CHAPTER THREE : a chance encounter

( i'll take you there, part i )

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THE MEMBERS OF THE Dunne Brothers, plus Camila, arrived in California with a little more than a beat-up van and a few dollars between them. It was a tight squeeze, the six of them in a small house in need of more than a few repairs, especially given that it didn't nearly have enough bedrooms for all of them.

MARILYN: Warren and I were fighting over this really nice bedroom, the second biggest in the house — Billy and Cami got the biggest, of course. I ended up realising that the argument was gonna go nowhere, so I told Eddie, who told Warren, that the previous owner died in the room and that it was haunted. He backed out immediately. Sorry, not sorry, Warren.

     WARREN: [calling through] What the fuck, Mari?

     MARILYN: If I end up locked out of the house tonight, this interview is why. Anyway, sorry, before that, right when we arrived, we were off to see Rod [Reyes]. Sorry, I'm getting the order of events confused.

     ME: I'll fix that up when I'm editing, don't worry.

     MARILYN: Alright. We didn't call [Rod] in advance or anything, just rocked up, which I thought was a bad idea, for the record. Those boys need to start listening to me. We, and by 'we' I mean everyone except me, laid out the things we wanted to be able to get really started, and then Rod laughed in our, and by 'our' I still mean everyone except my, faces. Because, and I thought this as well, they were demanding way too much for how small we really were then. Like, we'd just made it out of garages, and here they were begging for gigs on the Strip, and money, and a house, and Teddy Price — Teddy frickin' Price — to produce us. I believe Rod's exact words were, "Are you guys a bunch of fuckin' idiots?"

     ROD REYES (tour manager): Honestly, I nearly sent them away. Would'a been the most expensive mistake of my life, I'll tell you that. But then, right, I realised that there was one person there not saying a single word, and I thought to myself, I thought "We might just be on the same page here."

Rod lazily turns and points his lit cigarette in Marilyn's direction, ash dropping from the end of it onto the sunbed he's straddling. "You," he says. Marilyn raises her brows in a way as if to make sure that she's the one he's directing his attention at, and Rod nods in confirmation. "You. Why aren't you talking." She hesitates. "Be honest with me."

For another second, Marilyn says nothing. Then—

"I think they're all idiots."

Rod claps, either forgetting about the cigarette between his fingers or just not caring about it. "Exactly. Ex-act-ly."

"Mari—" Billy whines.

Rod waves a hand at Billy dismissively. "No, no, listen. Here's the deal. Because I see now that at least one of you has some sense, and if you guys are the band I'm thinking of, your set was kind of tight..."

     MARILYN: If you learn anything from me, kids, learn this. Sometimes, a bit of brutal honesty will get you real far. Rod made a call to a friend of his who ran this bar, real gross place, but it was on the Strip, so we didn't care, and I like to think that if I stayed quiet, or if I agreed with the guys and Cami, that he would've just told us to fuck off.

     ROD: I admired the girl's balls, what can I say? Takes a big pair to say that in front of a bunch of guys with fragile egos.

     MARILYN: Right after all that, Graham managed to snag Karen's [Sirko's] number off Rod before we left, and we rang her up when we got to this diner with a phone booth. Graham was the one who called her, but he fumbled over his words about a million times before Billy took the phone, and then Billy was sounding way too cocky, so I took it from him.

"Hey, hi, sorry for the phone tennis. It's Marilyn."

"Right, you gave me the bump on the head."

Marilyn grimaces, turning further into the corner of the booth so none of her friends see her face screwing up. "Yep, yeah, not my proudest moment. Sorry about that."

Karen laughs, and it's a little staticky over the phone. "It's all good, it's healing up nice." There's a minor scuffle on her end of the phone, which Marilyn chalks up to one of her bandmates pushing past her to get into another room. "So, what exactly are your brothers on about?"

"To sum it up, we're in L.A. We're in desperate need of a keyboardist— yes, Billy, we're desperate— and honestly, we need to up the number of women in this group because I'm going insane with there only being the two of us."

She's quiet for a moment.

"Well, let me speak to the other one, then."

     KAREN: I was mostly convinced by the boys, then Marilyn nearly tipped the scale. But, when I asked Camila if she thought they were worth it, from her more-unbiased point of view, and she said that they were? I was all in.

     MARILYN: When Karen actually arrived though, I mean, yikes. I'm pretty sure Billy and Camila were screwing, sorry. I was sitting on the floor in the kitchen with a book, and the other boys were, uh, sword fighting. Literally. Warren had this pirate costume on, I don't know where he found it.

     WARREN: I packed it from home. Never go anywhere without it.

     MARILYN: Eddie was in a dress that definitely didn't belong to Cami or me, so, that's still a mystery.

     EDDIE: I had a dress, so what?

     MARILYN: And Graham was in his underwear. Hence why I was staying out of the room. My brother in nothing but underwear... [shudders]

     GRAHAM: I have no excuse.

     KAREN: Thing is, Marilyn knew what they were doing and still led me in to say 'hi'. First impressions: Not great.

     MARILYN: We started rehearsing, and rehearsing, and rehearsing. And we played gigs to crowds of, on average, about ten. And Cami would spend her time filming us and trying to get Teddy Price to come and see us play. And after a few weeks, with still no Bear [Teddy] to be found, we were kind of getting nowhere. But, we had our six! Speaking of: the name! We were at this diner, right? It was Graham, Camila, and Billy on one side of the table, then Karen, Warren, and Eddie on the other side, and I didn't have any room to sit at the booth so I climbed up and sat cross-legged on the window ledge. We were just chatting, mostly about how little money we were making, and how we were on a path to destruction.

And, what they didn't chat about was Billy pulling a bottle of alcohol out of his pocket to pour it into his coffee. Only Marilyn clocked it. She furrowed her brows, concerned, but said nothing.

"Also, while we're talking about stuff, how come I'm the only one without a bed in the house?" Warren asks, out of the blue.

Billy looks up. "Well, you could've taken Marilyn and Karen's room," he suggests.

Warren shakes his head. "No, I couldn't have. That room is haunted."

"It's not haunted," Camila says, but Marilyn waves a hand around to shut her up, all the while insisting that the room is in fact haunted so that Warren doesn't realise that she was lying the entire time.

"And, I'm eating pocket toast, so," Eddie announces.

Before anyone has a chance to acknowledge the odd statement, Karen butts in. "Why are we still called The Dunne Brothers?" Billy looks at her. "I mean, three of us aren't Dunnes, and the last time I checked, Marilyn and I are nobody's brother."

Marilyn throws a finger gun in Karen's direction. "The lady makes a point."

"So, you wanna change our name?" Billy asks.

And thus began an argument, not between Billy and Karen, or Billy and Marilyn, but between Billy and Eddie about the concept of changing the name, followed by the boys throwing out options for new names despite Billy's insistence it stays the same.

"The six of us will never agree on a name, alright, so, let's just—"

Marilyn smacks Karen's shoulder to get her attention, raises her brows, and jerks her head in Billy's direction. Karen, luckily, has the same thought.

"How about The Six?"

MARILYN: I imagine there was fallout from that conversation, but I can't know for sure, because I made a very swift, not at all awkward exit. Because, like, I was on the window sill— anyway. I'd seen this advertisement for a free show, I can't remember where or what it was called, but I thought it would be fun to get out for a night and listen to some music that I didn't have to play. I get there, and this girl is on stage just killing it. She's got this voice that's made for the radio, and just, wow.

SIMONE JACKSON (disco star): I couldn't have known then, that this tiny girl in the audience, couldn't have even been eighteen then, was going to be one of my best friends.

MARILYN: So, Simone's song ends, and she invites another girl on stage. [hesitates] I fell in love the second I heard her voice. I'd had my fair share of boyfriends over the years, some that lasted only a few days, others who lasted months, and I thought I knew what love was with so many of them, but... I didn't. I didn't know what love was until I heard Daisy Jones on stage for the first time. I thought she was pretty when she walked onto the stage. She had her hair in two braids over her shoulders and this bright guitar strap and she just looked, I don't know, ethereal? And she started singing. And I swear, my heart nearly exploded out of my chest. By the end of the song, I had to turn away from the crowd because I'd started crying, and I had to dry my eyes with a napkin before anyone saw and asked me if I was okay. But, the napkin was coarse and irritated my skin so it just made me look like I was crying more than I actually was. And then, when I turned back, she was standing right next to me.

DAISY JONES (lead singer, Daisy Jones & The Six): Marilyn had that look in her eyes that everyone has when they've been crying. You know, when they're still a bit glossy, and the whites are kind of pinky-red, and her under-eye skin was a little raw from the napkin rubbing against it. I didn't let on that I knew, though, I mean, I never liked people seeing me cry either.

"Hi," Daisy says.

"Hi," Marilyn replies. "I liked your song."

Daisy fights the urge to break eye contact. She never usually gets flustered when people compliment her music. "Thank you. I wrote it."

"You write a lot?"

Marilyn's playing it as cool as she can while her eyes are still burning.

"Only every second of every day." Daisy's eyes rake around the bar as if looking for someone. Marilyn's eyes rake over Daisy. Daisy looks back, and Marilyn looks up. "I'm Daisy."

"I'm Marilyn."

MARYLYN: She grabbed the napkin that I'd just been crying on, pulled a pen out of her back pocket, and wrote down her phone number, missing all of the tear-stained parts. Then she handed it back to me and went to join Simone. And, that's when I realised that Simone was talking to Teddy fucking Price. What are the chances? I waited at the corner of the bar while he spoke to Simone, then to Daisy, and when he was done talking to both, I made my move. I definitely could've played it cooler, absolutely. I don't even remember what I said, really, I was so flustered. But the gist of it was, "Hey, I'm in a band, you should come, give our band a shot," and he handed me his business card and told me to give him a call in the morning.

TEDDY PRICE (archive footage, 1982): It really was Marilyn, who convinced me to give that band a shot, Merv. I know the rumours like to say that Billy convinced me, but Marilyn got to me about an hour earlier. Good kid, she is.

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published : april 18, 2023
word count : 2.1k