Almost Famous

Plot Summary

A coming-of-age story about a 15-year-old boy hitting the road with an up-and-coming rock band in the early 1970s. Elaine Miller is a bright, loving, but strict single parent whose distrust of rock music and fears about drug use have helped to drive a wedge between herself and her two children, Anita, and William. William makes something of his love of rock & roll by writing album reviews for a local underground newspaper. William's work attracts the attention of Lester Bangs, editor of renegade rock magazine Creem, who takes William under his wing and gives him his first professional writing assignment - covering a Black Sabbath concert. While William is unable to score an interview with the headliners, the opening act, Stillwater, are more than happy to chat with a reporter, even if he's still too young to drive, and William's piece on the group in Creem gains him a new admirer in Ben Fong-Torres, an editor at Rolling Stone. Torres offers William an assignment for a 3,000-word cover story on Stillwater, and over the objections of his mother, and after some stern advice from Bangs, Williams joins Stillwater on tour, where he becomes friendly with guitarist Russell Hammond and singer Jeff Bebe. William also becomes enamored of Penny Lane, a groupie traveling with the band who is no older than William, but is deeply involved with Russell.