The following is an excerpt from an early draft of Cameron Crowe's screenplay for Almost Famous:
Ext. Downtown San Diego Radio Station - DayGrade: A
A slovenly, hyperkinetic man is darting from shelf to shelf, dishing out quick and gutting reviews of the station's record library. This is the legendary critic, Lester Bangs. Expounding on the greatness of The Guess Who and Iggy Pop, he delivers a brief, erratic soliloquy on the mystical origins of rock 'n' roll.
"Here's a theory for you to disregard...completely. Music, you know - true music - not just rock 'n' roll - it chooses you. It lives in your car, or alone, listening to your headphones - you know, with the vast, scenic bridges and angelic choirs in your brain. It's a place apart...from the vast, benign...lap of America. Take Elvis. Elvis Presley! You think that man ripped off Little Richard? No! He was an emissary, the go-between, a numbers runner. You know, here he is, this young, truck-driving whelp, out of Tupelo-thank-you-ma'am-backwater-Mississippi - young and hungry, mind you - and he's living, I mean living, at these black clubs in Memphis, man. Soaking it up... and on the radio, too. Hell, the south was so segregated you weren't supposed to listen to a black station. And that's what nobody gets - people think it was T.V. - that T.V. made the music. Well, T.V. might have been the midwife, but it was radio knocked the country up. Got everyone nice and cozy at the petting party. All those waves in the night, just towers knocking down walls...Elvis was a Branch Rickey. And Jackie, yeah, Jackie in that Brooklyn blue, he had the talent, but Branch Rickey saw the window and jumped. Just listen - listen to that first album, those Sun sides, man, and it's there...no more Amos 'n' Andy, they were gone with the wind, because the kids were on board and the PTA couldn't say 'no' - not for long - not to a clean-cut army boy no matter which way his hips flipped..."
