Swampland:Cameron Crowe, The Allman Brothers and Me: A Defining Moment from 1973

Cameron Crowe, The Allman Brothers and Me: A Defining Moment from 1973

Posted: Dec 19, 2008

It was during this week 35 years ago that Cameron Crowe had his first cover story published in Rolling Stone magazine. It was a cover story on The Allman Brothers Band, and it was an amazing piece of rock and roll journalism. Of course, what made it that much more special was the fact that Cameron was only 16 at the time.

Now, Crowe and I are the same age, so I was in tenth grade in high school, and I had great dreams of becoming a music journalist- that is, if I couldn’t make it as a rock and roll star. I read all the music magazines, including Rolling Stone, and I remember buying the issue with the psychedelic image of the Allmans on the cover. I had just discovered the Brothers and Sisters record, and actually remember playing the LP while I read Crowe’s article. I had no idea the kid was my age. None.

During a week when the Top 40 included Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” Todd Rundgren’s “Hello It’s Me,” and The Carpenters on top, literally, at number one with “Top of The World,” I was escaping into a whole new style of music. A world where - in the case of Fillmore East - one song filled an entire side of an album. It was unheard of, and I loved that.

Crowe’s prose served as perfect liner notes for the new album that had already won me over via “Ramblin’ Man,” which was played almost every hour during that season across the airwaves of WORD-AM radio in Spartanburg. But I was soon to discover there was so very much more to the album than just “Ramblin’ Man.”

The instrumental “Jessica” would become an all-time favorite of mine, with Chuck Leavell’s now legendary piano work, and Dickey Betts would solidify himself as my die-hard hero with this album, from the aforementioned compositions to the hand-bone at the end of “Pony Boy.”

Cameron Crowe also became a hero of mine that year, alongside Dr. Hunter S. Thompson and Lester Bangs. I would have most likely never jotted down the first review had it not been for my exposure to these three.

Cameron Crowe hit me between the eyes like an upper cut from Joe Frazier with this Allman article. For example...

“The accent comes up out of Nashville, by way of Georgia, makes a dash across the States and ends up vaguely California. He sounds a bit like Kris Kristofferson, looks uncannily like his late brother, Duane. The hotel television is on; the sound is off. It is late, and the black and white movie - something surely about horror and death at this small hour - glows up on Gregg Allman's tired face like a moonscape in Macon's Rose Hill Cemetery.”

Yep. I wanted to write about the Southern Thang just like Crowe. (Who, by the way, loosely based his movie Almost Famous on his own early writing career. )

Looking back, that period of two years in ‘72 and‘73 marked the biggest growth period of my life, as far as music and reading go. I was onto something. Like Little Richard said so many times, “The blues had a baby and they called it rock and roll.” And I liked it.

I liked reading about it, seeing it live and on TV, listening to records and 8-Track tapes and trying to play it on my Teisco electric guitar. And one of my fondest memories is that Allman Brothers cover story by young Cameron in issue #149 of Rolling Stone, December 6, 1973. Thanks for the inspiration, Cameron, and all the great writing you followed it up with.

Keep it Real. Keep it Southern.
Buffalo

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waynep says...

I am a huge fan of Crowes movies. Jerry McGuire especially.

billyfarlow says...

Nice article Michael. Camron is a hell of a nice guy and has a lot of the same talents as you. Good stuff. Happy Xmas.

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