Cameron Crowe is not a grown-up man. He has never been married. Or divorced. He's not a father. He's never raised his voice or cursed in traffic. He's still a virgin. He still calls his mom every night. He's never tried drugs or even had a taste of liquor. He's a boy. A sweet, sweet teenage boy.
And this memoir, which dives into everything you think you know about Crowe, actually gives you a heartbreak all the while leaving you with a bit of a happy-sad feeling. Hmmm. The more I think about it, that happy-sad feeling is about the best way to describe a Cameron Crowe film.
The family sitch is not all that relatable (although I do see a little of myself in his mother, Alice) but the drive to be a writer and to be close to music sure is. When he talked about seeing his byline in Creem for the first time, I teared up a little. When he remembered his excitement from his early interviews with Kris Kristofferson and Glenn Frey, I felt that tremor.
I remember that feeling. That feeling of understood sympatico between writer and talent. The quiver in my knees when we got each other. And then the idea that we were going to share that feeling. The artist through the music and me through the writing. What a goddamm partnership!
And I got the feelings of uncoolness too. We weren't the musician ourselves. We might have dated them or been married to them, but we weren't them. We were the writers. And while we may have been welcomed, we were definitely not cool.
But it didn't matter if sweet lil Cameron was cool or not because he was himself. Utterly humble. Completely adorable. Always honorable.
And as always, I highly recommend audio listening to this book so you can hear Cameron's vulnerable voice retelling these stories. The sometimes obvious choked-up breaks will get you.
I mean, honestly.....have we ever read a bad press story about Cameron Crowe? Is he the Ron Howard or Nick Offerman of his genre?
Cameron Crowe is Lloyd Dobbler. He's every sweet, misunderstood boy you ever loved. He's Jerry Maguire. He's every beautiful underdog.
He's an American story, an American treasure. The Dick Clark of Gen X'ers. A son of California. A voice of a generation. And definitely, very definitely uncool.
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