July 28, 2025 • 51 mins
"In the fall of 2001 I had the honor and privilege of interviewing Cameron Crowe the more than almost famous journalist, author, writer, producer, director, actor, lyricist, playwright at his Vinyl Films office in Santa Monica, California. The conversation was candid and spanned a wide spectrum of his personal, professional and philisophical perspectives on his life and achievements. It was an inspring, uncool experience.." - Colie Brice 7/28/25
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, this is Colely Bryce for the Heart of Hollywood
on the Music dot Com today. It is my distinct
honor and privilege to sit down with a tremendous music officionado,
a writer, a director, producer, and even a songwriter and
one of the biggest hearts in Hollywood, mister Cameron Crowe. Cameron,
thanks for your time and we appreciate this opportunity to
speak with you.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
You too, Coalie, very very like, professionally announced.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
I have to say it must have been that one
oh one course at the community college back in Jersey.
It's carried me far.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Good to your office even I need to get that address.
I want to be that professional and that concise in
my own life.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
So what have you been up to lately?
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Just writing? Been at home writing, getting ready for the
next movie, listening to a lot of music and catching up.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
What have you been listening to? Anything new? Anything old?
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Actually I raked through my whole kind of collection. I
was taking a train trip from LA to Seattle.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
That sounds nice.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
It was really really great, And I gotta say trains
are not completely up to millennium you know, impersonal millennium standards.
They're really kind of still Rickety and the whistle blows
and it's a whole thing and they stop a zillion times.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
It's a nicer pace of life.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
I think it is.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
It is.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
And I made I was gonna make one, you know
tape of you know, one C one twenty and it
turned into like six and a half hours of tape.
So I just like stuffed from all eras and you know,
just just trying to catch up and calm through my
old favorites, some of which are on the almost famous
(01:38):
soundtrack I.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Must say, Oh good before I forget. I wanted to
congratulate you on the overwhelming success of Vanilla Skuy.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
There was some critics that were really throwing darts at you,
and it seems like you and Tom Cruise really went
out of your way to just get off your ass
and promote that movie and just really make it happen.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Yeah, it was ine experience. It's like the movie came
out in the Christmas season, and I think nothing could
have really prepared people for what the movie was really like.
And some people were shocked, some people were kind of entranced,
some people were confused, but everybody wanted to talk to
(02:20):
us about it and I thought, let's talk to him.
So we went and we found people that hated the
movie and really engaged in dialogue with them, hugged very
tightly the people that loved it, and thanked them, of course.
But no, it was really interesting to hear people's opinions,
and they generally changed in some distinct way after they
(02:43):
saw it. More than once.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
I read one review on the web that was privately
written that described it as a psychological equivalent to surround sound.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Wow, I missed that one. I could have used that one.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
New media, New age era acids it without the hangover.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
It is it is, but there is a hangover. The
movie does have a little hangover. Yeah, yeah, But and
and and it's sort of like, you know, time spent
inside a guy's brain, the the the music, the sounds,
the anxiety, the fear, the impulses to murder, the impulses
to love, and and we really were trying some stuff out.
(03:25):
It's sort of a genre movie that is genre less,
and that angered some people and delighted others.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Well, I think a lot of artists really appreciated someone
at your level, level of stature and empowerment to take
a chance like that.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
So Thanks.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Seeing a lot of people are plugging for being brave
about that film and actually doing something that had some
meaning and you know, stimulated some thought that doesn't happen
often in the theater, unfortunately.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
I appreciate that. I hope to keep doing it.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
The soundtrack was amazing as well.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
And I know that you had the opportunity to meet
recently remarried Sir Paul McCartney and actually, well, I'll let
you tell the story, but he actually ended up writing
the title track.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Correct. Yeah. I never thought he was going to show up.
Danny Bramson, who works on the movies with us and
helps on the music, he kept threatening that Paul McCartney
was going to come by our editing room, and I
just it's not the kind of thing you want to
prepare for or because you know it's not going to happen.
(04:32):
And then one day he showed up, was almost exactly
a year ago, and he sat exactly where you're sitting
right now in our office and just said, tell me
a little bit about the movie. And I said, well,
maybe you should see some of it, and he was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, great,
let's do it. Yeah, And nobody in the office knew
(04:54):
he was coming, so I walked down the hallway to
the actual editing room, you know, just down the ways
of a little bit, and I had this amazing experience
where I got to see the way Paul McCartney sees
the world looking at him, because I was sort of
sort of walking right next to him, and I saw
people slowly realize it was Paul the fucking Cartney in
(05:15):
the office. And the face, the facial contortions are really interesting.
It goes from shock to like a replay of Beatlemania love,
to disbelief to strange, tortured, where's he going? And is
(05:36):
he coming back? Feelings? And then it just kind of
melts into whoa. And he's really friendly and accessible. And
he saw about forty five minutes of the movie and
then said, you know, you should you should think about
using some stuff from the Driving Rain album, which he
was then recording. So follow follow me across town back
(05:58):
to the studio. I'll play some of the stuf. So
you're like, okay, yeah, We're like yeah, I think I
think we can do that. And he said he said,
I won't try and do an imitation of Paul, but
he said follow me. I'm in this black Corvette and
if you get lost the advanced car which is with
my buddy and the security guy, it's you know, it's
(06:21):
that electric yellow pt cruiser over there. We call it
the Yellow Submarine. So just follow the yellow Submarine. I'm like, okay, okay,
that that sounds good. I think I'll remember that. And
once we were in the car, I called my wife,
who's like, you know, the huge Beatle fan and the
huge Paul fan of all time, and I'm like, I'm
in the car right now on Olympic Boulevard following Paul
(06:44):
McCartney and the Yellow Submarine. No. And I think it's
good to be a fan. Sometimes it's it's it's a
lot of the time. I think it's good to be
a fan. And he I was always a John guy.
And then then I started to tilt towards Paul, and
(07:05):
then you know a little bit to George. It's something
that I actually put in Vanilla's guy. And you know,
where you are in your life sort of determines who
your Beatle is. And the funny thing is spending time
around Paul McCartney, I sort of realized that he's a
John guy, you know, he he admires and still kind
(07:26):
of chases after the dream of Lennon too. You know,
he was a fan of Lenin that actually got to
be in the band. Just little things like that came
through spending time around the guy. I didn't spent a
lot of time around him, but you know, I found
him to be great and really generous, and I felt
(07:48):
comfortable enough to ask him to write a song for
the movie that he had just seen forty five minutes
of and if something came to him, you know, I'd
love to get an original song. And everybody in the
in the studio when I said that, was kind of
looking at me like, wow, WHOA, that's sort of a
ballsy thing. You know. I think he's trying to get
(08:10):
you to use something from the album he's already recorded.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
And you're right, one might be grateful just.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
For that, and you know, and I was and everything,
but he's so accessible. And then that was like on
a Tuesday, and on a Saturday, he called Danny's cell
phone and said, yeah, it's Paul McCartney. Hey, you know,
be careful what you ask me, because the type of
guy I am is like this, I come through for people.
So you asked me for a new song. I've written
(08:38):
one I called the Vanilla Skuy and if you don't
like it, I'll just change the title to Manila Envelope
and come on over and hear it. So we went
screaming across town again and he played it for us,
and it sort of perfectly caught the metaphor of the movie,
The Banquet of Life, and it was exactly what we
needed for the end because the acid trip you so
(08:58):
aptly mentioned, he needed a cool down period and that
became Paul's song. Wow, yeah, it's cool. Plus plus I
heard it on tour and the song sort of improved
the more he's played it because of the record. It's
the first time he played.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
It, so he's kind of seasoned and coming into its
own as he plays it out long.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
It's good. It's good, and you know, it's just kind
of an other worldly experience to see Paul McCartney singing
a song with the beatlesque title that you came up with,
influenced by the Beatles, and there's Paul singing Vanilla Sky.
Keep thinking he's gonna put the guitar down and say
(09:40):
that was a me title, wasn't it? You owe me?
Some money for that or something, But how would I
give him money? Because he ended up writing the song
and he figured out how to seize the moment.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
That's amazing. It's truly an amazing.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
I love that he went right for the title song too,
which I didn't say, please write a title song, is
please write an original song. You went right for the title.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
That's stunning.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
I think.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Yeah, I'd say that's as trippy as you get. And
I mean, you've met everybody, but still you can even
talking to you now, you can tell that that was
just another level of penetration of your psyche.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Like yeah, but I think if you never lose the fan,
you know, you just never want to be the guy
that if if, by by amazing occurrences, you get to
meet some of your heroes, you should never be so
consumed with trying to be cool that you don't appreciate
the moment as it's happening. And I think I always
(10:40):
was a guy who, while attempting to as a journalist,
while attempting to represent people like me who wondered what
it would be like to have a front row seat
to the lives of bands they loved. You know, I
had journalistic objectivity, I thought. But also, come on, if
(11:02):
it's Led Zeppelin or Neil Young. You know, the managers
and people used to say to me, you know, you've
seen this show five or six times. You don't feel
the need, you know, don't feel duty bound to stand
on the side of the stage and watch the show
every night. And I'm like, duty bound? What else am
I gonna do? You know, it's as Neil Young is
standing twelve feet away. Well, what am I gonna go?
(11:24):
Like find a bowling alley in Madison, Wisconsin. No, I mean,
this is this is my life. I love music, and
this is an opportunity and I'm gonna catch every moment
of it.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
So you've always had kind of a reverent stewardship type
philosophy towards the opportunities you've had.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
I think so the one time an editor told me
you got to go out and rip somebody just to
kind of, you know, supply some yang to your ying.
You know, you got to go out and rip somebody.
I actively sought out a band that I didn't care
for to try and get a journalistic perspect I spent
(12:00):
a couple I think I think I spent five days
on the road with this band, and it was, you know,
it was an exercise in negativity and not my thing.
The band was Bachman Turner Overdrive, by the way, Oh
really yeah, And it was a it was kind of
(12:21):
a must have been pretty huge at that time. They were,
They were really huge. And I remember Randy Bachman because
I love the guess who Randy Bachman, who was this
devout religious guy, told me the greatest dirty joke. It was.
It was so like wonderfully, I actually ended up like
(12:43):
learning Bob Seger was opening for them, you know, and
Bob Seger was just completely struggling every night to win
over the audience. And I sort of understood their whole
world and the contradictions built into Bachman Turner Overdrive. But
the story came out kind of, you know, begrudgingly. It
existed begrudgingly, and I just felt like, this doesn't serve anybody.
(13:07):
And I think they love the story, though, which is
the irony.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
What else on that soundtrack did you like? In particular?
What were some of your favorite things on the Vanilla
Sky soundtrack.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
I love Mark Coslick and the Red House Painters, and
I love any new music from Mark and his band
so I love that that that's out there. Mark was
in Almost Famous, So Mark sort of became part of
our Vinyl films world, which is nice and look at it.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Yes, speaking of Vinyl, the album actually was put out
on a two LP set as well. How did that
come to be?
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Well, we are big fans of your work and Classic
Records and and uh and Vinyl in general, folks dot com,
you actually didn't. That's me stepping right out and stating it.
It's uh. These these discs, I mean, Classic Records did
(14:17):
Almost Famous and Vanilla Skuy both and they're sort of
lovingly reproduced and they really live up to the thing
that you want, which is a souvenir you can hold
as well as the music that matters to you. And
I really like that. There's stuff to look at and
things to get lost in. And you know, so often
(14:39):
in the CD experience, you just you get hung up
in the tabs that break off and the bookleads that
don't quite fit under the flaps, and it just becomes
a technical experience.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
And that damn thing you have to take off the
adhesive strip on. Then yeah, I've made peace with that.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
I've made peace with that. And now it's just kind
of it's just too small. Yeah, it's too small. Well,
you know, some people it doesn't sound as good.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
So you definitely have a genuine preference for vinyl sound wise, absolutely,
as well as the aesthetic of the packaging and everything.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
We try and use vinyl and did a lot on
Almost Famous. We try and use vinyl as the source
on the music as much as possible, and you know,
it probably balances out with all the digital traveling that
it has to make ultimately, but still we just know
that the Genesis was in vinyl, and when we've used Genesis,
it was on vinyl. Musically, I think we did once
(15:35):
to use Genesis. But the thing is, to me, Neil
Young said the greatest thing about CD versus vinyl, which is,
I don't know if you've heard this, but he said
a CD is like a thousand little pellets of hail
hitting you in the face, and vinyl is rain, which
(15:58):
to me sort of says it best. There's a warmth
and naturalness to vinyl that I can't get enough of.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
The interesting thing about it too, is that you can't
copy it the way you can copy a CD onto
MP three or distribute digital stuff over a residential broadband connection.
Either you're having a vinyl analog experience or you're not.
I wonder if that will kind of see the resurrection
of vinyl as a more viable mainstream media format.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
I hope so me too. Yeah, No, I mean it's
it becomes the odd thing is the vinyl is taking
the whole journey where it started out as kind of
this slightly illicit thing, a way that you could appreciate music,
and now it is again because it's hard. It's hard
(16:50):
to access vinyl. It's harder than CDs. But I have
not answered your question about songs on the Vanilla Sky soundstrack.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Well, I remember when I was in the studio actually
working on that at Bernie Grummins. I noticed, in particular
when we heard the finished product on s for instance,
the Radiohead song, the imaging and the spatial stuff was
just it just leapt out of the speakers on the
LP war So, I mean it was a startling difference.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Yeah, it's you know, it's wonderful to have the opportunity
to hear that and and get that different experience. Radiohead
was an important part of the movie. We were listening
to kid A the whole time we were shooting it,
and in fact, the first scene of Vanilla Sky, if
you played just the sound from what we filmed, it
(17:42):
would be the same thing because Tom's acting to the
song which is playing on a boombox that Scott Martin,
you know, who works with us as holding and we
did a lot of filming to music actually playing, and
a lot of that's represented, you know, on the on
the discs.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
So you use it to actually stimulate moods for your
actors and getting character.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Always, always, and most of the time on Vanilla Sky,
the music that you're hearing is exactly what they were
listening to while they were doing it. Last Goodbye Jeff
Buckley was an example of that. Can we Still be friends?
Todd run Gren? I love Todd Rungren. I've been trying
to work Todd Rundgren like a real.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Recurring theme in your soundtrack.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Yeah, but there's never enough.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Todd's ford the sound too. It's very distinctive, Yeah, and
it captures a definite mood and flavor that it really
works with your stuff. Thanks, Like throughout the tenure of
all the things you've done, it would seem it's funny.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
A lot of times music is it's it's it's like
relationships you've had in your life, and that somebody will
come out, or you'll meet somebody, or you'll hear a
piece of music and you'll just hate it. You'll hate it.
You'll look at the person's picture and you go, I
hate the way he looks, I hate the way she sings.
(19:10):
Let me hear it again, you know what I mean?
And you know now I sort of, you know, let
me put this thing on for you that I heard yesterday,
and all of a sudden, your most intense musical kind
of experiences you realize began and hatred or extreme dislike.
I was that way with Tommy the album by the Who,
(19:30):
And I was that way with Todd because he sort
of looked like me and he seems sort of precious
when I first heard him and he was calling himself,
you know, a wizard and a true star and everything,
and I was like, forget this guy. What else has
he done?
Speaker 1 (19:47):
You know?
Speaker 2 (19:48):
And so now you know, it's sort of he's so
indelibly a part of like the human experience for me
or something.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
I guess a lot of times it's our own ego
scars that kind of get agitated by something that's really
something that we're looking at within ourselves.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Hey cool, but it's so true you pass that over. Yeah,
but isn't it funny though that music is that personal
and it's still that personal, you know, and that powerful
and that powerful and and so Todd kind of strikes
that chord always with me, Love Love Love the Porpoise
(20:30):
song from Head the Monkeys really great that we were
able to put that on a you know, contemporary record.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
I think it's also good to give the public another
shot of hearing another dimension of the Monkeys, the fact
that there was this ambitious artistic experiment period they went
through where they're like, screw all this, you know, we
really are a real band. I guess people could debate
what the results are, but it was an ambitious kind
of it's kind of they and I don't know enough
(21:01):
about this, and you can correct me because I'm probably wrong,
but it seems like they were so inspired by, like,
you know, the stuff that was going on with like
the pet Sounds and yeah, with the Beatles were doing
the Sergeant Pepper and they're like, damn it, you know,
we want to put our best foot forward too.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
It seems like they really put an effort in it.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
They did, and the stuff, some of that stuff really
holds up. And I get some kind of strange private
satisfaction that we actually were able to put out a
soundtrack with McCartney and the Monkeys both on it. You know, Yeah,
that's true. So it's funny. Over time everything melds together.
(21:42):
I guess Cigarros we really listened to a lot of
their stuff while we were making the movie and couldn't
find the right song to end Vanilla Sky. And while
we were editing, the band came to town and played
at the l Ray Theater I think us no the
Wilship Theater here, and the third song they did was
(22:04):
Nasovlen the Nothing Song, which they hadn't recorded, but we
found on a bootleg and it's actually a bootleg recording
of that song that fuzzes out at the perfect moment
and everything that ends Vanilla Sky. So as that movie
was really a musical experience for all of us, I
think all of us who made it.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Well. Another consistent contributor to your soundtracks would seem to
be your wife herself, Nancy Wilson. Yeah, she's a consistent muse. Yeah,
it's prevalent and I don't know if all of your soundtracks,
but certainly the Lion's share of them.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Yeah, she's always a part of the writing and honing
of the scripts, and you know, we sort of lived
through the experience together. And she's one of my favorite guitarists,
was before I even matter. I love the way she
plays acoustic and electric too. She's an amazing acoustic player
(23:07):
like she and Paul Simon, I think are some of
the great two of the great under appreciated masterful acoustic players.
So there's this amazing, you know, and beautiful resource that
I live with where I can go into the kitchen
and say, can we do something along the lines of
(23:31):
the graduate here, and She'll say, oh, I'm making coffee,
and I'll say, just here's a guitar, and she'll say, oh, okay,
and just bang out something that's so perfect that it
never changes. And she was the same way when we
were writing music for Almost Famous. You know, we wrote
the still Water songs together, and She's music flows through
(23:53):
her so's it's part of the connective tissue of the movies.
I think one of the interesting abilities about her contributions,
particularly to Vanilla Sky and the acoustic repertoire on almost
famous as well. For obvious reasons, those are the ones
I'm most familiar with. But one of the interesting observations
that I think are worth noting is she has kind
(24:16):
of a chameleon likability to provide a cohesion to this
kind of eclectic array of soundscape that you provide with
all these different separate artists with very distinctive sounds of
their own, and something about her acoustic segues in between
kind of brings it back to a central theme that
kind of makes it work.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
She better be nice her.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Dude, I am, I'm hanging on with my fingernails. No,
it's it's it's true. I mean, I wish more people
notice that. Frankly, it's her stuff is so chameleon like
that it's.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Probably the beauty of it that it's not noticed. True,
she does it so well that it's not.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Her stuff gets bootlegged a lot, and sound editors pass
it around and and give it to other scoring artists
making movies in Hollywood and say give me something like this,
And people now openly kind of say to me, yeah,
I worked on this movie where the guy said, let's
rip off Nancy Wilson and and.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Uh like like when they typically say try and cop
this kind of vibe.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Yeah, but I just love that there's they're they're not
even trying to hide it from us anymore. They just
kind of openly say it. So I think the time
is comfort her to put out a you know, a
disc of her own stuff so that people can hear
hear her her music on its own, because it really
(25:40):
does kind of it really does create a mood when
you when you hear all of her stuff together from
from you know, from Say Anything through Vanilla Sky, it's
very powerful and it's right up there with some of
the best scoring you know, soundtrack scores.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Some amazing outtakes too, Yeah, stuff that we've never heard.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Yeah, there's even outtakes of stuff from Saying Anything. Songs
that Lily Taylor sang that didn't make it into the
movie that are just really hilarious, kind of long long
before it was an archetype, the the warbling female song
songstress with songs of wounded love. You know, Nancy, with
(26:25):
a tiny bit of input from me, you know, had
done all these great songs like there's this one that's
I think we finally put out on the new DVD
of Say Anything called he Hurts Me. That's so great,
Lily Taylor singing it, and we filmed it and she's like,
he hurts me. It's just kind of bad. Great warmed
(26:48):
over pseudo Patti Smith, it's really good. You had to
be there, and I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
I was reading my notes here. I wanted to change
directions for a minute after.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Yeah, that's good idea.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
I know.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
You, he hurts me.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Cameron's had a long day, folks.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Once I started singing, it's too bad you can't be
here to see the the like gray wall that came
up over his eyes when I started singing, no, panic, Panic,
I'm sorry you.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
I'm gonna sell this as a downloadable MP three.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
I can make a fortune from me buying it myself. Hey,
listen to me.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
I know, yes, Now we're getting back to the serious
part of the interview, if possible. I know, a couple
of months ago you spoke at and even presided over
to some degree, memorial service for Billy Wilder. I have
been reading the book that you wrote, the Interview style
(27:49):
book about his life, and sorry obvious the warmth and
regard it just kind of pervades. It just kind of
flows off the page when you're reading it. Not even
being acclimated to this man's work at all and not
being in the film business. One of the things I
thought was interesting you with your great background in rock
(28:11):
and roll and your love and interest in it. One
of you had mentioned it to him, and he kind
of had no interest in it whatsoever. If you had
had the chance to and he were amenable to it,
what are like three songs that you would have played
for him, just for him to just digest and at
least consider it.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
WHOA, that's a great question. I probably would have tried
to play him some Brian Wilson, though the introspective side
of some of Brian's greatest stuff probably wouldn't have wouldn't
have resonated with Billy. Billy was kind of the personal stuff.
You know, this is good for a letter to your parents.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
But to the self absorbed artist thing.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
No, No, he didn't, although his movies were personal in
very hidden ways. But just for the sake of having
played Billy Wilder some of the great Brian Wilson stuff,
I probably want to play him, you know, something like
I just wasn't made for these times. He ended up
finding his own first favorite rock song in the year
(29:14):
before he died, Is that right. Yeah, he was in
Johnny Rockett's having a hamburger and he heard are You
Lonesome Tonight? Which you know you have to say is
part of the rock era, you know. So he heard
Elvis Presley singing are You Lonesome Tonight? And he was like,
who's this, who's this? This is good. It's a waltz.
It's just good. And they're like, you know, Billy, it's
(29:36):
Elvis Presley. Oh well, that's okay, it's good, it's good.
Give me more of this man, Elvis Presley, because.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
He had mentioned in the book that he didn't particularly.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Care for Elvis, that didn't maybe a little bit the
freshness of the Beatles around the time of Hard Day's Night,
but I don't think you ever heard them. He liked
the idea of them. But anyway, so he saw it
out the Greatest Hits recording from Elvis Presley and to
all this stuff and said, no, I don't like the
hound Dog song, I don't like the Jailhouse song. No,
(30:06):
just just the are You Lonesome Tonight? Which is cool.
So he did find a song from the rock era
that he liked. I might play him a little Zeppelin
and I probably playing some blues, probably playing Robert Johnson
or something, and say, you know, here's here's where a
lot of stuff came from, and just so he'd know.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
You think he'd appreciate the improvisational quality of the blues.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
What he would probably appreciate would be the elegance of
some of those great songs, the elegant pain of the songs.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
I think he authenticity and the depth of it.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Authenticity, depth, and structure. He's a big structure guy, so
probably the the improv stuff wouldn't have wouldn't strike him
as much as as the the textbook stuff of the blues,
where you just see where so many other things began,
the structure of the blues.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
I think. I recently read another interview that you had
done where you had said something to the effect that
at one time, the most desirable occupation was to be president,
and then it was rock star. Yeah, and recently you
found out that the most desirable occupation was film director.
(31:34):
What advice do you have for aspiring creative types.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Go be a rock star. We need more rock stars.
Stay out of my business, Stay out of my business,
pick up a guitar, goddamn it. No, you know, write
the thing that only you can write, which is to say,
try not to make a movie that's really based on
another movie, which in a way I violated with Vanilla
(32:02):
Sky because that was a cover of somebody else's film,
you know, But it was something I wanted to try
and and we sort of had our different chords we
wanted to put into the cover song. But generally, the
movies that people remember are the stuff that's ripped from
your life, and that only you could have written. The
things that I've written that people responded to the most
(32:26):
right down the line were the things that I was
almost too embarrassed to put on the page.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
So when you're getting that squirmy feeling in your gut,
you know, that's what you gotta let out.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
Yeah, then again, you know, they're some people, maybe maybe
they're psych psyche. You know, maybe maybe they're psyche. Being
downloaded on film wouldn't be an enjoyable experience for any
of us, For any of us, But my my only
advice is, it's just you. It comes down to campfire stories.
(33:01):
In a way, it comes down to two people sitting
across the table and one person says, you know, the
weirdest thing happened to me yesterday. And a movie is
like that. It's one person talking to another. And as
soon as you believe that you have to speak to
everybody in a way, you're speaking to nobody. You know.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
Do you think the increasing prevalence of like residential broadband
access and cheap digital technology, people being able to buy
like a six hundred dollars digital camera and go into
a DVD authoring thing on their Mac, do you think
that's ultimately going to be good for film and creativity
or what do you think the manifestation is going to
(33:41):
be of all these people being able to have this
much creative empowerment.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
It means more poetry and probably less lives truly lived
in a way the you know, somebody's got to write
about real life. Somebody's gotta not film people that know
they're being filmed. Some people, you know, somebody's got to
(34:07):
write a book, you know, or or write some actual
poetry so that there's diversity. But basically giving people tools,
I think is a great thing. It's just what you
use the tools to write about. There's there's you know,
it's one of those things that Steely Dan wrote about
(34:29):
a long time ago. And show biz kids, you know,
show biz kids making movies about themselves. They don't give
a fuck about anybody else. That's the that's the downside
of everybody having the technology.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Well, I think that statement lends itself to going back
to where you suggested becoming a rock star? Can we
have rock stars again?
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Sure? I think everybody's just waiting.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
For I mean, now you know what I mean, like
with the media culture and everything, and like, you know,
you have eighteen year old kids trying to write the
first song and they're writing a how to write a
hit rock song and key of G book and they're
you know, they're got their web page manual how to
do this, and it's true, like taking marketing courses at their
local college. Is there what can see and inspire authenticity?
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Now another great question. I think you just have to
trust that it will happen. Because as long as you
know we all have a beating heart, you know you're
gonna seek out your own unique way of expressing what's
inside of you. And you got to trust that that happens.
(35:39):
And new avenues, you know, new avenues will show up
to be vivid and rebellious and actually say something, you know,
but you what you can't be is the guy who says, uh,
in my day it was like this, or you know,
even to an extent, you know, singing the praises of vinyl,
(36:02):
Well not really, because vinyl is vivid and vinyl is current,
and that that's it's good to celebrate that. But you
can't be the person that tries to put the genie
back in the bottle, because the genie's out of the bottle,
and you have to trust in new creative hearts finding
a way to scream what's inside of them, you know,
(36:26):
and that that's going to transcend the many, many, many
others that have the web page, that read the book
that you know, goes upstairs from their own basement and
mom and dad are listening to their music in a
desperate attempt to stay current. Everybody listens to everything now,
everybody listens to the same music pretty much. I'm reading
(36:48):
this book the corrections right now, and it's just there's
the greatest passage about this guy who's fall in love
with fall in love with a young co ed whose
parents we're in a punk band together, and fell in love.
And the bitterness of this guy who's coming face to
face with the child of his former rebellion because he's
(37:09):
older than the co ed is just so perfect. You know,
there's so little there that you can call your own
right now in music, and because it's all it's like
what I was just blabbing on about a second ago.
Everything is meant to be for everybody. You know, movies
(37:30):
are always supposed to be for you know, a huge
opening night on Friday Night. Records. You know, each record
that comes out now that has a little bit of
creativity to it, it's got to save the record business.
You know. The best stuff that I ever heard is
stuff that was written for one person.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
How do you personally deal with that? Being in the
position you're in where you do get a chance to
play with these huge budgets, and you do have the
chance to do that film, where do you make your
compromises or make how do you go about being sensitive
and obviously pragmatic about the reality of being in the
business that you're in, but also serving your artistic integrity.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Billy Wilder did it. He wrote very idiosyncratic movies and
sometimes worked with big stars and sometimes didn't, and they
were always playing on his court. And I think you
can work with a big star. I mean, Wes Anderson
showed that he could work with bigger stars and still
be as personal as ever in The Royal TANet Bombs.
(38:30):
I think it's a case by case basis. But what
I'm probably proudest of is that every time I've made
a movie, we've ended up in a room with a
marketing department who says, I have no idea, We as
a group have no idea how to sell this movie.
There's not really a movie like it that we can,
you know, think of.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
Isn't that the first thing that they could market?
Speaker 3 (38:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Interesting? Yeah, originality? Yeah, But they can't, you know. They
it's all about getting people in on on opening night
and and showing them that the water is warm. Man,
it's just like it was when you left it back
at four weddings in a funeral, you know. And and
but they're always so frustrated because they say, your stuff
(39:14):
really isn't its own. It really isn't a genre we
can access because it's sort of like life, how do
you sell life? And I always kind of like shake
my head solemnly along with the solemnly shaking heads in
the room. But I privately think like it's going to
scare me to death the day I'm in this room
and they say, we love it, we know how to
(39:35):
sell it. It's just like blank, you know. So it's
a battle that you fight. But I'm just lucky that
I've done stuff that people remember enough so that they've
supported the movies in the past, and I'm able to
(39:56):
say people turned up to see this movie or say anything.
You know, people discovered later and they still rented a
lot and made money. And I think all of my movies,
my five movies, have all made their money back, you know.
(40:18):
So that's a cool thing to be able to say,
this movie that you can't sell is part of a
tradition of movies that nobody has been able to sell
that have done.
Speaker 3 (40:25):
Okay, I'm gonna do a little flashback on you right now,
and I'm going to hand you the LP for song
Remains the same which you wrote the liner notes for
in what.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
Year seventy five? I think is that the year of
this seventy oh, no, seventy seven, right, so.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
About twenty five years ago.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
That's scary. The tour was seventy five, wasn't it? I
beg that you edit this, so I, oh, we will,
so I get the date. That's right? This was led
Zeppelin at Madison Square Garden. What year? Because they held
(41:08):
onto this for a while. Was it seventy three or
seventy five?
Speaker 1 (41:12):
I honestly don't know. I think, uh, that can be
a ask me the U ask me the question'll be
all our website.
Speaker 2 (41:21):
Yeah, yeah, healthcare seventy six. I think it was seventy
It was seventy three, Okay, So I asked me the
question again.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
Please, Okay, So caraenon, I'm gonna do a little love
flashback on you, and I'm gonna hand you the soundtrack
for led Zeppelin's The song remains the same. What goes
through your mind when you take a look at the
work you did all those years ago compared to where
you are now.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
This is one of the rare kind of documents of
led Zeppelin live, one of the great live bands ever,
woefully under represented even now these many years later, with
the live recordings. You know, I think we've all had
to kind of live on crazy bootlegs or this album
(42:13):
or when they put out the BBC sessions a couple
of years ago. But what goes through my head is
that the it wasn't the greatest show, and it wasn't
the worst show. It was kind of a middling led
Zeppelin show that happened on the night where they had
all the equipment and stuff.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
So it was like a median composite of what it was.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
Yeah, and still it's a vivid reminder of how great
this band was live and mercurial sets changed night to night.
There was no Ah, there was no video playback or anything.
You know, there was my Grandpa's band. There was a
(42:57):
jam band element. And and what was also interesting about
this period is now we take led Zeppelin for granted.
They're an institution. They're almost a franchise. Everybody knows led Zeppelin.
They were much more of a contraband experience. Back then.
They never even took ads for their concerts. There was
(43:20):
no official announcement that led Zeppelin was coming to your town.
It was all word of mouth. And this was before
email for a yes, and they sold out instantly fast
times at Ridgemont High The book is based on a
year in the life of a high school that was
(43:40):
preparing for a nineteen seventy nine concert by led Zeppelin,
a concert that was canceled when John Bonham died. The
original title Fast Times at Ridgemont High was Stairway to Heaven.
You're kidding me, Yeah, And that was the whole genesis
of that book, which gave me a career in you know,
which brought books and movies, which is really cool. So
much of that, so much of the good stuff that
(44:02):
happened to me has its basis in Led Zeppelin. And
this was I was one of the few journalists that
they allowed to tour with them. It was Lisa Robinson,
who wrote for Hit Parader and some magazines in New
York and New York Post and New York Post in
me and I'd written some freelance stories on them, and
(44:25):
they were like, yeah, have this guy tour with us.
So I toured with him in seventy three and seventy
five and wrote about him around the time that this
disc came out. These two discs came out. Song remains
the same. That was when they were recording presents, when
the movie and soundtrack album came out, and they were
(44:46):
in a dark period back then. But this was kind
of the document that they you know, honoring a commitment
to the fans. Okay, here's a live album from us.
And my my recollection was that they wished it had
been a better show, but all the fans that heard
(45:08):
it said, trust us, it's fine, you know.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
And gratefully accept it.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
Yeah. And and I just have real indelible memories of
touring with Led Zeppelin, some of which is there in
the movie of Almost Famous, and some of which I've
never written about. It was. It was an amazing time.
Speaker 1 (45:30):
The sequel you're gonna go from like untitled to en
titled where the guy gets rich as like rock star wife.
He's doing great everything.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
Boy, if the true version could only come out, it
would be so don't get me started.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
You seem like you've been kind of on this psychic
synchronous vibe trail or something with all the connections of
everything that's happened.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
It's it's funny, you know, I read something really intuitive.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
You trust your things, you know.
Speaker 2 (46:05):
It's uh. I read something the other day. I was
picked up a magazine at the grocery store and some
guy was really ripping on vanilla skuy and they go,
Cameron Crowe, you know, he's led such a charmed life,
and and it was kind of odd to read it
(46:26):
because well, you know, the alternate reality of it's hard.
You know, it's hard to it was it was hard
to kind of make a path, you know, from from
from early days of journalism through making movies now. But
but it was all it's always fun. It's always fun
(46:48):
because you're basically chasing your greatest hobby, which is movies, books,
or film or love, you know, And so so happily,
happily I read that, and happily I think to myself, well,
I wish it was that easy or seemed that easy.
But it did feel like a charmed life. When I
(47:11):
was on the road with Led Zeppelin, I felt like
I was at the one place on the globe where
I would have dreamed of being if I couldn't have
been there. And it was a very private joy because
the band let us in. We traveled with the band,
We stood on stage with the band and felt the
(47:31):
stage rumble with them. Lived through Jimmy Page's various tour
dramas you know, he broke his finger on the seventy
five tour right before the tour and couldn't play Dazed
and Confused, which was the song even more than Stairway
to Heaven at the time that people wanted to hear.
(47:52):
And I think he was like getting shots into his finger,
but it wasn't quite working, and he was playing just
well enough. And everybody wondered every night if he was
going to play Dazed and Confused, and he kept saying, no,
I can't do it, I can't do it. I can't
do it. And then then at Madison Square Garden, which
was the next time after a song remains the same
(48:12):
leads up and played, he was in the middle of
the show and had a bottleneck on his finger, threw
it down and said, I want to play Days and Confused,
And they played a forty five minute version of Days
and Confused, and nobody went streaming for the aisles, nobody
went to the bathroom. It was such a fan crowd.
(48:36):
They all knew that he hadn't been playing Dazed and Confused,
They knew about Jimmy's finger. It was such a personal experience.
I think rarely has that kind of situation been duplicated
in the fan bases that that you know that have
existed since maybe with the Dead and Fish or people
(48:57):
like that.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
Bros.
Speaker 2 (48:58):
The Alvind Brothers. Definitely amazing. So I feel very privileged
to have been there, and I was surprised they asked
me to write liner notes for the for the release
of the song remains the same, and so I just
wrote some tour memories down and they said, yeah, this
is great. But I signed. I remember I signed the
(49:20):
liner notes Cameron Crowe, Rolling Stone, and the only editing
change that they made was they took out Rolling Stone
because led Zeppelin always felt incredibly dissed by Rolling Stone
and they kind of took me on tour in spite
of the fact that I wrote for Rolling Stone. They
(49:41):
hated Rolling Stone. So that was only editing change they
made in the liner notes.
Speaker 1 (49:45):
It's kind of cool, though you're standing there on your
own merits.
Speaker 2 (49:49):
It was kind of cool. I was like, yeah, I'm
good with this change.
Speaker 1 (49:53):
Well, Cameron to let you go. I know you've got
a lot of writing to do. Yeah, and Hollywood awaits
what the next thing is gonna be. But before I go,
I'm gonna ask you the same question that was asked
to me on the street of on Hollywood Boulevard by
a Paramount's marketing team for the Vanilla Sky promotional website,
(50:14):
ironically after I'd just spoken to Andy Fisher, who works
in your office. Yeah, of all the experiences you've enjoyed
in your life, which remains the most memorable of all.
Speaker 2 (50:30):
Of all the experiences in my life, most memorable has
got to be Well, it would have changed. It would
have changed every year, I think, but now having kids,
it would have to be the birth of our twins,
which is the kind of answer that, you know, four
(50:53):
years ago or something I would have heard or read
and said, yeah, but I was loa to kind of
accept the idea that this was actually going to happen,
that we were going to have kids, and and and
then when it happened, it was like being given an
(51:15):
amazing gift that you just really didn't expect. So beyond
all the incredible stuff that sort of happened creatively and
meeting Nancy, I would say, like having the kids, really,
that's been the experience.
Speaker 1 (51:31):
That's wonderful. Cara, thank you very much for your time.
I appreciate you the opportunity you take care of you
two
Hi, this is Colely Bryce for the Heart of Hollywood
on the Music dot Com today. It is my distinct
honor and privilege to sit down with a tremendous music officionado,
a writer, a director, producer, and even a songwriter and
one of the biggest hearts in Hollywood, mister Cameron Crowe. Cameron,
thanks for your time and we appreciate this opportunity to
speak with you.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
You too, Coalie, very very like, professionally announced.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
I have to say it must have been that one
oh one course at the community college back in Jersey.
It's carried me far.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Good to your office even I need to get that address.
I want to be that professional and that concise in
my own life.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
So what have you been up to lately?
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Just writing? Been at home writing, getting ready for the
next movie, listening to a lot of music and catching up.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
What have you been listening to? Anything new? Anything old?
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Actually I raked through my whole kind of collection. I
was taking a train trip from LA to Seattle.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
That sounds nice.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
It was really really great, And I gotta say trains
are not completely up to millennium you know, impersonal millennium standards.
They're really kind of still Rickety and the whistle blows
and it's a whole thing and they stop a zillion times.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
It's a nicer pace of life.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
I think it is.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
It is.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
And I made I was gonna make one, you know
tape of you know, one C one twenty and it
turned into like six and a half hours of tape.
So I just like stuffed from all eras and you know,
just just trying to catch up and calm through my
old favorites, some of which are on the almost famous
(01:38):
soundtrack I.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Must say, Oh good before I forget. I wanted to
congratulate you on the overwhelming success of Vanilla Skuy.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
There was some critics that were really throwing darts at you,
and it seems like you and Tom Cruise really went
out of your way to just get off your ass
and promote that movie and just really make it happen.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Yeah, it was ine experience. It's like the movie came
out in the Christmas season, and I think nothing could
have really prepared people for what the movie was really like.
And some people were shocked, some people were kind of entranced,
some people were confused, but everybody wanted to talk to
(02:20):
us about it and I thought, let's talk to him.
So we went and we found people that hated the
movie and really engaged in dialogue with them, hugged very
tightly the people that loved it, and thanked them, of course.
But no, it was really interesting to hear people's opinions,
and they generally changed in some distinct way after they
(02:43):
saw it. More than once.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
I read one review on the web that was privately
written that described it as a psychological equivalent to surround sound.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Wow, I missed that one. I could have used that one.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
New media, New age era acids it without the hangover.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
It is it is, but there is a hangover. The
movie does have a little hangover. Yeah, yeah, But and
and and it's sort of like, you know, time spent
inside a guy's brain, the the the music, the sounds,
the anxiety, the fear, the impulses to murder, the impulses
to love, and and we really were trying some stuff out.
(03:25):
It's sort of a genre movie that is genre less,
and that angered some people and delighted others.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Well, I think a lot of artists really appreciated someone
at your level, level of stature and empowerment to take
a chance like that.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
So Thanks.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Seeing a lot of people are plugging for being brave
about that film and actually doing something that had some
meaning and you know, stimulated some thought that doesn't happen
often in the theater, unfortunately.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
I appreciate that. I hope to keep doing it.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
The soundtrack was amazing as well.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
And I know that you had the opportunity to meet
recently remarried Sir Paul McCartney and actually, well, I'll let
you tell the story, but he actually ended up writing
the title track.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Correct. Yeah. I never thought he was going to show up.
Danny Bramson, who works on the movies with us and
helps on the music, he kept threatening that Paul McCartney
was going to come by our editing room, and I
just it's not the kind of thing you want to
prepare for or because you know it's not going to happen.
(04:32):
And then one day he showed up, was almost exactly
a year ago, and he sat exactly where you're sitting
right now in our office and just said, tell me
a little bit about the movie. And I said, well,
maybe you should see some of it, and he was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, great,
let's do it. Yeah, And nobody in the office knew
(04:54):
he was coming, so I walked down the hallway to
the actual editing room, you know, just down the ways
of a little bit, and I had this amazing experience
where I got to see the way Paul McCartney sees
the world looking at him, because I was sort of
sort of walking right next to him, and I saw
people slowly realize it was Paul the fucking Cartney in
(05:15):
the office. And the face, the facial contortions are really interesting.
It goes from shock to like a replay of Beatlemania love,
to disbelief to strange, tortured, where's he going? And is
(05:36):
he coming back? Feelings? And then it just kind of
melts into whoa. And he's really friendly and accessible. And
he saw about forty five minutes of the movie and
then said, you know, you should you should think about
using some stuff from the Driving Rain album, which he
was then recording. So follow follow me across town back
(05:58):
to the studio. I'll play some of the stuf. So
you're like, okay, yeah, We're like yeah, I think I
think we can do that. And he said he said,
I won't try and do an imitation of Paul, but
he said follow me. I'm in this black Corvette and
if you get lost the advanced car which is with
my buddy and the security guy, it's you know, it's
(06:21):
that electric yellow pt cruiser over there. We call it
the Yellow Submarine. So just follow the yellow Submarine. I'm like, okay, okay,
that that sounds good. I think I'll remember that. And
once we were in the car, I called my wife,
who's like, you know, the huge Beatle fan and the
huge Paul fan of all time, and I'm like, I'm
in the car right now on Olympic Boulevard following Paul
(06:44):
McCartney and the Yellow Submarine. No. And I think it's
good to be a fan. Sometimes it's it's it's a
lot of the time. I think it's good to be
a fan. And he I was always a John guy.
And then then I started to tilt towards Paul, and
(07:05):
then you know a little bit to George. It's something
that I actually put in Vanilla's guy. And you know,
where you are in your life sort of determines who
your Beatle is. And the funny thing is spending time
around Paul McCartney, I sort of realized that he's a
John guy, you know, he he admires and still kind
(07:26):
of chases after the dream of Lennon too. You know,
he was a fan of Lenin that actually got to
be in the band. Just little things like that came
through spending time around the guy. I didn't spent a
lot of time around him, but you know, I found
him to be great and really generous, and I felt
(07:48):
comfortable enough to ask him to write a song for
the movie that he had just seen forty five minutes
of and if something came to him, you know, I'd
love to get an original song. And everybody in the
in the studio when I said that, was kind of
looking at me like, wow, WHOA, that's sort of a
ballsy thing. You know. I think he's trying to get
(08:10):
you to use something from the album he's already recorded.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
And you're right, one might be grateful just.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
For that, and you know, and I was and everything,
but he's so accessible. And then that was like on
a Tuesday, and on a Saturday, he called Danny's cell
phone and said, yeah, it's Paul McCartney. Hey, you know,
be careful what you ask me, because the type of
guy I am is like this, I come through for people.
So you asked me for a new song. I've written
(08:38):
one I called the Vanilla Skuy and if you don't
like it, I'll just change the title to Manila Envelope
and come on over and hear it. So we went
screaming across town again and he played it for us,
and it sort of perfectly caught the metaphor of the movie,
The Banquet of Life, and it was exactly what we
needed for the end because the acid trip you so
(08:58):
aptly mentioned, he needed a cool down period and that
became Paul's song. Wow, yeah, it's cool. Plus plus I
heard it on tour and the song sort of improved
the more he's played it because of the record. It's
the first time he played.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
It, so he's kind of seasoned and coming into its
own as he plays it out long.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
It's good. It's good, and you know, it's just kind
of an other worldly experience to see Paul McCartney singing
a song with the beatlesque title that you came up with,
influenced by the Beatles, and there's Paul singing Vanilla Sky.
Keep thinking he's gonna put the guitar down and say
(09:40):
that was a me title, wasn't it? You owe me?
Some money for that or something, But how would I
give him money? Because he ended up writing the song
and he figured out how to seize the moment.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
That's amazing. It's truly an amazing.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
I love that he went right for the title song too,
which I didn't say, please write a title song, is
please write an original song. You went right for the title.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
That's stunning.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
I think.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Yeah, I'd say that's as trippy as you get. And
I mean, you've met everybody, but still you can even
talking to you now, you can tell that that was
just another level of penetration of your psyche.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Like yeah, but I think if you never lose the fan,
you know, you just never want to be the guy
that if if, by by amazing occurrences, you get to
meet some of your heroes, you should never be so
consumed with trying to be cool that you don't appreciate
the moment as it's happening. And I think I always
(10:40):
was a guy who, while attempting to as a journalist,
while attempting to represent people like me who wondered what
it would be like to have a front row seat
to the lives of bands they loved. You know, I
had journalistic objectivity, I thought. But also, come on, if
(11:02):
it's Led Zeppelin or Neil Young. You know, the managers
and people used to say to me, you know, you've
seen this show five or six times. You don't feel
the need, you know, don't feel duty bound to stand
on the side of the stage and watch the show
every night. And I'm like, duty bound? What else am
I gonna do? You know, it's as Neil Young is
standing twelve feet away. Well, what am I gonna go?
(11:24):
Like find a bowling alley in Madison, Wisconsin. No, I mean,
this is this is my life. I love music, and
this is an opportunity and I'm gonna catch every moment
of it.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
So you've always had kind of a reverent stewardship type
philosophy towards the opportunities you've had.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
I think so the one time an editor told me
you got to go out and rip somebody just to
kind of, you know, supply some yang to your ying.
You know, you got to go out and rip somebody.
I actively sought out a band that I didn't care
for to try and get a journalistic perspect I spent
(12:00):
a couple I think I think I spent five days
on the road with this band, and it was, you know,
it was an exercise in negativity and not my thing.
The band was Bachman Turner Overdrive, by the way, Oh
really yeah, And it was a it was kind of
(12:21):
a must have been pretty huge at that time. They were,
They were really huge. And I remember Randy Bachman because
I love the guess who Randy Bachman, who was this
devout religious guy, told me the greatest dirty joke. It was.
It was so like wonderfully, I actually ended up like
(12:43):
learning Bob Seger was opening for them, you know, and
Bob Seger was just completely struggling every night to win
over the audience. And I sort of understood their whole
world and the contradictions built into Bachman Turner Overdrive. But
the story came out kind of, you know, begrudgingly. It
existed begrudgingly, and I just felt like, this doesn't serve anybody.
(13:07):
And I think they love the story, though, which is
the irony.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
What else on that soundtrack did you like? In particular?
What were some of your favorite things on the Vanilla
Sky soundtrack.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
I love Mark Coslick and the Red House Painters, and
I love any new music from Mark and his band
so I love that that that's out there. Mark was
in Almost Famous, So Mark sort of became part of
our Vinyl films world, which is nice and look at it.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Yes, speaking of Vinyl, the album actually was put out
on a two LP set as well. How did that
come to be?
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Well, we are big fans of your work and Classic
Records and and uh and Vinyl in general, folks dot com,
you actually didn't. That's me stepping right out and stating it.
It's uh. These these discs, I mean, Classic Records did
(14:17):
Almost Famous and Vanilla Skuy both and they're sort of
lovingly reproduced and they really live up to the thing
that you want, which is a souvenir you can hold
as well as the music that matters to you. And
I really like that. There's stuff to look at and
things to get lost in. And you know, so often
(14:39):
in the CD experience, you just you get hung up
in the tabs that break off and the bookleads that
don't quite fit under the flaps, and it just becomes
a technical experience.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
And that damn thing you have to take off the
adhesive strip on. Then yeah, I've made peace with that.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
I've made peace with that. And now it's just kind
of it's just too small. Yeah, it's too small. Well,
you know, some people it doesn't sound as good.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
So you definitely have a genuine preference for vinyl sound wise, absolutely,
as well as the aesthetic of the packaging and everything.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
We try and use vinyl and did a lot on
Almost Famous. We try and use vinyl as the source
on the music as much as possible, and you know,
it probably balances out with all the digital traveling that
it has to make ultimately, but still we just know
that the Genesis was in vinyl, and when we've used Genesis,
it was on vinyl. Musically, I think we did once
(15:35):
to use Genesis. But the thing is, to me, Neil
Young said the greatest thing about CD versus vinyl, which is,
I don't know if you've heard this, but he said
a CD is like a thousand little pellets of hail
hitting you in the face, and vinyl is rain, which
(15:58):
to me sort of says it best. There's a warmth
and naturalness to vinyl that I can't get enough of.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
The interesting thing about it too, is that you can't
copy it the way you can copy a CD onto
MP three or distribute digital stuff over a residential broadband connection.
Either you're having a vinyl analog experience or you're not.
I wonder if that will kind of see the resurrection
of vinyl as a more viable mainstream media format.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
I hope so me too. Yeah, No, I mean it's
it becomes the odd thing is the vinyl is taking
the whole journey where it started out as kind of
this slightly illicit thing, a way that you could appreciate music,
and now it is again because it's hard. It's hard
(16:50):
to access vinyl. It's harder than CDs. But I have
not answered your question about songs on the Vanilla Sky soundstrack.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Well, I remember when I was in the studio actually
working on that at Bernie Grummins. I noticed, in particular
when we heard the finished product on s for instance,
the Radiohead song, the imaging and the spatial stuff was
just it just leapt out of the speakers on the
LP war So, I mean it was a startling difference.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Yeah, it's you know, it's wonderful to have the opportunity
to hear that and and get that different experience. Radiohead
was an important part of the movie. We were listening
to kid A the whole time we were shooting it,
and in fact, the first scene of Vanilla Sky, if
you played just the sound from what we filmed, it
(17:42):
would be the same thing because Tom's acting to the
song which is playing on a boombox that Scott Martin,
you know, who works with us as holding and we
did a lot of filming to music actually playing, and
a lot of that's represented, you know, on the on
the discs.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
So you use it to actually stimulate moods for your
actors and getting character.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Always, always, and most of the time on Vanilla Sky,
the music that you're hearing is exactly what they were
listening to while they were doing it. Last Goodbye Jeff
Buckley was an example of that. Can we Still be friends?
Todd run Gren? I love Todd Rungren. I've been trying
to work Todd Rundgren like a real.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Recurring theme in your soundtrack.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Yeah, but there's never enough.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Todd's ford the sound too. It's very distinctive, Yeah, and
it captures a definite mood and flavor that it really
works with your stuff. Thanks, Like throughout the tenure of
all the things you've done, it would seem it's funny.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
A lot of times music is it's it's it's like
relationships you've had in your life, and that somebody will
come out, or you'll meet somebody, or you'll hear a
piece of music and you'll just hate it. You'll hate it.
You'll look at the person's picture and you go, I
hate the way he looks, I hate the way she sings.
(19:10):
Let me hear it again, you know what I mean?
And you know now I sort of, you know, let
me put this thing on for you that I heard yesterday,
and all of a sudden, your most intense musical kind
of experiences you realize began and hatred or extreme dislike.
I was that way with Tommy the album by the Who,
(19:30):
And I was that way with Todd because he sort
of looked like me and he seems sort of precious
when I first heard him and he was calling himself,
you know, a wizard and a true star and everything,
and I was like, forget this guy. What else has
he done?
Speaker 1 (19:47):
You know?
Speaker 2 (19:48):
And so now you know, it's sort of he's so
indelibly a part of like the human experience for me
or something.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
I guess a lot of times it's our own ego
scars that kind of get agitated by something that's really
something that we're looking at within ourselves.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Hey cool, but it's so true you pass that over. Yeah,
but isn't it funny though that music is that personal
and it's still that personal, you know, and that powerful
and that powerful and and so Todd kind of strikes
that chord always with me, Love Love Love the Porpoise
(20:30):
song from Head the Monkeys really great that we were
able to put that on a you know, contemporary record.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
I think it's also good to give the public another
shot of hearing another dimension of the Monkeys, the fact
that there was this ambitious artistic experiment period they went
through where they're like, screw all this, you know, we
really are a real band. I guess people could debate
what the results are, but it was an ambitious kind
of it's kind of they and I don't know enough
(21:01):
about this, and you can correct me because I'm probably wrong,
but it seems like they were so inspired by, like,
you know, the stuff that was going on with like
the pet Sounds and yeah, with the Beatles were doing
the Sergeant Pepper and they're like, damn it, you know,
we want to put our best foot forward too.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
It seems like they really put an effort in it.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
They did, and the stuff, some of that stuff really
holds up. And I get some kind of strange private
satisfaction that we actually were able to put out a
soundtrack with McCartney and the Monkeys both on it. You know, Yeah,
that's true. So it's funny. Over time everything melds together.
(21:42):
I guess Cigarros we really listened to a lot of
their stuff while we were making the movie and couldn't
find the right song to end Vanilla Sky. And while
we were editing, the band came to town and played
at the l Ray Theater I think us no the
Wilship Theater here, and the third song they did was
(22:04):
Nasovlen the Nothing Song, which they hadn't recorded, but we
found on a bootleg and it's actually a bootleg recording
of that song that fuzzes out at the perfect moment
and everything that ends Vanilla Sky. So as that movie
was really a musical experience for all of us, I
think all of us who made it.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Well. Another consistent contributor to your soundtracks would seem to
be your wife herself, Nancy Wilson. Yeah, she's a consistent muse. Yeah,
it's prevalent and I don't know if all of your soundtracks,
but certainly the Lion's share of them.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Yeah, she's always a part of the writing and honing
of the scripts, and you know, we sort of lived
through the experience together. And she's one of my favorite guitarists,
was before I even matter. I love the way she
plays acoustic and electric too. She's an amazing acoustic player
(23:07):
like she and Paul Simon, I think are some of
the great two of the great under appreciated masterful acoustic players.
So there's this amazing, you know, and beautiful resource that
I live with where I can go into the kitchen
and say, can we do something along the lines of
(23:31):
the graduate here, and She'll say, oh, I'm making coffee,
and I'll say, just here's a guitar, and she'll say, oh, okay,
and just bang out something that's so perfect that it
never changes. And she was the same way when we
were writing music for Almost Famous. You know, we wrote
the still Water songs together, and She's music flows through
(23:53):
her so's it's part of the connective tissue of the movies.
I think one of the interesting abilities about her contributions,
particularly to Vanilla Sky and the acoustic repertoire on almost
famous as well. For obvious reasons, those are the ones
I'm most familiar with. But one of the interesting observations
that I think are worth noting is she has kind
(24:16):
of a chameleon likability to provide a cohesion to this
kind of eclectic array of soundscape that you provide with
all these different separate artists with very distinctive sounds of
their own, and something about her acoustic segues in between
kind of brings it back to a central theme that
kind of makes it work.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
She better be nice her.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Dude, I am, I'm hanging on with my fingernails. No,
it's it's it's true. I mean, I wish more people
notice that. Frankly, it's her stuff is so chameleon like
that it's.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Probably the beauty of it that it's not noticed. True,
she does it so well that it's not.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Her stuff gets bootlegged a lot, and sound editors pass
it around and and give it to other scoring artists
making movies in Hollywood and say give me something like this,
And people now openly kind of say to me, yeah,
I worked on this movie where the guy said, let's
rip off Nancy Wilson and and.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Uh like like when they typically say try and cop
this kind of vibe.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Yeah, but I just love that there's they're they're not
even trying to hide it from us anymore. They just
kind of openly say it. So I think the time
is comfort her to put out a you know, a
disc of her own stuff so that people can hear
hear her her music on its own, because it really
(25:40):
does kind of it really does create a mood when
you when you hear all of her stuff together from
from you know, from Say Anything through Vanilla Sky, it's
very powerful and it's right up there with some of
the best scoring you know, soundtrack scores.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Some amazing outtakes too, Yeah, stuff that we've never heard.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Yeah, there's even outtakes of stuff from Saying Anything. Songs
that Lily Taylor sang that didn't make it into the
movie that are just really hilarious, kind of long long
before it was an archetype, the the warbling female song
songstress with songs of wounded love. You know, Nancy, with
(26:25):
a tiny bit of input from me, you know, had
done all these great songs like there's this one that's
I think we finally put out on the new DVD
of Say Anything called he Hurts Me. That's so great,
Lily Taylor singing it, and we filmed it and she's like,
he hurts me. It's just kind of bad. Great warmed
(26:48):
over pseudo Patti Smith, it's really good. You had to
be there, and I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
I was reading my notes here. I wanted to change
directions for a minute after.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Yeah, that's good idea.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
I know.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
You, he hurts me.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Cameron's had a long day, folks.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Once I started singing, it's too bad you can't be
here to see the the like gray wall that came
up over his eyes when I started singing, no, panic, Panic,
I'm sorry you.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
I'm gonna sell this as a downloadable MP three.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
I can make a fortune from me buying it myself. Hey,
listen to me.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
I know, yes, Now we're getting back to the serious
part of the interview, if possible. I know, a couple
of months ago you spoke at and even presided over
to some degree, memorial service for Billy Wilder. I have
been reading the book that you wrote, the Interview style
(27:49):
book about his life, and sorry obvious the warmth and
regard it just kind of pervades. It just kind of
flows off the page when you're reading it. Not even
being acclimated to this man's work at all and not
being in the film business. One of the things I
thought was interesting you with your great background in rock
(28:11):
and roll and your love and interest in it. One
of you had mentioned it to him, and he kind
of had no interest in it whatsoever. If you had
had the chance to and he were amenable to it,
what are like three songs that you would have played
for him, just for him to just digest and at
least consider it.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
WHOA, that's a great question. I probably would have tried
to play him some Brian Wilson, though the introspective side
of some of Brian's greatest stuff probably wouldn't have wouldn't
have resonated with Billy. Billy was kind of the personal stuff.
You know, this is good for a letter to your parents.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
But to the self absorbed artist thing.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
No, No, he didn't, although his movies were personal in
very hidden ways. But just for the sake of having
played Billy Wilder some of the great Brian Wilson stuff,
I probably want to play him, you know, something like
I just wasn't made for these times. He ended up
finding his own first favorite rock song in the year
(29:14):
before he died, Is that right. Yeah, he was in
Johnny Rockett's having a hamburger and he heard are You
Lonesome Tonight? Which you know you have to say is
part of the rock era, you know. So he heard
Elvis Presley singing are You Lonesome Tonight? And he was like,
who's this, who's this? This is good. It's a waltz.
It's just good. And they're like, you know, Billy, it's
(29:36):
Elvis Presley. Oh well, that's okay, it's good, it's good.
Give me more of this man, Elvis Presley, because.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
He had mentioned in the book that he didn't particularly.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Care for Elvis, that didn't maybe a little bit the
freshness of the Beatles around the time of Hard Day's Night,
but I don't think you ever heard them. He liked
the idea of them. But anyway, so he saw it
out the Greatest Hits recording from Elvis Presley and to
all this stuff and said, no, I don't like the
hound Dog song, I don't like the Jailhouse song. No,
(30:06):
just just the are You Lonesome Tonight? Which is cool.
So he did find a song from the rock era
that he liked. I might play him a little Zeppelin
and I probably playing some blues, probably playing Robert Johnson
or something, and say, you know, here's here's where a
lot of stuff came from, and just so he'd know.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
You think he'd appreciate the improvisational quality of the blues.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
What he would probably appreciate would be the elegance of
some of those great songs, the elegant pain of the songs.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
I think he authenticity and the depth of it.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Authenticity, depth, and structure. He's a big structure guy, so
probably the the improv stuff wouldn't have wouldn't strike him
as much as as the the textbook stuff of the blues,
where you just see where so many other things began,
the structure of the blues.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
I think. I recently read another interview that you had
done where you had said something to the effect that
at one time, the most desirable occupation was to be president,
and then it was rock star. Yeah, and recently you
found out that the most desirable occupation was film director.
(31:34):
What advice do you have for aspiring creative types.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Go be a rock star. We need more rock stars.
Stay out of my business, Stay out of my business,
pick up a guitar, goddamn it. No, you know, write
the thing that only you can write, which is to say,
try not to make a movie that's really based on
another movie, which in a way I violated with Vanilla
(32:02):
Sky because that was a cover of somebody else's film,
you know, But it was something I wanted to try
and and we sort of had our different chords we
wanted to put into the cover song. But generally, the
movies that people remember are the stuff that's ripped from
your life, and that only you could have written. The
things that I've written that people responded to the most
(32:26):
right down the line were the things that I was
almost too embarrassed to put on the page.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
So when you're getting that squirmy feeling in your gut,
you know, that's what you gotta let out.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
Yeah, then again, you know, they're some people, maybe maybe
they're psych psyche. You know, maybe maybe they're psyche. Being
downloaded on film wouldn't be an enjoyable experience for any
of us, For any of us, But my my only
advice is, it's just you. It comes down to campfire stories.
(33:01):
In a way, it comes down to two people sitting
across the table and one person says, you know, the
weirdest thing happened to me yesterday. And a movie is
like that. It's one person talking to another. And as
soon as you believe that you have to speak to
everybody in a way, you're speaking to nobody. You know.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
Do you think the increasing prevalence of like residential broadband
access and cheap digital technology, people being able to buy
like a six hundred dollars digital camera and go into
a DVD authoring thing on their Mac, do you think
that's ultimately going to be good for film and creativity
or what do you think the manifestation is going to
(33:41):
be of all these people being able to have this
much creative empowerment.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
It means more poetry and probably less lives truly lived
in a way the you know, somebody's got to write
about real life. Somebody's gotta not film people that know
they're being filmed. Some people, you know, somebody's got to
(34:07):
write a book, you know, or or write some actual
poetry so that there's diversity. But basically giving people tools,
I think is a great thing. It's just what you
use the tools to write about. There's there's you know,
it's one of those things that Steely Dan wrote about
(34:29):
a long time ago. And show biz kids, you know,
show biz kids making movies about themselves. They don't give
a fuck about anybody else. That's the that's the downside
of everybody having the technology.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Well, I think that statement lends itself to going back
to where you suggested becoming a rock star? Can we
have rock stars again?
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Sure? I think everybody's just waiting.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
For I mean, now you know what I mean, like
with the media culture and everything, and like, you know,
you have eighteen year old kids trying to write the
first song and they're writing a how to write a
hit rock song and key of G book and they're
you know, they're got their web page manual how to
do this, and it's true, like taking marketing courses at their
local college. Is there what can see and inspire authenticity?
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Now another great question. I think you just have to
trust that it will happen. Because as long as you
know we all have a beating heart, you know you're
gonna seek out your own unique way of expressing what's
inside of you. And you got to trust that that happens.
(35:39):
And new avenues, you know, new avenues will show up
to be vivid and rebellious and actually say something, you know,
but you what you can't be is the guy who says, uh,
in my day it was like this, or you know,
even to an extent, you know, singing the praises of vinyl,
(36:02):
Well not really, because vinyl is vivid and vinyl is current,
and that that's it's good to celebrate that. But you
can't be the person that tries to put the genie
back in the bottle, because the genie's out of the bottle,
and you have to trust in new creative hearts finding
a way to scream what's inside of them, you know,
(36:26):
and that that's going to transcend the many, many, many
others that have the web page, that read the book
that you know, goes upstairs from their own basement and
mom and dad are listening to their music in a
desperate attempt to stay current. Everybody listens to everything now,
everybody listens to the same music pretty much. I'm reading
(36:48):
this book the corrections right now, and it's just there's
the greatest passage about this guy who's fall in love
with fall in love with a young co ed whose
parents we're in a punk band together, and fell in love.
And the bitterness of this guy who's coming face to
face with the child of his former rebellion because he's
(37:09):
older than the co ed is just so perfect. You know,
there's so little there that you can call your own
right now in music, and because it's all it's like
what I was just blabbing on about a second ago.
Everything is meant to be for everybody. You know, movies
(37:30):
are always supposed to be for you know, a huge
opening night on Friday Night. Records. You know, each record
that comes out now that has a little bit of
creativity to it, it's got to save the record business.
You know. The best stuff that I ever heard is
stuff that was written for one person.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
How do you personally deal with that? Being in the
position you're in where you do get a chance to
play with these huge budgets, and you do have the
chance to do that film, where do you make your
compromises or make how do you go about being sensitive
and obviously pragmatic about the reality of being in the
business that you're in, but also serving your artistic integrity.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Billy Wilder did it. He wrote very idiosyncratic movies and
sometimes worked with big stars and sometimes didn't, and they
were always playing on his court. And I think you
can work with a big star. I mean, Wes Anderson
showed that he could work with bigger stars and still
be as personal as ever in The Royal TANet Bombs.
(38:30):
I think it's a case by case basis. But what
I'm probably proudest of is that every time I've made
a movie, we've ended up in a room with a
marketing department who says, I have no idea, We as
a group have no idea how to sell this movie.
There's not really a movie like it that we can,
you know, think of.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
Isn't that the first thing that they could market?
Speaker 3 (38:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Interesting? Yeah, originality? Yeah, But they can't, you know. They
it's all about getting people in on on opening night
and and showing them that the water is warm. Man,
it's just like it was when you left it back
at four weddings in a funeral, you know. And and
but they're always so frustrated because they say, your stuff
(39:14):
really isn't its own. It really isn't a genre we
can access because it's sort of like life, how do
you sell life? And I always kind of like shake
my head solemnly along with the solemnly shaking heads in
the room. But I privately think like it's going to
scare me to death the day I'm in this room
and they say, we love it, we know how to
(39:35):
sell it. It's just like blank, you know. So it's
a battle that you fight. But I'm just lucky that
I've done stuff that people remember enough so that they've
supported the movies in the past, and I'm able to
(39:56):
say people turned up to see this movie or say anything.
You know, people discovered later and they still rented a
lot and made money. And I think all of my movies,
my five movies, have all made their money back, you know.
(40:18):
So that's a cool thing to be able to say,
this movie that you can't sell is part of a
tradition of movies that nobody has been able to sell
that have done.
Speaker 3 (40:25):
Okay, I'm gonna do a little flashback on you right now,
and I'm going to hand you the LP for song
Remains the same which you wrote the liner notes for
in what.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
Year seventy five? I think is that the year of
this seventy oh, no, seventy seven, right, so.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
About twenty five years ago.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
That's scary. The tour was seventy five, wasn't it? I
beg that you edit this, so I, oh, we will,
so I get the date. That's right? This was led
Zeppelin at Madison Square Garden. What year? Because they held
(41:08):
onto this for a while. Was it seventy three or
seventy five?
Speaker 1 (41:12):
I honestly don't know. I think, uh, that can be
a ask me the U ask me the question'll be
all our website.
Speaker 2 (41:21):
Yeah, yeah, healthcare seventy six. I think it was seventy
It was seventy three, Okay, So I asked me the
question again.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
Please, Okay, So caraenon, I'm gonna do a little love
flashback on you, and I'm gonna hand you the soundtrack
for led Zeppelin's The song remains the same. What goes
through your mind when you take a look at the
work you did all those years ago compared to where
you are now.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
This is one of the rare kind of documents of
led Zeppelin live, one of the great live bands ever,
woefully under represented even now these many years later, with
the live recordings. You know, I think we've all had
to kind of live on crazy bootlegs or this album
(42:13):
or when they put out the BBC sessions a couple
of years ago. But what goes through my head is
that the it wasn't the greatest show, and it wasn't
the worst show. It was kind of a middling led
Zeppelin show that happened on the night where they had
all the equipment and stuff.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
So it was like a median composite of what it was.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
Yeah, and still it's a vivid reminder of how great
this band was live and mercurial sets changed night to night.
There was no Ah, there was no video playback or anything.
You know, there was my Grandpa's band. There was a
(42:57):
jam band element. And and what was also interesting about
this period is now we take led Zeppelin for granted.
They're an institution. They're almost a franchise. Everybody knows led Zeppelin.
They were much more of a contraband experience. Back then.
They never even took ads for their concerts. There was
(43:20):
no official announcement that led Zeppelin was coming to your town.
It was all word of mouth. And this was before
email for a yes, and they sold out instantly fast
times at Ridgemont High The book is based on a
year in the life of a high school that was
(43:40):
preparing for a nineteen seventy nine concert by led Zeppelin,
a concert that was canceled when John Bonham died. The
original title Fast Times at Ridgemont High was Stairway to Heaven.
You're kidding me, Yeah, And that was the whole genesis
of that book, which gave me a career in you know,
which brought books and movies, which is really cool. So
much of that, so much of the good stuff that
(44:02):
happened to me has its basis in Led Zeppelin. And
this was I was one of the few journalists that
they allowed to tour with them. It was Lisa Robinson,
who wrote for Hit Parader and some magazines in New
York and New York Post and New York Post in
me and I'd written some freelance stories on them, and
(44:25):
they were like, yeah, have this guy tour with us.
So I toured with him in seventy three and seventy
five and wrote about him around the time that this
disc came out. These two discs came out. Song remains
the same. That was when they were recording presents, when
the movie and soundtrack album came out, and they were
(44:46):
in a dark period back then. But this was kind
of the document that they you know, honoring a commitment
to the fans. Okay, here's a live album from us.
And my my recollection was that they wished it had
been a better show, but all the fans that heard
(45:08):
it said, trust us, it's fine, you know.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
And gratefully accept it.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
Yeah. And and I just have real indelible memories of
touring with Led Zeppelin, some of which is there in
the movie of Almost Famous, and some of which I've
never written about. It was. It was an amazing time.
Speaker 1 (45:30):
The sequel you're gonna go from like untitled to en
titled where the guy gets rich as like rock star wife.
He's doing great everything.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
Boy, if the true version could only come out, it
would be so don't get me started.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
You seem like you've been kind of on this psychic
synchronous vibe trail or something with all the connections of
everything that's happened.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
It's it's funny, you know, I read something really intuitive.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
You trust your things, you know.
Speaker 2 (46:05):
It's uh. I read something the other day. I was
picked up a magazine at the grocery store and some
guy was really ripping on vanilla skuy and they go,
Cameron Crowe, you know, he's led such a charmed life,
and and it was kind of odd to read it
(46:26):
because well, you know, the alternate reality of it's hard.
You know, it's hard to it was it was hard
to kind of make a path, you know, from from
from early days of journalism through making movies now. But
but it was all it's always fun. It's always fun
(46:48):
because you're basically chasing your greatest hobby, which is movies, books,
or film or love, you know, And so so happily,
happily I read that, and happily I think to myself, well,
I wish it was that easy or seemed that easy.
But it did feel like a charmed life. When I
(47:11):
was on the road with Led Zeppelin, I felt like
I was at the one place on the globe where
I would have dreamed of being if I couldn't have
been there. And it was a very private joy because
the band let us in. We traveled with the band,
We stood on stage with the band and felt the
(47:31):
stage rumble with them. Lived through Jimmy Page's various tour
dramas you know, he broke his finger on the seventy
five tour right before the tour and couldn't play Dazed
and Confused, which was the song even more than Stairway
to Heaven at the time that people wanted to hear.
(47:52):
And I think he was like getting shots into his finger,
but it wasn't quite working, and he was playing just
well enough. And everybody wondered every night if he was
going to play Dazed and Confused, and he kept saying, no,
I can't do it, I can't do it. I can't
do it. And then then at Madison Square Garden, which
was the next time after a song remains the same
(48:12):
leads up and played, he was in the middle of
the show and had a bottleneck on his finger, threw
it down and said, I want to play Days and Confused,
And they played a forty five minute version of Days
and Confused, and nobody went streaming for the aisles, nobody
went to the bathroom. It was such a fan crowd.
(48:36):
They all knew that he hadn't been playing Dazed and Confused,
They knew about Jimmy's finger. It was such a personal experience.
I think rarely has that kind of situation been duplicated
in the fan bases that that you know that have
existed since maybe with the Dead and Fish or people
(48:57):
like that.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
Bros.
Speaker 2 (48:58):
The Alvind Brothers. Definitely amazing. So I feel very privileged
to have been there, and I was surprised they asked
me to write liner notes for the for the release
of the song remains the same, and so I just
wrote some tour memories down and they said, yeah, this
is great. But I signed. I remember I signed the
(49:20):
liner notes Cameron Crowe, Rolling Stone, and the only editing
change that they made was they took out Rolling Stone
because led Zeppelin always felt incredibly dissed by Rolling Stone
and they kind of took me on tour in spite
of the fact that I wrote for Rolling Stone. They
(49:41):
hated Rolling Stone. So that was only editing change they
made in the liner notes.
Speaker 1 (49:45):
It's kind of cool, though you're standing there on your
own merits.
Speaker 2 (49:49):
It was kind of cool. I was like, yeah, I'm
good with this change.
Speaker 1 (49:53):
Well, Cameron to let you go. I know you've got
a lot of writing to do. Yeah, and Hollywood awaits
what the next thing is gonna be. But before I go,
I'm gonna ask you the same question that was asked
to me on the street of on Hollywood Boulevard by
a Paramount's marketing team for the Vanilla Sky promotional website,
(50:14):
ironically after I'd just spoken to Andy Fisher, who works
in your office. Yeah, of all the experiences you've enjoyed
in your life, which remains the most memorable of all.
Speaker 2 (50:30):
Of all the experiences in my life, most memorable has
got to be Well, it would have changed. It would
have changed every year, I think, but now having kids,
it would have to be the birth of our twins,
which is the kind of answer that, you know, four
(50:53):
years ago or something I would have heard or read
and said, yeah, but I was loa to kind of
accept the idea that this was actually going to happen,
that we were going to have kids, and and and
then when it happened, it was like being given an
(51:15):
amazing gift that you just really didn't expect. So beyond
all the incredible stuff that sort of happened creatively and
meeting Nancy, I would say, like having the kids, really,
that's been the experience.
Speaker 1 (51:31):
That's wonderful. Cara, thank you very much for your time.
I appreciate you the opportunity you take care of you
two
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