Cameron Crowe is a counter-culture interlocutor extraordinaire.
In 1975, while his peers are off flunking high school physics, Crowe is flying high with Led Zeppelin onboard their legandary Starship. Crowe interviews Jimmy Page and Robert Plant for their Physical Graffiti tour, and watches the band belt out Kashmir live for the first time, night-after-night, as their ‘dazed’ fans get their minds blown across America.
Crowe, in his recently-published memoir, ‘The Uncool,’ recounts his start as a teenage stringer in San Francisco reviewing music for a Renegade alt-weekly newspaper aptly named, The Door.
After skipping ahead several grades in high school due to his writing prowess, Crowe is savagly bullied in the locker-room. “Where are your pubes, little cunt?! Where are they?!” Cameron retreats into his room with his vinyl records and Rolling Stone maganizes. He believes his escape from teenage geekdom lies in getting his byline published on the cover of the legendary counter-culture ‘zine.
If you’ve seen ‘Almost Famous,’ then you’re already familiar with Crowe’s reporting methods — charming publicists, roadies, and groupies with his disarmingly dweeby approach and encyclopedic music knowledge — then, ultimately gaining access to the band’s seedy hotel suites, for a late-night interview.
“It’s all happening.”
— 70’s scenesters
As goes the refrain of the various scenesters at the Troubador, the Continental Hyatt House, and other choice LA haunts, “It’s all happening.” It’s also often the last thing Cameron hears before getting chucked out by the bouncers for being underage.
Spoiler Alert: It all happens.
Crowe gets his Rolling Stone gig and travels the country with sidekick photog Neal Preston, interviewing a pantheon of Rock Gods at the peak of their powers throughout the 1970’s.
“If there was never another record made, there’s enough music recorded and in the vaults everywhere for me to be happy forever. … I don’t really care about The Next Big Thing.” — Jimmy Page
Crowe’s challenges include interviewing one mysterious star who has been coked-out for days; is actively transitioning into a new personality called ‘The Thin White Duke’; and is found to be drawing pentagrams on the drapes of his room. (yes, it’s David Bowie)
Crowe is hazed (again) by a speedballing Gregg Allman, who first grants him a marathon interview, and then steals Crowe’s tapes and flys them to his next gig in Hawaii. Crowe is so devastated by Gregg’s betrayal, that he considers quitting journalism to become a lawyer like his mother always wanted. (**Phew: An Allman Brothers roadie named ‘Red Dog’ later returns the tapes.)
“Success was being able to keep your brain inside your head.” — Gregg Allman
Cameron’s mother Alice Crowe, plays a big role in the book, which is hilarious / sweet as she’s an anti-drug-crusading school teacher whose son happens to be flying around with some of the most depraved rockers on the planet. “Put some good into the world before it blows up,” says Alice.
The book’s title, and best lines, come from Crowe’s mentor Lester Bangs — the jaded rock critic played by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman in ‘Almost Famous’. “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool,” says Bangs.
“Call me anytime, I’m always home. I’m uncool.”
“Real music, music that you can call your own, barely exists anymore. It’s over. Soon, it’ll just be an industry … of cool.”
–Lester Bangs
renegadeslogbook.com 