JUST SLUMMING: The upcoming Rolling Stone magazine...

JUST SLUMMING: The upcoming Rolling Stone magazine cover story on Pearl Jam (it goes on sale Oct. 12) marks the return to rock journalism for Cameron Crowe, the magazine’s one-time Wunderkind who went on to fame as a writer and director, with the likes of “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and “Singles” on his resume. Crowe was asked to do the article because of his connection with the band: He’s a Seattle resident and featured singer Eddie Vedder and bandmates Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament in “Singles,” where they played Matt Dillon’s mates in a fictional band, Citizen Dick.

Shifting gears back to journalism proved more difficult for Crowe than he had anticipated. “I had forgotten about deadlines and editors and all that,” he says, noting that the intensive effort delayed his completion of his latest screenplay.

The new film, he says, will for a change be about someone his own age--the 35-year-old has traditionally written about teens and young adults. But you can bet that music will play just as big a role as it did in his earlier films.