‘Daisy Jones & The Six’ Episode 10 Recap: “Rock ‘N’ Roll Suicide” (2023)

When Daisy Jones & The Six limped into Chicago in October 1977, it was after a lengthy and eventful US tour that brought to bear both their rock star status and all of their lasting rifts and insecurities. “I was having such a good time, man,” Warren tells his present day interviewer in Episode 10 (“Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide”). “I didn’t want to see it.” But the writing was scrawled on the wall like desperate bathroom graffiti in a scuzzy rock club. And during their fateful set at Soldier Field, in front of a sellout crowd, the fissures in The Six’s facade all find each other, and the network of cracks opens wide enough for the band to fall right through.

Leave it to Eddie to hold a grudge. Remember all the way back in Episode 1, when Billy coerced him into switching from guitar to bass? He never forgot that perceived slight, and when you figure in his lifelong infatuation with Camila, Eddie was never going to feel secure in The Six. For him, the band was always going to be the Billy Dunne show. And it’s Billy who punches him in the face hours before the Chicago show, when Eddie says he’s quitting the band. But there’s also some truth in the grouchy bassist’s final retort. “This is your fault, man. You did this.” Throughout the course of their band’s lifespan, Billy was always too busy high horsing his emotions to eat even a bite or two of humble pie.

Daisy does get a nice surprise while in Chicago, with the arrival of Simone. Her best friend ended up turning down that major label contract, the one that would have forced her to be someone she’s not. “In New York, Daisy, I stopped being afraid, and people went nuts.” She’s living her life on her own terms, in love with Bernie, making her own way professionally, and Simone is happy. And at lunch on the day of the show, she offers Daisy counsel. If she doesn’t think she can do it anymore, coexisting with Billy in this band, then she just shouldn’t.

As “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide” bounces between the set at Soldier and everything that went down in the hotel the day of, we get a clear picture of each band member’s final chapter. After what she witnessed between Billy and Daisy on the previous tour stop in Pittsburgh, Camila delivers an ultimatum to her husband. I saw you, she tells him. “Tell me you don’t love her,” Camila demands. And Billy can’t answer. Karen tells Graham about the decision she made regarding her pregnancy, and he stalks off the elevator in an emotional snit. Later, she’ll tell him that what she doesn’t want is what she always didn’t want, and it’ll inspire Graham to lay down his guitar case. And after witnessing Billy fight with Camila, Daisy retreats to her hotel suite for a binge session with champagne, cocaine, and blasting The Saints on a portable record player while she ignores Rod’s calls about attending sound check.

Daisy also opens the letter that’s been dogging her since before Greece. It’s from her mother, Jean (Nicole Laliberte), and includes photos from her childhood. But a phone call does not go well. “You’re not an orphan, you selfish little shit,” Jean spits, and Daisy slams the telephone back into its receiver.

“You two are so much alike, you know that? You think you’re these two lost souls just fumbling your way through the dark but…” Camila frowns. She grimaces. “…You deserve each other.” It’s a few hours before the Soldier gig, and Billy is leaving messages for his wife. “If there’s any part of you that wants to make this work, please just come to the show tonight. I love you. I need my girls.” And he breaks his sobriety, downing a whiskey in the bar and pulling on a flask backstage, where he also kisses Daisy again. This guy’s a mess.

With Billy drinking again, and Daisy doing bumps on stage, the Six’s final set has all the hallmarks of their lowest points. But somewhat miraculously, it also holds together as a document of what they always did best. The co-frontpeople harmonize on one mic. Simone comes out to duet on a triumphant version of “The River.” And the Six songs resonate as the intra-band message centers they’ve always been. The group takes a bow, and between set an encore, Billy kisses Daisy again. “She left me,” he mumbles, and pours out some coke. Daisy is concerned. And when Billy says he just wants to be broken together, she stops him cold. “I don’t want to be broken.”

Onstage for the encore, with their fans holding lighters aloft and chanting for “Look At Us Now (Honeycomb),” Billy can’t muster his vocal through fucked up tears. He runs off the stage as Daisy leads the Six through a spirited version of the song, and races back to the hotel. “Camila! Wait!” He tells her that while Daisy sees all of him, he’s never allowed Camila into the same places in his heart. But she tells him she was always there anyway. Billy, packing a duffel, says he’ll put in the work to regain her love and trust. And in the present, his interviewer says she knows this part, because as it turns out, she was there the whole time. “I remember that night. I remember a lot more than you think, Dad.”

With the big reveal of Billy and Camila’s fully grown daughter Jules (Seychelle Gabriel) as the person interviewing everybody in Daisy Jones & The Six, the series kicks off an epilogue of sorts, where we find out what became of them in the two decades since that final show and their resulting dissolution.

Daisy Jones: With Simone’s support and Teddy’s help, Daisy entered a rehab program and got clean for good. “Everything that I have, and everything that I’ve done, my music, my sobriety, my daughter, is all because I left that night.” And when Jules asks her if she’s been loved since then, Daisy says yes. “But with Billy it was different.”

Billy Dunne: Daisy and him, well, he knows they were two natural disasters who needed to heal. He got out of rehab (again), went to therapy, “did some actual self-reflection for the first time in my life,” and it took years, but he won Camila back.

Karen Sirko: “I wanted to be a rock ‘n’ roll star. To travel the world and play music for strangers. And that’s what I did.” Cut to an 1980s MTV clip of Karen with her band Candy Floss, playing a keytar on their hit single “Solitude” as everyone is dressed in an amalgam of the video for Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love.”

Graham Dunne: “I moved back home, to Hazelwood. Fell in love, started a family – they’re my whole world, and I’ve got Karen to thank for that. I’d probably still be pining after her if she hadn’t been brutally honest with me.”

Eddie Roundtree: Eddie says he ended up starting his own band, and there’s a brief shot of him in a punky blonde dye job performing in a club somewhere. “We weren’t bad, just…” he drifts off. But he’s still out there playing solo gigs, including the old Six material, which these days populates classic rock radio.

Warren Rojas: “I’ve been a session drummer for years now. I mean, I’ve been on some records, you know?” And a quick shot of Warren playing the drums in an ’80s mesh tank top is followed by his marriage to Lisa Crowne, the birth of their twin girls, and his boat in Marina del Rey.

Simone Jackson: Simone and Bernie opened up their own club in New York City, Haven, and whenever she gets up to perform, “it still brings the house down.”

Rod Reyes: The tour manager quit the music business after The Six fell apart. He says he was devastated by the split. “You get your heart broken enough times, you stop falling in love. Except no, you don’t.” Here’s hoping Rod – and Timothy Olyphant’s wigs – ride on in some future form.

Teddy Price: “Teddy,” Billy says, “died in ‘83. They found him hunched over a soundboard after another all nighter. He died doing what he loved. Just like he said he would.” And we return to that Merv Griffin Show interview from 1982 and Episode 2. “The world won’t remember me,” Teddy says. “But they will remember the music. And I’m plenty good with that.”

And then there’s Camila. The voice of reason, and the steadiest presence since the beginning of Daisy Jones & The Six. “She was the reason I joined the band,” Karen tells Jules. “She was the reason I stayed.” For Daisy, Camila was an oracle. “She saw a future for me that I couldn’t see for myself. And she was right.” And Billy tells Jules that Camila was the love of his life, something he can say now and know it’s the truth.

“Give me all of the Platinum albums you want. The success, the fame, all of it – and I would hand it all back to you for one more minute with her.”

Jules shows Daisy footage on her Panasonic Palmcorder of her interview with Camila. This was in the weeks before her mom died of cancer. Camila adjusts her wig and says she’d like Jules to talk with Daisy. “Just tell her that I’m happy for her. And tell your father to give her a call. We have had such a wonderful marriage. We chose each other. But nothing in life is ever as simple as we want it to be.”

Needle drops in Daisy Jones & The Six Episode 10:

David Bowie, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide”

The Saints, “This Perfect Day”

The Rolling Stones, “Shine a Light”

Daisy Jones & The Six, “No Words”

Daisy Jones & The Six, “Regret Me”

Daisy Jones & The Six, “More Fun to Miss”

Daisy Jones & The Six, “The River”

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter:@glennganges