Amazon Prime’s new limited series, Daisy Jones & The Six, has sent fans fans into a rock 'n' roll induced frenzy.

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Adapted from the Taylor Jenkins Reid novel of the same name, it stars Riley Keough as the eponymous star and follows the meteoric rise and legacy of the band.

Alongside Keough, the cast also consists of Sam Claflin, Camila Morrone, Suki Waterhouse and more.

But is the band based on any specific musical group? Read on for everything you need to know about the inspiration behind the Prime Video series.

Is Daisy Jones & The Six based on a true story?

Daisy Jones & The Six Prime Video
The cast of Daisy Jones & The Six. Prime Video

While the series definitely feels as though it's based on a real band's come-up story, it's all fictional – but is inspired by real events.

As outlined in our review, if you're a Fleetwood Mac fan, the story between Daisy (Riley Keough) and Billy (Sam Claflin) will be a familiar one and feels like an ode to Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham majorly.

In a 2019 post on the Hello Sunshine website, Taylor Jenkins Reid wrote about how the iconic real-life band influenced her writing Daisy Jones & The Six.

She describes coming across a performance of Landslide that saw Nicks and Buckingham move closer together and the author thinking they were in love with each other, but then was surprised to learn from her mother at the time that though they had dated, the pair were no longer together.

She wrote: "Years later, once I understood the full story of Fleetwood Mac, I came across 'The Dance' again, this time on YouTube. I watched it in its entirety. I saw that later on in the show, Stevie sung 'Silver Springs', like a woman scorned, holding that microphone like a weapon, drilling holes into Lindsey’s head with her eyes as she sang that her voice would haunt him."

She continues: "And yet, two years ago, when I decided I wanted to write a book about rock ‘n’ roll, I kept coming back to that moment when Lindsey watched Stevie sing Landslide. How it looked so much like two people in love. And yet, we’ll never truly know what lived between them.

"I wanted to write a story about that, about how the lines between real life and performance can get blurred, about how singing about old wounds might keep them fresh."

The scandals and drama surrounding Fleetwood Mac's production of their 11th studio album, Rumours, are well-known. They included Christine and John McVie's divorce before the recording of the album, Go Your Own Way being Buckingham's response to his break-up with Nicks, as well as other affairs and drug use throughout the production of Rumours.

The drama circulating Rumours didn't just concern Nicks and Buckingham, who draw close similarities to Daisy and Billy in the series — the band's other members were all going through their own relationship drama, with the fallout and trauma providing inspiration for some of their greatest hits.

Nevertheless, Rumours went one to be one of the band's most successful albums, in a similar way to how Aurora does the same for Daisy Jones & The Six in the series.

Daisy Jones & The Six
Riley Keough as Daisy and Sam Claflin as Billy in Daisy Jones & The Six. Prime Video

At the time of Rumours's release, Stevie Nicks told Rolling Stone that the majority of the songs she wrote for the album “are definitely about people in the band... Chris’s relationships, John’s relationship, Mick’s relationship, Lindsey’s and mine".

She added: "They’re all there and very honest and people will know exactly what I am talking about... people will really enjoy listening to what happened since the last album.” Similarly, drummer Mick Fleetwood previously said previously that Rumours was an album that "almost killed us".

Fleetwood Mac consists of Buckingham (lead guitarist and vocalist), Nicks (lead female vocalist), Mick Fleetwood (drummer), John McVie (bass guitarist) and Christine McVie (keyboardist and vocalist).

It mirrors a similar band make-up to Daisy Jones & The Six, with Billy (Caflin) as guitarist and vocalist, Daisy (Keough) as lead female vocalist, Warren (Sebastian Chacon) as drummer, Eddie (Josh Whitehouse) as bassist, Graham (Will Harrison) as lead guitarist and Karen (Suki Waterhouse) on keyboard and vocals.

Of course, the new Prime Video series is based on Reid's novel of the same name, which was published in 2019. But arguably, the sound of Daisy Jones & The Six is also a nod to Fleetwood Mac, especially seeing as Aurora's lead single of Look At Us Now (Honeycomb) samples Fleetwood Mac's The Chain.

The first three episodes of Daisy Jones & The Six are available to stream on Prime Video now, with new episodes landing every Friday in March. Try Amazon Prime Video for free for 30 days. Taylor Jenkins Reid's original book Daisy Jones & The Six is also available now.

Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on.

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Authors

Morgan Cormack
Morgan CormackDrama Writer

Morgan Cormack is a Drama Writer for Radio Times, covering everything drama-related on TV and streaming. She previously worked at Stylist as an Entertainment Writer. Alongside her past work in content marketing and as a freelancer, she possesses a BA in English Literature.

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