THIRD SPUD FROM THE SUN: CAMERON CROWE THEN AND NOW
By Richard Meltzer, from the alternative paper in San Diego
In the merry sequence of things, Cameron Crowe was the third of a
conspicuous trio of teenage rock-crit wanna-bes, junior spuds from the
gitgo, whose paths crossed mine in the early 1970s.
The biggest cheesepuff of the bunch, if also initially the most ambitious,
Jon Tiven began publishing the mimeo rag New Haven Rock Press during his
sophomore year of high school. To look at the damn thing now, a single
staple holding 20-some off-white pages together, it might be tough to figure
how something so lame and ugly managed to endure the three-four years it
did, but when mommy and daddy foot the bills, merit is inconsequential.
Having grown up in the mansion where that spooky pic The Other later got
shot, he made no bones about being what could be loosely termed a rich
kid--upper middle class we today would call him--but without the "finish"
his class would typically afford him: a dumb little, poor little u.m.c.
dipshit, younger than his years. Ein Kind without much Wunder.
On weekends down from Connecticut, crashing sometimes at Nick Tosches' pad
or mine, he brought along Tupperwares full of homecooked crap--his mother
didn't trust Manhattan food. Back then, with the drinking age in New York
still 18, nobody ever got asked for I.D., and Nick and I would always try to
get him drunk. He'd order some wimp drink like a sloe gin fizz, and we'd
tell him, "Jon, this bar has a two-drink minimum." He'd get another, and
then we'd hand him some bullshit like "The custom here is to make your own
bar"--raise a forearm to your chin and drink around it (haw!)--and like a
monkey he'd go for it. (Never met another 16'er so slowww on the draw.)
When he stayed at my place, he'd have my girlfriend take him to neighborhood
fop stores--"boutiques"--where he'd shop for the sorts o' things rock stars
wore: satin, velvet, "English cut." (Even girl-things with darts were okay
if he could imagine Procol Harum wearing them.) He was one thudding fool
for platform footery.
Finally, his parents sprung for a room at the New York Hilton, giving him
occasion to invite this gal he met at a Nick party up for some room service
plus, later claiming they'd whoopeed and he'd come 13 times...say
what?...which led us to believe he'd never even jerked off.
If Tiven's 'zine had truly reflected his misadventures as a neophyte simp,
an amateur's apprentice, that would've been one thing, but all it did was
blend the same old shit ("With this album, Elton is performing to his
potential...5 stars") with a painful preadolescent cuteness ("Oatmeal Harv"
was his favorite pseudonym). Issue after issue, nothing in the New Haven
Rock Press spoke even generically of (or from) the "outrageousness of
youth"--or the center of grav of its goofy enthusiasm. With an abiding
Junior Achievement blandness, it sought merely to coalesce with the least
anarchic, least invigorating aspects of the burgeoning rock media, to
simulate "rockmag" status and in so doing score mailings of promo albs,
tickets to Rod Stewart in Yonkers...oh goody.
Hey--the groovy myth of Everyperson a writer/publisher be damned: 99.9
percent of all 'zines--then, now, ever--are lame, tame, and insipid. As
fate would have it, though, one of the great vanity rock sheets of all time
was a contemporary of the NHRP. The progeny of a core of young hellions
from the Bronx and Queens (only slightly older than Tiven himself) who would
later morph into the proto-punk band the Dictators, Teenage Wasteland
Gazette could usually be counted on to make a fine mess. Both personally
and ideologically, TWG regarded Tiven as a doofus and made him its
designated enemy. "The New Haven Rock Press," wrote editor Andy Shernoff,
"really sucks my noodle. If I see another fuckin review by Jon Tiven I will
take action. I challenge Tiven to any form of competition he wants. I
prefer 12 oz. gloves but he may want GOLF (they have a lotta country clubs
in N. Haven). Eat five-iron, limey lover!"
When I told Shernoff that once, after Tiven had split our apartment, my
girlfriend and I found a load of doodoo in the crapper, unflushed, but no
toilet paper, an occurrence we were hard put to explain, he devoted a full
page to the incident, closing with the following hypotheses:
"1) Mr. Tiven may have used his hand.
"2) Mr. Tiven may collect used toilet paper.
"3) In an economy move Mr. Tiven may have eaten his toilet paper.
"4) It is a well-known fact that citizens of the well-to-do suburbs of the
'nutmeg' state maintain a live-in maid. One of the doodies of such a maid
is to wipe the heinies of family members. Possibly Mr. Tiven is too young &
immature to be trained to do the deed himself."
I haven't seen Jon since '76, but on evidence it would seem he made it
through adolescence. Dunno 'bout the years between, but lately he's
producing records by B.B. King, Wilson Pickett, and writing songs for aging
blues and soul people--ain't life funny? The only thing I've heard is Buddy
Guy's "Heavy Love": too heavy for a man to bear alone, he could use a little
help, see? (Still makin' with the cutesy.) I leave it to soul music
aficionado Kevin Kiley to fill out the picture:
"He ruined Pickett's comeback CD with shit arrangements, REAL BAD
production, GARBAGE songs written by him and his fucking wife, and bad
playing in general. I hate most of today's records. Even my old favorites'
new records suck, due to crummy 'modern' production techniques. I may be a
dinosaur, but I know what the shit SHOULD sound like, and Tiven ain't got a
fucking CLUE!
"At the Luther Ingram benefit in Memphis last year he was a self-absorbed
prick, and a real asshole namedropper. He played guitar there with Mack
Rice and Swamp Dogg. He brought his own guitar, one of those stupid-looking
things with a whacky headstock (how do you come to MEMPHIS to play at a SOUL
show without a fucking FENDER?!), he overplayed with a rock tone that had
NOTHING to do with soul music, and fucked up one of Swamp's tunes, even
though there were CHARTS!
"There was a birthday party for Rufus Thomas. Everyone was smiling,
laughing, having a good time. Tiven had his dour, 'gotta look cool' mug on.
He seemed taken aback that I didn't know his name. During our entire
conversation, he rarely looked at me, but was instead surveying the
happenings around the room. He had finished a CD on Sir Mack Rice, and I
asked what kinda stuff was on it. 'You'll just have to wait to hear it.'
It was like he was thinking, 'Leave me alone, I'm too cool, I don't want to
miss anything by talking to YOU.' What a rude, condescending
mother-fucker!"
* * *
For almost 30 years, the single word which might best fit the Gestalt of
NHRP's "Los Angeles correspondent," Danny Sugerman, the face he's with
extreme volition worn for the world, is SLEAZE. The night I met him, at an
L.A. party in '72, the first thing he told me was "My father works for the
Mafia, and I'm a heroin addict"--uttered with a great deal of teenage pride,
like Can you top either of these? Two cool.
I've never known the veracity of boast number one, nor of number two
vis-à-vis then, but in the lead story of Methadone Today, Volume III, Number
4 (www.tir.com/~yourtype/v3_n04.htm), Danny waxes loud and long on select
details of his eighteenth detox attempt. A tour-de-force combo of personal
confession (the bitter--ouch--Truth) and whole-cloth William Burroughs, of
empiricism and giddy egoism (nothing in the closet 'bout me-me-ME), "Delayed
Onset Withdrawal" is the first thing I've read by the guy since 1980.
Sleaze, and if there's another word, maybe Jim, y'know Morrison--he's made
great hay of their ten- (or was it five?) minute relationship. Though
others who were there insist that when the Doors still included Jim, before
he took his death cab to Paris, young Danny's bond to the Lizard King was no
more, no less, than to lurk about the band office seeking ways to be
"useful," opening fan mail and perhaps going out for donuts, and while I've
heard two of the three living Doors mention in passing that the growed-up
Danny made their skin crawl, the dude has by sheer tenacity parlayed the
lurk and its aftermath into an official calling card as "long-time Doors
associate."
In 1980, he fleshed out and flavored Jerry Hopkins' stab at a Morrison bio,
something variously described as a skeleton of research and a flawed ms.
that had been lying around unpublishable for years. The result was No One
Here Gets Out Alive, a ponderous and despicable piece of celebrity fluff,
heavy on the "dark side" (ooh, Jim was such a bad boy) and including a cameo
by a kid named "Danny." When it came out, he phoned to beckon me into the
night: "Let's celebrate Jim." Uh, thanks but no-thanks...I'd rather walk my
schnauzer.
In my subsequent review, I wrote: "Hey, this book stinks. I don't wanna
really play its game, but one error in particular really irks my
recollective whatsis. I was there at the 'infamous' Singer Bowl show of '68
and all I gotta say's Jim was wearing brown leather (not black) and if
'hundreds of teenagers were bleeding' at concert's-end (p. 195) then I guess
it must've been menstrual or out in the parking lot because it certainly
wasn't within proximity of the stage. Little things like that (including
bogus alternate death scenarios and the scumbait sham of coddling the myth
that Jim--like Paul--might still be alive) would be enough to make the
cognoscenti puke if not for the trail of vom independently left in the wake
of the BOOK AS IDEA." Idea? Oh, something about the
intrinsic--inseverable--connection between genius and perversion, or
creativity and excess...or something.
Since then he's had his hand in another two or possibly three Doors books,
plus a Guns N' Roses book...say, that's really branching out. I think the
word for this is "rock-sploitation," evincing an entrepreneurial, as opposed
to strictly journalistic, agenda. (When, to cover the release of Oliver
Stone's The Doors, a European TV crew was dispatched to L.A., he wasn't
deemed a relevant enough "journalist" to bother interviewing.)
For a glimpse at another of his entrepreneurial fortes--rock manager--check
out Please Kill Me, where on p. 251 Ron Asheton tells a good'un 'bout the
time Danny left his "charge," a fucked-up Iggy Pop (wearing a dress), to
fend for himself when three surf louts began pounding him outside a David
Bowie show, leaving him bloody and minus a couple teeth on the pavement in
Hollywood.
Last I heard about Danny he was living with Fawn Hall--remember her? (What
a perfectly corrupt universe.)
* * *
For whatever reason(s), Danny didn't make it to the first and only mass
gathering of the U.S. rockscribble crowd, known to history, generally and
simply, as "The Rockwriters Convention," Memphis '73, but Tiven was there,
as was San Diego's Cameron Crowe. By sucking up to John King, marketing
director for Ardent Records--a subsidiary of Stax, which underwrote the
whole silly event--Tiven had a major hand in putting together the guest
list, guaranteeing a sizable 'zine contingent. Since the National Rock
Writers Association, as Stax had dubbed the throng, was an org of no
card-carrying members, nor even of cards, to be among the chosen 140-plus
signified equal parts much and nothing. Given the basic unreality of the
affair, its dream-within-a-dream sound and fury, all intimations of pecking
order were foolish and fruitless (the rock-crit "profession" being all of
five-six years old anyway).
Still and all, a couple things about Cameron set him down a peg from even
the rank and file of 'zine greenhorn dust-suckers. Unless he had an NHRP
affiliation that no one was aware of (S.D. correspondent-designate?), he for
all intents & purps was not even a--how you say?--symbolically employed
writer-in-training, most likely just someone Tiven knew, or knew of, through
the teen-auxiliary grapevine. While hardly the sole unaffiliated writeboy
at the convention, or the only one who had yet to earn a dime from writing,
he was for damnsure, in more ways than one, the YOUNGEST such being in
attendance: 16, maybe only 15, a goony-goofy gosh-oh-gee KID, blowing on a
goddam kazoo. Or maybe an ocarina.
Recorder? Something. Playing Name This TV Themesong with anyone who would
sit still for 30 seconds, not really that tough a score on a bus full of
stationary writefolk en route to a Budweiser brew tour--playing it with, to,
and at us...Bewitched...The Flintstones...Father Knows Best...The
Jetsons...give the boy a bubble gum cigar!
Which ain't quite the same as leading with your own chin, or wearing a
lampshade on your head, or actually demanding, Pay attention, dammit--hey,
he wasn't that assertive--but the Cameron I met on the bus was certainly
more forward--sassy--cheeky--than "William Miller," the sullen little
cocksucker standing in for him in this flick he's got out now, Almost
Famous. More cheerful and outgoing, he wurn't no self-conscious smallfry
(taller than me, and I was 28). Why he would go and turn himself into a
solemn sawed-off goody-goody geek---someone less bearable than he was at
that age--is a mystery. 'Cause in '73 he was, well, bearable. (More, at
any rate, than either Tiven or Sugerman.)
In the months following the convention, he wrote for the San Diego Door and
Creem (at the time edited by former San Diegan Lester Bangs, who'd also been
on the Bud bus), before eventually landing in Rolling Stone. When people I
meet these days find out I once myself wrote for the fugging Stone, they ooh
and ahh, then I tell 'em, "Sure, but fortunately I've had the good sense to
never stick my penis in a garbage disposal." It's debatable whether the
Stone had ever been a class venue for the writing of rockwriters--appearing
in its pages was basically always about visibility and money. Well before
there was anything like a rockwrite style sheet--a by-the-numbers for
dealing with this thing-called-rock, a throbbing whatsem that for a while
remained relatively nascent-and-nasty--in the
rock/underground/counterculture press at large, Rolling Stone had one in
spades. Heavy-handed editors--the meanest in the biz--would routinely (as a
matter of policy) alter your text without consulting you; delete entire
paragraphs if they contained the itsiest allusion to people or things the
"fact checker" of the day was having trouble finding backup on; try to
coerce you out of positions you'd taken on favored musical celebs. By the
time Cameron showed up, the paper was little more than a highwater marker
for self-effacing, slave-drudge careerism: the most conspicuous place,
nationally, to have your copy butchered, your ideas reshaped to fit the
moment's market-driven party line.
Salon.com has called Almost Famous "a sweet-natured paean to the '70s, a
time when...editors at magazines like Rolling Stone told their staff to
write the truth and damn the consequences"--what a hoot! First of all,
there were no other mags "like" the Stone, but the only "truth" it sought
was a sprinkling of sensationalism ("Dead Busted in N.O.--Set-Up
Suspected"). Another review claims that the Stone in those days ran "more
exposés than puff pieces." Gimme a break: the Stone INVENTED the rock 'n'
roll puff piece.
Rolling Stone in the '70s was, as it remains today, a TRADE PAPER, a record
industry HYPE SHEET, a promulgator of mass compliance in the Consumer
Sector, a principal factor in the dumbing, maiming, and calming down of the
public's taste for a rock-roll beast that had once indeed been not only wild
& crazy but GENUINELY ANARCHIC. (Radical!--with or without the superadding
of topical content.) The very idea, as nearly every review has put it, of
the film's "poking fun" at Rolling Stone...whew. Would you have "poked fun"
at Nixon for killing two million Southeast Asians? Hey, folks: Rolling
Stone is not some venerable institution in need, from time to time, of a
good-natured lampoon or two. Like MTV to follow, it has for a longgggg time
been one of the big things GRAVELY WRONG WITH THE WORLD.
Jimmy Olsen incarnate, the youthsome Mr. Crowe accepted the R.S. style sheet
implicitly, in all likelihood worked very hard, but essentially got and kept
the gig when it was discovered that rock stars, such a sensitive lot, were
less intimidated by him than by actual functional grownups, who had the
disconcerting habit of asking grownup questions. He would never, for inst,
have thought to ask Jimmy Page, as interviewers already had, whether the
guitarist, pre-Led Zeppelin, had in fact "done" a certain Linda E., famous
for later marrying Someone Big--done her (he'd privately boasted) with a
PICKLE. Cameron's writeup of Led Zep demonstrated his ability to fill pages
as glibly as the next bozo, and a tad more affably to boot. Y'know:
cheerfully. But it offered scarcely a hint of the service-with-a-smile he
would provide the Singer-Songwriter gang in the years ahead--as its
advocate, mouthpiece, interlocutor, shill...its virtual publicist and "man
inside" the Stone.
Ah, the gang: I knew it well. I'd had an encounter with one of its thugs,
see, and in the process got tossed by said mag for telling what was it?, oh
yes, the truth. This was '72. After several false starts, Jackson Browne
finally had an album out, which seemed a good occasion to bring to light
some interesting hokum from his past--I'd known the mutha since '67. So I
did the first feature on him for Rolling Stone or anywhere else--a rave, for
crying out loud, and he freaking hated it, thought it made him look "too
punk." And what might be so wrong with that? Before twelve people knew who
the fuck he was, he was like some weird-isn't-the-word cross between the
Young Marble Giants, say--or from a later universe: Cat Power--and Byron or
Shelley. On his first visit to New York, he backed up (and
horizontal-danced with) the fabulous NICO, had a connection to Lou Reed and
the Warhol crowd, blah blah blooey. So I talked all this stuff up--what the
hey--it was what I thought would make him MOST APPEALING. And he's so upset
he gets Asylum Records prez David Geffen to call the Stone and have me
booted, good riddance, don't come back.
Four years later, I was eating at South Town Soul Food in L.A. when Jackson
walked in with gang-sister number one Linda Ronstadt. Not wanting her
exposed to my cooties, he motions for her to stay put, struts over, sits
down, and in less than a minute explains to me how it is. "We
singer-songwriters"--he always relished being part of something (but imagine
calling yourself such hogwipe)--"feel we get a better shake from this
Cameron kid...he never challenges us...accepts our side of the story...we
don't have to worry what he'll say...no offense, but..." I.e., writers
exist to write-about-musicians, bub...so go wash dishes or something.
To some extent, Lester Bangs was prob'ly cheated by posterity when he got
pigeon-holed in stone as a punk-rock scribbler, more or less, but at least
there's some oompah to that. Just dig it if your rockwrite credential
consisted to an inordinate degree of your coverage of Jackson, Linda, and
related twaddle--a subset of the rock mainstream which by the mid '70s was
almost Exhibit A of how far rock had sunk, how far it had gone in the
direction of ceasing-to-be. Not to mention the decidedly SOFT edge (and
LIGHT weight) implicit in such a number: being that kind of
rockwriter...yow. (Where's the existential reverb in that one?)
Anyway, after a tour of Stone duty had given him enough chops to deal with
non-rock matters, Cameron wrote Fast Times at Ridgemont High, a
youth-demographic pile of pulp which few people in L.A. ever seriously
considered--re his contention (and his publisher's marketing premise)--a
work of non-fiction. Like had Cameron, by now in his twenties, actually
gone back to school, where he impersonated (and passed for) a student? Not
v. many thought so. Which is fine, who cares, but anyhow I haven't read it,
nor did I see the '82 film of the same name (for which he got both script
and "novel" credit), nor have I seen any of the later cinematic thingies
he's written, directed, or produced, except for the current monstrosity.
I'm probably not the person to judge his oeuvre, but Almost Famous, which he
wrote, directed, and produced, and which purportedly draws its content from
the dawn's early light of his own rockwrite apprenticeship, strikes me as
insufferable dogmeat, coming from the same neverneverland (w/ the briefest
shot of nipples thrown in) as a bad week's episode of Happy Days. A
first-string ditz based on the auteur's MOTHER provides plot annoyance
throughout (hey, she's a player). Has there been such parental
non-exclusion in an alleged rock film since Bye Bye Birdie? All-age
sentimental slop: the sort of film that if it wasn't nominally a rock film
you'd bring in violins to ensure, and intensify, audience submission at
every emotional checkpoint. The scene towards the end where the William kid
wags a finger at the guitarist (whose music he so-o-o respects) for
mistreating the groupie (who respects and loves the bloke), thus triggering
plot resolutions that culminate in fame and fortune for both (and vicarious
gratification for the groupie), is something Ron Fucking Howard wouldn't put
in one of his dogmeat films. And the actual "rock" soundtrack? Well, the
FIRST TWO TUNES are the Chipmunks' Xmas single and Simon & Garfunkel's
"America"--ye gods. (Don't wanna turn off the grandmas.)
Aside from all the references to Creem and Rolling Stone, and the recurrent
presence of Lester Bangs as dramatis persona, Almost Famous is clearly a
fiction film. It would be kind of absurd to try and extract from it
anything specifically autobiographical re its director's own historical
past, and/or his present retrospect on such biz, but shoot--long as we're
here--let's go for it. To wit: Does Cameron Crowe, former rockwriter, have
the self-awareness to grasp the true basis of his early career? (Do the
Jimmy Olsens--cub reporters for Dotted-Line Central--even in retirement
realize they were once dupes and decoys of the first water?) Possibly not,
but by recasting the setup from the p.o.v. of an utter
bumpkin/child/innocent, by using the b/c/i as a model of generic reporterly
integrity, by going SO wide of the personal-historical mark--assuming, of
course, the guy remembers anything pre-Ridgemont High--the frigging movie
registers on my shit detector (don't know 'bout yours) as a willful act of
evasion. A gross cultural-personal "lie."
All this poppycock with little William as "the enemy"--someone bands have
reason to fear!--feels suspiciously like what in football parlance you'd
call the ol' misdirection play. Sure, you bet--the mid-'70s Cameron, like
most of his colleagues, did at times have to wear down or slip under bands'
defenses in pursuit of et cetera, yet even after repeated encounters
manymost of his targets welcomed his amiable crit-cum-hype. Compared to the
rest of the write pack, even after he'd grown a bit, he remained inherently
harmless. The millennium Cameron, meanwhile, would like us to view li'l
Will as anything but harmless: a tough little bulldog dead-set on "getting
the story" (when, in any case, "story" and "truth" are separate domains of
the journaloid firmament).
But like so what. A shitty movie suggested by an unaffecting (if
"successful") life. They make 'em all the time.
What's troublesome is the movie's use of Lester. I won't even complain
about Philip Seymour Hoffman, who after makeup and coaching isn't totally
unlike Lester--he's just not especially like him. Did they get the mustache
right? Well, he only had one about a tenth of the time ('70-'83) that I
knew him. Cigarettes? If in his lifetime he sometimes smoked, he was
hardly a smoker (drank far more bottles of Romilar--full bottles--than he
smoked individual cigs). (If you want an actor's version of somebody
quitelike Lester, personally like him in significant mammal ways, rent Gus
Van Sant's first feature, Mala Noche. Tim Streeter is Lester to a T. And
not too far afield--don't laugh--is Smiley Burnette, the comic sidekick in
old Gene Autry films.)
And why not use Lester? A dab of Lester will add a touch of
class--certainly of interest--to virtually any proceeding. (A little 'll go
a long way.) But for Cameron to have him bouncing around as the movie's
roving "disclaimer"--a guy who'd rather listen to the Stooges than the
Eagles; who knows the difference between commodity and culture--is BAD
FAITH, pure and simple. At least that's what Sartre would call it.
What's laughable--and downright insidious--is Cameron actually believes
Lester "influenced" him. He's said so in a score of interviews. Lots of
folks are claiming he influenced them, like this third-rate gossip at the
L.A. Times, Patrick Goldstein. When he wrote full-tilt, Lester was a
STAND-UP IDEOLOGUE, a man on a total-assault LIFE MISSION--not some
careerist cluck lockstepping to the illusions of payday and acclaim.
Conviction and contention oozed out of him like they did from any front-line
'50s Beat poet. He influenced the likes of Cameron and Patrick about as
much as he influenced Clinton and Reagan.
The dictionary def.: "(1) To affect or alter by intangible means; sway (2)
To have an effect on the condition or development of; modify"--'s a matter
of cause/effect. To have caused (if he did) budding young Cameron to
perform acts not in kind: is that influence? As far as rockwriters go, the
whole last 30 years of 'em, with the exception of Metal Mike Saunders (from
Arkansas--you prob'ly never heard of him), Lester influenced NO ONE. He was
the end of a line--believe it!--not the beginning of one. Even "inspired"
would be too strong a word, too active. At best, Cameron and his ilk
received inspiration, or let's put it this way: perceived what they received
to be inspiration. From bad faith to blind faith...
Fuggit.
In all probability (and with all due respect), on the hottest writing day of
the rock phase of his professional life, Mr. C. Crowe was not one of
rock-crit's TOP TWENTY-FIVE figures (list available upon request). He was
simply one of the era's more readable hacks--a cheerful, good-natured hack,
but still a hack--one about whom the best and worst that can be said is he
was benign. As in: he didn't cause cancer, nerve damage, birth defects, or
ingrown toenails. But in the merry scheme of things, considering the range
of hands, dealt and undealt, some if not all of us have lived, embraced,
fought, raved, and died for, what the bloody, bleeping hell is BENIGN?
If you go and see his stupid flick, please keep that question in mind.
* * *