Cameron Crowe on music, marriage, film and Elizabethtown
Tamara Conniff

NEW YORK—Cameron Crowe was on tour with his wife, musician Nancy Wilson. He gazed out the bus window at the Kentucky landscape and thought of his father; he had not been back to Kentucky since his dad’s funeral many years earlier. For Crowe, returning to Kentucky was a celebration, an adventure into all the things he loved, all the things he could not see when he was mourning his father. “Elizabethtown” — the film and the soundtrack — was born.
Music and movies have no separation for Crowe, who began his writing career at age 15 with a byline in Rolling Stone. Crowe likens the music from “Elizabethtown” to a “great American radio station” — a perfect road-trip mix tape.
Music has been an important presence in all of Crowe’s films. In “Say Anything,” the lovelorn hero blasts Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” from a boombox as a wooing technique. “Singles” features the members of Pearl Jam, a band that was little known when the film was shot; and in “Almost Famous,” loosely based on Crowe’s days as a writer for Rolling Stone, Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” turns a bus sing-along into a meaning-of-life moment.
Crowe says he wanted to champion singer/songwriters on the soundtrack to “Elizabethtown,” which stars Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst. This eclectic mix, out on RCA Records, features previously unreleased songs by Tom Petty, Lindsey Buckingham and My Morning Jacket, as well as tracks from Elton John, Ryan Adams and Patty Griffin.
Crowe recently spoke with Billboard about music, marriage, film and his personal journey with “Elizabethtown.”
Q: “Elizabethtown” marks another musical collaboration between you and your wife, Nancy Wilson, who wrote the score. How do you work together?
A: It’s the most natural collaboration. Because even if there wasn’t a movie, we’d still be playing each other music and having that kind of dialogue. From the years she toured with her sister (Ann Wilson) in Heart, they would always go back to their room, put on robes and watch movies. She’s actually seen more movies than I’ve seen. That was the great surprise when we first got together. I thought, “That’s crazy. You’re not supposed to know that much about movies and be able to play the guitar like that!”