1960s

The 1960s are the formative decade for Daisy Jones and the band that would become The Six. In its later years, Daisy was beginning to attract notice on the Sunset Strip, while in Pittsburgh the Dunne brothers’ self-taught blues-rock group grew into a larger ensemble. These were separate beginnings: one shaped by Daisy’s access to Los Angeles’s artistic and musical world, the other by brothers making music with the guitar their father had left behind.

Setting and Scope

The decade’s evidence centers on beginnings rather than on the band’s later fame. Daisy Jones was born in 1951 and grew up in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles. By the late 1960s, while still a teenager, she was making a name for herself on the Sunset Strip. The period thus places her early visibility within the city’s music scene, before the later events that would make her a nationally recognized performer.

The same years also contain the early history of The Six. The group began in the mid-1960s as the Dunne Brothers, a blues-rock band from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Its origins were modest in scale and familial in character: Billy Dunne and Graham Dunne played together before the group expanded into a band with other members.

Daisy Jones in Los Angeles

Daisy’s adolescence unfolded amid unusual privilege. Her father, Frank Jones, was a well-known British painter, and her mother, Jeanne LeFevre, was a French model. A biographer recalls Daisy as wealthy and striking even as a child, with cobalt-blue eyes, thick copper-red hair, and pronounced cheekbones. The account also emphasizes that she had an exceptional voice without formal lessons and had access to artists, clubs, and other parts of Los Angeles’s cultural life.

That background helps distinguish Daisy’s route into music from the Dunne brothers’ beginnings. Her early presence on the Sunset Strip made her visible as a young teenager, but the evidence does not describe a formal musical education or an organized career in the decade. Instead, the contrast is between resources and natural ability on one side, and a band built through practice and shared effort on the other.

The Dunne Brothers and the Band’s Growth

Billy and Graham were raised by their single mother, Marlene Dunne, after their father, William Dunne Sr., left the family in 1954. The brothers’ musical life grew out of what he left behind: an old Silvertone guitar. They taught themselves to play and fought over who would use it, making the instrument both a practical starting point and a link between their family history and their shared ambition.

In 1967, while the brothers were still teenagers, the band added drummer Warren Rhodes, bassist Pete Loving, and rhythm guitarist Chuck Williams. Warren wanted to join because, as a drummer, he needed a band in order to perform; his musical ambitions were shaped by the groups he listened to, including the Who, the Kinks, and the Yardbirds. With these additions, the Dunne brothers’ project became an ensemble whose future depended on more than the two siblings’ bond.

The Decade’s Afterlife

The 1960s do not contain the group’s later commercial peak, but they establish the people and beginnings from which it emerged. By the end of 1976, Daisy was performing with the band, and their recording of Honeycomb had reached number three on the Billboard Hot 100. The transition from the Dunne Brothers to The Six and then to a group performing with Daisy shows how far the early Pittsburgh formation had traveled beyond its original scale.

Later images of the band also gave the formative years a public afterlife. During the Aurora album photo shoot, photographer Freddie Mendoza captured Daisy and Billy looking at each other while the rest of the group faced the camera. A separate image of their torsos became especially memorable, and later commentary described the album cover as a landmark for young listeners because Daisy appeared self-possessed rather than posed to please someone else. These later interpretations belong to the band’s subsequent history, but they throw the decade’s beginnings into relief: the teenager first noticed on the Sunset Strip and the self-taught Pittsburgh musicians would become part of the same musical and visual identity.