For music writing geeks, one of the more revealing moments in Cameron Crowe's new memoir The Uncool comes in the summer of 1977, when John Belushi calls Crowe with bad news. Belushi had requested Crowe for a Rolling Stone cover story, but the editors refused, saying Crowe “was too busy and took too long.” Instead they gave the assignment to the writer Charles M. Young. 

For Crowe, this confirmed what he had already suspected: a "sword of Damocles" was hanging over his writing career at the ripe old age of 21. Young was "a favorite of the New York staff," Crowe writes, part of a new guard that was pushing him out of Rolling Stone, taking assignments interviewing the mainstream '70s album-rock stars that had previously gone to Crowe. To add insult to injury, unlike Crowe, Young was a hilarious writer and a "revolutionary" —the guy who wrote the first Sex Pistols cover story in RS, a piece Crowe calls "the beginning of the end of the '70s" — the era that gave him his writing career.

I was lucky to count Young as a friend and mentor in later years, and was Crowe’s editor on a couple of Rolling Stone stories in the 2010s (he was a delight), but I didn’t know about this episode. It’s interesting because it shows some of the tensions behind Crowe’s boy-wonder Almost Famous narrative. It also shows two different visions of music writing at the height of ‘70s rock: was it owned by fans or writers?

Crowe was the 15-year-old San Diego kid who hustled his way into Rolling Stone by championing bands many older rock writers didn’t want any part of—the Eagles, Led Zeppelin, the Allman Brothers. He was channeling his fellow teenage fans and solving Rolling Stone’s first generational crisis: how to cover the first rock class after the late-Sixties giants. But his early writing was more about solving a gatekeeping issue than trying to be the next Norman Mailer. He doesn’t seem to take his idol Lester Bangs’ famous advice “don’t become friends with the band” anywhere in The Uncool. After showing Joni Mitchell a draft of an interview for feedback, Mitchell sends him a note saying "thanks for your collaboration,” which Crowe hides lest any fellow journalists see it. At one point Jann Wenner brutally tells him to act more like "a real writer."

Chuck Young, six years older and a graduate of Columbia's journalism school, arrived at Rolling Stone after winning the magazine's first national college writing competition. He set about documenting downtown NYC bands like the Ramones, Patti Smith, and Television, bringing an almost Monty Python-ish sense of humor to the magazine. Like Crowe, he championed

some critically disrespected bands like Van Halen, but where Crowe was often sublimating himself to a band’s vision, Young aimed to embody rock's spirit with his writing: he hailed the Ramones for having “less command of their instruments than the New York Dolls” and called Kiss “the greatest act since death.” Not every joke hit: his extended metaphor comparing Kiss’s music to buffalo farts attracting dung beetles in a cover story hasn’t stood the test of time. But everything he wrote buzzed with energy.

The Belushi story was something of a turning point for both writers. It led to a friendship between Young and Belushi and some dangerous, peak-1970s coke-era partying, which didn’t help his growing substance abuse and drinking issues. Young would end up fired from Rolling Stone after reportedly menacing Jann Wenner with a bullwhip at the Christmas party. Meanwhile, as told in The Uncool, Crowe had a creative revelation when he wrote a funny, painfully honest Rolling Stone piece about his sexual insecurities and got the warmest response of his career from his editor. It was a signal that his best writing voice might be more personal and self-deprecating, a point of view that would inform his screenwriting in movies like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Say Anything, and of course, Almost Famous. 

Young would struggle with drinking into the 1980s. He signed a contract to write a book on the Butthole Surfers and never finished it. But after getting sober in 1988, he would write wonderful profiles on Phish (where he coined the term "noodle dancing"), Jerry Lee Lewis, Noam Chomsky and others over the next two decades. He had become a minor legend in music writing circles, and was active in progressive politics, sitting in Zuccotti Park for Occupy Wall Street. "I haven't been this excited since 1972," he said at the time. He died in 2014 from a brain tumor at the age of 63.

Near the end of The Uncool, Crowe visits Wenner at the old midtown Rolling Stone offices in 2019; the magazine is moving after being sold, and the two are reflecting on the old days. Wenner is talking about Lester Bangs, and asks what made him "better than the rest." (Crowe has a private chuckle at the question because Wenner had fired Bangs in the 1970s over a Canned Heat review.)

Crowe offers that Bangs “led with his heart.” The same could be said for both Cameron and Chuck. I’d like to think — putting this in generous, Crowe-ian terms – that they’ve shown there are lots of different ways to do that.

This week is our first 6×6 crossword, which means it’s 20% more devilishly entertaining. Don’t let the first few questions throw you!