Parallel Roads ↠ Daisy Jones & The Six

track 003: different drum

TRACK THREE:
DIFFERENT DRUM

❝ yes and i ain't sayin' you ain't pretty
all i'm saying's i'm not ready for any person
place or thing to try and pull the reins in on me, so
goodbye, i'll be leavin' ❞
— stone poneys

.•° ✿ °•.

GRAHAM: [Smiles] We started dating after that night.

FRANCESCA: I saw Graham the morning after that first kiss. But I didn't go to the garage this time — he came to visit me. He was stood outside the door, looking nervous as hell when I came outside. It was... pretty strange, all of it. I wasn't exactly clear on where we'd left off. I asked him, "What're you doing here?"

And, I remember this, he said, "I wanna go somewhere with you. Literally anywhere that isn't Chuck's garage..." I could definitely get behind that, so I said yes. It was on May 3rd, exactly a month after we'd first met.

GRAHAM: A week later, we went on our first real date. It was early May, I think, and I remember the weather was amazing. Not a cloud in the sky... it was actually a lot hotter than we thought it would be. So, I remember sweat. A lot of sweat... and not just the nervous kind [Laughs] I thought it would be a good idea to get some ice cream, and we did that.

FRANCESCA: We went to get ice cream in the morning, but it wasn't open yet, so we killed some time looking in a record store in Pittsburgh. Clouds had come out literally a couple days before, so I snagged it straight off the shelf. After a lot of convincing, I persuaded Graham to buy The Velvet Underground's debut album, right after he promised to listen to Chelsea Girls as well.

GRAHAM: I was originally just gonna get a single by The Who, 'cause I liked the guitar on it. Then I ended up getting some extra records... probably would've ignored them if it weren't for her. Don't tell her that, or she'll kill me.

FRANCESCA: After that, we grabbed some lunch at a local diner and went walking around Pittsburgh. That was what felt so special, even then — there were no expectations between us. We didn't have to anything extravagant, you know? Just being with each other was enough. I should've realised it at the time... how rare it is to find someone you can share that with.

GRAHAM: Francesca was just unlike anyone I'd ever met or hung out with before. Even if it hadn't been a date, I would've had the best time just being in her company.

In the afternoon, I took her up on the Duquesne Incline. I thought it was kind of touristy, but I wanted her to have the best view in town. Downtown looks so small from up there. You had the river winding through it, and then there was Francesca — she spent ages just leaning on the rail, taking everything in...

[Softly] It really was a great view.

FRANCESCA: I'd had a boyfriend very briefly before, back in my hometown, but that was very different. I was fifteen and it was more like, you know, "Let's meet behind the train tracks at this time on Saturday to kiss." [Giggles] Yeah, no, what I had with Graham was beyond that in so many ways. He sure gave me a pretty good reason to hang around in Pittsburgh.

But it wasn't just him. The rest of the band became a home away from home to me, and I'd started finding a place for myself in the music scene. You might think it's weird, how fast that happens, but I felt I'd uprooted myself from Waterbury. In my head, my life was now in my suitcase. And at that moment, it was unpacked in Pittsburgh, so of course my life was there. Typically, you like making yourself feel at home wherever your life is right now.