Press – The Uncool – Fresh Air

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TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross. My guest Cameron Crowe is known for writing the screenplay for “Fast Times At Ridgemont High” and writing and directing “Say Anything,” “Jerry Maguire,” “Vanilla Sky” and Almost Famous,” for which he won an Oscar for best screenplay. It’s the story of a 15-year-old who, in 1973, manages to become a rock critic and somehow get backstage interviews with important musicians. By the age of 16, he’s published in Rolling Stone and even writes a cover story. As improbable as that may sound, it’s based on Crowe’s own life as a teenage music writer. His new memoir, “The Uncool, ” is about that period of his life and more, including his adventures and misadventures, writing about musicians like Gregg Allman, Kris Kristofferson, Jimmy Page and David Bowie.

He also writes about what life was like in his family when he was growing up and how reluctant his parents were to allow him to go on the road with musicians before he’d even graduated high school. Let’s start with a clip from early on in “Almost Famous.” The Cameron Crowe character, William, is about 11, listening to an argument between his mother, played by Frances McDormand and his older sister, played by Zooey Deschanel. The mother speaks first.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “ALMOST FAMOUS”)

FRANCES MCDORMAND: (As Elaine Miller) You’ve been kissing.

ZOOEY DESCHANEL: (As Anita Miller) No, I haven’t.

MCDORMAND: (As Elaine Miller) Yes, you have.

DESCHANEL: (As Anita Miller) No, I haven’t,

MCDORMAND: (As Elaine Miller) Yes, you have. I can tell.

DESCHANEL: (As Anita Miller) You can’t tell.

MCDORMAND: (As Elaine Miller) Not only can I tell, I know who it is. It’s Darryl. What d’you got under your coat?

DESCHANEL: (As Anita Miller) It’s unfair that we can’t listen to our music.

MCDORMAND: (As Elaine Miller) It’s because it is about drugs and promiscuous sex.

DESCHANEL: (As Anita Miller) Simon & Garfunkel is poetry.

MCDORMAND: (As Elaine Miller) Yes, it’s poetry. It is the poetry of drugs and promiscuous sex. Honey, they’re on pot.

DESCHANEL: (As Anita Miller) First, it was butter. Then it was sugar and white flour, bacon, eggs, bologna, rock ‘n’ roll, motorcycles. Then it was celebrating Christmas on a day in September when you knew it wouldn’t be commercialized. What else are you going to ban?

MCDORMAND: (As Elaine Miller) Honey, you want to rebel against knowledge. I’m trying to give you the Cliff Notes on how to live life in this world.

DESCHANEL: (As Anita Miller) We’re like nobody else I know.

GROSS: Cameron Crowe, welcome back to FRESH AIR. It’s a pleasure to talk with you again.

CAMERON CROWE: Thanks, Terry.

GROSS: Was your mother at all like the Frances McDormand character and how unusual she was and how opposed to rock ‘n’ roll, even Simon & Garfunkel, who she probably hadn’t even heard yet?

CROWE: Well, first of all, hearing that clip, it’s uncanny how much Frances McDormand is my mother. I mean, the dialogue was straight out of our family and our home. But somehow she…

GROSS: Let me – I’m just going to interrupt by saying…

CROWE: Yeah.

GROSS: Your mother died – I think it was last year.

CROWE: She died in 2019.

GROSS: 2019. Yeah.

CROWE: On September 11. Born on Fourth of July and passed away…

GROSS: Oh, jeez.

CROWE: …On September 11, two days before “Almost Famous,” the musical, opened in San Diego. So it was a dramatic exit from the earth from my mom.

GROSS: Yeah. So I didn’t mean to interrupt, except I just wanted to express my condolences.

CROWE: Thank you so much. She was a huge character and completely inspiring. But listening to that clip, it just made me appreciate how sometimes real life is the best writer. And it was just lodged in my head forever as this classic thing that happened where my mom made us believe that she could tell if you’ve been kissing. And, of course, it was a stunt to get the truth out of us, or my sister, in that case. But just hilarious how life kind of puts in front of you the best stuff to write about.

GROSS: With a mother who was so controlling in terms of, like, food and vehicles and not even listening to rock ‘n’ roll,

CROWE: Yeah.

GROSS: …Were just kind of band in your house – you had to sneak it in – how did you manage to get away at the age of 15 and start going on the road with bands so that you can write cover stories about them?

CROWE: She was, you know, all about – as a teacher and a counselor who had many great counselees who loved her so much, she’d always respected intellectualism. If I could somehow pin it to intellectual success, I had a way in. So to go on the road with Led Zeppelin at 15, I had to really sell Led Zeppelin to her as, like, music that’s based on Tolkien. This is, like, lofty material that’s, like, good for the soul. Ultimately, I think she said – because we loved the interviewer Dick Cavett in our family – go and take this journey. Put on your magic shoes. Call me every night. And don’t take drugs. And that was my ticket out.

GROSS: Don’t take drugs is, like, the refrain of the movie. Like your mother’s always calling.

CROWE: Always.

GROSS: And anytime you call her, it’s like, don’t take drugs.

CROWE: Yeah.

GROSS: Did you take drugs?

CROWE: ‘Cause it was about brain cells. It was about brain cells.

GROSS: Oh, so you had to stay smart. Yeah.

CROWE: Yeah.

GROSS: Did you end up taking drugs?

CROWE: No.

GROSS: I’m sure you were offered them all the time.

CROWE: I was offered drugs, for sure. And I learned early on, Terry, that, like, the best response is, no, because the person offering you the drugs generally then says, smart kid, more for me. And that made me – I don’t know, it made people know that I wasn’t there to join the band, party with the band. I was there with a notebook full of questions based on loving music. And that really swung the door open.

GROSS: Was the writer aspect of being a music writer what your mother approved of, because that is a more intellectual pursuit?

CROWE: Exactly (laughter). And it was true, you know. I really felt like the best of the music that we loved that did sneak into our family had its roots in wonderful writing, for example, Joni Mitchell. Simon & Garfunkel, there was something about the song “Mrs. Robinson” that rubbed my mom the wrong way. And I think it was the way they said,

CAMERON CROWE AND TERRY GROSS: Coo, coo, ca-choo (ph).

CROWE: Totally.

GROSS: Yeah.

CROWE: You got it. She thought it was sneering. And she did. She pulled out the “Bookends” album cover and showed us the pupils of Paul Simon and promised us that he was high on pot.

GROSS: (Laughter).

CROWE: And the funny thing is when the movie came out with that scene in it – I think it was on CNN – somebody was interviewing Paul Simon, and they said, you know, what about this movie “Almost Famous”? – holding up the bookends album cover. You know, it was Frances McDormand saying, they’re on pot. He’s like, we were. So she was right.

GROSS: I think she’s also right of being, like, a sneering song about middle-aged women.

CROWE: Absolutely. So she saw clearly, and it was inevitable, I think, that music was going to come in, you know, underneath the door or through the window. Somehow, the power of rock was going to find my sister and me. And it did. To this day, that’s our favorite language with each other, sharing music and the things that happen when music kind of takes over and transports you and gives you that feeling that you really can’t get any other place.

GROSS: The first concerts you went to, including a Bob Dylan concert…

CROWE: Yeah.

GROSS: …Very early in his career, you went to with your mother.

CROWE: Yeah.

GROSS: That could be a very wonderful or a very embarrassing experience, with both mother and child being uncomfortable.

CROWE: Oh, yeah.

GROSS: Their child doesn’t want to be seen as needing to be escorted by a parent, and the parent feels, like, a hundred years old compared to all the kids that are there.

CROWE: Yeah.

GROSS: What were those experiences like for you…

CROWE: I was just…

GROSS: …Knowing that she hated rock ‘n’ roll?

CROWE: Yeah. Well, Bob Dylan, you know, we were pretty young, and he was appearing at a gymnasium at the college near where we lived in Riverside, California. And, she had read something about this young protest singer that had something to say. And so she came to us and said, let’s go see this protest singer and brought a blanket for us to sit on the floor of the gymnasium. And we did see Bob Dylan in 1964, like, right after he had written “Times They Are A-Changin’,” and he was kind of a Charlie Chaplin-type figure, I remember. Like, he just kind of was a little jaunty and these loose-fitting jeans, and he was funny and serious at the same time. And that affected us, for sure.

But real rock was banned for the longest time because it was, as she said, a vehicle for sex and drugs. And, you know, sometimes it really was. But I was able to go to another concert, which was Eric Clapton, Derek and the Dominos, with her. And it was so electrifying that even she kind of understood what the power of rock sometimes could be. And after somebody sitting next to her offered her cocaine, which was…

GROSS: (Laughter).

CROWE: …You know, striking to see. But she, you know, politely turned it down and everything. But when the concert was over, we were walking out and she said, you know what? Your music is better than mine.

GROSS: Wow. Yeah.

CROWE: And that was my mom. She is a truth-teller. So that was her truth. And that was another moment where the door swung open a little wider.

GROSS: When you were 15 writing about bands, the bands were older than you were.

CROWE: Yeah.

GROSS: But looking back now, they were probably mostly in their 20s.

CROWE: I know (laughter).

GROSS: Which is really young.

CROWE: Really young.

GROSS: So what’s your take on some of those musicians now, thinking of them as young people and not as older people?

CROWE: Yeah. Well, I thought they were, you know, seasoned adults at the time. And you’re right. They were 22, for example. And being 15, you know, the distance between 15 and 22 is enormous. It’s like a generation.

GROSS: Yeah.

CROWE: But really, we were all kind of young together. And rock was young. There wasn’t video assists and all the bells and whistles and dancers and stuff. It was really just a naked stage and people playing songs. The power of the songs was the power of the concert. And what I thought, as a young guy led into some of these dressing rooms to glimpse how bands prepared for a show, or how they struggled to figure out, you know, who was right in an argument about how to play a song – I started to see a dynamic that was so human that it was kind of beyond what I had been able to see as a high school student, for example, when my mom had skipped me two grades and later three. I didn’t have a lot of friends. But somehow…

GROSS: Because you were much younger than…

CROWE: Yeah.

GROSS: …Your fellow students, your classmates.

CROWE: But then, you know, somebody like Kris Kristofferson deigns to give me an interview and tries to sneak me into a bar where I’m underage. And then when we get caught, he says, well, I’ll sit out here in this big red leatherette chair, and I’ll do my interview with you as fans and people stream by. He treated me like an adult and talked to me about the power of movies and music and all this stuff that ended up speaking to me so strongly later. But as a young guy, you’re kind of in this position where, you know, this person is allowing me to ask them whatever I want to about music that I love. It was a blissful time, and I still love writing about it (laughter).

GROSS: So how did you manage to convince anybody that at the age of 15, still in high school, that you were worthy of being taken seriously, that your opinions were informed enough and deep enough…

CROWE: (Laughter).

GROSS: …Went deep enough to be a spokesperson for whether this album was good or not to be worthy of talking to a band?

CROWE: I’m just laughing because so much of it was just where I lived. We lived in San Diego, and San Diego is not a primary market. San Diego usually happens at the end of a tour after a band or an artist has been in, you know, San Francisco, LA, New York. Big reviews. They had to worry about – San Diego, it’s like, it’s surfers, you know?

GROSS: (Laughter).

CROWE: So they would just be partying early for the end of their tour a lot of times. And so here’s a kid that comes to the door with a notebook full of questions based on the music that nobody was really asking them about in the hands of an older journalist. Here’s some guy with an orange bag full of cassettes, like, ready to talk to you about your album “Aqualung.” You know, they’re like, get that kid in here. Come on, we’re bored. Let him ask us those questions.

And so many of the bands were just nice to me because they were bored in San Diego. And I got to tell you, going back and listening to a lot of those interviews – because I kept everything – they really talked to me. They really opened up. And that informed the life I was lucky enough to have later as a writer and a director in movies because I knew how people spoke. I transcribed all my interviews myself. So I knew that people don’t talk elegantly, but they can pour their heart out in half-sentences. So it was really one big magic carpet ride of learning about people. And it started early. I’m a lucky guy.

GROSS: If you’re just joining us, my guest is Cameron Crowe. And he has a new memoir, which is called “The Uncool.” We’ll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF STEVIE WONDER SONG, “YOU HAVEN’T DONE NOTHIN'”)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let’s get back to my interview with Cameron Crowe. His new memoir is called “The Uncool.” It covers the period of his life when he was a music writer for Rolling Stone and still in his mid-teens. He told a fictionalized version of the story when he wrote and directed the film “Almost Famous,” which came out in 2000.

So Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Lester Bangs in “Almost Famous.” And I want to play a scene where he gives you some very interesting advice. But first, I want to explain who Lester Bangs is.

CROWE: Yeah.

GROSS: I mean, he was a really eccentric guy.

CROWE: Yeah.

GROSS: And such strong feelings.

CROWE: Strong (laughter).

GROSS: And unwavering in his confidence and his opinions about what was great and what was garbage.

CROWE: Oh, yeah.

GROSS: And he pretty much became a cult figure, you know?

CROWE: Yeah.

GROSS: And died young.

CROWE: Sadly, yes.

GROSS: Yeah. So when you start writing for Creem, he gives you some advice. So this is a scene between Patrick Fugit, who plays your surrogate in the film.

CROWE: (Laughter) Yeah.

GROSS: And Philip Seymour Hoffman, who plays Lester Bangs.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “ALMOST FAMOUS”)

PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN: (As Lester Bangs) Once you go to LA, you’re going to have friends like crazy. But they’re going to be fake friends. You know, they’re going to try to corrupt you. You know, and you got an honest face, and they’re going to tell you everything. But you cannot make friends with the rock stars.

PATRICK FUGIT: (As William Miller) Is it OK if I…

HOFFMAN: (As Lester Bangs) If you’re going to be a true journalist, you know, a rock journalist, at first, you never get paid much. But you will get free records from the record company. (Laughter) There’s just [expletive] nothing about you that is controversial, man. God, it’s going to get ugly, man. They’re going to buy you drinks. You’re going to meet girls. They’re going to try to fly you places for free, offer you drugs. And I know it sounds great, but these people are not your friends. You know, these are people who want you to write sanctimonious stories about the genius of rock stars. And they will ruin rock ‘n’ roll and strangle everything we love about it, right?

FUGIT: (As William Miller) Right.

HOFFMAN: (As Lester Bangs) And then it just becomes an industry of cool. I mean, I’m telling you, you’re coming along at a very dangerous time for rock ‘n’ roll. And that’s why I think you should just turn around and go back, you know, and be a lawyer or something.

FUGIT: (As William Miller, laughter).

HOFFMAN: (As Lester Bangs) But I can tell from your face that you won’t. I can give you 35 bucks. Give me 1,000 words on Black Sabbath.

FUGIT: (As William Miller) An assignment?

HOFFMAN: (As Lester Bangs) Yeah. Yeah (laughter). Hey. You have to make your reputation on being honest and, you know, unmerciful.

GROSS: Unmerciful. Honest and unmerciful.

CROWE: Yeah. Yeah.

GROSS: And I think that was true of Lester Bangs.

CROWE: Absolutely.

GROSS: Were you capable of being unmerciful?

CROWE: Intermittently (laughter). When I listen to that, it takes me right back to when I first met him. He said almost exactly those words. And can you imagine being 15 or 16 and somebody enters your life who speaks that kind of truth with that kind of passion and treats you like an equal?

GROSS: Yeah, and unmerciful isn’t something you usually strive to be in your life.

CROWE: Yeah.

GROSS: But as a critic, you have to be honest. And sometimes that means unmerciful.

CROWE: Yeah.

GROSS: But that’s still a harsh word to use for a 15-year-old…

CROWE: You bet.

GROSS: …Who’s starting in a very harsh business.

CROWE: Yeah. Well, let me give you the context. His stance when I met him that day was, it’s over. You know, it’s gone. That passion, that thing, that flame that is true rock, true music, it’s over. They’ve taken it over. So I was like a straggler to something that was like a flying saucer and had left to him. So he’s telling me it’s over, but here you are. And just watch out because they’ll try and corrupt you, too. And I’m warning you right now because they already ruined rock.

It was, like, a lot of information. But his thing about unmerciful was, you got to fight back. You have to fight back in the homogenization of something that is important to you. And that’s why he used that strong word. And he was sometimes not unmerciful. Sometimes he was very kind. He was kind to me, for example. But he was a politician for the soul of rock, and to me, he was a legend instantly for that and many other reasons.

GROSS: Lester Bangs also warned you about not making friends with musicians or publicists. You probably really wanted to be the musicians’ friends. But did you try not to be? Like, how did that work out for you?

CROWE: Well, I think generally I was able to witness people that would come through a tour or backstage. And you could tell the people that were there to, like, party and act like they’re a rock star, too. And that person would leave the room, and you’d hear how they were talked about by the bands. And you just go wow. OK, well, I get it, you know? I don’t play an instrument, so I’m not going to be in a band (laughter) or try to be in this band. But generally, I thought like, be the guy that’s there to document it. And when you’re done, go home. Don’t stay out or try and, you know, hang out in the hotel rooms. Go back to your room and transcribe the interview.

I remember something, Terry, that happened early on. I was on the road with the Allman Brothers Band. And I loved the Allman Brothers Band. And they were staying at the Continental Hyatt House in Los Angeles, and I was covering them for Rolling Stone. And after their show at the Forum, they all came back to this kind of communal room to party and jam. And so there’s Gregg Allman playing, you know, this blues song, “Come In My Kitchen.”

And I’m just loving it. He’s like 8 feet away, and there’s some people singing, and there’s another guy playing guitar over there. And there was a guitar right next to me. And, you know, I only knew two chords. But I picked up the guitar, and I started to strum. And I was thinking, this is cool, man. I am, like, jamming with the Allman Brothers Band. And it was like hands appeared kind of behind me…

GROSS: (Laughter).

CROWE: …And lifted the guitar out of my hands. Almost like a hand from heaven is just coming to, like, relinquish the guitar from my grasp. And I just felt like, OH, that’s cool. I’m in heaven, and there goes the guitar now. (Laughter) It was like, don’t jam with the Allman Brothers Band, particularly when you only know two chords. And I thought that was the most gentle way to teach me a lesson early on.

GROSS: We need to take another break here, so let me reintroduce you. My guest is Cameron Crowe. His new memoir is called “Uncool.” And it follows roughly the same period of time as his movie “Almost Famous,” which is about being, like, a teenager still in high school, touring with bands and writing about them for Rolling Stone and other magazines. We’ll be back after a short break. I’m Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “STATESBORO BLUES (LIVE AT FILLMORE EAST, MARCH 13, 1971)”)

THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND: (Singing) I woke up this morning, I had them Statesboro blues. I woke up this morning, I had them Statesboro blues. Well, I looked over in the corner, baby, and Grandma, she done had them, too.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross. Let’s get back to my interview with screenwriter and director Cameron Crowe. His films include “Say Anything,” “Jerry Maguire” and “Vanilla Sky,” and he wrote the screenplay for “Fast Times At Ridgemont High.” His new memoir, “The Uncool,” is about the same period of his life as his 2000 film “Almost Famous,” when he was in his mid-teens, still in high school, and became a music writer, getting interviews with important musicians for Rolling Stone and other magazines. He won an Oscar for writing the screenplay for “Almost Famous.” The memoir expands to a few years before and after the territory covered in that film.

You followed David Bowie around for – you know, off and on for a year and a half…

CROWE: Yeah.

GROSS: …And wrote a piece. You know, was it a cover story?

CROWE: Yeah, it was a cover story in Rolling Stone. It was also the Playboy interview. And I did some other stories for, like, Creem and some other publications. It was a David Bowie factory I had going for a while because he wasn’t talking to anybody else. I mean, you know, life puts you at a crossroads, and you go one way, and it turns into 18 months with David Bowie. I had no assignment. He said to me, hold up a mirror to me; I want to see what you show me. So, like, spend some time around me, ask me anything you want. I want to see the mirror that you hold up. And that’s what I did.

I’m not sure he appreciated totally the mirror that I held up to him. But he did know that it was an accurate portrait of what he was going through in those 18 months, which are kind of referred to as a lost weekend, when he was living untethered in Los Angeles and not sure if he was going to become a movie actor for a while. He fired his manager, and he was just kind of learning what was going to be next and trying to reinvent. And he was playing around with this character called The Thin White Duke. And one day, he put 12 pages of an autobiography in my hand and signed it and said, I wanted you to have this. And it was called “The Return Of The Thin White Duke.” He never finished it. It’s 12 pages. It’s striking.

And this was the time David Bowie was trying to figure out what was coming next. And I was lucky enough to be around, and I asked him all kinds of stuff. And he was both warm and engaging, steely and brilliant, and lost.

GROSS: Well, you know, that kind of fits, in a way, with the fact that he had so many characters…

CROWE: Yeah.

GROSS: …That he embodied. And when he said to you, I want to see the mirror you hold up, do you think he didn’t really know who he was, in some ways?

CROWE: He – it’s so funny that you asked that. I asked him at one point – ’cause his real name is David Jones, right? So I asked him at one point, am I meeting David Jones, or am I meeting David Bowie, the creation? And he said, you’re meeting David Jones, who’s aggressively throwing David Bowie at you.

GROSS: Oh, wow (laughter).

CROWE: I know. I know. I know. He even – I asked him at one point – I was like, how do you think you’re going to die? Do you think you’ll die onstage – ’cause Ziggy Stardust, one of his characters, I think, was based on somebody who had died onstage. And he said, no, no, no, I don’t think that’s going to happen to me. I think I’m paraphrasing a little bit, but he said, I think my death will be an event, something that I manage and produce and make my own statement. And that is exactly what happened.

GROSS: Remind us how he died.

CROWE: Well, he died of cancer at a young age. And he knew he was dying. He didn’t tell anybody except a small group of collaborators. And he did this album, “Blackstar,” which is his statement about the death that was coming. And it’s profound and it’s managed and it is an opportunity that he did not throw away.

And he also said in one of the songs, you know, I can’t give you everything. So he kept a lot for himself. I think he found a life where he was in love and living in New York. And he loved his family. And the mirror that I held up to him, Terry, was a glimpse of a time when he almost died and wasn’t looking after himself and involved in drugs. And too many of his friends, he said, were drug dealers, and he’s lucky that he made it out alive.

GROSS: One of the things that you portray in the movie “Almost Famous” is the teenage girls and young women who followed the bands and partied with them afterwards and went to their hotel rooms afterwards. And people would call them groupies. But the leader of the group of girls in “Almost Famous” says, we’re not groupies. We love the music. That’s why we’re here. We’re band aides – A-I-D-E-S. And, you know, we’re here to help the band because we love their music.

The name of the character in the movie, the leader of these girls, is Penny Lane. That’s what she was known by. It wasn’t her real name. In your memoir, she’s also using the name Pennie Lane, but her real name is Pennie Trumbull. In the movie, she’s a main character played by Kate Hudson. In your memoir, she gets a paragraph in which you talk about her importance in the band world or the groupie world and her importance to you, but that’s it. Are you trying to protect her privacy by not saying more?

CROWE: A little bit. I’ve talked about Pennie quite a bit. Pennie Trumbull is an open book. She always said at the time when she got older she wanted to use whatever money she’d saved to put together an old folks’ home for old rock stars up in Oregon, which she did with a little bit of the money that she made, which wasn’t that much, to be able to use her story in the movie. We wanted to give her something, which she definitely used for exactly that.

So she loved music and behaved exactly that way. I was pretty young at the time. And so for Pennie and the Flying Garter Girls, who was, like, her clan, you know, who would fail at not getting emotionally involved with the bands – her thing (ph) was like, watch out. They all would fall for some of the guys and get their hearts broken – whatever. But Pennie Trumbull was one of the ones that really opened up to me and told me what it was like emotionally to follow a band and to crave that experience of being in an empty arena after you’d seen the show that meant so much to you and you could still feel the spirits in the air of that empty arena.

That’s my favorite scene in “Almost Famous,” when Kate Hudson is dancing in the garden of trash left behind where Stillwater has played. And that’s what I was left with – not trying to protect them. I think, you know, I’ve written about it, and you get the emotional carnage that can happen. That’s in “Almost Famous.” But I always felt that Pennie Trumbull was an open book and was, you know, a friend, as well as a kind of a, you know, flamboyant figure who was true to her word. She loved music.

GROSS: There’s a scene in “Almost Famous” where Stillwater, the fictional band…

CROWE: Yeah.

GROSS: …That your fictional surrogate is following – at some point they…

CROWE: I like that. My fictional surrogate.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: Yeah. So the members of Stillwater basically trade some of the girls to another band.

CROWE: Yeah.

GROSS: For $50 and a case of beer.

CROWE: Yeah, that happened.

GROSS: I mean, that is so condescending and so dismissive and so misogynist.

CROWE: Yeah.

GROSS: Was that based on something real?

CROWE: Yeah.

GROSS: And what does that say about the way the band sometimes saw the girls and young women who followed them around?

CROWE: Well, not everybody was…

GROSS: And went to their hotel rooms with them after the show.

CROWE: Yeah. No, I know. I was horrified when I saw that. That was a road crew traded one of the women who had been following the band around. And I felt that that was kind of a dark cloud that was passing over this thing that I felt so lucky to be covering and be given a backstage pass to see, et cetera. That was the ugly side of things. And it was heartbreaking to watch. But, you know, I felt at the time like this was a glimpse of the thing that I had seen in movies sometimes, like in a movie like “Carnal Knowledge” that Mike Nichols had made.

This is, like, emotionally violent. And it frightened me what people were capable of. I didn’t see it a lot. I saw it sometimes. And I think that’s probably something that wasn’t unique just to the world of rock. People mistreat people. And I found it really powerful. And when it came time to write about it in a fictional sense later, I did.

GROSS: Let me introduce you here because we have to take a short break. My guest is Cameron Crowe, whose new memoir, “The Uncool” is based on the same period of his life as his film “Almost Famous,” which he wrote and directed and won an Oscar for Best Screenplay. We’ll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “BENNIE AND THE JETS”)

ELTON JOHN: (Singing) Bennie, Bennie, Bennie, Bennie.

I want to talk with you about the title of your book, “Uncool,” and about what cool means or what people think it means.

CROWE: Yeah.

GROSS: And what cool signifies. In your movie, Philip Seymour Hoffman, as Lester Bangs, the rock critic, is giving you advice again. And his advice is, like, always very astringent and coming from a very skeptical or cynical point of view, usually with good reason (laughter). And so he’s talking with you about wanting to be cool and what that really means and why you are not cool.

CROWE: (Laughter).

GROSS: So here’s Philip Seymour Hoffman playing Lester Bangs and Patrick Fugit playing your surrogate.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “ALMOST FAMOUS”)

HOFFMAN: (As Lester Bangs) Oh, man, you made friends with them. See, friendship is the booze they feed you because they want you to get drunk and feeling like you belong.

FUGIT: (As William Miller) Well, it was fun.

HOFFMAN: (As Lester Bangs) Because they make you feel cool. And, hey, I met you. You are not cool.

FUGIT: (As William Miller) I know. Even when I thought I was, I knew I wasn’t.

HOFFMAN: (As Lester Bangs) Because we are uncool. You know, women will always be a problem for guys like us. Most of the great art in the world is about that very problem. I mean, good-looking people, they got no spine. Their art never lasts. And they get the girls, but we’re smarter.

FUGIT: (As William Miller) Yeah, I can really see that now.

HOFFMAN: (As Lester Bangs) Yeah, because great art is about, you know, guilt and longing and, you know, love disguised as sex, and sex disguised as love. And, hey, let’s face it. They got a big head start.

FUGIT: (As William Miller) I’m glad you were home.

HOFFMAN: (As Lester Bangs) I’m always home. I’m uncool.

FUGIT: (As William Miller) Me too.

HOFFMAN: (As Lester Bangs) You’re doing great, you know? The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool. Listen, my advice to you – and I know you think these guys are your friends – if you want to be a true friend to them, be honest and unmerciful.

GROSS: So that was Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lester Bangs. So did you want to be cool? And what did cool mean to you? And I just want to start by saying, too, that Lester Bangs ended up personifying cool for a lot of rock critics and people who were devoted to reading rock criticism because he went his own way with such confidence

CROWE: Yeah.

GROSS: And was so skeptical of the rock star machinery.

CROWE: Yep. Terry, he said cool in a way that I think Philip Seymour Hoffman caught, which is like, cool. (Laughter) You know, it’s like

GROSS: Posturing.

CROWE: The derisive way of saying cool because that way of cool means you’re trying to be cool.

GROSS: Yeah, you’re posturing.

CROWE: And when you’re cool, you’re posturing. So I was always trying to figure out what cool was because as we spoke about earlier, my mom skipped me too many grades. I got my high school diploma in the mail because I graduated as a junior. And, you know, the attempt to be cool, or even cool, was never going to pay off if you’re younger than everybody else. But what Lester was saying was exactly that. When you’re posturing, you’re never there.

And he said that they had done that to music. They had made music a lifestyle posture, not the thing that’s ripped from the soul of everyone from Van Morrison to, you know, the guys who made “Louie Louie.” That’s real. And everything else is just cool. And I thought, wow, so many of the musicians and the writers and the people that I came to love were not cool. They couldn’t even be cool. It was like…

GROSS: (Laughter).

CROWE: It was like a lost pursuit. But they found each other through music. They found each other through this thing that gave you that feeling of being understood. So I called the book “The Uncool” because it was the badge of honor that Lester put on me, you know? Don’t try and do it. Be whatever is real to you, and that might be cool (laughter). But the distinction between the two was pretty clear when he first started talking to me. It’s like he was kind of a rumpled genius who did not look at himself as cool, which made him, to me, a legend.

GROSS: Well, also, he was saying, like…

CROWE: Yeah.

GROSS: …I’m uncool, you’re uncool. You’re not part of, like, the rock star tribe…

CROWE: Exactly.

GROSS: …So don’t fool yourself. And maybe he was also implying you should be honored you’re on my team.

CROWE: Yeah. Exactly. And I got to tell you a tiny story because when I wrote that scene, when Lester in “Almost Famous” says, you know, we are uncool, you know? And I met you – you’re not cool. So I had this kind of scene written in my head of, like, victory. You know, Lester would say, you know, we are uncool. You know, that’s who we are. And when it came time to film the scene – this is the brilliance of Philip Seymour Hoffman, who Lester, I think, would have loved playing him – Philip Seymour Hoffman said, like, what if we do this scene like we are the only two people awake in the world, me and the character William Miller, and I’m going to tell him quietly who we are. We are uncool.

And it was that time as a director where you go, thank God I have, like, this person playing this part, who takes your words that you wrote in a quiet room and sends them into a whole other world of meaning. And that’s one of the other reasons why I used the title “The Uncool,” because it reminds me of, like, the lineage of Lester and what he told me. And it ended up in the hands of Philip Seymour Hoffman, who landed it in a way that Lester truly meant – as a gift to me, not as a warrior cry.

GROSS: Cameron Crowe, it’s really been a pleasure. Thank you so much.

CROWE: Thank you. Really enjoyed this.

GROSS: Cameron Crowe’s new memoir is called “The Uncool.”

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