Simone

Simone is Daisy Jones’s trusted friend and a disco performer whose relationship with Daisy is defined by closeness, candor, and the recognition that love cannot command another person’s recovery. She pursues Daisy across distance, intervenes when Daisy is close to abandoning her band for Niccolo Argento, and ultimately helps her enter rehab. Her account also traces a separate life after disco’s decline: she invests her money, marries, has a daughter, divorces, and later watches that daughter become a successful musician.

A Friendship Across Distance

Daisy describes her connection with Simone through the image of two blinking lights in a dark world. The lights flash at the same time, she says, and neither is alone. The image makes their friendship feel present even when their lives are separated by distance: Simone is not simply a person Daisy remembers, but someone whose existence Daisy experiences as a point of connection. Their bond is expressed in terms of recognition and companionship rather than constant physical proximity.

That connection takes on a more difficult form when Simone flies to Thailand. Exhausted and jet-lagged after the journey, she reaches her hotel and asks the concierge for the room of Lola La Cava, only to learn that Lola has checked out. The brief discovery gives Simone no reunion, only evidence that Daisy has left before she can reach her. Daisy’s account of what follows makes clear that Simone’s effort to find her is part of a continuing friendship, not an isolated gesture.

The Intervention in Italy

While in Patong with Niccolo, Daisy agrees to travel with him to Italy. The tickets arrive at her door, and she remembers Simone is on her way only after she is already en route. Later, when Daisy tells Niccolo she needs to return to Los Angeles for the band’s press obligations and tour preparations, he urges her to stay and dismisses the band as unimportant. Daisy nearly gives in, even though the band matters profoundly to her.

Simone arrives at the door and insists that Daisy take her suitcase and get into the cab. Daisy recalls that Simone’s fury and decisiveness made something click. The intervention changes the immediate direction of the scene: instead of remaining with Niccolo at the cost of the band and her own commitments, Daisy leaves. Daisy describes the importance of having one person who will tell the truth even when doing so hurts, and who will act when a crisis makes hesitation dangerous. Simone’s friendship here is not passive reassurance; it becomes practical protection at the moment Daisy is wavering.

Care Without Control

Simone’s later reflections complicate the rescue scene. During Daisy’s tour, Simone receives calls from her at all hours and offers to come get her, but Daisy refuses. Simone considers forcing her into rehab, rehearses interventions, and imagines traveling to drag her offstage. She recognizes that none of these plans can guarantee change. Her conclusion is that she cannot control Daisy or make her recover through either love or anger; trying to discover the perfect words only makes her feel responsible for an outcome she cannot command.

That recognition does not mean Simone stops caring. She describes the difficult alternative as stepping back while remaining ready to catch Daisy if she falls. The image of letting someone go into danger, without knowing whether she will make it through, conveys the cost of respecting Daisy’s agency. Simone’s account therefore gives the friendship a boundary as well as a promise: she can offer help, speak honestly, and be present, but she cannot choose sobriety for Daisy.

After the final Chicago concert, Daisy goes directly to Simone and tells her everything. Simone gets her into rehab. Daisy later says she has been sober since July 17, 1979, and connects the life she built afterward—including leaving the music business, publishing books, traveling, adopting sons, and opening the Wild Flower Initiative—to the decision to get clean. Simone’s role is specific and consequential: she helps Daisy reach treatment, while Daisy’s account presents sobriety and its lasting effects as Daisy’s own subsequent work and choice.

Simone’s Life Beyond the Rescue

Simone’s retrospective account also follows her own professional and personal changes. Disco dies in 1979, and although she tries to continue, she cannot achieve on radio the success she had in clubs. She invests her money, marries, has Trina, and later divorces. The sequence is stated without being made into a parallel of Daisy’s career: Simone’s life proceeds through its own shifts in work and family, beyond the crisis in which she helps her friend.

By the time she recounts it, Trina is far more famous than Simone was, earning money and making music videos Simone regards as crass. Trina has sampled Simone’s song The Love Drug on a new track, Ecstasy. Simone jokes that contemporary artists no longer leave anything to innuendo, but she also calls her daughter a boss and celebrates her success. That mixture of teasing and admiration gives their relationship its own warmth, distinct from Simone’s role as Daisy’s rescuer.

Simone’s narrative importance lies in the contrast between the limits of care and its real force. She cannot make Daisy accept help when Daisy refuses it, and she understands that love cannot substitute for recovery. Yet when Daisy returns to her, Simone acts: she gets her to rehab. The friendship is neither a promise of control nor an empty offer of sympathy. It is a durable connection that can survive distance, respect a refusal, and still be ready when Daisy finally asks for help.