By Steve Pond

Back in the mid-1970s, it was fairly common to find Cameron Crowe on tour. Even though he was just a teenager, Crowe was one of the top music writers at Rolling Stone magazine, regularly landing interviews with artists who typically snubbed the magazine’s writers but somehow welcomed this kid from San Diego with a tape recorder slung over his shoulder and notebooks full of scrawled questions and, crucially, passion for the music he loved.

Crowe went on the road with Led Zeppelin and the Allman Brothers, moved in with the Eagles and spent more than a year hanging out with David Bowie, before making a career change (in his early 20s!) into the movie business, where wrote “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and then wrote and directed “Say Anything,” “Jerry Maguire,” “Vanilla Sky” and others.