Some had played in garage bands, while others had never touched an instrument before.
“Because we had the pandemic, everybody buckled down and learned and was amazing,” Neustadter explains.
“I don’t know what we would’ve done had we gone when we were supposed to.
The cast of ‘Daisy Jones and The Six’.Lacey Terrell/Prime Video
It would’ve looked a lot different.
We would’ve had a little more movie magic involved.
But in this particular case, they were all really doing all this stuff.”
Sam Claflin (Billy), Suki Waterhouse (Karen), Josh Whitehouse (Eddie), Will Harrison (Graham), and Sebastian Chacon (Warren) perform as Daisy Jones & the Six.Lacey Terrell/Prime Video
And I need to know that they can do that.
Because if they can do it, they’ll be fine into a camera,'" he recounts.
“We wanted to seem as authentic as we could, so we made them do a concert.”
Riley Keough and Sam Claflin as Daisy Jones and Billy Dunne.Lacey Terrell/Prime Video
“They had a set list and there was no help,” he details.
Claflin, who stars as tortured frontman Billy Dunne, describes it as a surreal moment.
“It was a strange experience,” he says.
Suki Waterhouse.Lacey Terrell/Prime Video
“It was the first time we were all in costume together, and we were on a stage.
It’s not like we’re going to be trying to get a close up of some little action.
Waterhouse, the force behind keyboardist Karen Sirko, remembers it as more frightening than anything.
Riley Keough as Daisy Jones.Lacey Terrell/Prime Video
“It was honestly way more nerve-wracking than any show I’ve ever done,” she says.
“We were absolutely terrified.
I got to my piano and someone hadn’t switched on an amp, so there was nothing.”
Sam Claflin as Billy Dunne.Lacey Terrell/Prime Video
(Don’t worry, they fixed it).
The fact that we were able to do it for real we impressed ourselves.”
The concert also served another purpose.
Tom Wright (Teddy), Suki Waterhouse (Karen), Josh Whitehouse (Eddie).Lacey Terrell/Prime Video
“At that point, we didn’t even know how to stand,” says Claflin.
“That really informed us.
My movements, everything, were terrible.
Daisy Jones and The Six performing on the show.Lacey Terrell/Prime Video
It was a long process and a lot of hard work to reach that point.
But she was like, ‘I’m not musical.
I’ve only sung in the shower.'”
From there, they got to work helping her unleash that power.
For Claflin, he’d only sung within the realm of musical theater.
“And then I would attempt to copy the person that had sung and recorded it before.”
He took the same approach for hisDaisy Jonesaudition, attempting to imitateElton Johnsinging “Your Song.”
“I gave the worst Elton John impression I’ve ever heard,” he says with a laugh.
Adds Neustadter: “The music directors were like, ‘Does he know anything about this show?
What’s he doing?'”
He then spent a year and a half learning to play the guitar.
That’s where we landed.
Chacon played the drums growing up, and Whitehouse grew up playing guitar but had never played bass.
Waterhouse had never played the keyboard before joining the show.
For those with some experience, it marked an opportunity to hone their skills.
The more time they spend together, the more they did seem like a real band."
That period also included some screening or listening sessions of real musicians of the era.
“Sometimes we would show footage of rock stars,” adds Neustadter.
But we never said to them, ‘This is who it’s based on.
This is what we were thinking about.’
Instead, take a little something from everywhere and infuse it into your performance."
Naturally, the cast all drew from famous musicians of the ’70s.
Whitehouse and Harrison say they took a broader approach.
“Often, I found they were quite rigid and maybe their jaw was swinging a little bit.”
So, it was laid out there for me to pull from as we went through it."
Honestly, I cannot play the way that I used to play any more.
I only play with this silly set-up now, and it’s great."
That was also about practice and hours spent getting to know each other’s idiosyncrasies as people and musicians.
“We spent months and many, many hours rehearsing and hanging out a lot,” Waterhouse says.
“That’s the best way that you become a band.
You hang all the time.
You make stupid jokes.
You become delirious and silly.”
“And the other cast members got so good at their instruments, it was mesmeric.”
Next stop,Saturday Night Live?
Daisy Jones & the Sixpremieres March 3 on Prime Video.
