In August 1977, the seven members of the band entered Wally Heider’s Studio 3 to begin the process of writing and recording their third album.
Graham: Karen and I left her place that morning, heading over to Heider. I said to her, just as we walked out of the door, “Can’t we just drive over together?”
She said she didn’t want people thinking we were sleeping together.
I said, “But we are sleeping together.”
She still made us take two cars.
Karen: You know how easy it is to screw up your entire life by sleeping with somebody in your own band?
Eddie: Pete and I drove over that morning. By that point, I think he and I were the only two still staying at the place in Topanga Canyon. Before he’d gotten back from the East Coast, I’d had the place all to myself.
I said to Pete on the way there, I said, “This should be interesting.”
And he told me to not take it all so seriously. He said, “It’s just rock ’n’ roll. None of this really matters.”
Daisy: When we all met up at the studio that first day, I brought this basket of cakes that someone had sent over to my place at the Marmont and my notebook full of songs. I was ready.
Eddie: Daisy showed up in a thin tank top and these tiny cutoff shorts. Barely covered anything.
Daisy: I run hot and I always have. I am not going to sit around sweating my ass off just so men can feel more comfortable. It’s not my responsibility to not turn them on. It’s their responsibility to not be an asshole.
Billy: I had written about ten or twelve songs so far. All of them in great shape. But I knew I couldn’t go in there and tell them that I’d written the album already. Like I did with the other two albums. I couldn’t say that.
Graham: It was kind of funny, to be honest. Watching Billy put on this act like he gave a shit what anyone else wanted on the album. God bless him. You could see the effort he was putting in. Talking all slow, thinking about his words.
Daisy: We were sitting around and I handed over my notebook. I said, “I’ve got a lot of good stuff in here to start from.” I thought maybe everyone could read it all and we could discuss it from there.
Billy: Here I am, holding back my twelve great songs, so that no one thinks I’m trying to control things, and Daisy’s just walking into a band she’s brand new to, expecting everyone to read a whole journal of ideas.
Daisy: He didn’t even flip through it.
Billy: If Daisy and I were going to write an album together, it needed to be just the two of us. You can’t give seven people a say in the words. Somebody had to take charge and control the process.
So I said, “Look, I wrote this song ‘Aurora.’ It’s the one I really believe in out of everything I’m working on for this album. The rest is up to us all. Daisy and I will write some songs and everyone will take a crack at the arrangements and once we’ve got a slate of great songs that we all love, we’ll narrow it down to the best of the best.”
Karen: Maybe it’s revisionist history, but I think when Billy played “Aurora” it felt clear that we could build an album around it.
Graham: We were all on board with “Aurora” as a great place to start—it was a great frickin’ song. After that, Daisy started talking about ideas for the album as a whole.
Warren: I wanted no part in writing. That morning felt like a waste of my time. Everyone’s sitting around, talking about shit I don’t care about. I finally just said, “Don’t you all think that Daisy and Billy should go write the songs and come to us when they have them?”
Karen: Teddy was really decisive about it. He handed Billy the keys to his guesthouse and said, “You two pop on over to my place, set up in my guesthouse, and get to writing. Everyone else is going to get to work on this new one.”
Eddie: Billy didn’t want us composing anything for that song without him. But he also didn’t want Daisy writing songs without him. So he had to choose whether he went with Daisy and got started writing or stayed with us and worked on the arrangement for his new song.
And he chose Daisy.
Billy: I got to Teddy’s pool house first and so I got settled. Made myself a cup of coffee, sat down, looked through my notes trying to decide what to show Daisy.
Daisy: By the time I opened the door, Billy’s already there, he’s got his notebook out to show me. Not so much as a hello. Just “Here, read my stuff.”
Billy: I told her the truth, I said, “I’ve got a lot of the album written already. Do you want to take a look at it and see where we can make adjustments together? See if maybe there’s some gaps that we can fill in with some new stuff or the stuff you’ve written already?”
Daisy: I shouldn’t have been surprised. It was never gonna be easy with him, was it? I think I grabbed one of the bottles of wine I saw on Teddy’s counter and I opened it up and flopped myself down on the sofa and just started drinking it. I said, “Billy, that’s great that you’ve written a bunch of songs already. I have, too. But we’re writing this album together.”
Billy: The woman is drinking warm white wine before it’s even noon and trying to lecture me on how things should go. She hadn’t even read my songs yet. I handed my work over to her and I said, “Read it first before you go telling me I should throw it away.”
Daisy: I said, “Ditto then.” And I shoved my notebook in his face. I could tell he didn’t want to read it. But he knew he had to.
Billy: I read her stuff, and it wasn’t bad, but I thought it wasn’t The Six. She used so many biblical metaphors. So when she asked me what I thought, I told her that. I said, “We should start with my stuff as the backbone. We can refine it together.”
Daisy was sitting on the sofa with her feet up on the coffee table, which irked me. And then she said, “I’m not singing an entire album about your wife, Billy.”
Daisy: I really liked Camila. But “Señora” was about her. “Honeycomb” was about her. “Aurora” was about her. It was boring.
Billy: I said, “You’re writing the same song, too. We both know every song in this book is about the same thing.” Well, that got her upset. She put her hands on her hips and said, “What is that supposed to mean?”
And I said, “Every single one of these songs is about the pills in your pockets.”
Daisy: Billy got this smug look on his face—Billy had this face that he would make when he thought he was smarter than everyone in the room. I swear, I have nightmares still about that goddamn face. I said to him, “You just think everybody’s writing about dope ’cause you can’t have any.”
And he said, “You just go ahead and keep popping pills and writing songs about it. See where that gets you.”
I tossed his pages at him. I said, “Sorry we all can’t be sober and writing songs as interesting as wallpaper paste. Oh, here’s a song about how much I love my wife. And another! And another!”
He tried to tell me I was wrong but I said, “This whole pack of songs is about Camila. You can’t keep writing apology songs to your wife and making the band play them.”
Billy: So out of line.
Daisy: I said, “Good for you for finding some other shit to be addicted to. But it’s not my problem and it’s not the band’s problem and nobody wants to listen to it.” You could see it on his face. That he knew I was right.
Billy: She thought she was brilliant because she’d realized that I’d replaced my addictions. Like I didn’t already know that I clung to my love for my family to keep me sober. That just made me even more mad, that she thought she knew more about me than me.
I said, “You want to know your problem? You think you’re a poet but other than talking about getting high, you don’t have anything to say.”
Daisy: Billy’s one of those people who has a sharp tongue. He can build you up and he can take you down, too.
Billy: She said, “I don’t need this shit.” And she left.
Daisy: I started heading out to my car—getting more rip-roaring angry with every step I took. I had a cherry red Benz back then. I loved that car. Until I crashed it by accident by leaving it in neutral on a hill.
Anyway, that day with Billy, I was headed out to that Benz and I had my keys in my hand and I’m ready to get as far away from him as I can and I realize that if I leave, Billy would just write the album himself. And I turned right back around and I said, “Oh, no, you don’t, asshole.”
Billy: I was really surprised that she came back.
Daisy: I walked right into the pool house and I sat down on the couch and I said, “I’m not giving up my chance to write a great album just because of you. So here’s how it’s gonna go. You hate my stuff, I hate your stuff. So we’ll scrap it all, start from nothing.”
Billy said, “I’m not letting go of ‘Aurora.’ It’s going on the album.”
I said, “Fine.” And then I picked up one of his songs lying around where I’d thrown them and I shook it at him and I said, “But this shit isn’t.”
Billy: I think that was the first time I realized that there’s … There is no one more passionate about the work than Daisy. Daisy cared more than anybody. She was ready to put her whole soul into it. Regardless of how difficult I tried to make it.
And I kept thinking about Teddy telling me she was how we were going to sell out stadiums. So I put out my hand and I said, “Fine.” And we shook on it.
Daisy: Simone used to say that drugs make a person look old, but when I was shaking Billy’s hand—his eyes were already wrinkling at the corners, his skin was freckled, he looked weathered, and he couldn’t have been more than twenty-nine or thirty. I thought, It’s not drugs that make you look old, it’s sobering up.
Billy: It wasn’t very easy, thinking about writing together when we’d said what we’d said to each other.
Daisy: I told Billy I wanted to get lunch before we did much of anything. I wasn’t going to deal with the headache of trying to write with him before I had a burger. I told him I’d drive us to the Apple Pan.
Billy: I grabbed her keys just as she was about to get in her car and I told her I wasn’t letting her drive anywhere. She was half in the bag already.
Daisy: I grabbed my keys back and told him if he wanted to drive, we could take his car.
Billy: We got into my Firebird and I said, “Let’s go to El Carmen. It’s closer.”
And she said, “I’m going to the Apple Pan. You can go to El Carmen by yourself.”
I just could not believe she was being so goddamn difficult.
Daisy: I used to care when men called me difficult. I really did. Then I stopped. This way is better.
Billy: On the way there, I turned on the radio. Immediately, Daisy changed the station. I changed it back. She changed it again. I said, “It’s my car, for crying out loud.”
She said, “Well, they’re my ears.”
I finally put in an A-track of the Breeze. I put on their song “Tiny Love.” Daisy started laughing.
I said, “What’s so funny?”
She said, “You like this song?”
Why would I put on a song I didn’t like?
Daisy: I said, “You don’t know anything about this song!”
He said, “What are you talking about?” He knew it was Wyatt Stone that wrote it, obviously. But he didn’t know the rest of it.
I said, “I dated Wyatt Stone. This is my song.”
Billy: I said, “You’re Tiny Love?” And Daisy started telling me this story about her and Wyatt and how she came up with those lines about “Big eyes, big soul/big heart, no control/but all she got to give is tiny love.” I loved the chorus of that song. I had always loved it.
Daisy: Billy listened to me. The whole way to the restaurant, as he drove, he was listening. For what felt like the first time since I met him.
Billy: If I had a great line like that, and someone else pretended it was theirs, I’d be pretty angry.
She made more sense to me after that. And, to be honest, it was harder to tell myself she had no talent. Because she clearly did. It was a real reality check. That voice that whispers in the back of your head, You have been acting like an asshole.
Daisy: It made me laugh. That to Billy I needed a reason to want an equal say in the art I created. I said, “Cool, man. Now that you dig it, maybe you can stop being such a dickhead.”
Billy: Daisy could really give you the grief you deserved. And if you took it in the spirit it was intended … she wasn’t so bad.
Daisy: We sat down at the counter and I ordered for both of us and then put the menus away. I just wanted to put Billy in his place a little bit. I wanted him to have to deal with me being in charge.
But of course, he couldn’t let it go, he said, “I was going to order the hickory burger, anyway.” I think I’ve rolled my eyes about five thousand more times in my life just on account of Billy Dunne.
Billy: After we both ordered, I decided to try a little game. I said, “How about I ask you a question, you ask me a question? No one can dodge the answers.”
Daisy: I told him I was an open book.
Billy: I said, “How many pills do you take a day?”
She looked around and fiddled with her straw. And then she turned to me and said, “No one can dodge the answer?”
And I said, “We have to be able to tell the truth to each other, to really be honest about ourselves. Otherwise, how can we ever write anything?”
Daisy: He was open to writing with me. That’s what I took from that.
Billy: I asked the question again. “How many pills do you take a day?”
She looked down and then back up at me and she said, “I don’t know.”
I was skeptical but she put her hands up and said, “No, really. That’s the truth. I don’t know. I don’t keep track.”
I said, “Don’t you think that’s a problem?”
She said, “It’s my turn, isn’t it?”
Daisy: I said, “What makes Camila so great that you can’t write anything that isn’t about her?”
He was quiet for a really long time.
I said, “C’mon, now, you made me answer. You can’t weasel out of it.”
He said, “Would you wait a minute? I’m not trying to weasel out of anything. I’m trying to think about my answer.”
After another minute or two, he said, “I don’t think I am the person Camila believes I am. But I want to be that person so bad. And if I just stick with her, if I work every day to be the guy she sees, I’ve got the best chance at coming close to it.”
Billy: Daisy looked at me and said, “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
And I said, “What did I do to make you mad this time?”
And she said, “There’s just as much to hate about you as there is to like about you. And that’s annoying.”
Daisy: Then he said, “It’s my turn.”
I said, “Out with it then.”
Billy: “When are you going to quit the pills?”
Daisy: I said, “Why are you so obsessed with the goddamn pills?”
Billy: I told her the truth. I said, “My father was a drunk who was never there for Graham and me. I never wanted to be that way. And then the first thing I do, my first act as a father, was to get all messed up in all the shit you’re messed up in—even heroin, too, I’m afraid—and I let my daughter down. Even missed her birth. I turned out to be exactly what I’ve always hated. If it wasn’t for Camila, I think I’d still be that way. I think I would have made all my own nightmares come true. That’s the kind of guy I am.”
Daisy: I said, “It’s like some of us are chasing after our nightmares the way other people chase dreams.”
He said, “That’s a song, right there.”
Billy: It wasn’t behind me. My addiction. I kept hoping it would feel like it was. Like I didn’t need to keep looking over my shoulder all the time. But that doesn’t really exist. At least not for me. It’s a fight you keep fighting, some times are easier than others. Daisy made it harder. She just did.
Daisy: I was paying the price for the parts of himself that he didn’t like.
Billy: She said, “If I was a teetotaler you’d like me more, huh?”
And I said, “I’d like to be around you more. Yeah, probably.”
And Daisy said, “Well, you can just forget that. I don’t change for anybody.”
Daisy: I finished my burger and threw down some money and I got up to go. Billy said, “What are you doing?”
And I said, “We’re going back to Teddy’s. We’re gonna write that song about chasing our nightmares.”
Billy: I grabbed my keys and walked out after her.
Daisy: On the way back to Teddy’s, Billy was singing me this melody he’d had in his head. We were at a red light and he was tapping the steering wheel and humming along.
Billy: I had a Bo Diddley beat I was thinking of. Something I wanted to try.
Daisy: He said, “Can you work with that?”
I said I could work with anything. So when we got back to the pool house, I started sketching some ideas out. And he did, too. After about a half hour, I had stuff to show him but he said he needed more time. I kept hanging around, waiting for him to be done.
Billy: She was pacing around me. She wanted to show me what she was writing. I finally had to say, “Will you get the fuck out of here?”
And I … on account of how rude I’d been to her in the past I realized I needed to be clear that I just meant it the same I’d say it to Graham or Karen, you know? I said, “Please, will you get the fuck out of here? Go get a donut or something.”
She said, “I ate a burger already.” That’s when I realized Daisy only ate one meal a day.
Daisy: I picked the lock to Teddy’s house, borrowed his girlfriend Yasmine’s bathing suit and a towel, and went for a swim. I was in there long enough to prune. And then I went back in, put the bathing suit in the wash, took a shower, and went back into the pool house and Billy was still sitting there, writing.
Billy: She told me what she did and I said, “That’s weird, Daisy. That you borrowed Yasmine’s bathing suit.” And Daisy just shrugged.
She said, “Would you have rather I skinny-dipped?”
Daisy: I took his pages from him and I gave him mine.
Billy: She had a lot of imagery of darkness, running into darkness, chasing darkness.
Daisy: When it came to the structure of the verses, his were better than mine. But he didn’t have a really fun chorus yet and I thought that I did. I showed him the part I’d written I liked the most and I sang it to him with his melody he’d given me. I could tell on his face, he knew it sounded good.
Billy: We went back and forth a lot on that song. Just hours of talking it out, playing with the melodies on the guitar.
Daisy: I don’t think any of our original lines made it into the final version.
Billy: But when we sang it—when we worked out the lyrics and who should sing what, and refined the melody of the vocal and that interplay between those two things—we started singing it together and fine-tuning it. You know what? I’ll tell you, it was a great little song.
Daisy: Teddy came in the door and he said, “What the hell are you two still doing here? It’s almost midnight.”
Billy: I did not realize how late it was.
Daisy: Teddy said, “Also, did you break into my house and use Yasmine’s bathing suit?”
I said, “Yeah.”
He said, “I’d love it if you didn’t do that again.”
Billy: I was going to leave then but I thought, You know what, let’s show Teddy what we’ve come up with. So Teddy sat down on the couch and we sat across from him.
I was saying, “This isn’t the final” and “We just came up with this.” And all that.
Daisy: I said, “Stop, Billy. It’s a good song. No disclaimers.”
Billy: We played it for Teddy and when we were done, he said, “This is what you two come up with when you’re on the same team?”
And we looked at each other and I said, “Uh, yeah?”
And he said, “Well, then, I’m a genius.” He sat there laughing, real proud of himself.
Daisy: It was like we all agreed not to discuss that Billy needed Teddy’s approval like a son needs his father’s.
Billy: I left Teddy’s that night and I rushed home because it was late and I was feeling guilty about it. I walked in the door and the kids were asleep and Camila was sitting in the rocking chair watching the TV on low volume and she looked up at me. I started apologizing and she said, “You’re sober, right?”
And I said, “Yeah, of course. I was just writing and I lost track of time.”
And that was it. Camila didn’t care that I hadn’t called her. She just cared that I hadn’t relapsed. That was all.
Camila: It’s hard to explain, because I really do think it defies reason. But I knew him well enough to know that he could be trusted. And I knew that no matter what mistakes he made—no matter what mistakes I might make, too—that we would be fine.
I don’t know if I would have believed in that type of security before I had it. Before I chose to give it to Billy. And by giving it to Billy, I gave it to myself, too. But saying to someone, “No matter what you do, we’re not over …” I don’t know. Something about that relaxed me.
Billy: All those weeks that Daisy and I worked on songs together, I’d work as late as I needed. I’d stay out with Daisy as long as we needed. And every night when I came home, Camila was in that chair. She’d get up when I got home and I’d sit down and then she’d sit in my lap and put her head on my chest and say, “How was your day?”
I’d tell her the highlights and I’d hear about her day and I’d hear about the girls. And I’d rock us back and forth until we went to sleep.
One night, I picked her up out of the rocking chair and I put her in bed and I said, “You don’t always have to wait up for me.”
She was half-asleep but she said, “I want to. I like to.”
And you know … no crowd cheering, no magazine cover ever made me feel even remotely as important as Camila. And I think the same goes for her. I really do. She liked having a man who wrote songs about her and carried her to bed.