And, hey! Maybe I did take acid in college so I could be a \u201cgolden god,\u201d but I ended up just leaving my breakfast in the john instead. Most writers around me have their own connections to Almost Famous. The first paper I ever wrote in undergrad was about a concert, because I wanted to submit myself to a place beyond the \u201cvast, benign lap of America.\u201d I don\u2019t know that I\u2019m \u201cmade for this\u201d line of work or ever will be, but Cameron Crowe and his teenaged, print-magazine decorations at least promised me that there\u2019s no aging into this art. It\u2019s never too early to say you love something, even if you\u2019re fifteen, twenty-seven, or forty years old. There ain\u2019t much money in any of it, but you should still tell somebody about that music you fell asleep to, or that music that got you thinking about a once-tucked-away part of yourself.<\/p>\n
When Crowe\u2019s writing got hot fifty years ago, he built a template every school-taught reporter has since fought to resist. He let Joni Mitchell offer corrections to his story about her in 1978; he shit-talked the magazine employing him, albeit respectfully, to Led Zeppelin in order to get interviews out of them, especially Jimmy Page, in 1975. In academia, you\u2019re taught to never put yourself in a piece and to never inflate the importance of the subject. You\u2019re the enemy and you should embrace that. Never cross lines and always keep it professional, the headmasters probably said. But I wouldn\u2019t really know. I skipped journalism school to get a creative writing degree at a mid-level liberal arts college. I\u2019m not a reporter or anything of that kind, anyways. I\u2019m just telling a story, either my own or somebody else\u2019s. And Crowe taught me how to do that first, when I read his piece on the Eagles in issue #196 of Rolling Stone and cluttered up the pages with yellow highlighter, pulling out passages I could only dream of writing on my own. The way he witnessed the \u201chairy-chested rock\u201d world and translated it for everyone else\u2026 I ached for that. Crowe\u2019s voice was like the tempo flip in \u201cOver the Hills and Far Away.\u201d Through him, I didn\u2019t learn how to love music deeply, I just learned how to speak up about it. But maybe that\u2019s the same thing.<\/p>\n
In my home office, the white walls are camouflaged by a film of various hangings: autographed photos of wrestlers, signed vinyl records, shelves of action figures and other trinkets, and concert souvenirs. They remind Crowe of his own collection, which includes a drawing David Bowie gave him, backstage passes, and too many setlists, many of them signed. Think William Miller\u2019s desk at the dawn of Almost Famous. Behind me are two Rolling Stone magazines framed, one of which is issue #284 featuring Neil Young on the cover\u2014a story written by a 22-year-old Crowe. He notices it behind me, saying, \u201cI think they messed up there, because they called him \u2018The Last American Hero,\u2019 but he\u2019s from Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n
Crowe: \u201cThe Last North American Hero\u201d would have been an awesome line.<\/p>\n
Crowe has a memoir coming out next week, an orange book called The Uncool<\/a>. The pages scale the entirety of his ordinary beginnings\u2014when he was a baby-faced SoCal kid watching Bob Dylan play in a gymnasium, contributing to the San Diego Door, befriending cranks like Lester Bangs, submitting his writing about Humble Pie to Creem, and graduating high school in 1972 at age fifteen\u2014through his days of tailing folks like Jerry Garcia, Jim Croce, Gram Parsons, and Fleetwood Mac<\/a> for tell-all stories. Stories of his family, including the suicide of his sister Cathy, are sown into the memoir, too. Not only is it a snapshot of a part of his childhood we\u2019ve only seen fictionalized, in the bookending segments of Almost Famous in 2000, but it\u2019s him putting personal touches on a time in his life where he shared the stories of others almost exclusively.<\/p>\n A year after graduating, Crowe went on the road with the Allman Brothers Band for three weeks after they put out Brothers and Sisters, penning a cover story for Rolling Stone that would make him the magazine\u2019s youngest-ever contributor. His old place of part-time employment ran a piece on him a coupla weeks ago, where he said that \u201clooking back can be dangerous.\u201d I press him on it, the sepia-toned mist of this \u201cback in my day\u201d phantasm that he fears: \u201cMy memories of that time are so present and vivid, more vivid than two weeks ago\u2014maybe because you\u2019re a younger person and you imprint so heavily, or maybe I just gather details because \u2018forever a journalist,\u2019\u201d he explains. \u201cBut there was so much in the stories behind the stories that was gonna get lost. I go there when I hear music.\u201d<\/p>\n Every time Crowe listens to Lynyrd Skynyrd<\/a>, he\u2019s teleported back to 1973 when, as a \u201clittle guy,\u201d fate landed him on a fishing trip in Hawaii with Ronnie Van Zant. \u201cAnd this guy was so vital and hungry\u2014a hero!\u201d Crowe remembers. \u201cThe Wikipediaization of so many people boils it down to the point where you think, well, in 200 years it\u2019s going to be \u2018There were the Beatles and Taylor Swift, and they did everything. There was nobody else.\u2019\u201d Rather than \u201cget lost in the past,\u201d The Uncool plucks the people out from behind the curtain, gives them a stage, and, as Neil Young<\/a> would put it, confronts \u201cthe danger\u201d head-on. \u201cDon\u2019t get calcified by staying in that one place,\u201d Crowe adds. \u201cI wanted to introduce people to people they should meet, including people that they think they know.\u201d<\/p>\n Reacting to Crowe\u2019s curriculum vitae of interviewees, it\u2019s hard not to view it as anything but a who\u2019s-who of rock and pop history. And sure, trying to convince a cereal-eating Jimmy Page to do an interview on Zeppelin\u2019s Starship was a lesson in elevator pitching, but an even harder lesson, he says, was what he refers to as \u201cthe Allman Brothers incident.\u201d He writes about it in The Uncool, how, the night before he was set to leave the band\u2019s tour, Gregg Allman had a \u201clate-night vision that the FBI could possibly be using me to investigate his band\u201d and demanded Crowe turn over his tapes. You can see the fictional version of that, and its consequences, unfold in Almost Famous, when Stillwater denies William\u2019s story and, catatonically, he runs into his stewardess sister at the San Francisco airport. Allman eventually returned the tapes to Crowe with an apology note.<\/p>\n \u201cI really felt humiliated and bullied by Gregg,\u201d he admits. \u201cI had a really hard time reading through it in the audiobook, because a lot of that stuff came back to the surface. I felt like it was emotionally violent. It was not a bus tour anecdote, it was a very scary time. Sometimes, the bliss of \u2018Going forward, I\u2019m following my instincts! Everything\u2019s coming my way\u2019\u2026 You slam into a wall and you can\u2019t go deeper down than what happens after that. You\u2019re like, \u2018Everything I was about was bullshit. My dream, that people are really kind of cool and will always throw an arm around you, is bullshit.\u2019 Life is dark. All of the bad things I\u2019ve ever heard? All of it\u2019s true. And then it turns around, but you carry scars from that. That stuff is as meaningful as the giddy highs.\u201d<\/p>\n It was the combination of dreams and scars that he wanted to catch. That\u2019s what he loves about music, and about writing and film\u2014that \u201clife will scare you and it will also throw you a lifeline,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd in that journey is all the great feelings in life and music. That\u2019s what I love writing about. The Allman Brothers Band\u2014a band I loved\u2014bringing me into their group, and then the guy saying to me, the night before I had to leave [for] home, \u2018You must be a cop. You are sixteen, what gives you the right to be here? You\u2019re underage and I\u2019m taking all the tapes. I\u2019m gonna tell everybody about you! And by the way, my dead brother is in that empty chair right next to you. He\u2019s there laughing at you\u2019\u2026 I fucking cried my ass off in the elevator leaving that room, and I never forgot it. I\u2019m glad that I got to see Gregg Allman and look him in the eye and have that moment. I thanked him for Almost Famous and he said, \u2018You\u2019re welcome.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Me: The final scene in Almost Famous, with William and Russell: Had you hoped that would have been what a reconciliation between you and Gregg would have been like? Was that your dream of making things right with him?<\/p>\n Crowe: Yeah, yes. I\u2019ve never been asked that.<\/p>\n Crowe says the catharsis was telepathic\u2014poignant, even. I don\u2019t rewatch Almost Famous as routinely as I did ten years ago. But whatever I thought I knew then about human connection went moot after watching those concluding scenes. Crowe wrote Almost Famous because he wanted to \u201ccapture that feeling of \u2018we\u2019re all in it together, and music is the glue,\u2019\u201d before elaborating that \u201cwe listen to it all differently, but we\u2019re here because we wanted to get close to a feeling that changed our lives, and that will always be a memory that we\u2019ll share, along with the coat that she left behind.\u201d At the absolute beginning, though, he wanted an excuse to make a film that David Bowie could act in. But, it turns out that Almost Famous was meant to be a story about family and loving music. Crowe didn\u2019t think it would be successful. By most metrics it wasn\u2019t, grossing $47 million on a budget of $60 million. Almost Famous got made because Jerry Maguire was a hit. For the coming-of-age, blank-check follow-up, Crowe put together a cast of mostly nobodies. The biggest star, Frances McDormand, had won a Best Actress Oscar for Fargo two years earlier. Philip Seymour Hoffman was still a coupla years away from stardom and an Oscar victory of his own. But that was a good thing, Crowe says, because it was \u201ca perfect storm. A star would have fucked it up.\u201d But he did have Billy Crudup, who\u2019d spend six weeks learning how to play guitar and courageously slip into the role of Russell Hammond.<\/p>\n The Stillwater cover story, titled \u201cStillwater Runs Deep!,\u201d eventually got written by Crowe as William Miller and you can read it on Rolling Stone\u2019s website<\/a>, or in the Almost Famous LP box set that came out a few years back. And there they are, those famous words beneath Neal Preston\u2019s shot of the band: \u201cI am flying high over Tupelo, Mississippi, with America\u2019s hottest band\u2026 and we are all about to die.\u201d<\/p>\n Me: Do you think you ever wrote another lede as good as that one?<\/p>\n Crowe: No. The lede for the Allman Brothers story was pretty good, but it was a collaboration with Ben Fong-Torres and another writer, so I can\u2019t really claim that.<\/p>\n Crowe takes me back to that first day of shooting, with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Patrick Fugit in San Diego (a scene that, by Crowe\u2019s own admission, offended the hell out of Lou Reed): \u201cIt was on the street where I\u2019d actually met Lester Bangs and had the same conversation,\u201d he recalls. \u201cI\u2019m listening to it on the headset and getting a chill, and I couldn\u2019t believe that life had given me the opportunity to make a movie about this stuff.\u201d He called up David Geffen, who\u2019d co-founded DreamWorks with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg five years earlier, and said, \u201cI\u2019m here, it\u2019s the first day of filming, and I\u2019m just pinching myself because I don\u2019t know how I got here, where I\u2019m able to do this and summon these things.\u201d<\/p>\n Geffen\u2019s response?<\/p>\n \u201cJerry fucking Maguire!!\u201d he told Crowe and then hung up. So much for sentimentality.<\/p>\n Glenn Hughes from Deep Purple did go to Crowe\u2019s house like Russell does in the film, but it wasn\u2019t to right a wrong like his fictional stand-in. \u201cTo have one of those people that you\u2019ve listened to come into your room and look around and see your records and stuff, I remember that felt like: terrifying and inspiring at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n Me: Will\u2019s first true experience with rock and roll is through the Who\u2019s Tommy. Was that the same for you, or was it winning Iron Butterfly tickets from a radio station?<\/p>\n Crowe: Tommy was the fully-realized, mysterious [experience]. It\u2019s a concept album and the packaging is really ornate and cool. I\u2019d read Pete [Townshend]\u2019s writing about the band in Rolling Stone. But going back to that first thing that tweaks you in a certain way, there was a radio station in the desert, KREO. They had a contest where, if you called in when you heard a certain noise, or just the thing that they stuck into a song, and were the first called, you\u2019d win. They had that harmonic piece from \u201cFor What It\u2019s Worth,\u201d which I didn\u2019t know that Neil [Young] played. I always thought [Stephen] Stills played it. That little harmonic hook, and the DNA that built from hearing that sound\u2014and the fact that, later, I realized it\u2019s Neil\u2014that was huge. And it still is huge. And it\u2019s so funny, the things that break through and get your attention. Sometimes you see a movie, or something, and it\u2019s somebody who comes in for one scene, and you just lean in and you remember a random moment. It makes you go, \u201cI want to follow that person\u2019s career. I want to watch this movie again for that one moment.\u201d It can be the smallest thing, and then you get to treasure that for all-time. That\u2019s my favorite part of it, how the music you love becomes a souvenir in a diary later. A clue to who you were.<\/p>\n The title of Crowe\u2019s memoir feels apt enough. Not only is \u201cthe uncool\u201d a phrase that\u2019s followed him for decades now, most prominently in Almost Famous and as the URL for his personal website<\/a>, but it\u2019s a phrase that reminds him of being in school, finding Hunky Dory, and loving the song \u201cChanges.\u201d \u201cI would carry it in and play it for my English class,\u201d he recalls. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t seem like it\u2019s going to be a universal thing, but then you meet people that love music, at a concert or something, and you\u2019re like, \u2018Wait, there\u2019s a bunch of us and they\u2019re all similarly disconnected, too, where they were supposed to cooler than they were, but they found this little hamlet over here to live in.\u201d Todd Rundgren used to make Crowe and his friends feel that way, too, because \u201cmusic introduces us and makes us know that we\u2019re in the same club, so that we have a club,\u201d he says. \u201cThat world made me think it was okay to be an outcast in school, because it punched a ticket into another place where I really belonged. I felt that there were people like that besides me, and that\u2019s what Lester\u2019s thing was. It\u2019s a badge of honor; it resonated. Somebody wrote to me recently that the book should have been called \u2018To Begin With\u2026 Everything,\u2019 which I was like, \u2018That\u2019s a pretty fucking good idea\u2019\u2026<\/p>\n Me: Some people would surely be like, \u201cWell, that\u2019s a little on the nose, don\u2019t you think?\u201d<\/p>\n Crowe: But I think that\u2019s okay, because not everybody knows the nose.<\/p>\n The Uncool features a lot of deeply sympathetic writing about Southern California, a region \u201cinfused with more soul than a lot of people give it,\u201d Crowe says. \u201cThe pockets outside of LA, writing about Yucapia, these places in the Inland Empire, Riverside\u2014sometimes a place where you lived is synonymous with the way you appreciated the music, and the music comes back to you when you go back there.\u201d For him, Riverside is a smoggy town with palm trees and strip malls. It\u2019s not DTLA or Hollywood, but more like San Bernardino, and the people living there are the people who went to gigs in San Diego. \u201cI wanted to write about that Southern California, because Martin Scorsese writes about his places with such care and loving detail,\u201d Crowe acknowledges. \u201cI can do that, I want to do that. This is what it\u2019s like to venture outside of Orange County and Los Angeles and into these other places. Time and place is super important.\u201d Like Neil Young giving you a weather report, Crowe knows the face of a blank page well: \u201cIt\u2019s pretty scary if you think about it too much. But it\u2019s also inviting, if you have a tip for yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n Crowe got his start writing for his school\u2019s newspaper and then the San Diego Door, the publication Lester Bangs left to edit Creem. In the early seventies, Bangs and Crowe had already started corresponding with each other. What Crowe remembers first about his Detroiter mentor is his \u201ceasy ability to lend a hand to somebody that clearly didn\u2019t have the experience.\u201d Crowe reckons that Bangs never went looking for somebody to mentor, but that he found joy in \u201cbringing people up.\u201d \u201cI was lucky enough to be that person,\u201d he elaborates, \u201cbut I was also very excitable. I tried to entertain him, probably to an obnoxious degree.\u201d He would do an English voice until Bangs flashed his \u201cI\u2019m gonna eat you alive\u201d face back at him. Maybe Bangs felt bad for Crowe, he tells me. \u201cBefore he died, I had a conversation with him where I knew he was going to write a book about Blondie, and I think he was disappointed that I\u2019d written about the most famous people of the era, pretty much. To Lester, I think that was tipping over the edge into the corporatization of rock. I felt compelled to impress him with how I was not that, but he died shortly after.\u201d<\/p>\n Crowe wrote about everyone, except Marvin Gaye. That was his white whale. \u201cI loved What\u2019s Going On,\u201d he tells me. \u201cAs a little guy, that really spoke to me. And I love all the Tammi Terrell duets. I knew from Ben Fong-Torres\u2019 big story on Marvin in Rolling Stone that he was kind of garrulous and maybe a little high on weed and just intensely interesting and wounded. I really, really wanted to interview him.\u201d Gaye had been living in Belgium for a good amount of time, but Crowe knew a few dudes who\u2019d done interviews with him. \u201cHe was living on Outpost Drive in Hollywood, near where I was living. They had their big stereo equipment, and they came up there to record the interview, and there was Marvin. He smoked a joint and he was really thoughtful, answering their questions. Then he closed his eyes and fell asleep, and they had to pack up their equipment and go. I love that story.\u201d Twenty years later, he gave that story to Stillwater in a now-deleted scene from Almost Famous, when a disc-jockey named Quince falls asleep while conducting a radio interview with the band. \u201cI think you\u2019re always going to get some kind of adventure writing about Marvin,\u201d Crowe says. \u201cAnd that\u2019s something I\u2019ve really missed out on getting.\u201d<\/p>\n Me: So, Stillwater\u2026 How big do they get after they get the Rolling Stone cover?<\/p>\n Crowe: Probably medium-sized. I always thought Russell [Hammond] gets plucked for another band. And [Jeff] Bebe continues doing the band and touring, maybe having a Spin Doctors period of relevance\u2014a little blip that still sticks around for summer shows.<\/p>\n Me: What do you make of what Ben Fong-Torres said once about you, that you were the writer who covered the bands that hated Rolling Stone?<\/p>\n Crowe: Or the bands ignored by Rolling Stone. [Laughs] If you\u2019re Richie Blackmore in Deep Purple, you haven\u2019t seen a lengthy, 4,000-word thought-piece about Machine Head. So [Fong-Torres] is like, \u201cOkay, I\u2019m gonna take this steak and stick my fork in it and throw it across the room, so that it hits the wall because it\u2019s too well done. Have fun writing about that.\u201d And that was great.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/GettyImages-528843910.jpg\")
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