Rolling Stone's “biggest foes” cover story

Rolling Stone's “biggest foes” cover story made the antagonism between Billy Dunne and Daisy Jones a public spectacle just as Aurora reached stores. Conceived as a profile of the band’s decision to bring Daisy aboard, the story instead presented its two lead singers as enemies. Its timing joined music, photography, and personal conflict into a potent promotional narrative—and, according to manager Rod Reyes, gave the album the final push toward becoming an event rather than merely a record.

The image behind the story

The magazine’s visual conceit grew out of a separate photo shoot for Aurora. Rod Reyes arranged for photographer Freddie Mendoza to photograph the band and played him early album tracks to convey the sound they were pursuing. Mendoza imagined the desert mountains as the setting. The musicians offered competing ideas: Karen Karen remembered Billy proposing a boat, while Billy recalled wanting a sunrise photograph. The album had already been named Aurora.

On the shoot, the seven band members stood against the Santa Monica Mountains landscape, with a road, dust, trees, and sun forming what Mendoza saw as an image of California and the American West. Billy and Daisy had moved to opposite ends of the group. While Mendoza tried to get everyone to mix positions, Daisy leaned forward to look at Billy; for a brief moment, Billy turned toward her and met her gaze. Mendoza caught the exchange while the rest of the band looked at his camera. He thought the resulting photograph could serve as the album cover.

Mendoza also singled out a close image of Billy and Daisy’s torsos. Their faces were absent, but their identities seemed legible in the contrast between Billy’s denim and Daisy’s exposed chest. A clear blue sky separated them; its line appeared straighter beside Billy and followed Daisy’s curves. Mendoza also noticed what looked like a vial in Daisy’s pocket, though he could not identify it with certainty. He read the image as combining sex, drugs, summer, and rock ’n’ roll. Later, biographer Elaine Chang emphasized a different meaning in Daisy’s posture: the image conveyed self-possession, not an attempt to please Billy or the viewer. The album artwork thus supplied a charged visual vocabulary that the magazine’s hostile pairing could exploit.

From interview to antagonism

Jonah Berg was sent to write about the strategic value of Daisy joining the band. During his interview with Billy, however, Billy supplied a far more provocative subject. He said he could not stand Daisy, described her as selfish and entitled, and told Berg that her talent was wasted on her. Berg judged the conflict between two musicians who were creatively in sync yet openly contemptuous of one another more compelling to readers than a familiar story of Billy’s alcoholism and recovery. He returned to New York and wrote the piece in forty-eight hours, unusually quickly for him.

Berg instructed the photographer to create the cover he wanted, which the photographer said could be assembled from existing pictures. The resulting design placed Billy’s profile on one side and Daisy’s on the other, their noses nearly touching. Its headline asked whether they were rock ’n’ roll’s biggest foes. The arrangement turned personal antagonism into a legible image: two faces almost meeting, presented as rivals even as their creative partnership remained central to the band’s music.

Release and consequences

The story appeared the same week Aurora hit the shelves. The promotional campaign was already in motion: “Turn It Off” was the first single, the band had been booked on Midnight Special, and radio appearances had been arranged around the country. Karen remembered the single debuting at number eight on the Billboard charts. Rod regarded the Rolling Stone story as the first step in Aurora’s movement beyond music and said there would have been no diamond record without it; in his account, the article gave the album the last push it needed to take off.

The publicity also intensified the band’s internal fracture. Graham Dunne recalled that Berg’s assignment was meant to demonstrate why Daisy’s arrival was a smart move, not to publicize the singers’ hatred. Eddie Loving felt their private grievances had contaminated the band’s work. Karen believed the article ended any real chance that Billy and Daisy would set their pettiness aside and collaborate more fully on tour. Daisy later said that hearing Billy call her talent wasted in print made reconciliation unlikely; Billy countered that she could not claim the moral high ground after exposing other people and their families. The cover story did not resolve their conflict. It made the conflict part of the band’s public identity.

Public image and lasting meaning

The issue’s impact rested on more than scandal. The album cover itself became an influential image for young listeners. Chang recalled that, for teenage girls in the late 1970s, Daisy’s confident presentation of her body seemed fearless and self-directed. Freddie Mendoza, who had initially thought the shoot was just another job, later found that people continued to ask him about it. The photograph’s reception shows how an image made for an album could acquire meanings beyond promotion, while the magazine cover repackaged the same pair as antagonists.

In the story’s broader portrait of fame, the article is a turning point in how the band is seen: a carefully timed release, a striking visual pairing, and a damaging public exchange converge. The conflict sells the record even as it deepens the personal division on which the headline depends. The account’s irony is that the band’s public story of mutual loathing draws power from a musical connection strong enough to make the supposed rivalry fascinating.