Audiobook Review The Uncool by Cameron Crowe – Memoir of a Distraught Insider | Biography and memoirs

The title of The Uncool refers to rock critic Lester Bangs’s assessment of Cameron Crowe, whose adventures as a music journalist were loosely depicted in his 2000 film, Almost Famous. Long before he became a film director, the teenage Crowe traveled around the United States interviewing some of the biggest rock bands of the era, including Gram Parsons, Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, the Eagles, and the Allman Brothers Band. Crowe’s memoirs reveal him as the perpetual outsider who, unlike his interviewees, had little interest in sex, drink and drugs, and lacked a certain feeling. Know-how. However, the rock stars loved his presence, enjoying his sincerity and the fact that he was more of a fan than an impartial reporter.

Crowe is the reader, offering a warm and lively narrative that conveys the wide-eyed wonder of his young character as he is thrust into the orbit of his heroes. It also paints a vivid picture of an era when bands were not protected by groups of PR representatives, and a writer could spend 18 months with an artist – as Crowe did with Bowie in the mid-1970s – to write a single biography.

The book comes to a close shortly after Crowe conducts a filmed interview with Tom Petty. With the video director absent, Betty orders Crowe to pick up the camera and begin filming. In doing so, Crowe stumbles into what turns out to be his ideal medium: “I was a music journalist, translating time and space for others to savor. This was an exercise in cutting out the middleman. It was like writing without a pen.”

Available via the fourth estate, 9 hours and 18 minutes

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