Riley Keough Powers the Amazon Drama "Daisy Jones & The Six"

But it proves better than most of its predecessors by showing a bit how the writing process works including songs that are well worth hearing in their various incarnations and paying attention to period details for a band in the 1970s a decade that clearly wasn39t the 3960s anymore politics are a drag but one where the business of rock bands really was big businessMost of all Daisy Jones benefits from a lead fairly bursting with incandescent star powerRiley Keough has proved a good actress in previous roles but as the bold and often unpredictable Daisy Jones finally finds herself in her element by drawing on DNA that includes not only parents who were both musicians but no less than Elvis Presley as a grandfather not to mention for a brief time a stepfather named Michael Jackson Her embodiment of the engaging and sometimes baffling title character burns brightly audiences can39t look away from her just as the rattled frontman of The Six cannotSan Claflin plays the oftenbrooding Billy Dunne the bandleader of The Six who bristles at having a woman step in to share his spotlight But there39s no questioning her addition helps make a humdrum band a hit with soaring harmonies and onstage chemistry that keeps audiences questioning whether the love they address in their songs may actually be about themThis is where the soapier elements of the series arise Dunne is already married to a supportive girl from back home in Pittsburgh Camila Morrone in strong performance but his connections with Daisy seem undeniable even to him He39s such a jerk in the early going of the series by avoiding working with Daisy cheating on his wife and getting wasted that he39s hard to warm to But he39s a more believable rock star than the rest of The Six who all seem much younger and inexperiencedBacking musicians Will Harrison Sebastian Chacon and Josh Whitehouse appear to be most natural when they39re a struggling high school band trying to get a big brother to join up their sudden advancement to recordingready seems quite a stretch Certainly they don39t seem promising enough to attract a keyboardist from another band Suki Waterhouse in a thankless roleThe latter39s English accent and blonde hair serves as another broad wink to the audience if they hadn39t guessed it already that this is supposed to be Fleetwood Mac and she39s the Christine McVie in the groupAuthor Reid has made no secret that she was inspired to write Daisy Jones ampamp The Six by the strangerthanfiction onstage friction of Fleetwood Mac when they were at their commercial heights Swirling in diaphanous capes is meant to cement the Stevie Nicks connectionThe onstage friction between the two is based on a famous clip of Fleetwood Mac between Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham playing out their issues on stage through songMaking them a fictional band rather than doing a straight drama about Fleetwood Mac would seemingly allow for more imaginative turns for the series but that rarely happensStill the details in creating 1970s Los Angeles from the beloved clubs on Sunset Strip to the storied recording studios and the woozy late night vibe of the Chateau Marmont are well matched with some choice needle dropsAt least in its first handful of episodes Daisy Jones ampamp The Six exists in a world where the fringed and patchoulisoaked era reigned unimpeded when in reality big changes were already afoot in music as recently seen in FX39s Pistol another recent rock series that was as whitewashed in its own way Indeed Patti Smith39s cooly indelible quotDancing Barefootquot is the series39 theme song representing a whole other rock faction It also raises a challenging bar for the original songs in Daisy Jones to reachProducer Blake Mills does his best to craft credible tunes with Keough and Claflin using their own voices on new material from songwriters that include Jackson Browne Marcus Mumford and Phoebe Bridgers They39ve even released their own Daisy Jones ampamp the Six album which if it becomes as popular as the series may require the fictional band to go out on the road in real life Success could turn them into the modernday MonkeesDaisy Jones ampamp The Six is streaming on Amazon Prime VideoClick the social buttons to share this content with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writersamp160

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Riley Keough Powers the Amazon Drama "Daisy Jones & The Six"

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Riley Keough Powers the Amazon Drama "Daisy Jones & The Six"

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