‘My Led Zeppelin road trip was counted as a class credit’: Cameron Crowe on the interview that changed everything

In an extract from his new memoir, the writer and film-maker reflects on how as a teenager he managed to bag the exclusive of a lifetime

• ‘Rock stars would be like, Yeah, bring the kid in’: read an interview with Cameron Crowe

There was always something slightly forbidden about Led Zeppelin. They were darker than the other bands and they had a command of mystique. You didn’t see a slew of interviews with them; you barely saw any at all. They famously hated Rolling Stone. The rumour was that Jimmy Page and [Rolling Stone co-founder] Jann Wenner had tangled over a girl in London. The magazine trashed their first album. I had, however, interviewed Led Zeppelin for the Los Angeles Times. It was a kind of maiden voyage into the mainstream for the band, and two years later, as they were about to release their album Physical Graffiti, I was invited on the road with them by Danny Goldberg, the band’s publicist and an executive at the label they’d started, Swan Song.

The key to getting Zeppelin on the cover of Rolling Stone was always going to be Jimmy Page. I would interview the other members first, and if Page still refused, Robert Plant would be on the cover by himself. Surely that prospect would lure Page into the idea of a group shot. Or maybe he would scuttle the whole endeavour. That was possible too, perhaps probable.