Atlantic Data was so wanting to land the soundtrack to Amazon Prime Video’s new sequence, Daisy Jones & The Six that West Coast president Kevin Weaver went to extraordinary measures.
The ten-part sequence, whose first three episodes debut at the moment, brings to life Taylor Jenkins Reid’s best-selling 2019 novel about an imaginary rock band from the ‘70s who launch their magnum opus, Aurora, earlier than they breakup, riven by the sophisticated, tortured relationship between singer/songwriter Jones (Riley Keough) and band co-founder Billy Dunne (Sam Claflin). The sequence is instructed from the perspective of the band members 20 years after the cut up by means of flashbacks.
With a number of labels competing to launch Aurora, Weaver pressed up faux vinyl copies of the album, full with the Ellemar Data label (the made-up report firm the band is signed to within the guide) and despatched them to the sequence producers Reese Witherspoon’s Howdy Sunshine and Amazon Studios.
“The chance right here felt large, and it simply felt extremely vital to Atlantic with our story, heritage and the label’s wealthy historical past in rock and roll and this sort of music over many years and many years that we had been the associate right here,” Weaver says.
Whereas the band could also be faux (and owes a serious debt to Fleetwood Mac’s fractured dynamics and superb melodies), the music on Aurora — which comes out at the moment (March 3) on vinyl and to digital service suppliers — could be very actual, and was created by a few of music’s heaviest hitters. Grammy Award-winning producer Blake Mills, who co-wrote and produced the album and supplemental songs heard within the sequence, collaborated with associates Phoebe Bridgers, Marcus Mumford, Jackson Browne, Dawes’ Taylor Goldsmith and others to create the 11 songs on Aurora, plus one other 14 non-album originals which are peppered all through the sequence.
When Atlantic president of A&R Pete Ganbarg heard of Mills’ involvement, he was completely bought. “Not solely is he a terrific report producer, however he understands time and place,” he says. “[Over] an almost four-year course of, he actually turned the artistic voice, the visionary of what this Daisy Jones music was going to sound like.”
The method within the writing room included 10 songwriters composing for round 5 months, says veteran producer/A&R government Tony Berg, who dealt with extra manufacturing on the album and serves because the sequence’ chief music guide. “We had a fairly complete dialogue about what it’s to be in a band and what it was to be in a band 50 years in the past,” Berg says. “The songs had been finished with actual ambition and by no means that type of corny simulation of a track from a time and place, however as a substitute ‘Are these nice songs? Would a band 50 years in the past or a band at the moment carry out these songs?’ That constituted our standards for whether or not it was adequate.”
As to how Mills and Berg attracted such top-notch songwriters, they merely opened their cellphone books. They’ve labored with most of the large names concerned: Mills produced Mumford’s latest solo album and Berg produced two of Bridgers’ albums, in addition to her forthcoming set as a part of supertrio Boygenius.
Berg has nothing however reward for the producers from Amazon Studios and Howdy Sunshine for trusting Mills, who was really useful by CAA’s Brian Loucks, to make the songs sound as genuine as potential. “That they entrusted this complete challenge to Blake is outstanding as a result of traditionally tv treats music moronically,” Berg says. “And it was a concerted effort by everybody concerned for that to not occur.”
After the songs had been accomplished, Berg and Mills started rehearsing the solid and obtained an sudden profit from COVID. The actors within the band, which additionally embody Suki Waterhouse, underwent just a few months of deliberate vocal coaching, however when the pandemic hit and capturing was delayed, that coaching prolonged to 18 months. “We went into what Frankie Pine, our music supervisor, calls band camp they usually rehearsed as in the event that they had been a band for months so they might arise and carry out the songs and do a extremely good job,” Berg says. The actors even performed a gig at SIR Studios in Los Angeles earlier than an viewers. All band members contributed vocals however didn’t play the devices on the album and sequence.
That authenticity in each the songwriting and the actors singing their very own vocals “has super significance” in giving the challenge credibility, Weaver says. “These are among the most credible, vital songwriters of our technology, and so to have vital contributions from them on this music is extra invaluable than something.”
Mills recorded the music for the album and the sequence at iconic Sound Metropolis Studios, which he and Berg run. The studio, the topic of a 2013 documentary by Dave Grohl, performs a recurring position within the present. “They shot for 3 or 4 months at Studio Metropolis,” Berg says. “All of the studio footage was finished right here. We remade the rooms to look a lot as they did again within the day.”
Lead single “Remorse Me” has acquired 1.2 million streams, in line with Luminate, whereas new single “Look At Me Now (Honeycomb)” is at 207,000 steams and has been serviced to radio. “We’re trying to develop that and with the streaming story and the momentum off of the present launch this week, the hope is that we are able to actually drive that to be a significant report at a number of radio codecs,” Weaver says.
Moreover, every week after the episodes air, Atlantic will drop EPs with the featured music on DSPs. Weaver and Ganbarg add that there can be extra shock releases coming throughout the period of the sequence.
In an period the place the pop charts are dominated by solo acts — the one rock group within the prime 20 of the present Billboard 200 albums chart is Paramore — Berg hopes the sequence and soundtrack reignites curiosity in bands.
“I grew up in an period the place bands had been the whole lot and the concept of a band with two and three lead vocalists was fairly regular — The Beatles, The Band, The Byrds, The Buffalo Springfield, Eagles — all of them have [multiple] singers. Right now, I can’t title a single band like that. I need folks to know that camaraderie, that competitors, however, in the end, the great thing about a band relationship.”
