give the group its name). Session musician Christine Perfect also played keyboard on most of the band's albums, and eventually got married to John McVie, changing her name to Christine McVie (whom we sadly lost in November 2022)

But the atmosphere in Fleetwood Mac was never an easy one to understand. In 1970, Green left the band, with Spencer following shortly after, forcing the group to search for new guitarists to replace them. They went through many different formations, but, in late 1974, though, their luck changed. Mick Fleetwood was introduced to a duo that went by the name Buckingham Nicks, and enjoyed their music. When he was introduced to guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, it wasn't a difficult decision to invite him to join him. Originally a bassist, Buckingham had a distinctive way of playing the guitar with no pick, making his style unique in the industry. And it wasn't difficult for him to accept the invitation, too, with one condition: his girlfriend, Stevie Nicks, had to join as a singer.

Romantic Relationships Impacted Fleetwood Mac and Daisy Jones & The Six

This would go on to become the classic and most popular line-up of Fleetwood Mac. But tension was always a constant in the group's history, and that wasn't about to change. After their first album together (the band's tenth), marital issues became an important part of their collective jobs, as the McVies divorced and Buckingham and Nicks broke up. That made things even more difficult for everyone, but they decided to stay together as a band, recording their second album and releasing it in 1977.

The story of how Rumours was made is fascinating because the band members were at odds with each other all the time, while continuing their private lives. It's already difficult to get over a break-up, but doing so while being part of the same group seems unheard of. Plus, it was happening to two couples in the same band, at the same time. Christine McVie, Buckingham, and Nicks were the songwriters in that era of Fleetwood Mac's history, and their feelings about everything showed in each of the album's songs, with plenty of jabs at everyone. It was the recipe for disaster, but, somehow, the album turned out great, and is to this day considered one of the seminal works of 1970s rock 'n' roll.

Unfortunately, after two more albums together, this line-up of Fleetwood Mac couldn't hold anymore, and the songwriting trio was never together in studio again. They did reunite in 1997 for a reunion concert called The Dance and later in 2018, but how they managed to make such great music while being at war among themselves still baffles the fans. There have been many interviews, documentaries, and books about it, but they were never really conclusive. Even in the reunion concerts, that old tension was still there, so had the members ever really gotten along? In fact, it was the atmosphere in The Dance that inspired a certain author to write a novel about a rock band in the 1970s. Yep, Taylor Jenkin Reid's Daisy Jones & The Six.

'Daisy Jones & The Six' Brings Closure That Fleetwood Mac Fans Never Had

In 1997, The Dance was constantly making the rounds on both MTV and VH1, as Taylor Jenkins Reid recalls. Nicks and Buckingham's glances at each other during Fleetwood Mac's performances of "Dreams" and "Silver Springs" was enough to plant the creative seed in Reid's mind, and that's how Daisy Jones and The Six began to take shape. A great creative mind recognizes drama and potential anytime, and that is what happened with the author, who is also known for The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.

What Reid does in her novel is reverse engineer the story of a dysfunctional group of people who made something beautiful together, trying to get the outline for a puzzle whose pieces belonged to very complicated individuals. That's the premise of Daisy Jones, as the band tells their story themselves in a series of interviews to try and understand how they could have broken up at the peak of their success.

Riley Keough's Daisy Is Very Similar to Stevie Nicks

Of course, the parallels are no mystery at all. The rebellious and lonely Daisy Jones is a near-perfect mirror of Stevie Nicks, complete with her mystical vibes and angelic voice, and Billy Dunne is her opposing force, the Lindsey Buckingham to her Stevie Nicks. But it's important to remember that not just singers and songwriters make up a band. Just like for Fleetwood Mac drummer Mick Fleetwood was important to keep the band from breaking up, we have Graham Dunne (Will Harrison), Eddie Roundtree (Josh Whitehouse), and Warren Rhodes (Sebastian Chacon), who keep Billy grounded as he clashes with the powerhouse that is Daisy.

None of them are as funny and charismatic as keyboardist Karen Sirko (Suki Waterhouse), though, who's an almost antithesis of Christine McVie, but artistic liberties are always welcome.While Fleetwood Mac managed to prolong their years together through the span of four studio albums, Daisy Jones and The Six had just one, Aurora, which you can actually buy. It was enough to send them to the heights they always craved, but couldn't handle, and became their counterpart to Rumours. The series' biggest challenge, though, was to bring to screen all the love, tension, sadness and ecstasy that Reid captured so well in her novel, which, in turn, is inspired by one of rock's greatest stories. For those of us who enjoy good music, watching Daisy Jones & The Six can be closure for a fan who never got it in real life.

Daisy Jones & The Six is available to stream on Prime Video in the U.S.

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