Daisy looked at me and said, “What do you think, Graham? I think people will expect it. We don’t want to disappoint them.” I could not understand why she was directing it to me.
Before I could even answer, Billy looked at me and said, “But it’s slow. We have to keep in mind we’re playing bigger venues. We need stuff that plays to a crowd.” I was about to ask Billy if that meant he didn’t want to do “A Hope Like You” either, because that’s also a slow one. But before I could, Billy said, “So that settles it then.”
And Daisy said, “Well, what does everybody else think?”
And the whole time, they weren’t even making eye contact. We were all standing around, watching them talk near each other.
Billy: The first day we rehearsed, I came in with a good attitude. I said to myself, This is somebody I need to work with. Forget whatever chaos is going on. This is a professional relationship. I tried to put my personal issues with her aside. And you know what? I was still mad about her calling for a vote on “Regret Me.” Yeah, I was. But it was water under the bridge. It had to be. So I made sure that my tone was kind and I kept my nose to the grindstone.
Daisy: I was ready to put all of that crap between Billy and me in the past. I was married now. I was trying to keep my focus on Nicky. I was really trying to make it work.
Nicky had finally agreed to join me as we went into rehearsals. He flew in from Rome and moved into my place at the Marmont.
He even had dinner with my folks. I almost never had dinner with my folks. But I asked them if they wanted to meet him and they invited us out to Chez Jay. He was incredibly polite and sweet and really impressed them. He pulled out the whole “Yes, Mrs. Jones. No, Mr. Jones” thing and they liked that and then the minute we got to my car afterward, he said, “How can you stand those people?” And I smiled about as wide as humanly possible.
I liked being married. I liked the idea of us being a team, of being tied to this one person. I had somebody who asked how my day was, every day.
Simone: In theory, marriage made a lot of sense for Daisy. She needed stability back then. I mean, she has always been my best friend. Always will be. But she wanted someone to share her life with. Someone who loved her and cared about her and worshipped her. She wanted someone that, when she wasn’t home by a certain time, would wonder where she was. So … I understood what she was trying for. I wanted that for her, too.
She just picked the wrong person for the wrong reasons.
Daisy: Obviously there were a lot of signs that I’d made a wrong turn. Niccolo was deeper in the dope than I was. I was the one telling him to slow it down. I was the one turning down heroin. I was the one noticing just how much we were putting on my credit cards. And he was very threatened by Billy. He was jealous of anyone that I had previously dated or had feelings for and anyone that he perceived as someone I might possibly sleep with. At the time, I chalked it up to newlywed problems.
They say the first year of marriage is the hardest and I really took that to heart back then. I wish someone had told me that love isn’t torture. Because I thought love was this thing that was supposed to tear you in two and leave you heartbroken and make your heart race in the worst way. I thought love was bombs and tears and blood. I did not know that it was supposed to make you lighter, not heavier. I didn’t know it was supposed to take only the kind of work that makes you softer. I thought love was war. I didn’t know it was supposed to … I didn’t know it was supposed to be peace. And you know what? Even if I did know that, I don’t know that I would have been ready to welcome it or value it.
I wanted drugs and sex and angst. That’s what I wanted. Back then I thought that the other type of love … I thought that was for other types of people. Honestly, I thought that type of love didn’t exist for women like me. Love like that was for women like Camila. I distinctly remember thinking that.
Simone: Niccolo had a lot of good qualities. He did. He cared about her. He made her feel secure, in his own way. He used to make her laugh. They had inside jokes I never understood. Something about the game Monopoly. I don’t know. But he genuinely made her laugh. And Daisy had such a great smile, and she’d been unhappy for a while.
But he was possessive. And you can’t own anybody, let alone somebody like Daisy.
Warren: I met Niccolo and I went, Oh, okay, got it. This guy’s a con artist.
Eddie: I kind of liked Niccolo. He was always real cool with me and Pete.
Billy: Niccolo came down to the studio to hear us rehearse a lot. There was one day when Daisy and I … we were rehearsing the vocal harmonies and it wasn’t jibing. We had a few moments of downtime and I said to her, “Maybe we need to shift this into a different key.” That was more than I’d said to her in I don’t know how long. But Daisy just said it was fine the way it was. I said, “If you can’t hit the note exactly, we have to change something.” She rolled her eyes at me. And I apologized. Because I didn’t want to make a scene. I said, “Okay, I’m sorry.” I figured it would work itself out.
But she just said, “I don’t need your apologies, all right?”
I said, “I’m just trying to be nice.”
She said, “I’m not interested in your nice.” Then she shivered. And it was cold in the studio and she was wearing basically nothing. She looked cold to me.
And I said, “Daisy, I’m sorry. Let’s just be on good terms, all right? Here, take my shirt.” I had on a T-shirt and then a button-down over it. Or maybe I was wearing a jacket or something. Anyway, I took it off and I put it around her arms.
And she shrugged it off and she said, “I don’t need your fucking jacket.”
Daisy: Billy always knows best. He knows when you’re not singing right. He knows how you should fix it. He knows what you should be wearing. I was so sick of being told by Billy how things were going to go.
Billy: I was sick and tired of being treated like I was her problem. She was my problem. And all I tried to do was give her my jacket.
Daisy: I didn’t want his coat. What did I want his coat for?
Graham: Daisy was raising her voice a little bit. And the minute she did, Niccolo just came running in.
Karen: He was over by the couches we had in the corner, next to the cooler of beers. He always wore blazers over his T-shirts.
Warren: That fucker was drinking all the good beers.
Billy: He came running in toward me and grabbed me by my shirt. He said, “What’s the problem here?” I knocked his hand away and I could tell, by the look on his face when I did it, that he was trouble.
Graham: I was watching it happen—this fight brewing—and I was thinking, At what point do I step in here?
I’m worried Billy’s gonna clock him.
Karen: You wouldn’t have thought, at first, that Niccolo was tough. Because he was so smarmy. And he wasn’t muscular or anything. And he was supposedly some prince or what have you. But I watched him puff out his chest a bit and, look, Billy’s a formidable guy. But you just got this sense that Niccolo was a little bit unhinged.
Warren: There’s a code to two men fighting it out. You don’t punch the nuts. You don’t really kick. You never bite. Niccolo would have bitten. You could just see it.