Daisy Jones and The Six, review: music, drugs and an imperfect generation

Daisy Jones and The Six, review

On March 3 Daisy Jones and The Six , the new musical TV series based on the best-selling novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid (with its first three episodes, followed in the following weeks by the others) arrived on Prime Video ( if you are interested in recovering it, you can find it on Amazon ) and produced by Reese Witherspoon with Hello Sunshine together with Amazon Studios. Built on a narrative structure that continuously plays with the dimension of the mockumentary, at the center of the project we find a band that didn't really exist, but which nonetheless offers us a series of ideas relating to the period and the world narrated, embracing a set of reflections quietly applicable to many other musical artists on the same slope.

To subscribe to the Prime Video streaming service, also taking advantage of the 30-day trial, you can use this link. We are in the late 60s, early 70s and rock'n'roll is literally taking over everything, also infiltrating the emotional and cultural dimension of the generations of those years. No longer simple music then, but a real scream, a voice that comes from the depths of a youthful context a bit disoriented and demotivated by everything, looking for a reason to go on, or an identity to cling to that it was not the stale one of the parents and of those who have lived in the previous years. Thus some bands begin to emerge, groups of people who tell and tell each other through music, marking a clear border between what was before and a present that is recognized in completely different models from the past.

Daisy Jones and The Six develops its narrative potential starting from such a context, from a historical period that is clear from the very first shot to tell the story of this group of young people who, like many others in that period, seek eternal glory through music. With a series of narrative tricks, however, it is not limited only to weaving a path from the stars to the stables of a manner, but goes far beyond, continuously trying to deepen even its own protagonists and all the demons that they drag along. All punctuated by a set of songs that coordinate perfectly with everything else .



Daisy Jones and The Six

Daisy Jones and The Six: being through music

Everything develops from a great mystery still unsolved today: why did Daisy Jones and The Six disband at the height of their success, after one of their biggest and most famous concerts in 1977 at Soldier Field in Chicago? This is the fuse that ignites the cameras of this mockumentary in search of an answer in the folds of the various members of the band. An investigation, therefore, which does not only want to glorify the famous group, but to deepen some aspects that require their first-person collaboration, without too many filters. Thus we see this performance, the delirious audience and the construction of the individual interviews with each of them in the present, alternating with a narration that wants to reconstruct the facts as they went from the very beginning, from the origins of their musical collaboration. .



Daisy Jones and The Six Everyone wants to find out the truth behind the band who, in those years, it had become a sort of family, a sort of emotional nucleus that was extremely united and ready to face anything. From the very first shots, however, something particular is perceived in the gazes of the protagonists, in their eyes that look down all too often, probably concealing quarrels or clashes in the private dimension. It was the 1970s and beyond, and many people had gotten lost along the way, urged by the vices that began to spread along the streets of the whole world. In such a context, many built emotional ties with friends and with their own bands. In parallel, however, we find the dream, the goal of getting somewhere with one's music, of breaking through in some way, trying with all one's strength to produce something immortal and meaningful, in relation to one's way of being.

So along the road to success we find these guys, quite lost, who come together, in one way or another, establishing sincere and deep ties between them that soon go beyond music. They live off what they play and what they feel as they create something out of nothing. This is one of the aspects on which the series dwells a lot trying to propose a context that is credible from start to finish. Daisy Jones ( Riley Keough ), Billy Dunne ( Sam Claflin ) and the other cast members are human beings first, before legendary rock stars, with a narrative touch that enhances their value on the small screen from episode to episode, allowing viewers to empathize more easily with them.

Knowing how to tell

Daisy Jones and The Six is ​​not only history, but also narration through images and sounds. One of the most interesting sides of this TV series lies precisely in the formal system that shapes every single episode. The direction and editing cannot fail to recall the music videos of that era and later, with recognizable photographic charms both in terms of color and composition. To further enhance the situation we find a musical sector that continually mentions those years, accompanied by a series of original songs written by Blake Mills and other artists (there are 24 to be precise).

An artistic sector of this kind is useless only to surround the events represented, soon becoming a voice in its own right, a more direct way of telling not only what happened to the protagonists in the game, but a very specific historical period, marked by a figurative rhythm superior to many other products of the same genre.



Daisy Jones and The Six

Final reflections

On the notes of a soundtrack studied and built ad hoc a story moves that crosses the broken notes of a generation with the looks of its protagonists. Theirs is a story of ascent that everyone wants to know but how many will be able to understand them seriously? How many will be able to go beyond the veil of legend to touch the real fragility of a group of people like any other?

Because it is precisely on this that Daisy Jones and The Six reflects so much, on the reality behind the story, about belonging to something imperfect that must necessarily collide with the demons of each of these people, restoring a story closely connected with the musical dimension of a particular generation, still managing to be extremely familiar even for all those who they see today.