Confessions of a Heartbreaker: Mike Campbell

Tom Petty's right hand man, guitarist Mike Campbell has a fantastic new memoir. An interview with him and co-writer Ari Surdoval.

Mike Campbell’s Heartbreaker: A Memoir came out this week and it’s a great read, delving deeply into his complicated, decades-long relationship with Tom Petty. Campbell was the lead guitarist in Petty’s Heartbreakers and before that in Mudcrutch and what becomes clear throughout Heartbreaker is he was also a crucial glue guy in keeping the band together and harmonious for decades. The book is really well done, avoiding the common celebrity memoir of glossing over difficult moments or bogging down in early, inconsequential moments.

Any fan of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers will want to read this book. Naturally, I was also intrigued to know more about how co-writer Ari Surdoval crafted this excellent work, so I got a hold of him, My interview with Ari follows and below that is an interview I did with Mike for Guitar World last year when his album Vagabonds, Virgins & Misfits was released. It his third with the band Mike Campbell and the Dirty Knobs.

You can buy Heartbreaker on Amzaon here, or anywhere that books are sold!

Can you describe the process of writing it? I assume it started with hours of interview with Mike.

That’s exactly how it started. Zoom calls. We just started talking, getting to know one another, building trust, and at the same time I was listening to his voice and speech patterns, trying to wrap my head around putting it all into a story that would flow in his voice. Then I would transcribe the recordings of the calls, very carefully, to internalize the cadence and rhythms of his voice and speech patterns. It would take hours and hours. His voice is Southern and Southern Californian. So there are lots of different tones to capture. He’s got this very Southern ability to throw in amazing turns of phrase out of nowhere, that seem almost odd on first hearing it but so perfectly captured whatever he was talking about. I started jotting them down. The one I always remember is “quagmires of disharmony.” That’s like something out of Tennessee Williams. And then when I learned more the situation he would have been talking about, it would be just the perfect way to describe it. The first line in the book is a nod to Huck Finn, because there is something of that in the story. A poor southern kid on an adventure.

How much of a relationship did you have with him before that?

None at all! I was just a fan. He’s always been one of my very favorite guitarists. I used to say Tom Petty was so lucky that he got to play with the English George Harrison in the Traveling Wilburys and the American George Harrison in the Heartbreakers. That’s the level I always saw him on. And I live in Nashville now, so I hear Mike Campbell’s influence literally everywhere. So he was always a huge musical figure to me. But there really wasn’t much out there about him, and I felt like what had been written about him really didn’t do him justice. So just as a fan of his, I wanted to know more about him. And as a writer, I had a feeling he had a cool story. But I never dreamed it would be me helping tell it.

Then I wrote my novel, Double Nickels, and I published it myself. And I wanted to send him a copy, because “Refugee” and “Here Comes My Girl” are mentioned in it, and Damn the Torpedos is kind of a metaphor in it.

My friend Jaan Uhelszki, who was a founding writer at Creem and who is mentioned in the book, who I know from the glamorous salt mines of rock writing, has known Mike forever. So I kept bugging her for Mike’s manager’s address to send him a copy of Double Nickels. Totally thinking, maybe if Mike ever wants to do a book… So I finally wore her down and I sent a copy of Double Nickels with a fan letter pretty much, saying if Mike ever wanted to tell his story, I’d love to help. Mike read Double Nickels and he really liked the tone and voice of it. So Mike and his manager went to Jaan, who bless her, vouched for me. More than vouched. I think she kinda talked them into me.

It was a little bit harder talking Mike into doing a book though. That took a few different conversations—about the type of book it would be, what it would be about, and that people would want to read a book about him. I had to assure him they would, which I couldn’t believe.

Did you do secondary interviews or a lot of fact checking?

I did a ton of research and some amazing interviews. I got to interview Stan Lynch, Benmont Tench and Ron Blair, all the original surviving Heartbreakers, and Randall Marsh, who is amazing. I also interviewed Tom Leadon three times, for three hours each time, and his memories were just incredible. Almost photographic in their level of detail. They added so much. We talked about his whole life, his family and childhood and his life before and after Mudcrutch. Then three weeks later, he died. So that was a very moving experience that really shaped the writing. It’s a book about Mike’s life in music, so I really focused on the musicians he played with.

All the interviews started out very cautious and got very deep. Because I was interested mainly in their personal, emotional experiences and less in “what was Mike like?” kind of questions. And for all of them it was an incredibly intense emotional experience, and just extraordinary circumstances that changed their lives completely. So there was a lot of feelings there for all of them, and I just wanted to hear whatever they would share about what it was like for them, not anybody else.

And then after the interviews were over, I just researched a lot and tried to balance and reconcile it all together. But it all had to be from and through Mike’s perspective and voice, because it is not a biography. It’s Mike’s story. So as time went on, those interviews influenced my conversations with Mike and things got much deeper.

Gaining trust was a big part of it, for all the interviews. It’s a complicated story that touches a lot of lives. So I think that took an appropriate amount of time. I think they had a right to be cautious and I knew I needed to earn it.

I’ll tell you, it is an uncommonly intelligent group of people. And not just for a band. I didn’t anticipate getting into a long conversation with Stan Lynch about the relationship between the writer Robert Caro and his editor Robert Gottlieb, but there it was happening. They were all very insightful.

And they were also very kind, and very gracious and especially to each other, very loving. So it’s nice to see the book being praised for its tone, but really I think that comes directly from the people in the book, particularly Mike.

It feels like Mike was very honest about his relationship with Tom, detailing both his loyalty and deep respect for him from the start and how difficult he could be at times. Was that easy for him? It is so essential to the book's success because it paints a three dimensional picture of Tom, from an inside perspective.

We got into some very deep water. I think he was incredibly brave to go to the places he did. But it was not a hop, skip and a jump to get there. They had an incredibly deep connection. And it was focused on this music they created together, which meant everything to each of them and that they both needed the other to create. It was a shared dream, or maybe even like a calling, they could only achieve together. That’s a heavy connection alone, and then you add the shared experience of achieving it, over forty years.

Mike is extremely protective of Tom, to this day. It is deeply brotherly in that respect. So I would push him on things, because it was important to have a more three-dimensional portrait of Tom Petty, and Mike would instinctively leap to Tom’s defense. There is a lot of love there. But I also just got the feeling that Mike often just agreed with Tom. Not always, but my impression was that Mike just got him, and understood him and accepted him. And loved him, as he was, for who he was. And in that way their relationship wasn’t complicated at all, it was just as it was.

I'm thinking particularly of the description of the band meeting with Elliot Roberts. In just a few pages, you guys tell a very revealing story - about Tom, about the music business, about managers and about Mike and how important his personality was to the Heartbreakers.

It’s really conventional wisdom that bands never make it without someone like Tom Petty—driven, ambitious, in control, whatever. But I think they also don’t make it, not to 40 years anyway, without someone like Mike. A stabilizer. Someone who can tangibly ground what is happening both into the bigger picture and the music itself. There was a lot coming at them from a lot of different directions, and Mike had an ability to stay focused on what mattered. But I like that Mike is open to showing that he has his feelings and frustrations as well. He wasn’t just blindly going along. There are times when he gets angry, but he moves through it and always comes back to keeping the band together.

I think Mike also really understood the musical power of the band. He’d played with Tom in several different line ups, and saw what worked and what didn’t with him. Mike had great insight into that, throughout the Heartbreakers, and I think a lot of success came from that. And Mike is a brilliant guitar player, and songwriter, producer and engineer too. He deeply understands that music, he breathes it. So I think he recognized how good the band was and he wasn’t going to let it blow up. So he was drawing from a lot of different instincts to keep that band together.

That brings up something that the book does really well - highlight how hard but crucial it is to maintain band dynamics. Did you realize going into the project how important that would be?

I always knew this was a story about people. And how they need each other. In some ways it is a book about solidarity and commitment and tenacity. And connection and compromise. We live in such a conflict-driven culture. Mike’s efforts to cool and calm situations to make things work in the book really stands out.

It’s interesting, because with Mudcrutch we get to see the story of almost every band, who dreams and sacrifices and struggles and works so hard, and doesn’t make it.

And then we get the story of one band, the Heartbreakers, and how big it got, and how it got that big, and what happened when it did.

So we get to see what happens when dreams don’t come true and what happens when they do

Tom and Mike A Jay Blakesberg photo

Mike Campbell was Tom Petty’s right-hand man throughout his career. They started playing together as teenagers in the band Mudcrutch, moved to Los Angeles together and honed their music together, along with keyboardist Benmont Tench, the other band member there from Petty’s beginning.

Campbell was not only the Heartbreakers’ lead guitarist, but the only band member Petty regularly co-wrote with, including landmark songs like “Refugee,” “Here Comes My Girl” and “Running Down a Dream.” Campbell also co-produced many of the band’s albums and did some landmark work with others. He wrote and played on Don Henley’s “Boys of Summer and Stevie Nicks’ “Stop Dragging My Heart Around,” and worked with a range of other artists, from Bob Dylan to Randy Newman, Matthew Sweet to Aretha Franklin. When Petty died tragically and unexpectedly in 2017, Campbell replaced Lindsey Buckingham in Fleetwood Mac, in place for a two-year world tour before turning to the Dirty Knobs, the group he had formed in 2000 as a live outlet during Petty’s touring breaks.

The Dirty Knobs, featuring Heartbreakers drummer Steve Ferrone alongside guitarist Chris Holt and bassist Lance Morrison, who both have worked with Henley, recently released Vagabonds, Virgins & Misfits, their third album since 2000.

“I had a big interest in doing my own songs and learning how to front a band,” says Campbell. “While I was in a band with Tom, out of respect for our relationship and our songwriting arrangement, I didn't want to do anything that would throw that off kilter. When Tom passed away, there was a huge hole, so what am I gonna do? It seemed to be the time to follow the idea of writing and singing my own songs and see what I can make of it.”

Are you scratching an itch that was always there by fronting your own band?

Yeah, sort of. I wrote more music than Tom could handle when we were together. He would pick out the best ones and he put great lyrics on my songs, which I'm so grateful for. But I might have 20 other pieces of music he wouldn't have time to address. In the back of my mind, I thought, maybe someday I'll take that more seriously. That's why very late in life I decided to and write some words and sing these in my studio where nobody can hear me and see if I could do something with it.

Are you enjoying it?

Yes. I'm really enjoying the process. I learned a lot watching Tom front the Heartbreakers all those years and I'm picking up how to be at the mic, engage the audience, try to sing in tune, remember all the lyrics and lead the band. It's a lot more than I thought, and I have a lot more respect for him now that I'm trying to do it all. I'm enjoying it and getting a lot better each time and the band is just great. I love playing music and I can't see going through the rest of my life without doing so.

Remembering lyrics is like stretching a different part of your brain than the muscle memory of having a million guitar parts in your fingers.

Absolutely. It's a corner of my brain that was asleep. What's the next verse? What's the chorus? What's the bridge? How do I tell the band where to move or break down? That part of my brain has been awoken out of necessity. I love playing lead guitar, but I also like to put chords together and write songs and that's as much or more satisfying than playing a great solo. I try to do both.

You mentioned Tom putting lyrics to your music. Is that how you guys always wrote together?

Usually, I would write music and leave him a blank palette -basically a finished record with no vocal - and if he liked it, he would bring it in the next day and start singing along what he'd written. He would just get in there, find the melody, come up with some words and then show me what he's got. He would hand my music back to me as a better song. The songs he wrote on his own, he would usually bring them in fully finished, then I would just listen and play along, and by the end of the song, I’d have an alternate guitar part that hopefully made the song better. A lot of our writing was very organic.

Do you approach a solo differently on a song where you were the primary writer?

No, I've always had the same process in the studio. I'm usually engaged in the rhythm track and let the vocal do its thing. If there's room for a guitar lick, I'll put it on the live track, but I rarely work them out. If there's a solo that I have to go back to, like the end of “Running down a Dream, “ I approach it the same way; I don't compose solos in advance. I like to run the track and see where my fingers go and what my mind picks up in the moment. A lot of times it's a bunch of sloppy crap, then two little pieces that show me the way I should be playing the solo. So I can roll it back again and use that as a template to do a better solo. I do like to wing it; that's where the spirit is.

Playing with the same guys for years leads to easy, unspoken communication. Have you had to work to rebuild that with the Dirty Knobs?

The Heartbreakers had a history of mental telepathy where we would just instinctively know how to complement each other, which was a blessing that could also be a curse. We would sometimes fall into repeating ourselves, but it's a comfort to know that this guy is not gonna let you down, that you can get a feedback going between you and inspire each other. In this band, we’ve now been together long enough that we're starting to develop that. They can sense where I'm gonna go or I can give them a look or a shoulder move and they’ll follow me.

And thank God we now have Steve Ferrone on drums. He’s really great and we have a history, so he knows me really well, which makes it easy to pay with dynamics. If I want the song to get quiet or build up in an unscripted moment, he can pick up on that. the whole thing is just kind of coming alive and becoming a great band. I love the Heartbreakers forever, but this is like starting over and we have a lot of fun. I'm blessed to have these guys.

How was the Fleetwood Mac experience? It was a blip in your career, but you did some significant shows with them in what seems like it would have been a tough situation, though you have a long history with Stevie Nicks.

It’s interesting that you use the word blip because we went around the world for two years and played a lot of shows. It was a beautiful and long journey – but now when I look back at it, it does feel as you described. It went by and became something that happened but is hard to believe. Like, I went to high school once and I toured the world with Fleetwood Mac. [laughs]

It was an interesting experience. Mick Fleetwood asked me to join the band, but I don't think Stevie voted against me. It was a challenge because I don't usually play other people's guitar parts. I had to do something I've never really done before and try to emulate some of Lindsey’s melodies that the songs need. I don't play like Lindsey, but I was able to do the songs justice. That was a good bit of work, and it was good for me. The gigs were incredible, and they treated me and my wife like royalty: private planes, big hotels, lots of days off all around the world. It was almost like a beautiful paid vacation and the music was always good. I would look around and see Mick and John McVie and go, “Holy shit. How did I get here?” It was just another blessing in my life.

I learned a lot about the guitar by having to learn Lindsey's parts. Nobody sounds like somebody else, but I did the best I could and brought my own vibe to it. Also, every night we would do “Free Falling” as a tribute to Tom and that was very emotional. Stevie was wonderful and she carries a vocal coach to warm her voice up, and I came by every day and he worked with me to learn how to get more character and strength and pitch in my voice. He taught me this vocal routine that helped me a lot, and I’m not sure I’d be doing what I am as well without that.

At what point in your relationship with Tom did your roles become defined - that he would be the front man and you would be the guitar player?

Right away. I wasn't singing and I was beginning to write a little music, but he already was writing songs, and he just had that charisma. He was playing bass when I met him in Mudcrutch, then he borrowed my Strat and we switched him over to guitar and got a bass player so he could present his songs the way he was writing them. We just had a natural respect for each other. I was happy to be the guitar player and I think he was happy to have me there.

One of the great joys of seeing the Heartbreakers as a guitar guy was salivating over the instruments you and Tom played. Every song you strapped on a new guitar we’d all kill for. Now that you have a smaller production, are you traveling with a lot fewer instruments?

Yes. I have a guitar obsession. I sold about 120 of them a couple of years ago because I don't have room for them anymore. I've quit buying them because I kind of have one of every guitar that I ever dreamed of. At this point buying them is kind of pathetic. I play them all in the studio, but I just take a few essentials on the road because you’re right: it is a smaller production. That includes a Rickenbacker 12 string, a ‘56 Tele that Gene Parsons installed a String Bender on, and a white Firebird that I got in a pawn shop for 500 bucks on the Fleetwood Mac tour that has become my workhorse. Now that I'm leading the band and I've got all these things I must concentrate on, the last thing I want to do is try a different guitar just for fun. I just want it to be in tune because I’ve got to think about other stuff now. It’s a different gig!

The paperback edition of my fourth book, Brothers and Sisters: the Allman Brothers Band and The Album That Defined The 70s, was recently released by St. Martin’s Press. It was the third consecutive one to debut in the New York Times Non-Fiction Hardcover Bestsellers List, following Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan and One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band. My first book, Big in China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising a Family, Playing the Blues and Becoming a Star in Beijing, about my experiences raising a family in Beijing and touring China with a popular original blues band, was optioned for a movie by Ivan Reitman’s Montecito Productions. I am also a guitarist and singer with two bands, Big in China and Friends of the Brothers, the premier celebration of the Allman Brothers Band.