HE LED WITH HIS HEART: a review of "The Uncool" by Cameron Crowe

 

THE UNCOOL: A Memoir
CAMERON CROWE

Published by Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster
October 28, 2025
336 pages

"Seek out heroes and role models. Most will not disappoint you."

-Alice Crowe

Despite my own intense desires and vivid imagination, I am not entirely certain that I am one who fully ascribes to the adage of "never meeting one's heroes."

Now, for the ones who have been heroes to me throughout my life, I do have to admit that the prospect of meeting any of them certainly would've tested that adage. If I were ever to have met Prince, for instance, I do not have any idea of what I could have possibly done or said to even be able to brake through a persona that felt impenetrable to the point of being alien. To that end, I wonder if John Hughes would've been dismissive or if Todd Rundgren would prove to be mercurial. 

However, there have been a few moments in my life, where I am more than thankful for the times when I found myself in positions where I was able to meet figures who have deeply influenced or enriched me. Molly Ringwald, for instance, I met while she was on a book tour stop promoting Getting The Pretty Back (2010), her self described "girlfriend's guide." Or the time, when I met musicians Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman of Prince's band The Revolution, behind the theater after a 2016 performance in commemoration of the then recent passing of their bandleader and collaborator. Or another when I met keyboardist Greg Hawkes of The Cars, right on the sidewalk outside of the venue where he had just performed as a member of Todd Rundgren's touring band. Or especially, and whole not face to face, the time in which I was able to conduct an extended interview with Moe Berg, leader of The Pursuit Of Happiness-one of my favorite bands-for my Savage Radio program on WVMO 98.7 FM (an experience in which I thought to myself, "I have to 'Cameron Crowe' this," so I don't waste Berg's valuable time).

In all three of those occasions, I was thankful to have encounters that were warmer and more engaging than they perhaps any right to be as I was just one face of many, hearing words that they have all heard variations of time and again. And still, they each found something to ensure the meeting was unique to me, creating a moment, while most likely not overtly memorable to themselves, but one that would be  everlasting for me. 

What else could I truly ask for? All I could wish for is just enough time to deliver a "thank you" as heartfelt as I could possibly elicit in a manner that did not exploit their time and energy as well as one where I didn't embarrass myself profusely. As I think about public figures-or better yet, a hero--whom I wish that I could meet, Cameron Crowe has long existed at a peak...and honestly, that desire has only elevated further.

Cameron Crowe has existed as an instrumental figure in my life, creative and otherwise for so long, it is actually a little difficult to think of a time when he was not a passionate influence. Granted, during his time as an adolescent writing music articles and interviews for Rolling Stone, I was too young (I am a little over 10 years his junior) to have experienced his work, despite our shared passion for music. Yet, by the time I was 13 years old and experienced Director Amy Heckerling's "Fast Times At Ridgemont High" (1982) for which he wrote the screenplay and the original novel from which the film was based, he became a fixture. It was the film I felt that officially began what I like to think of as the "Golden Age Of Teen Films" during the1980's and I watched it repeatedly, knowing full well the truth of what I was seeing, even as I was just a hair too young to have had the similar experiences of those as depicted within the film. It felt real and because of that, I would've followed Crowe anywhere,  

While not nearly as prolific as John Hughes, Cameron Crowe, like Hughes, had this uncanny ability to reveal a new project at precisely the perfect time in my life, at an exact point when I needed to experience it. 

I was a 20 year old college student when his directorial debut "Say Anything..." (1989) arrived in theaters, and for me, brought that aforementioned "Golden Age Of Teen Films" to its beautifully melancholic conclusion. I was exactly 23 years old, a college graduate, living with my then girlfriend now wife, just trying to figure out a life direction when his deliriously romantic cinematic short story collection "Singles" (1992) was released. By the time of his filmmaking artistic breakthrough of "Jerry Maguire" (1996), I was 27 years old and had experienced just enough of adulthood to receive that film as a work of spiritual deliverance so profound that I would need an entirely different essay to convey every moment that spoke to me as guidance, as truth, and as the wise words from a treasured older figure reminding me that integrity is not weakness, having empathy is not a fault and the act of just trying to be a good human being in an unforgiving world is an act of heroism. 

And of course, there is his magnum opus, "Almost Famous" (2000), a film to which I have expressed my towering love on this blogsite many times over, still contending it as existing as one of the finest films of the 21st century unquestionably, artistically and emotionally. 

I could continue through his creative life and my relationship with it, but I think you get the picture. And through everything over time, I still harbor my deepest hopes that I could one day meet Cameron Crowe, for if I could just have the chance, I would love to not only thank him, but to be able to have a conversation. His eloquence and loquaciousness precedes him and I would be forever grateful.

While the likelihood of such a meeting is highly unlikely, I am feeling that I have just experienced what has got to be the next best thing. The Uncool, Cameron Crowe's recently released memoir, is masterful. It accomplishes a tremendous feat of being simultaneously nostalgic and so very present as Crowe returns to the same conceptual territory of "Almost Famous" to weave a more extensive tale of his family and upbringing alongside his teenage experiences on the road writing about and interviewing rock stars, making for a work that informs the beloved feature film, grounding it in a more emotionally precarious context than maybe already felt. From end to end, Crowe's literary voice is elegantly warm with a meticulous sense of time and place firmly injecting the reader into periods and spaces, both external and internal, where emotional truths rise to the surface within every anecdote, adventure and aphorism, whether victorious or painful, ensuring every passage is felt purely and deeply.

And there are surprises to be felt as well. The memoir's opening section, during which Crowe recounts his own sense of mounting anxiety during rehearsals towards the opening of the stage version of "Almost Famous: The Musical," coupled with his relationship with Alice Crowe, his formidable Mother, who at this stage, was nearing the end of her life, I was instantly struck with the brave fragility of which Crowe revealed of himself upon the page. He pulled me in closer, as I was sensing that I was about to read something not dissimilar from the very best of his writing and filmmaking efforts. 

It is not easily achievable, to conjure the emotional liminal space of what Crowe celebrates as the "happy/sad," which to me is greater and deeper than mere bittersweetness. It is the existential space where hearts connect, ache, break and somehow find the strength to uplift, hope and rise again. Cameron Crowe's The Uncool accomplishes this feat consistently with honesty and grace, making for an enormously rewarding reading experience where the stories and the emotions linger in the air much like the afterglow of a treasured concert experience. 

As Cameron Crowe's The Uncool returns to the same conceptual ground as "Almost Famous," what has been delivered is no retread whatsoever. Our understanding of Crowe's life and the tender and tenuous relationships within his family is expanded to include his Father, James Crowe, and both of his older sisters Cathy and Cindy, who tragically ended her life when Cameron Crowe was a child, and with whom music served as a connective tissue and understanding even in a home where rock music was banned. 

From here, The Uncool details his journey of self discovery and attaining a sense of belonging with the figures who would make up his chosen tribe of rock writers, including mentors like the inimitable Lester Bangs, and the musicians they each revered. In doing so, and like "Almost Famous," The Uncool allows the reader to live vicariously through Crowe's teenage rock journalist experiences making for us wheat feels to be a magic carpet ride through a crucial period of rock music history precisely when it was all happening. If that were all the book offered, it would still be compulsively readable but this is Cameron Crowe we're talking about and salacious, superficial tell-alls are the furthest thing from his mind when there are deeper emotional waters to plunge into.  

The Uncool firmly exists as a collection coming of age stories. First, there is Cameron Crowe himself, where he is exactly like the teens he chronicled in "Fast Times At Ridgemont High," as he willingly exposed himself to, and therefore experienced and endured, a life that was indeed too fast and he was clearly not developmentally ready for but was forced to adapt in order to achieve his dreams let alone survive.    

To that end, it is a coming of age story for the rock stars Crowe wrote about for so many of these larger than life figures were also relatively young people just trying to gain footing in an unpredictable, uncompromising world where art, business, creativity and fame often collided and clashed. 

In one vignette after another, Crowe elicits what could almost be lost songs from the individuals profiled. Interior moments, like ones of pensive sadness with Jim Croce, an 18 month chrysalis phase with the ever shape shifting David Bowie and especially, a brutally striking sequence of grief and sorrow starring Gregg Allman, succeed tremendously with humanizing those who have always been quite unknowable and have existed as out of reach legends. Now that many of whom have passed on, The Uncool graciously opens up windows reminding us that these same legends were also once kids with talents and dreams all trying to discover just how to navigate this thing called life. 

The book is also a coming of age story for a family, as we witness the respective odysseys of Crowe's parents, through their occupations, as marriage partners and as parents to three children navigating triumphs and tragedies. Wisely, we regard the process of  "coming of age" as not being limited to the young but as an ongoing, lifelong process where, if we truly allow ourselves, we are able to try, fail, try again, learn, discover, unlearn and re-discover all the while hopefully formulating precisely the person we wish to become in the lives we are blessed to have with the people, experiences and the music we love all playing essential puzzle pieces. And as the perfect bookend, Crowe returns to himself at the book's outset, at his present age, a myriad of life lessons learned while openly acknowledging that he is still learning. 

The Uncool often reminded me of Crowe's beautiful documentary "The Union" (2011)--now, extremely difficult to find as it is not available on physical media and is not streaming anywhere in the HBO archives, the format in which I saw the film--starring Elton John and Leon Russell and surrounding the creation of their duet album of the same name (released October 19, 2010). For me, it was a film that fully transcended the fly-on-the-wall making of aesthetics to become a work of supreme gratitude, from Elton to Leon certainly, but for everyone who wishes to reach back to the key individuals who first inspired you, championed you, who somehow noticed that inexplicable spark in you, to just say "Thank you." 

The Uncool accomplishes the same feat as every encounter led to another and then another, each one inspiring confidence to keep placing one foot in front of the other onto every stepping stone. I loved  how this book, much like how Writer/Director James L. Brooks' peerless "Broadcast News" (1987) meticulously captured the pinpoint when television news crossed the Rubicon from the ethics of  journalism into the heartless business of entertainment, Crowe offers a love letter to journalism, physical print media publications and passionate writers who once existed in a healthy fashion for readers desiring a window into an otherwise unattainable world. It is a love letter to every music journalist, like himself, who harbored a genuine, unassailable passion towards their favorite art form as well as for writers who simply harbored an equally genuine, unassailable passion for the art of writing. 

It should be noted that The Uncool is not necessarily a complete memoir Crowe takes the narrative largely up to his beginnings in the film industry. That being said, over and again, Crowe offers his gratitude to all who showed him, in gestures both large and seemingly throwaway (a tiny moment with Tom Petty, in particular, is seismic), a path forwards and in all honesty, and Crowe's thankfulness, we would not be holding this book in our hands without any of them. In turn, Crowe's memoir offers all of us reading an opportunity to think to those who aided us and how we can inspire those coming up alongside or behind us whatever our station in life happens to be.

Which of course, brings me to what might be the book's greatest love letter, from Cameron Crowe to his Mother--which then made me ponder my own relationship with my Mother, who is, like Alice Crowe, a formidable, force of nature of a woman. Even now, at her advance age, she remains seemingly unstoppable, forever busy and involved with one excursion or another, and unshakable in her beliefs and lifelong role as a leader, guide, mentor and teacher (which was indeed her profession--a Chicago public high school Science teacher). 

My Mother is the one who shaped my love of libraries. She was the one who read to me as we shared books together. She was the one who refused to allow me to fully slack off during Summers as it was expected that I continue with Math workbooks and other learning excursions to keep my brain operating as she saw fit. She ensured I had swimming lessons and was involved in church activities and alongside my equally formidable Father, she was uncompromising with my academic progress. And, also like Alice Crowe, she is forever armed with aphorisms. This, of course, led to considerable friction as the person she wanted me to be clashed with the person I already knew that I was. Even now, seven years after my Dad's passing, there is still something tenuous between us that rides directly with the love we share. For can we truly accept each other for who we each happen to be, especially now as the remaining time we have to share is lessening as we age both separately and together.

The final sections of The Uncool, which crosscut between Alice Crowe's last days on the eve of the musical's opening night free fall into the happy/sad majestically. If you allow me to set the scene for you...

I was reading these sections to the end of the book, two evenings after Christmas while listening to Ben  Watt's wintry album "Fever Dream" (released April 8, 2016). As I reached this portion of the book, the album coincidentally reached its finale, the plaintive, meditative track "New Year Of Grace," and within that combination, an emotional, ephemeral alchemy began to just...happen. The words on the page were augmented by the song, which I began to play on repeat so as to not lose the spell being weaved, and before long, my face was flushed with tears. Trust me, while films and songs can easily bring forth tears, I am able to count on one hand the books that unlocked that level of emotion and I firmly believe that The Uncool accomplished this not through any sense of unearned manipulation but for the purest thing...Cameron Crowe led the storytelling with his heart. 

Cameron Crowe's The Uncool is as warm and as personal as if he is right in the room with you speaking directly to you. Writing this book is one that he clearly wrote for himself as the pleasure of just writing is palpable. But...it also feels like a book he wrote directly to you, inspiring feelings and memories, creating a dialogue even though he is unable to hear our side of the conversation.

Perhaps this book really was my way to meet a lifelong hero...even so, I still wish for a day when I can have that chance to say "Thank you." And for someone who has always been uncool, that is possibly them most uncool wish to have.