Almost Famous and the importance of a good film soundtrack
Musings on electrifying soundtracks and movie-music magic ✨
The deliberate silence as the bomb explodes in Oppenheimer, the sheer anger in Toni Collete’s voice as she yells ‘I am your mother’ in Hereditary, the close-up of Cesar awakening in the silent film Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, the improvisational genius of Gene Wilder’s limping Willy Wonka and the freeing dance Mads Mikkelsen performs at the end of Druk.
There are many reasons why a film scene can become meaningful: the performance of the actors, the emotional cadence felt through their dialogue or simply the way a cinematographer makes a scene look. Cameron Crowe knows how to find meaning by carefully curating a soundtrack that transports viewers back to the cultural heights of the 1970s in the critically acclaimed Almost Famous.
He takes us back to the place and time of his youth, crafting a love letter to the classic rock bands of the seventies where our main character William Miller finds himself, not unlike Crowe, as a teenage boy with the dream of becoming a music journalist.
Growing up with a strict mother who’s banned rock music from your household isn’t an easy task, especially when your older sister moves out, leaving behind her record collection as your only form of escapism. William finds a way around his mother’s tyranny and manages to get backstage at a Black Sabbath concert as a fifteen year old under the wing of his mentor and well-known music critic Lester Bangs. He doesn’t reach his goal of interviewing the headliner, but manages to flatter the opening band Stillwater into letting him inside - into the building and into their world.
His article on Black Sabbath catches the attention of an editor for Rolling Stone Magazine and William gets hired to follow Stillwater on tour and write an extensive piece about them. He quickly earns the nickname of “the enemy” as no journalist can be trusted, but William is different. He’s an impressionable young boy, he’s only fifteen years old after all and gradually loses his objectivity the closer he gets to the band and their inner circle.
Part of that inner circle is the mysterious Penny Lane, a veteran groupie based on the real-life Pennie Lane Trumbull: founder of the “Flying Garter Girls Group”, who followed famous rock bands around the country. In the film however, Penny and her friends removed the word ‘groupie’ from their vernacular and instead choose to follow the music as opposed to the rockstar status, donning the moniker of “band aids”.
Out of all the characters, Penny Lane is my favourite. She’s a greatly written, three dimensional character, deserving of her own spin-off film, with a wardrobe to die for. The setting and soundtrack of Almost Famous are just as important to the feeble young adult brain in the midst of an identity crisis, as the costuming. The wardrobe department deserves a bouquet of roses and a kiss on the cheek for the outfits they carefully curated for the band aids.
Her long blonde curls, natural make-up and mysterious eyes make her intriguing from the first moment you lay eyes on her. But the thing that makes her stand out visually is her tan afghan coat, a piece that would spruce up any outfit worn underneath. Whether she’s sporting a simple crop top or adorns herself with puffy sleeves, the coat is a statement in and of itself. The suede and … is such an iconic combination that another name for these coats are Penny Lane coats, named after the one and only.
Crowe knows how to blend memorable moments from his own youth with those of William, comparable to Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical film The Fabelmans. For example, the scene of Stillwater’s guitarist Russell jumping off the rooftop into a pool was taken from Crowe’s time spent following The Allman Brothers Band on tour.
Heartfelt and personal yet relatable to people from every walk of life is what describes Almost Famous best. Whenever a film seeps into my brain, I tend to analyse not just why I think it’s a good film but the level of emotionally attached I get to it. The answer is often because part of me identifies with the story the main or side characters go through.
Almost Famous is one that jumps out as I didn’t relate to the people on screen but rather the ones behind, Crowe’s heart and soul that he dedicates to the music is one I related to immensely. The time and place evokes a feeling of nostalgia, not because I was there but because of the music chosen for the soundtrack.
I often say that if I had a time machine and were able to visit a different age, it’d either be the sixties or the seventies just so I could feel the music of that time. I wouldn’t want to stay there, but the safe feeling the music transports me to is something I could only dream of experiencing around me as well as within me. Watching films is one way to live out these daydreams.
Classic rock feels so timeless and yet of that time, it was new and exciting back then and even though it’s not innovative at this day and age, it still feels exhilarating to listen to. The electricity that flows through the music runs like a current through my veins, it’s as much part of me as I am of it. It transports me beyond time and space into my own little haven of grooves and colours.
Like the scene in which William asks Russell what he loves about music, my answer too would simply be “everything”. I don’t know enough about music theory to form an even remotely objective review on why a certain song holds merit and another one doesn’t. I listen to a lot of music by a lot of different artists, I know what I like and why I like it and that’s pretty much it. And I know that a song I was once indifferent to can become meaningful through the art of cinema.
It has been years since I saw Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited for the first time, but every time I hear a song that’s on the soundtrack, I get transported back onto that train. The film takes place in India and yet the soundtrack consists mostly of music from the sixties, with three tracks from The Kinks’ magnum opus: Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One. Darjeeling was my first introduction into the music of The Kinks and Lola is still one of my favourite albums to this day. For the three main characters - the Whitman brothers - India is a strange country, it’s their first time stepping foot on foreign soil but it’s the music that brings them home and draws them closer together and ultimately into facing their childhood trauma.
Every time I hear This Time Tomorrow, I see Peter Whitman running in slow motion as he tries to catch his train, signalling the start of his journey. Every time I listen to Echo and The Bunnymen’s The Killing Moon, I see Donnie Darko riding his bike home, the tunnel scene in The Perks of Being a Wallflower was already meaningful to a twelve year old but hearing Heroes by Bowie for the first time is even more special, the melancholic singing and noisy guitars of Slowdive hit even harder when listened to with the words ‘written and directed by Gregg Araki’ splattered on top of them, and hearing a bus full of misfits who despise each other sing Elton John’s Tiny Dancer is what makes being human so magical.