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Cameron Crowe is reflecting on the influence of Kris Kristofferson.
In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE for this week’s print issue, for his new memoir The Uncool, Crowe, 68, looks back on how the singer-songwriter and Star is Born actor, who died in 2024 at age 88, helped kickstart his career as a music journalist.
Crowe first interviewed Kristofferson in 1972. At the time, Crowe was a freelance journalist on assignment for underground newspaper The San Diego Door. He was sent to San Diego’s Civic Theatre to interview Kristofferson’s then-fiancée, singer Rita Coolidge, at one of the former’s concerts.
“She was like, ‘Oh, you’d love this guy. You’d love Kris. Kris is great,’” Crowe recalls. “And sure enough, she had asked him to talk to me. It was really kind of out of a noble duty to Rita that he said yes.”
Kristofferson agreed to an interview after his concert at a nearby Mexican restaurant and bar. Crowe, though, was underage and wasn’t allowed inside — so Kristofferson sat in the lobby with him for the conversation.
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“He geeked out with me,” Crowe recalls. “I was 15. He geeked out with me about movies and the marriage between movies and music and ‘Did I read Henry James?’ I’m like, ‘I haven’t gotten there in my English class yet, but I feel pretty cool asking you these questions and you going in these directions.’”
“He was a really key figure to me,” Crowe says. “He really took time with a kid to tell me some truths and then kept inviting me to come back. Kris Kristofferson ran through my life as somebody who seemed to be there at a certain point to open a door.”
The musician also gave Crowe intel into a new (and secret) album of music he’d recorded with Bob Dylan in Mexico.
“He really helped me,” Crowe says. “I wouldn’t have gotten into Rolling Stone if he hadn’t given me a scoop.” (Crowe later wrote a 1978 cover story for the publication on Kristofferson and Coolidge, who divorced in 1980.)
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Crowe reunited with Kristofferson at a tribute concert for Joni Mitchell at Walt Disney Hall in 2019, where Kristofferson performed a cover of “Case of You” with Brandi Carlile. Though Crowe saw that the “For the Good Times” singer “had no idea who I was,” he was still able to thank him for his help all those years ago.
“I got to say, ‘I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you,’” Crowe says. “He had a smile like, ‘I wouldn’t be here either if it wasn’t for me.’”
Crowe continues: “You never know where your angels are going to show up on your shoulder and say, ‘Look this way or look that way. Keep going, feel good about yourself.’”
Kristofferson is just one of the “heroes” that Crowe pays tribute to in his new memoir, which charts his career as a reporter-turned director, who helmed films like Say Anything, Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous.
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It was music journalism, however, that set the stage for Crowe to tell other people’s stories across mediums.
“I couldn’t believe that walking through one open door would lead to a room of people who were just interested to see what you had to ask them,” he says.
The Uncool is out on Oct. 28 and is now available for preorder, wherever books are sold. Crowe’s book tour kicks off on Oct. 30 in Nashville.
