When I shut the door behind me, alone in my room, I felt so stupid. It was so obvious that he thought I was hitting on him and that made me so sad.

BILLY: When she took her key out of her pocket, she also took out a bag of coke. She was going into her room, and she was gonna, at the very least, have a bump. I…I didn’t want to be around it.

I couldn’t go into that room.

DAISY: I had thought for a moment that he and I could be friends, that Billy could see me as an equal. Instead, I was a woman he shouldn’t be alone with.

BILLY: I knew myself. And it just wasn’t an option. So it all had to stop right there.

Daisy and I had just put on this great show together. And we’d had a great night together. She was a knockout. She really was. There was no denying it. Her eyes were big and her voice was gorgeous. Her legs were long. Her smile was…it was infectious. You’d see her smile and then you’d watch smiles open up on the faces of the people around her like a virus passing through.

She was fun to be around.

But she was…[pauses]

Look, Daisy was barefoot when it was cold, wearing jackets when it was hot, sweating no matter the temperature. She never thought before she spoke. She seemed sort of manic and half-delusional sometimes.

She was a drug addict. The type of addict that thinks that other people don’t know she’s using, which is maybe the worst type of addict of all.

There was no way—no matter what was happening, even if I wanted to—that I could let myself be around Daisy Jones.

DAISY: I didn’t know why he insisted on rejecting me time and again.

BILLY: When someone’s presence gives you energy, when it riles up something in you—the way Daisy did for me—you can turn that energy into lust or love or hate.

I felt most comfortable hating her. It was my only choice.

JONAH BERG: From my vantage point, the biggest part of what made that band original and first-rate was the combination of Daisy and Billy. Daisy’s solo album was nothing compared to what The Six was doing. And The Six without Daisy wasn’t anything near what they were with her.

Daisy was an integral, necessary, inescapable part of The Six. She belonged in the band.

So that’s what I wrote.

DAISY: Rod brought us the article before it came out and when I saw the headline I was so excited. I loved it.

JONAH BERG: I knew the headline before I even finished writing it. “The Six That Should Be Seven.”

ROD: It was a great cover. A clear shot of all of them onstage together, Billy and Daisy singing into the same mike, Graham and Karen looking at each other. Everybody else really rocking out. In the foreground were about four or five people holding up lighters in the audience. And then there was the headline.

WARREN: We were on the cover of Rolling Stone. Rolling Goddamn Stone. I mean, you get jaded about a lot of things when you’re ascending. But not that.

BILLY: I grabbed the paper from Rod.

GRAHAM: I don’t think Billy was happy about it.

BILLY: “The Six That Should Be Seven.”

ROD: I believe Billy’s exact words were “Are you fucking kidding me?”

BILLY: I mean, are you fucking kidding me?

DAISY: I knew not to say a single thing about that article. None of us acknowledged it except Rod and I when no one else was around. Rod told me that if I wanted to officially join The Six, I should just hang tight and the opportunity might present itself.

ROD: Billy started to calm down after a few days. By the time we all got back on the plane to head to L.A., he was downright reasonable.

BILLY: I wasn’t trying to be…ignorant. I was aware of the fact that our biggest hit had been with Daisy. And Teddy had been floating the idea of another song or two with Daisy in the future. I knew that we were more mainstream, more marketable, with Daisy—obviously I was aware enough to see that. But I was taken by surprise at the idea of having her formally join the band….And also that the suggestion was made so publicly.

GRAHAM: The article was about how good we were with Daisy. Sure, it was with Daisy but I really felt like the takeaway was how good we were.

EDDIE: By the time the article came out, the tour was over. The seven of us, Rod, the engineers, the roadies…we were all headed home.

WARREN: We had to take a commercial flight, back to the States. I felt like a pauper.

BILLY: I got out of my seat pretty soon after we took off. I walked over to Graham and Karen. I said, “What would it look like, do you think? Letting Daisy join the band?”

KAREN: I thought the article was right. She was an honorary part of the group. Why not make it official? Why not have her on all our songs?

GRAHAM: I told Billy to let her join.

BILLY: They were no help.

WARREN: At one point in the flight, Billy was sitting next to me making a list of pros and cons, you know, whether Daisy should join the band or not. And I see Karen coming out of the bathroom looking like somebody’s balled her. All flushed and her hair messed up. So I turn around and who’s mysteriously gone from his seat? Bones.

EDDIE: I’m sitting in the back of the plane and I could see Graham getting up, Karen’s walking around, Billy’s talking to them. I’m watching, trying to figure out what the hell’s going on. I turn to Daisy and I say, “What do you think they’re doing up there?”

But she’s got her nose in some book and she goes, “Shut up, I’m reading.”

WARREN: I looked over when Billy was writing his little list about whether Daisy should join the band, and he didn’t have that many cons and it seemed like he was really searching his brain for some.

I said, “Make sure you write ‘Gives you a hard-on you’d rather not have’ in the cons section.”

He told me I didn’t know what I was talking about. I said, “All right, you don’t want my opinion.”

He said, “Yes, I do.” And I looked at him and he said, “Fine, I don’t.”

So I sat back, sipped my Bloody Mary, and went back to reading the instructions on the barf bag.

KAREN: Billy came back to where Graham and I were with this list. He’d slowly come to the conclusion that he wanted more hits and Daisy would bring us more hits.

I said, “You know, she might turn us down.” That thought never occurred to Billy or Graham. But Daisy had more hype than even we did.

GRAHAM: We decided we’d do one album with Daisy. See how it went.

BILLY: I was making a decision that affected a lot of people. What is good for me might not necessarily be good for everybody else. I had to weigh that. Warren, Graham, Karen, Rod. They all wanted to get bigger, to top the charts. We all did. I had to take that into account.

No matter how much I may have preferred to keep a healthy distance from her personally.

WARREN: I wasn’t sure why Billy was stressing about it so much. He was just going to do whatever Teddy told him to do anyway.

KAREN: People have said Billy didn’t want Daisy to join the band because he didn’t want to share the spotlight but I don’t think that was the case. Billy wasn’t really an insecure guy in that way. That was sort of the problem with him, really. Was that he wasn’t intimidated by anyone else’s talent.

I think she just…unsettled him. However you want to interpret that.

BILLY: By the time we landed at LAX, I decided that it was a good idea to at least float the idea by Teddy. If he thought we should do an album with Daisy, then I’d ask her.

ROD: When we landed, I caught up to Billy and checked in, asked him what he was thinking. He said he wanted to talk to Teddy about whether Daisy should join the band. So I pulled Billy over to a pay phone and I called Teddy and I said, “Teddy, tell Billy what you told me this morning.”

GRAHAM: Of course Teddy was on board with Daisy joining the band!

BILLY: Teddy reminded me that when we first met, I’d told him I wanted to be the biggest band in the world. He said, “You two singing together is how you do that.”

EDDIE: When we landed, Pete and I caught up with Warren and Graham and Karen and they said, “We’re gonna ask Daisy to join the band,” and I couldn’t believe it.

Once again, No. One. Fucking. Asked. Me.

DAISY: They were all whispering and huddled up and I caught Rod’s eye and he winked at me and I knew.

BILLY: I got off the phone with Teddy and I said to Rod, “All right, tell her she’s in.” And then I got in a cab and went straight home to my girls.

KAREN: When we all left the airport that day, we all headed in our own directions. It was like school was out for the summer.

BILLY: The moment I walked in the door of my home, it was like Daisy and my band and the music and the gear and the tour…none of it existed. I was ready to get Camila strawberry ice cream at any hour of the night and to play any tea parties Julia wanted. My family was all that mattered.

CAMILA: Billy came home and he needed a day or two, to decompress. But then there he was. With us when he was with us. And happy. And I thought, Wow. Okay. We’re figuring this out. We’re doing this right.

ROD: I gave it a few days. I let the dust settle a little bit, made sure Billy wasn’t going to change his mind. And then I called Daisy.

DAISY: I’d checked back in to my favorite cottage at the Marmont.

SIMONE: When Daisy got back from the road, I was back, too. And I think it is important to mention that after that tour, Daisy was jacked up. I mean, she was higher than all get-out, all the time. I thought, What happened to you out there? She could barely handle being alone. Always calling people to come over, always begging me not to get off the phone. She didn’t like being home by herself. She didn’t like things being calm.