And she's a fantastic actress.

Fantastic.

Good choice.

But then there's also you.

Yeah

... and these intimate songs about people.

And that's, that was one of her great tools for touching people, that she was able to be, you know, the, the luminous, uh, personality that she was, but also know people so well.

And to write about the intimate heartbreaks and joy, it's, uh, it- it- it's stuff that, you know, Bob Dylan sat and paid a lot of attention to.

This is how to write about people, and those songs will live forever.

Um, al- along with her big heart, you know? She, she was a quiet, um, a c- a quiet genius and a quiet gift as a philanthropist.

She, she didn't talk a lot about what she was doing, but we're, we're hearing about it now, and it was a lot.

... she became known to audiences in a whole other way as, as an actress, as an actor.

And what happened?

It was Tom and Paul Wagner, his producer, had been working with Alan Klein to get the rights to the Phil Spector story, which to me was like, whoa, this is like a big, big deal.

And we had done, yeah, we'd just done Jerry Maguire and Tom was really interested in playing Phil Spector.

And we had a big meeting with Tom and Phil Spector and Alan Klein at Phil's house, which was like a museum of Phil.

And kind of like Sunset Boulevard, where it was dark and pictures of John Lennon on the table next to you and stuff.

It was a heavy-duty thing.

And I remember at one point – I was cause I was closer to Phil than Tom Cruise at that point.

So how is the Joanie movie coming? Is it a doc or a biopic?

You tried.

I tried.

I would try often, and sometimes I'd get, like, 30 or 40 seconds in before the emergency brake got pulled by her throwing her hands up and saying, "I can't talk about this.

I don't wanna-- Don't make me talk about-- Don't make me talk about it." And then you just feel like you're this wicked person for delving deeper.

A lot of the stuff that's been talked about in your amazing interviews, it's the things we bury and how they fester and how they never go away.

You think they're gone.

You think you've outlived them, and they're there.

My California girl sister was telling me not to worry, baby."

This is, uh, tapes from your interviews with The Allman Brothers Band, right, when you were working on a piece for Rolling Stone? Is that correct?

Yeah.

It was my first big tour that I got invited on.

And, you know, I just felt like, "Boy, I b- I belong here." And I asked...

By the way, I love this question, and I love that you started the book in San Diego, 'cause that's where this, this began.

Um, but yeah, Gregg Allman, you know, his, his brother, Duane, had died in a, uh, terrible motorcycle accident.

There'd been another member of the band that died too, and the band also got a terrible story in Rolling Stone, uh, where the writer kind of, you know, made fun of them for being Southern and stuff like that.

And the day it ceases to be dumb is the day it ceases to be real.

The youngest, you wanted to be the youngest lawyer.

Yeah, I mean, this was, this was the path that was set out for me.

But he, we talked about The Allman Brothers, my dad had stayed up all night on New Year's Eve to tape an Allman Brothers concert for me.

And I came home from going to a party, and that was his kind of gift to me to say, "I understand that you're gonna take the path that you're gonna take." And he also had tried to run answering services, you know, which were then being replaced by automatic answering machines.

So, um, what he always said is like, you know, "Nothing will ever beat the sound of the human voice," which he really believed.

And that's the end of the book, because in this, in this love story to music, um, I wanted to end by saying the humanity of the, the human voice, which my dad kind of used as a motto, is always true.

And when you hear that voice in a song even, like in a way that the song speaks to you in such a personal way, that's the stuff you never forget.

(laughs)

Yeah.

Definitely.

Uh, but Laszlo was amazing for a first time director.

So helpful and so soulful, had a great crew, really cared about all the textures.

And the thing I wanna shout out about this movie that I've always tried to learn from, and this is from Beatty, I think, because he does this in Bonnie and Clyde too.

He knows what a screen kiss can do.

It's better than sex in a movie if you get that kiss right.

(laughs)

You know, w- w- was it a cover story on the way?

Yeah, it was a cover story in Rolling Stone, and it was also the Playboy interview, and I did some other stories for, like, Creem and some other publications.

It was, it was a David Bowie factory (laughs) I had going for a while because he wasn't talking to anybody else.

Life puts you at a crossroads, and you go one way, and it turns into 18 months with David Bowie.

I had no assignment.

He said to me, "Hold up a mirror to me.

I wanna see what you show me.

Are you trying to protect her privacy by not saying more?

... hopefully you develop other values that are more important than whether you're trendy among a certain group of people.

people.I thought it was a badge of honor and that, I think that's what Lester Bangs is saying there.

You know, to not belong means there's- there's something coming around the corner that you'll find where you will belong.

And for Lester and for me too, it was music which, as a young guy, like, interviewing a lot of th- the people that I was just so happy to have a chance to interview them about their music, like me, my mom had skipped me three grades in school so I was not cool.

(laughs) I was like a little mascot to a lot of them.

But going out and- and chasing a dream of being able to talk to musicians that I- I really loved, they were uncool in their early days, and music was-

In their own way, yeah.

...

I mean-

Amazing, amazing, with these electric blue eyes looking at you, and you're 15, and he starts telling you, like, you know, "Don't we love it when, like, music and a movie get together like in The Last Picture Show?" And I'm th...

He's talking to me about the marriage of music and cinema.

I didn't know that, like, years later, that would be, like, my favorite thing and the thing that drove, like, my later career as a director.

But i- I'm sitting there going, like, "He's saying we, like, uh, we both went to college together or something," you know.

(laughs)

Oh.

Um, Brandi Carlile was with him at Joni Mitchell's 75th, uh, birthday celebration, and I had mentioned something to Brandi.

W- were you angry about it, sad about it, uh, confused by it? I mean, do you remember what your emotions were related to it at the time?

I do.

I do, you know? It was also a, it became a violent time because RFK got shot, Martin Luther King got shot.

We were in that, that house at the same time, and I, I ju- I had a bunch of hamsters, and the hamster wheel would be going.

And I just remember, like, the hamster wheel was this, was the soundtrack for this violent time.

My sister dying, political assassination, like, what a time in the world.

And, uh, it was the rise of, of, you know, the Summer of Love and all that stuff.

Right.

You know, w- w- was it a cover story on Bowie?

Yeah, it was a cover story in Rolling Stone, and it was also the Playboy interview, and I did some other stories for, like, Creem and some other publications.

It was, it was a David Bowie factory I had going for a while because he wasn't talking to anybody else.

I mean, you know, life, life puts you at a crossroads, and you go one way, and it turns into 18 months with David Bowie.

I had no assignment.

He said to me, "Hold up a mirror to me.

I wanna see what you show me.

Are you trying to protect her privacy by not saying more?

Don't let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy.

So I, um, I kind of, like, bootlegged a kind of an assignment and called the publicist at, uh, their record company, Asylum.

David Geffen's label.

And it's Cameron Crowe in San Diego, and the, the publicist's name was Lita Eliscu.

And, uh, I said, "I really wanna interview them." And she's like, "Well, I think, uh, Paul Ahern will be there, in, like, you know, ask for him.

And he's the tour manager, and he'll help you meet the guys and, great, do an interview." So, I go to this show.

I get there early.

Yeah.

But I do get the feeling in this book that, that, that you had to constantly figure out like, "Do I mop this up for them, or do I let this occur exactly as it's happened?" Like, there is a line when you're a fan and you have a job to be objective where you have to ask yourself, "What is the right path here?"

The right path is to, to capture a feeling, and I, I feel that's true in the movies I've been lucky enough to make, too.

It's like know the feeling that you're after.

And there was a very specific feeling around each band or artist.

Jim Croce is a guy that you hear a lot now.

He's, like, from the early '70s, one of the, one of those singer-songwriters.

He died young.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, it was all a joke."

[laughs] What are you still figuring out?

Yeah, really well said.

Um, well, I, I love that time when everything meant life or death emotionally, and you really felt things, and you hadn't built up, like, many layers of leather-like skin.

Like, oh, yeah.

When I first started directing, one of the things that really drove me crazy was when people would say, like, "Ha.

That's not how it's done.

Let me, let me show you how it works." And they didn't seem to have joy.

Yeah, tell me about that.