Cameron Crowe’s ‘Almost Famous’ Hits Broadway This Fall

It’s been four years since we last heard from Cameron Crowe regarding his musical ventures with the iconic film Almost Famous. At that point, we were only offered a 20-second video of composer Tom Kitt playing the piano. Finally, the marvelous movie has earned its adaptation on Broadway at Manhattan’s Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, opening on November 3.

In 2018, Crowe announced the musical, and a year later it premiered in his hometown San Diego, California. The pandemic put the musical on pause by the time it was ready for Broadway, but that didn’t stop the close-knit cast from working together.

“We all stayed close through the pandemic. It’s such a statement that nearly the entire cast was able to come back to tell the story,” Crowe said in an interview with Rolling Stone. “Someone said to me the other day, ‘Was it always your dream as a kid to write a musical for Broadway?’ All I could think was, my dream as a kid was to afford buying records and to get an article published in Rolling Stone. Everything after that has been a rollercoaster and a gift that came from loving music… which coincidentally is kind of what this play is about.”

The musical is similar to the film in that it tells the story of Crowe as a young adult writing for Rolling Stone in the ’70s. He joins the rock & roll band Stillwater on their tour, covering a story about them for the magazine.

English Director Jeremy Herrin, who has most recently worked on the play People, Places and Things (2017), will be directing Almost Famous. The music will be produced by Kitt, who helped score Jagged Little Pill (2018). The cast will include Casey Likes, Chris Wood, and Solea Pfieffer among others.

Crowe has mastered the genre-crossing story, proving that Broadway musicals and classic rock & roll can be tied together. “Broadway fans and rock fans have so much in common,” he said. “We obsess over the music, we pour over every possible recording we find, and we treasure those moments when an artist stands on stage, opens their heart in the most personal way, and creates real magic.”

The musical Company is currently held at Jacobs Theatre, and previews will go up on Oct. 3. The Broadway soundtrack for Almost Famous will also be released in the fall. Tickets are now on sale.

To Crowe, the movie’s motto “It’s all happening” remains true in reality as it does in both the film and the play. “The line ‘it’s all happening’ has always been so key to the show, and now that we’re heading to Broadway it’s finally come true. It actually is… all happening,” he says.

Meanwhile, Almost Famous recently celebrated its 20th anniversary with a reissue of the soundtrack, a podcast and Zoom reunion with the cast (Kate Hudson, Frances McDormand, and Billy Crudup and more), and an interview with Crowe.

Photo by Rich Fury/Getty Images