Cameron Crowe on his new memoir and the stories he regrets

Twenty-five years after “Almost Famous” put his origin story on movie screens, Cameron Crowe is thinking again about his roots as a teenage music journalist.

The Oscar-winning filmmaker’s new memoir, “The Uncool,” is a tender and insightful account of his adventures covering the likes of the Eagles, Led Zeppelin and Joni Mitchell for Rolling Stone in the 1970s. Back then, a relative scarcity of serious rock writing meant that bands would open the doors of their private jets and let him tag along with a notebook and tape recorder for weeks at a time.

Due Oct. 28, the book explores Crowe’s relationships with David Bowie, whom he shadowed across Los Angeles as Bowie constructed his Thin White Duke persona, and with Rolling Stone’s founder, Jann Wenner, whom he depicts as a kind of mentor-slash-antagonist. But it also ponders what Crowe, now 68, calls the “odd chemistry” of his loving yet complicated family, including his parents’ handling of his older sister Cathy’s suicide at age 19. (He’ll discuss the book Nov. 20 and 21 at the Montalbán Theatre.)

Crowe, whose movies include “Say Anything” and “Jerry Maguire,” is at work on a Mitchell biopic rumored to star Meryl Streep and Anya Taylor-Joy; next year, he plans to issue a volume of his collected journalism. Over coffee and bagels on a recent morning in Culver City, he talked about “The Uncool,” a missed opportunity with Bob Dylan and Wenner’s much-discussed ouster from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

I think it’s fair to say that you were known back in the day for being pretty sympathetic toward your subjects. Who’d you get crosswise with?
When I was starting out, there were some editors at Rolling Stone that really felt like they needed to tell me that you can’t just write about people that you admire. There were two assignments that I took, and I thought, OK, I’m gonna try out what later became known as snark.

I thought Bachman-Turner Overdrive were kind of goofy, but they were having big hits and Rolling Stone wanted the story, so I went on the road for three days. Opening for them: Bob Seger, who was between career successes. I remember sad Bob Seger on a pay phone in a hallway talking to somebody — like, “I’m headed to Michigan, where I should be a god, but I’m opening for Bachman-Turner Overdrive.”

I once beheld Bob Seger in a dressing room eating a chocolate-chip cookie off a styrofoam plate.
That’s like an Edward Hopper portrait.

Sorry, continue with BTO.
They were full of themselves — three big hits, and they think they’re the Beatles. So I just quoted them being completely pompous. Then I felt like s—.

Because you’d been asked to do something that wasn’t you, and you’d obliged?
Yeah. I remember seeing William Buckley on TV as a little kid and being like, He bites. What if I bit? Here was the interesting thing, though: They loved the story. “This sounds like us, man!” But I felt soiled by it.

Another thing I’m still kind of bummed about: I wrote about John Travolta [for Playgirl in 1977]. He was in a particular place, not unlike Bachman-Turner Overdrive, where he was just kind of trying out stardom, and I made a comment like, “Yeah, good luck.” He had a journalist friend who was a good friend of mine, and he called the guy up and he goes, “Why did Cameron do that? I really enjoyed talking to him, and he was looking where he could shoot an arrow at me.”

Years go by, and I end up at the same table with him when “Jerry Maguire” came out. Kelly Preston, his wife, had been in the movie, and he’d advocated for her to do it and everything. There was a moment where I said, “I really regret what I wrote about you because it wasn’t me, and I don’t think it was you either.” F—ing Travolta looked at me and he said, “I appreciate what you’re saying, but there’s no road back to trusting you.” I can still see his face. And it wasn’t “I’m so hurt,” you know? It was “You weren’t honest with yourself, were you?”

What’s some writing you’re especially proud of in the book? You’ve got a scene where you’re in Chicago with Led Zeppelin and you meet this woman in a bar. You say, “She was a single mother and a schoolteacher on her day off. She invited me to her apartment, and I watched her pay the babysitter.”
I’m proud of that. What that did — and you can’t really do it with screenwriting in the same way — it just caught a feeling. It felt real to me, and honest, and a little sad. I’m also proud of the writing about Ronnie Van Zant [of Lynyrd Skynyrd]. That guy was cut short, and there was a huge career ahead of him. More people need to put a crown on his head.

You do a nice job in the book of speeding up and slowing down as you go through your memories. It’s got some changes in tempo.
Hopefully like music.

One of the longest sections revisits an encounter with Gregg Allman. He spoke candidly to you about his music and about the death of his brother Duane. Then he kind of turned on you — accused you of being a cop, took your interview tapes.
The Allman thing was sitting in my gut for decades, and so that just wrote the way it did. It was very violent emotionally, and more violent than I think Gregg — well, no, I think Gregg knew it. But it was a tour bus anecdote in his autobiography. I felt like, Come on, man — that’s not real.

When I did the audiobook the other day, I started crying. He really scared the s— out of me. I didn’t have a family where I heard domestic stuff happening in the next room. So to be 16, on your big ride, and to have somebody beat you up with hard fists — it was still in there.

In a way, that scene feels like —
But I never hated him for it.

No, I didn’t get that impression from the writing.
I felt like I’d uncovered a wound somehow. I wasn’t a doctor, but there was the wound, and I was like, “I’m sorry that you’re so angry about it.”

The scene feels like the heart of the book to me.
Look at the guy: He wasn’t that much older than me, and there was so much going on inside him — so much pain. And I too had that kind of pain because I’d also lost a sibling.

Who’s an artist you got wrong?
I did an interview with Bob Dylan for Los Angeles magazine, and I got it so wrong that they didn’t publish it. It was around the time of “Street-Legal,” and we did it where they were recording. He had a room in the rehearsal space, and the top 10 albums of the moment were spread out on this bed — like he’d asked someone to bring him the top 10 albums. I think Seger was one of them. The interview just really didn’t go well. It was like no good answers. Or maybe my questions weren’t big enough. He’d done “Renaldo & Clara,” and he was talking about how Shelley Winters was a very important artist. I’m like, “Shelley Winters? That person on the Johnny Carson show?”

Years later, I got the job to do the liner notes for [Dylan’s box set] “Biograph.” He came over to my house for two hours and sat down at this little red table in our living room. Because it was for him, I think, he had something to say. The interview was basically me saying, “‘Forever Young’ — go.” And he f—ing answered the questions! “Well, I wrote it in Arizona, and I was thinking about…” I was like, “Who is this guy?”

Who disappointed you?
I was given the assignment to do a cover story on Steve Miller. It wasn’t like I was burning with desire to write about Steve Miller, but I liked the records — the early stuff was great. So I went to San Francisco, to the top of this hotel. It was really cold and all the windows were open. Everybody was kind of shivering except for Steve Miller, who had a big coat on. I started talking to him a little bit, and he said, “What makes you think you know enough to interview me? I think you’re too young to grasp my complete musical scope.” Everybody in the room is looking at me — like, “How you feel about what Steve just told you?” The ping-pong ball’s rattling in front of me. Am I gonna hit it back? I was like, “Well, I think I do, and…” But I went and wrote a memo to Jann about why I didn’t want to do the story, which he gave to Steve Miller.

Have you talked to Miller since?
No, but I think he still remembers. He said something at the Rock Hall about it.

In 2023, Wenner was booted from the Rock Hall’s board after an interview with the New York Times’ David Marchese about his book “The Masters.” Marchese asked why Wenner interviewed only white men in the book, and Wenner suggested that women and Black artists — including Joni Mitchell and Marvin Gaye — weren’t sufficiently articulate. Did you interpret those comments as a betrayal of Wenner’s true self, or was that the true Jann coming out?
I think it was the true Jann on that day. The guy you would imagine he was [by] reading those comments, I didn’t recognize that guy as Jann. I recognize that guy as probably having written that book and feeling really good about the people that he interviewed and explaining why he chose the people he chose to call masters. But it’s a “Have you stopped beating your wife?” question, you know? I don’t know that Marchese was trying to play gotcha, but I think that’s how Jann answered the question on that day.

To me, Jann is a guy that got a lot of people psyched to link arms and write about music at a time when nobody had a place to really do it. To be a young person going into that office and seeing those vibrant people who were five or six years older than you but rowing together to tell these stories — it was super exciting. And Jann created that atmosphere. Later, as a director, I realized how important it is to be the person that brings everybody together. And it’s not easy.

Cameron Crowe and Joni Mitchell in San Diego in 2019.

(Bruce Glikas / WireImage)

Would you say the opprobrium that came down on him was justified or excessive?
Probably excessive if you weren’t able to get more of the story. If you were able to see Jann from a different perspective, you might understand what he was trying to say better. But this is the thing in clickbait culture: You get the four sentences that get people crazy or super happy but mostly outraged. He’d probably say it differently today.

I’m certain he would. But is that because he feels different or because he got stung and now he’d be wary?
I think he was wrong about Joni and knows he was wrong about Joni. She’s the most articulate of them all.

What’s a type of music that makes you feel old now?
I have two sons who are into melodic death metal. That was never my thing, but I went to a Sleep Token concert with them and I was blown away at how emotional it was.

I love that I asked you about music you don’t understand and you told me about something you totally do understand.
I mean, Sleep Token — in a way, it’s singer-songwriter music.

You’re known for your excellent needle drops. Who uses music in their movies even better than you do?
Quentin [Tarantino] often does. To use Jim Croce the way he did [in “Django Unchained”], or using the Delfonics in “Jackie Brown” — that was a crusher. I saw this series “Wayward” with Toni Collette that hurt for me to watch. Michael Angarano, who’s in “Almost Famous” — he plays the little guy: “11!” — he made a really nice movie called “Sacramento,” and there in the middle of it is this obscure Ron Wood track that’s fantastic. I’m like, F—, I gotta make another movie and show some muscles.