Elvis Presley's grand-daughter Riley Keough credits Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix for inspiring her portrayal of fictional rock star Daisy Jones

Riley Keough as Daisy Jones — (Image credit: Prime Video)

Actress Riley Keough says she took inspiration from Led Zeppelin, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix for her portrayal of fictional '70s rock star Daisy Jones in the Amazon Prime 'rockumentary' Daisy Jones & The Six.

While author Taylor Jenkins Reid drew inspiration for her best-selling book from the real life soap opera of Fleetwood Mac, and in particular, an intense 1997 performance of their song Silver Springs, Keough, Elvis Presley's eldest grand-child, cast her net further to draw upon the influence of other iconic '70s artists.

"I was like, 'I’m not going to exclusively look at women; I want to look at Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix’," the actress revealed to net-a-porter.com. "I pulled influence from men because I felt like Daisy was ahead of her time, in terms of how open and how willing she was to go into a space and be confident. I think that was really hard for women to do."

"I watched so many videos of [singers] in that era to get a sense of their movements," she continues. "There wasn’t the freedom there is now for women, and that is evident in how they behaved on stage. It was much more restricted in the 1970s, so I struggled with that because my body movements are so inherently of my generation."

Keough goes on to say that she also drew inspiration from the “childlike excitement” Janis Joplin displayed in a mid-tour letter written to her family at the peak of her career.

"Being excitable and seeing the wonder in the world, but really struggling with how she wants the world to be, versus what she’s being handed, is something I can really identify with," the actress says. "I also really identified with the way she wasn’t being taken seriously in her art. I think a lot of women at the time probably weren’t – and still aren’t.

"I was watching a video on Instagram the other day, of women on late-night talk shows from 2008 or something, and the questions they were asked were so appalling and disgusting. It was shocking. For women, [the public eye] was a vicious place for many years – and it still is."

Watch the trailer for Daisy Jones And The Six below:

Artists

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.