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From Bowie to Joni, the creator of Almost Famous serves up tales of rock'n'roll hedonism

- By Alex Needham

Book of the week The Uncool By Cameron Crowe

Cameron Crowe spent his youth being in the right place at the right time. In 1964, aged seven, he was taken by his mother to see "a kid named Bob Dylan" play a college gym. By the age of 14, living in San Diego, he was writing record reviews for a local underground magazine. Then he started interviewing the bands of the day as they came through California - first Humble Pie for Creem, and then the Eagles, the Allman Brothers Band and Led Zeppelin for Rolling Stone.

Crowe previously fictionalised his story in the 2000 film Almost Famous, which he wrote and directed. His lyrical and compulsively readable memoir is bookended by the opening of a musical version, which coincides with the death of Crowe's mother Alice, whose aphorisms, including "Put some goodness in the world before it blows up", are scattered throughout the book.

Alice insisted that Crowe skip two school grades, driving his precocity.