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Cameron Crowe’s ‘The Uncool’ Credits Kris Kristofferson With Launching His Journalism Career

Arriving Oct. 28, the memoir reflects on a freer 1970s music press that a Los Angeles Times review calls an elegy for a lost era.

Overview

  • Crowe recounts first meeting Kris Kristofferson in 1972 by conducting an interview in a restaurant lobby because he was underage.
  • Kristofferson, at the time engaged to Rita Coolidge, shared what Crowe describes as a secret album project recorded with Bob Dylan in Mexico.
  • Crowe says that scoop helped him break into Rolling Stone, leading to a 1978 cover story on Kristofferson and Coolidge.
  • A Los Angeles Times review emphasizes the book’s portrait of unguarded access in rock journalism before heavy publicity controls and social media.
  • The Uncool is published Oct. 28 by Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster, with a book tour starting Oct. 30 in Nashville; Crowe later thanked Kristofferson at a 2019 Joni Mitchell tribute, noting the singer died in 2024 at 88.