An Ode To Penny Lane: God’s Gift To Rock ‘n’ Roll
“It’s all happening!” - Penny Lane
It’s rare to find a film that you can love more and more every time you experience it. For me, that film is Almost Famous. Released twenty years ago, the film is Cameron Crowe’s love letter to rock ‘n’ roll and growing up. It’s an authentic coming-of-age story that gives us a backstage pass into the ‘70s rock scene. Since its release, it has become one of the greatest and most beloved music movies of all time.
Loosely based on Crowe's teen years, Almost Famous follows William Miller (Patrick Fugit), a 15-year old aspiring rock journalist, through his journey with music. When William lands a gig profiling up-and-coming band Stillwater for Rolling Stone Magazine — whose staff is oblivious to the fact that he’s only a teen — he jumps at the opportunity and embarks on tour across the country with the band, despite his overbearing mother’s objections.
Every time I watch Almost Famous, it feels like I’m seeing it for the first time all over again. I feel overwhelmingly happy whenever I watch the magical Tiny Dancer scene. With a killer soundtrack masterfully weaved into each scene and stunning costumes that make you want to invade the characters' wardrobes, the film is completely in tune with the period it is portraying. It continuously hits me with a wave of nostalgia for a time that I wasn’t even alive in. The film transports me into a different world for a few hours, allowing me to forget reality and live vicariously through William’s eyes. However, it wasn’t until my umpteenth rewatch recently that I realized how much Penny Lane means to me.
Penny Lane, played to perfection by Kate Hudson, is the heart and soul of the film. Hudson injects her with so much humanity and mystique, turning her into such a complex character that it’s difficult to take your eyes off of her when she’s on screen. She encapsulates freedom and passion but deviates from the ‘Manic Pixie Dream Girl’ title she has been associated with due to the fact that she is based on a real woman. She feels familiar, maybe it’s because I've known girls like her or because at one point I so badly wanted to be her. Penny Lane is without a doubt one of, if not, the greatest characters in the history of cinema.
We first meet Penny as she emerges out of the shadows at the stage door of a Black Sabbath concert. Her golden curls, purple-tinted sunglasses, iconic fur-collared coat, and electric presence are enough to make us — and William — fall head over heels in love with her.
She refutes William's claim that she and her friends are “groupies”, pointing out that they prefer the term “Band-aids” because they are there to be muses for the musicians, not to sleep with them. Penny is there because she genuinely loves the music, which is clear to us just by the way that her eyes sparkle when she’s watching the band perform on stage.
Penny instantly takes William under her wing, navigating him through the new world he’s entered and giving him advice as if he were one of her fellow Band-aids: “I always tell the girls, never take it seriously, if you never take it seriously, you never get hurt, you never get hurt, you always have fun, and if you ever get lonely, just go to the record store and visit your friends.” As the film progresses, they become genuine friends and confidants, with Penny eventually revealing her real name to William after she overdoses on Quaaludes.
Despite saying that she’s purely on tour with the band for the music, Penny is in a relationship with the lead guitarist Russell Hammond (Billy Crudup), who is completely caught up between wanting to be cool and wanting to be famous. In a scene from the “bootleg” cut, Russell tells Penny, “Miss Penny Lane, let me tell you what rock ‘n’ roll will miss... the day that you truly retire.” As he fills his glass with ice, and with Penny’s back to him, he continues by listing things about her that would be missed: “The way that you turn a hotel room into a home. The way that you pick up strays wherever you go. The way that you know the words to every song. Every song, especially the band ones. It’s mostly the bad ones. That green coat in the middle of the summer. The real name that you won’t reveal.” It’s a vital scene that captures the essence of their relationship and why Penny fell for Russell.
In my favorite scene, Penny dances alone in an empty, debris-covered concert hall, a single red rose swinging from her hand as Cat Stevens’ “The Wind” plays. As she sits on the floor, smelling the rose and surveying the room, she comes to the realization that she is entirely alone, existing only for herself in that moment, and we watch as she reflects on her purpose without Stillwater.
It isn’t until William reveals to Penny that Russell sold her and the Band-aids off to Humble Pie for $50 and a case of beer that she realizes that Russell doesn’t love her the way that she loves him. With tears gently rolling down her cheeks and a faint smile, Penny asks William, “What kind of beer?”. It’s heartbreaking to see her realize that she was solely a pawn in Russell’s world. She was Stillwater’s biggest fan and yet they threw her away.
Without her, the band has no sense of direction and thus begins to unravel. In Penny’s absence, the band nearly crashes in a plane, which results in everyone on board revealing their deepest secrets in a shear moment of panic and fear. It isn’t until after she’s gone that everyone realizes that she was quite literally the band-aid that held the band together.
By the end of the film, Penny releases herself from Stillwater’s grasp. She leaves rock ‘n’ roll behind in exchange for a trip to Morocco — a place she expressed her desire to escape to in the beginning of the film. She starts her own narrative, one that allows her to start over with an entirely new persona and find a “new crowd”, free from the hold of manipulative men.
Penny Lane will remain a timeless character. We will continue to view her as a role model — she has taken us under her wing just as she did with William. I am fond of her for many reasons, one being that despite everything, she was never anything but herself and was completely comfortable and confident in her own skin. Penny is not just a character in Almost Famous, she is Almost Famous.