"Almost Famous" director Cameron Crowe has opened up about spending time with the legendary David Bowie, who passed away Jan. 10 from cancer. Crowe - who began his career as a rock music journalist before parlaying his talents behind the camera - detailed his personal account of interviewing "The Thin White Duke" in his heyday while promoting his new Showtime series "Roadies" at the Television Critics Association Press Tour in Pasadena, Calif.
"I wrote about him a lot for Rolling Stone, Playboy and Cream magazines," said Crowe. "He was amazing. He was the most generous and exciting interview subject that I was ever allowed a lot of time with."
During a period when Bowie was not doing any interviews himself, Crowe reached out to some of the singer's friends for interviews, which would prove fruitful.
"I had told these musician friends of his, 'Boy, I would really like to interview David Bowie.' I was 16. So they were like, 'Yeah. We'll let David Bowie know you want to interview him.'"
"I was sitting in my bedroom in San Diego, and the phone rang one night, it was David Bowie," continued Crowe. "He said, 'I'm on a train, and I'm on my way from New York. I've just split with my manager. I don't know that many people in Los Angeles. I'll be getting in in a couple of days, and would you like to do an interview with me?' I said, 'Yes, I would. I really, really would.' He says, 'Well, I'll call you when I get to Los Angeles.' I was ready for it to be over at that point."
True to his word, upon his arrival in Los Angeles, Crowe received another call from Bowie.
"He called me and said, 'Come up here. I'm staying at this house. Let's meet, and let's spend some time together,'" revealed Crowe, who would go on to spend six months straight with Bowie, sans little breaks to return to San Diego.
"Basically, I was in this whirlwind with him in the period between 'Young Americans' and 'Station to Station.' And thank goodness I kept notes on every aspect of it. There were no limits. Everything was discussed. He said, 'Ask me anything. Watch me create. Watch me produce. Watch me sad. Watch me happy.' It was an incredibly vital experience because he said, 'You can do this story for whomever you want.'"
Ultimately, every publication in the country would want the story, which turned out to be quite the coo for the burgeoning writer. "It was a great help for my career," mused Crowe.
"But the amazing thing that I come away with is that even then, which was kind of a wild period in his life, he was always obsessed with music and art and never the business," said Crowe. "It was always a young artist that moved him, and he would reach out to that artist. Bruce Springsteen was somebody that caught his attention.... He was talking about Bruce Springsteen in [the] early stages of Springsteen's career."
Now that Bowie has passed, Crowe reflected on his time with the artist: "Over the last couple of days, I've had a chance to really think about it. David Bowie's impact is so huge in that he presents himself now as a role model to artists that may need to remember that it's not about branding. It's about a restless need to be creative and to continue being creative. David Bowie was the anti-branding artist, and for a young musician or artist of any kind, anybody coming up, it's great to look to Bowie and see that seismic effect he's had on people, not because he kept doing the same thing that worked again and again, but because he always shook it up and he always served the gods of creativity, and that was the lesson I got from him then and today."
