{"id":333931,"date":"2025-10-26T13:35:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-26T13:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/333931\/"},"modified":"2025-10-26T13:35:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-26T13:35:11","slug":"cameron-crowe-remembers-wild-times-as-a-teen-journalist-with-led-zeppelin-allmans-bowie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/333931\/","title":{"rendered":"Cameron Crowe remembers wild times as a teen journalist with Led Zeppelin, Allmans, Bowie"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cameron Crowe doesn\u2019t traffic in regrets, except maybe one. He almost cast David Bowie in \u201cAlmost Famous\u201d<\/a> \u2014 the Oscar-winning 2000 movie loosely based on his life as a teen journalist on the road with a rock band \u2014 but didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

His original plan, Crowe told The Post in an exclusive interview, was to cast Bowie as Rocky Fedora, \u201ca Peter Frampton\u2013type character who\u2019s working with this British, Brian Epstein\u2013style publicist named Russell De May.\u201d<\/p>\n

But then the script evolved. Side characters muscled forward, the ensemble swelled, and Rocky vanished.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cameron Crowe originally planned to cast David Bowie (pictured) in \u201cAlmost Famous.\u201d Andy Kent<\/p>\n

\u201cI still feel bad about it,\u201d Crowe lamented. \u201cIt was really tough to lose that character, and to lose Bowie.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his wildly entertaining new memoir, \u201cThe Uncool<\/a>\u201d (Avid Reader Press \/ Simon & Schuster, out Tuesday), Crowe describes meeting Bowie in the mid-\u201970s when he was just 18, and being invited to spend long stretches around the singer in Los Angeles as he chased the sound that became \u201cStation to Station,\u201d the\u00a01976 art-rock opus featuring hits like \u201cGolden Years.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lifestyle was famously spartan and unhinged \u2014 Bowie was surviving solely on milk, red peppers and cocaine at the time \u2014 while the art was laser-focused.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know how that could ever happen today,\u201d Crowe says with a laugh. \u201cSomebody as famous as Bowie telling a kid, \u2018Spend a year and a half around me and hold up a mirror.\u2019 There was no assignment. I was just winging it.\u201d By night, Crowe watched Bowie assemble the Thin White Duke in real time; by day, he slipped into a kind of domestic sitcom with Angie Bowie and their son in a nondescript Beverly Hills rental. <\/p>\n

There were surreal moments aplenty. \u201cSometimes there might be a hexagon drawn on the curtains in his bedroom or a bottle of urine on the windowsill,\u201d Crowe writes. \u201cHe might cheerfully take me to the edge of the indoor swimming pool adjacent to his bedroom. \u2018The only problem with this house,\u2019 [Bowie told him], \u2018is that Satan lives in that swimming pool.\u2019 It was as if he were pointing out a pesky problem with termites.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his wildly entertaining new memoir, \u201cThe Uncool\u201d (Avid Reader Press \/ Simon & Schuster, out Tuesday), Crowe describes meeting Bowie in the mid-\u201970s when he was just 18, and being invited to spend long stretches around the singer in Los Angeles as he chased the sound that became \u201cStation to Station,\u201d the\u00a01976 art-rock opus featuring hits like \u201cGolden Years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Digging through his old tapes for the book, Crowe even found a moment he\u2019d forgotten, a kind of on-the-spot collaboration. Bowie demonstrated the William Burroughs cut-up method for songwriting, and told the teenager to throw words at him until a melody snapped into place.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was participatory journalism to the max,\u201d he recalled. \u201cThe song had a \u2018Space Oddity\u2019 feel. Never ended up on a record, but it was good.\u201d His months with Bowie ultimately became a 1976 Rolling Stone cover story. <\/p>\n

Crowe\u2019s journalism career reads like a greatest hits of American rock music. A Palm Springs\u2013born, San Diego\u2013raised prodigy,\u00a0he blew past grades and graduated high school at age 15. <\/p>\n

When his peers were still cramming for midterms, a teenage Crowe was crisscrossing America with a notebook, filing meaty features on Fleetwood Mac<\/a>, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Tom Petty \u2014 whom Crowe helped introduce to a national readership with Rolling Stone\u2019s first big feature on him in 1978. His youth and unassuming personality helped to get him past the velvet rope into whatever counted as the real room.<\/p>\n

Crowe graduated high school at 15 and started working as a music journalist. Redferns<\/p>\n

With Led Zeppelin, that \u201croom\u201d could be the least expected place in town. After arena blowouts during their \u201cPhysical Graffiti\u201d tour, the band would slip past the autograph hunters and reappear somewhere fans weren\u2019t looking. As Crowe writes, they often found refuge in \u201ca gay bar just around the corner. Fans combing the streets looking for the band never realized they could find Jimmy Page and Robert Plant dancing together, unbothered, to a song by Gloria Gaynor or the Average White Band.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, young Crowe used the gay bar\u2019s bathroom as a newsroom, \u201cmaking notes on little pieces of paper, often to the soundtrack of cocaine-sniffing patrons and some\u00adtimes sex on the other side of the stall door.\u201d<\/p>\n

He even briefly lived with the Eagles, at a rented house off Mulholland that singer Glenn Frey dubbed the \u201cEagles\u2019 Nest.\u201d <\/p>\n

While on tour, Led Zeppelin\u2019s Robert Plant (pictured with Crowe) and Jimmy Page would find refuge in gay bars. Neal Preston<\/p>\n

\u201cI was six feet away, with tape recorder on, as they wrote \u2018Lyin\u2019 Eyes,\u2019 \u2018One of These Nights\u2019 [and] \u2018After the Thrill Is Gone,\u2019 \u201d he writes. The access got so familiar that Frey gave him a nickname: C. C. Writer.<\/p>\n

There were other rites of passage. Kris Kristofferson helped the underage reporter into bars with his movie star charm \u2014 \u201cI\u2019d really appreciate it if ya made an exception,\u201d the singer told one bartender \u2014before heading onstage at San Diego\u2019s Civic Theatre. <\/p>\n

Lee Michaels, riding high off \u201cDo You Know What I Mean,\u201d pressed a gift into the kid\u2019s hands: \u201ca gallon-sized mason jar packed with freshly grown purple-and-green-flecked marijuana.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Not everyone was charmed. When Crowe met Lou Reed in New York, the greeting was a single sound effect \u2014 \u201ca small hissing sound,\u201d Crowe writes.<\/p>\n

Crowe also helped introduce Tom Petty to a national readership, writing Rolling Stone\u2019s first big Petty feature in 1978, when the singer bristled at being mislabeled a punk and vented about the record business.
\n courtesy of Petty Legacy LLC<\/p>\n

In \u201cAlmost Famous,\u201d one of the most bruising turns is when the fictionalized Stillwater band\u2019s frontman claims the teenage reporter\u2019s quotes are fabricated and nearly tanks the kid\u2019s career. That moment wasn\u2019t pure invention. It was a softened version of something stranger. In the early \u201970s, Crowe joined the Allman Brothers Band on tour at their peak and sat down with Gregg Allman in San Francisco.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What started as an interview became an unburdening. \u201cThe room changes when deep truths are being spoken, when raw honesty is in the air,\u201d Crowe writes. \u201cIt was no longer an interview. It was Gregg Allman\u2019s confession.\u201d\u00a0The singer spoke frankly and openly about topics that were usually off limits, like his two recently deceased bandmates (including brother Duane) and the murder of his father.<\/p>\n

A few hours later, it all flipped. At 2 a.m., Crowe was hauled back to Allman\u2019s suite.\u00a0Allman had discovered that the young reporter was just 16, and he was outraged.\u00a0\u201cHow do I know you aren\u2019t with the FBI?\u201d he said, according to Crowe. \u201cYou\u2019ve been talking to everybody. Asking questions. Taking notes with your eyes. Making tapes. I could have you arrested.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crowe\u2019s Oscar-winning 2000 movie \u201cAlmost Famous\u201d portrayed his early rock journalist days. The film starred Patrick Fugit and Kate Hudson. \u00a9DreamWorks\/courtesy Everett \/ Everett Collection<\/p>\n

Allman pointed to an empty chair. \u201cMy brother is sitting right there, right now,\u201d he said, referring to Duane, who\u2019d died in a motocycle crash in 1971. \u201cAnd he\u2019s\u00a0laughing\u00a0at you.\u201d\u00a0Crowe surrendered his tapes, and spent four days convinced he\u2019d blown the biggest shot of his life, before they were returned.<\/p>\n

Crowe\u2019s own mother was memorialized in the film\u2019s overly protective, big-hearted mom, played by a young Zooey Deschanel. His real-life mother, Alice, was a college teacher and \u201cunstoppable force,\u201d he said. She put him in on an accelerated track with school that made him something of a consummate outsider \u2014 the perfect perch for a journalist and later a film writer and director.<\/p>\n

She died in 2019, and Crowe still remembers her fondly. \u201cShe had intellectual curiosity to her last breath,\u201d he told The Post. \u201cI think about her hourly. She was a remarkable woman.\u201d<\/p>\n

A key moment in the film was inspired by a real life encounter Crowe had with Gregg Allman (right). Neal Preston<\/p>\n

Even triumphs were met with her steady hand. The night he won a screenwriting Oscar for \u201cAlmost Famous,\u201d Alice told him lovingly, \u201cIt\u2019s not too late to go to law school.\u201d<\/p>\n

Steven Spielberg was the wind at Crowe\u2019s back. He devoured Crowe\u2019s 172-page screenplay for \u201cAlmost Famous\u201d in a single weekend and phoned with the verdict: \u201cShoot every word.\u201d Crowe almost did, but one scene that got away still needles him.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNeil Young had a part and he had been costumed and everything,\u201d Crowe told me. The plan was for Young to play the estranged father of Stillwater guitarist Russell Hammond, showing up at a concert with a new, much younger wife who flirts with Russell while Dad remains oblivious.\u00a0The day of filming, \u201cin a slightly heartbreaking moment,\u201d the rocker called and said he\u2019d decided not to do it. <\/p>\n

Crowe found a measure of closure with a few of the giants who shaped his early life. With Bowie, it arrived over the phone in 2006, when Rolling Stone asked Crowe to revisit their landmark story.<\/p>\n

Crowe last saw Allman in 2015. Neal Preston<\/p>\n

Crowe\u2019s mother was a college teacher who put him on an accelerated track. Courtesy of Cameron Crowe<\/p>\n

Bowie told him he\u2019d tried re-reading the piece that morning but \u201ccouldn\u2019t finish it,\u201d calling the mid-\u201970s \u201cone of the worst periods of my life\u201d where he had \u201ctoo much time on his hands and too many grams of amphetamine or PCP or cocaine, and maybe all three, in his system.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another circle closed in 2015. Crowe drove to Del Mar, Calif., to see Gregg Allman play an afternoon set at the fairgrounds. The former \u201csleek rock god,\u201d now in his late 60s, carried himself \u201clike a biker on a pit stop,\u201d Crowe writes.<\/p>\n

He watched Allman flip through old photos with his \u201cweathered and tattooed hands,\u201d pausing on one with his late brother Duane, onstage at the Fillmore East. \u201cI \u2026 I can\u2019t,\u201d he said softly, before closing the Pandora\u2019s box of memories.<\/p>\n

Crowe is now at work on a biopic about Jodi Mitchell. WireImage<\/p>\n

They took one final photo together, and Cameron noticed that Allman \u201cstood up straighter, puffed his chest out a little,\u201d he said. \u201cThe rock star in him was taking up residence. Not much had changed in four decades, except everything. It was showtime.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s not done telling music stories. Crowe is quietly at work on a docu-drama about Joni Mitchell\u2019s life, and he\u2019s careful not to spill too much of his plans. But at the suggestion that Rocky Fedora could make a guest appearance, he brightened.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like that!\u201d Crowe exclaimed. \u201cHe\u2019d make a great Easter egg. Who knows, he might just pop up again. I think Bowie would approve.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cameron Crowe doesn\u2019t traffic in regrets, except maybe one. He almost cast David Bowie in \u201cAlmost Famous\u201d \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":333932,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[76390,1022,121872,7654,171,165461,35304,165462,975,75566,165463,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-333931","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-allman-brothers","9":"tag-books","10":"tag-cameron-crowe","11":"tag-david-bowie","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-gregg-allman","14":"tag-led-zeppelin","15":"tag-lou-reed","16":"tag-music","17":"tag-rock-and-roll","18":"tag-rolling-stone-magazine","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115440734916445371","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}