Simone Jackson

Simone Jackson is a disco singer whose story links an independent musical career with a formative friendship with Daisy Jones. She recognizes Daisy’s unusual presence and talent early, gives her a place in her own life and home, and becomes the first person Daisy recalls as someone who would do anything for her. Their bond is intimate but not possessive: Simone encourages Daisy while pursuing her own work, and eventually departs on tour just as Daisy is turning toward a new band and a different future.

Identity and Career

Simone is introduced as a rising disco star whose success becomes international. By 1974, signed to Supersight Records, she was scoring dance hits that later came to be regarded as classics of the protodisco genre. “The Love Drug” and “Make Me Move” topped dance-club charts in France and Germany. Her success gives her a professional life distinct from Daisy’s early dependence on other people and frustration with a recording contract that would not let her make the music she wanted.

Simone’s career also takes her beyond Los Angeles. In the summer of 1974, she set out to tour Europe. Later, she prepared to tour behind the Superstar album, with New York City as her base between shows. She describes the disco scene there through the Hustle at Studio 54: a world and a set of professional commitments that were her own, not simply an extension of Daisy’s story.

Friendship with Daisy Jones

Simone first remembers seeing Daisy on the dance floor at the Whisky a Go Go. Daisy drew attention immediately; Simone describes her as gold against a silver world. Daisy, in turn, identifies Simone as her best friend. Simone says she had never had a sister and brought Daisy everywhere, making the friendship both chosen family and a practical source of shelter and companionship.

That care became especially consequential because Daisy was so young. During the Sunset Strip Riot, Simone and Daisy joined the protest against the curfew and police, met actors, and continued socializing afterward. Daisy, about fifteen, fell asleep on someone’s patio; Simone, about nineteen, remained troubled by the sense that no one else was looking out for her. The memory makes clear that Simone’s attachment was not just admiration for Daisy’s beauty or talent: it carried a protective responsibility, even in a social world where adults did not reliably provide one.

Simone invited Daisy to live with her in Laurel Canyon, in a home her producer had bought for her. They shared a bed for six months. Simone recalls that Daisy could be awake at four in the morning, wanting the light on so she could read. Daisy’s insomnia had begun in childhood, when she would stay up reading while her parents entertained downstairs. Their shared nights thus joined ordinary domestic closeness to a difficulty Daisy had carried for years; Simone knew her not only as a striking performer but as a restless, private person.

Daisy later remembers being made to leave Simone’s home as a turning point. She was perhaps seventeen when she first understood that she could not keep drifting through life on other people’s support, and began to wonder whether she had a purpose. The change belongs to Daisy’s account, not to a stated intention on Simone’s part, but it shows how the friendship’s shelter could also mark the boundary beyond which Daisy had to imagine a life of her own.

Musical Recognition and Mutual Affection

Simone heard Daisy sing in unguarded moments at home: while taking a shower or doing dishes, Daisy would sing Janis Joplin or Johnny Cash, especially “Mercedes Benz.” Simone was taking voice lessons and working hard to secure another record deal, yet thought Daisy sounded better than anyone and sang with an ease that seemed almost effortless. Simone admits to feeling envy, but says Daisy was not easy to hate. Her response recognizes the imbalance between labor and apparent natural ability without reducing the friendship to rivalry.

One of Daisy’s favorite memories is a drive with Simone down La Cienega, listening to Carole King’s Tapestry. When “You’ve Got a Friend” came on, they sang along; Daisy was also listening closely to its words and felt grateful for Simone. She became tearful and turned toward her, but Simone understood without needing an explanation. In Daisy’s recollection, that small exchange expressed the security of knowing there was someone in the world who would act for her, and for whom she would do the same. The scene makes music a language for a closeness the two friends already share.

Separation and Narrative Significance

Simone’s departure for another tour introduces a quiet separation at a moment of change. She was preparing to tour behind Superstar and spend more time in New York; Daisy seemed worried, but told her to go and expected they would see each other soon. Daisy was excited about what lay ahead because she was joining a band. The accounts do not describe a rupture between them. Instead, the two women’s paths diverge: Simone continues building a career in disco, while Daisy enters a new phase with The Six.

Simone’s significance rests partly in this contrast. She is not merely the friend who discovers Daisy’s voice or provides a temporary home. She has her own recording success, international audience, and touring life, and she leaves to pursue them. At the same time, her memories help establish the person Daisy was before her fame: conspicuous on a dance floor, gifted in casual song, sleepless at home, and young enough to need someone’s care. Through Simone’s affectionate but clear-eyed testimony, Daisy’s later celebrity remains connected to a private history of friendship, refuge, and growing independence.