Daisy Jones, played by Riley Keogh, is largely inspired by Stevie Nicks, the lead singer of the rock band Fleetwood Mac. According to author Taylor Jenkins Reid, it was watching a clip of Nicks and bandmate (and ex-boyfriend) Lindsey Buckingham that sparked the ideas for Daisy, Billy, and the entire story.
"When I decided I wanted to write a book about rock 'n' roll, I kept coming back to that moment when Lindsey watched Stevie sing 'Landslide.' How it looked so much like two people in love. And yet, we'll never truly know what lived between them," Reid wrote for Hello Sunshine. "I wanted to write a story about that, about how the lines between real life and performance can get blurred, about how singing about old wounds might keep them fresh."
Reid also has said that the mysterious breakup of the indie-folk duo the Civil Wars (Joy Williams and John Paul White) inspired the dynamic between Daisy and Billy. "They wrote these incredibly romantic and intimate songs, and they would perform them so beautifully and so intensely," Reid told Entertainment Weekly. "They're both married to other people, and one night they just break up [the group]."