"Almost Famous" isn't really about groupies and '70s rock bands on the road. Director Cameron Crowe has actually made a movie that makes writing articles for Rolling Stone an act of heroism.
In doing so, of course, Crowe is mythologizing his own youth, since he started turning out wartless profiles of rock stars for the bimonthly tabloid before he was 16 years old. In 1973, when the magazine ran Crowe's first piece (a profile of the prog-rock leviathans Yes, in which he revealed that the fellows in the band ate health food), Rolling Stone was in the center of the universe, run out of a Third Street office in San Francisco.
Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner had zoomed past the world of rock 'n' roll, where the magazine had started only five years before, into a far broader realm of journalism. It went from the wacky Hunter Thompson's coverage of the Nixon-McGovern presidential campaign to Tom Wolfe's first inquiries into the history of the space race that eventually became the book "The Right Stuff." Long before Sharon Stone and "Basic Instinct," Joe Eszterhas was working as an editor at Rolling Stone. Another editor, Jon Landau, had not yet signed on to manage and produce Bruce Springsteen. Celebrity photographer Annie Leibowitz was still learning her craft.
Crowe came to Rolling Stone at a crucial time. While the older editors and staff members were looking askance at the rising tide of paint-by-numbers FM radio rock that was a long way from the countercultural cacophony of a few years earlier, Crowe held down the core audience of the Rolling Stone franchise with his authentic enthusiasm.
"He was adorable," said Sarah Lazin, today a high-powered New York literary agent, but back then an assistant editor at the magazine. "He was serious about learning stuff. He was a pleasure to work with, a total professional. He was easygoing and eager to learn. Obviously, the bands loved him."
In the course of six years with the magazine, Crowe would become Rolling Stone's centerpiece rock writer, churning out cover story after cover story on the likes of Led Zeppelin, the Allman Brothers, Jackson Browne, Neil Young, the Eagles, Rod Stewart, Eric Clapton, Peter Frampton, Linda Ronstadt, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Fleetwood Mac and others. In 1979, at age 22, after using his youthful looks to disguise himself as a high school student for a year, he wrote about the experience in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," which led to his career as a screenwriter. He never looked back -- until "Almost Famous."
In his new movie, the young Crowe character, named William Miller, goes out on the road with a fictitious rock band, Stillwater, that seems to be a composite of the Allman Brothers and Led Zeppelin, with touches of the Eagles thrown in. The musicians distrust Rolling Stone -- they call Miller "the enemy" -- but end up singing an impromptu version of the Dr. Hook song "Cover of the Rolling Stone" when they find out his article about the band is going to appear on the magazine's front. It undoubtedly closely parallels Crowe's own experience.
"He was the guy we sent out after some difficult customers," said Ben Fong-Torres, onetime Rolling Stone senior editor who is portrayed in the movie by actor Terry Chen. "He covered the bands that hated Rolling Stone."
While Rolling Stone's other writers may have practiced a world-weary cynicism that entertained hip readers, Crowe's fresh- faced enthusiasm offered the antidote. For example, here's Crowe on Peter Frampton's sudden stardom in the wake of the multimillion-selling phenomenon "Frampton Comes Alive" (featuring liner notes written by -- you guessed it! -- Cameron Crowe): "I wondered just how much longer, amidst the inevitable pressures, he could continue being what he has long been considered: a low-key, untroubled Nice Guy." (Frampton ended up working as technical consultant for "Almost Famous.")
Like his Rolling Stone profiles, in "Almost Famous" Crowe cordons off a fairyland in the middle of a circus of the decadent and deranged. In his film memoir, there are few drugs, little booze and sex is a gauzy Isadora Duncan dance by maidens in diaphanous gowns. It's a sweet movie with few ugly realistic touches, although ex- Rolling Stone staff members argue about how realistic it is. Nevertheless, Crowe and his production staff went to such lengths re-creating the Rolling Stone offices that songwriter Ron Nagle, who worked as a carpenter at the real offices, walked out of the screening thinking he had built the sets.
Fong-Torres had praise for the actor portraying him and called the film's attention to detail remarkable. But he thought the emotional verisimilitude was even greater. "The scene where William Miller sits slumped in the hallway crying, frustrated that he couldn't get the interview and is going to miss his deadline," Fong-Torres said, "that probably happened."
In the movie, the magazine abandons the piece after a fact- checker calls the band's lead guitarist and he denies that any of what the writer described took place. "We would have never done that," Fong-Torres said. "That's a Hollywood invention. He needed a crisis in Act 2. It sounds strange that the magazine would dump on him. We would have checked his notes, his tapes. We would have confronted the band members as to why they were changing their stories. That doesn't ring true. That's not the way we would have run our operation."
Brin Bridenthal, who currently oversees media relations at David Geffen's DreamWorks Records, worked as the promotion director of Rolling Stone when Crowe was writing for the magazine. She remembers sleeping on her office floor because she stayed too late and had to be back too early. Bridenthal and Fong-Torres spoke after they saw screenings of Crowe's movie.
"It came off as real stressful," she said. "Ben said, 'It wasn't that bad, was it?' Well, it wasn't that far off."
