How can you mend a broken heart? The Mike Campbell interview

While Tom Petty was very much a singular talent, he surrounded himself with musicians who could translate the songs he wrote, interpret them, re-define them and elevate them. They had all been friends, too, back in North Florida, and so there was a fraternal bond and a telepathy that transcended music, fame, fortune and rock star ego.

Without Tom Petty, there would never have been a Heartbreakers. The reverse is just as true.

Mike Campbell was the lead guitarist in Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. He was also Petty’s frequent songwriting collaborator, musical sounding board and co-producer. From 1970 until Petty’s death in 2017, they were – more than the other guys in the band – joined at the wrist.

On the heels of his recent and revelatory autobiography, Heartbreaker, Campbell will play Ruth Eckerd Hall Wednesday, Aug. 13 with the Dirty Knobs, a band he put together as a side project while he was still working side-by-side with Petty. The band’s most recent album is Vagabonds, Virgins & Misfits.

Find tickets for the concert at this link.

In this wide-ranging interview, Campbell talks about his ex-bandmates Petty, Benmont Tench, Howie Epstein and Stan Lynch – and the session drummer that replaced Lynch in 2004, Steve Ferrone. And his 2018 world tour as the lead guitarist in Fleetwood Mac.

“I’m a musician, I’ll keep playing till I die,” Campbell says. “That’s all I know how to do. It’s all I love. And I don’t want to do anything else.”

St. Pete Catalyst: Why did you write a book?

Mike Campbell: Because they asked me to. Honestly, I wasn’t thinking about writing a book, certainly not about myself. But my friend came to me with the idea, and I tried to talk her out of it. She had a writer friend, she sent me his book and I liked it. She said ‘He’s really keen to do a book with you,’ so we dove into it. So it just kinda happened.

I might have thought ‘Someday I’ll write a book,’ but not about me. Just write a novel or something. But it was nothing that I ever really entertained.

Obviously there are deep, dark and personal stories that will and should remain private. But you open a lot of closet doors here. Were you hesitant about revealing any of this stuff at all?

Well, I only had one kind of rule, or boundaries. I wanted it to be an open book, and honest. I didn’t want to write a rock ‘n’ roll book, like sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. I had no interest in doing that. And that’s been done so much anyway. I wanted to make the book more about the creative process, and the relationships with my bandmates and my wife, and more about important things in life – not just the smut.

So other than that, I was open to just explore anything that was truthful.

The stuff about Ben and his drinking, Tom and his drugs – that’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. Did you ever have to stop and say ‘How much of this do I want to put in here?’

Well, no, ‘cause there wasn’t that much. With people that are alive, you know, I ran it by them to see if they were comfortable with it before I would put it out. And Ben was fine with it.

I wanted to be real, but I didn’t want to get dark and creepy. Ben’s story is a beautiful story, because he got sucked into the hole, and he pulled himself out. So I didn’t mind putting that in because it had redemption in it. And he was fine with it, like I said.

Howie’s story, which we all kind of knew, is particularly tragic. Then he was publicly fired from the band. How hard was that to get through, from a band standpoint? That must have been brutal.

It was. Anytime someone is in the throes of a disease, you feel helpless if you can’t cure it. And Howie was on that path, and he could not be distracted from what he was gonna do, which was basically kill himself. I don’t know why. He’s my friend, y’know, and I hung in there trying to pull him out the best I could, but he was pretty determined. And he kind of put up the walls and went into his addiction.

We did everything we could. We sent him to rehab, we fired him, we hired him, we did everything, but nothing worked. That’s the way addiction is with some people.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2002 was the last time you, Ben and Tom played with Stan, and with Howie. What was that experience like for you?

I’ll be very honest, Bill, I don’t think much of the Hall of Fame. I think it is kind of a “sosh club” from high school, as far as I’m concerned. And it’s not really a rock ‘n’ roll hall of fame any more, anyway. It’s kind of a charade with all the different types of music, and they call it Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

At the time we did it, it was still more about rock ‘n’ roll, and I was proud of it. My son was proud of it. My son came home from school the next day and he goes ‘Dad, my friends were telling me you’re in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.’ I said yeah. And he said ‘Can they kick you out if you make a bad record or something?’ I said no, you’re in for life. He was relieved.

I don’t want to talk down about it, ‘cause I am proud of it on one level, but on the other level it doesn’t mean anything.

We had Ferrone, and I certainly insisted that Stan should be there. And so, ‘who’s gonna play on what,’ and ‘Howie’s kind of a zombie ghost’ … it wasn’t much. I didn’t put much stock to it. It came and went, and there it is, you know?

Being that I was the journalist from Gainesville in the ‘80s and ‘90s, I always felt invested in the Heartbreakers story. For me, the chemistry was forever altered when Stan left.

Yeah.

Tom was the guy, the talent, but it had always been ‘us.’ At some point, it became ‘Tom … and us.’ You worked more closely with him than anybody – did you ever feel yourself becoming a sideman?

No, I never considered myself a sideman. I considered myself a partner. And I also considered myself someone who was a good foil for Tom. To make him sound hopefully better than he did without me. And I saw his drive, which I didn’t have, his ambition, which I didn’t have, and so I was happy to have someone like that as a partner who could carry that weight. And I could just play music.

I never had any problem with ‘Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers,’ I mean, that’s what it was. Might as well call it what it is, you know? He’s the leader, and he’s the focal point, he’s the writer, the singer, certainly he should have his name up front. I don’t mind.

Mike Campbell and Tom Petty, New York City (1986) by Bill DeYoung.

After Tom died, did you ever consider doing anything else?

What do you mean, doing anything else? Like washing windows?

Oh, I don’t know …. ‘I’ll go be a farmer now’?

No! [laughing] I’m not gonna be a farmer. My wife is a farmer. I’m a musician, I’ll keep playing till I die. That’s all I know how to do. It’s all I love. And I don’t want to do anything else. I’m not gonna retire, or whatever, sit around and wonder what I’m gonna do with my time. I can always record and write, but I’m gonna keep playing.

I’m aiming for 100, Bill! [laughing]

Why did you take the Fleetwood Mac gig? It seemed very left field.

Well, it did come out of the left field. I was deep in grief and thinking about what I would do next. I got the call, and I said ‘Give me 24 hours to think about it,’ and I looked at all the different complexions of the gig. And then I realized, y’know, this is probably good for me. To give me something to focus on. Give me a musical challenge. And to be with my friend Stevie, and play with those guys.

So I decided sure, I’ll go for it, I’ll do it. And we had a wonderful two years, we went around the world. It was like a paid vacation, a five-star vacation.

It was a challenge. I did the best I could, realizing the songs, the way they’re supposed to sound. I had a joy playing with those guys.

Did you ever talk to Lindsey Buckingham about it, like ‘How did you play this lick?’

I’ve seen him, and he was very friendly, but we never discussed it, really. But he was always real nice to me. I saw him at Christine (McVie)’s wake, and he came up and gave me a hug, ‘Hey Mike, how ya doing?’ We didn’t dig into it; we didn’t discuss it. We had other things on our mind.

Now to the Dirty Knobs: You hardly ever sang in the Heartbreakers. How much of a leap of faith was it to say ‘I’m going to be the vocalist in this band’?

It wasn’t an overnight decision, it was a decade or more of playing with the Dirty Knobs – me writing the songs, in the studio I would sing them. I would just explore what was there, you know? I’d always been intimidated by Tom, so I never tried to sing around him much.

One thing that helped me a lot was Stevie Nicks’ vocal coach, Steve Real. On the tour, he would come by the dressing room every day and work with me. Getting comfortable with my breathing and learning how to focus on pitch … but you know what, Bill? It was 95 percent confidence, and accepting that I’m not Roy Orbison. But neither is Tom!

I had two challenges: One was to be confident enough that I could hear my voice without cringing … there’s singing and there’s stylizing [laughing]. I’m more stylistic. I have my own style, it’s conversational, I can find a character and hit the notes in my own range. And tell the story. Much like Tom did.

I can’t get it all out, but I filtered out a lot of Tom’s phrasing and nuances in the way I was singing. Once I got rid of that, I started to feel more comfortable with it.

Who’s in the Knobs now? Is Ferrone playing with you guys?

Yes he is! The Dirty Knobs is me; my bass player we’ve had for decades, Lance Morrison – we call him Crawdaddy; our new guitarist, who is incredible, his name is Christopher Holt. He’s been playing with the Eagles at the (Las Vegas) Sphere on his time off from us. He does guitar and he’s a great harmony singer. He makes me sound a lot better. And he plays keyboards, so now he can play some of the keyboard songs – it’s not just two guitars all the time. And he’s a great vibe.

I had a drummer for several years, Matt Laug, who was incredible, but he got his dream gig offer of his life to join AC/DC. So I lost him to Angus Young [laughing].

But then Ferrone came back and said ‘Can I have my seat back?’ So he’s a permanent member now. And I don’t really think we’re gonna change the lineup again. That’s our lineup until it’s not.

The Dirty Knobs in 2022: Jason Sinay, left, Stan Lynch, Mike Campbell, Lance Morrison. Photo: Facebook.

When Matt was busy in 2022, Stan Lynch sat in for some shows. Was that fun?

Yeah, it was great! We kind of mended some fences. We had a good time. It was very celebratory and reverent to play those songs again with Stan. ‘Cause he knows how they’re supposed to feel, you know? And we had a real blast.

The Long After Dark reissue, with bonus session tracks, was pretty great. Wondering if there will be something similar for Southern Accents, since there was so much material left off the original album?

To be truthful, I’m not hands-on with the legacy estate stuff. Tom’s daughter is doing all of that, and we don’t always see eye-to-eye, so I’ve kind of stepped away. And I don’t really like nostalgia anyway.

But knowing what they’ve been doing, they’ll probably re-release everything with whatever bonus stuff is left over, until they run out.

In your book, you talk about how the original vision for Southern Accents changed dramatically over time. I wondered whether the ‘all southern songs’ concept could be re-assembled?

No, not without Tom. I have no interest in that. We put out what we had, the best that we had at the time. The songs that were left over were usually left off because they weren’t as good as the other songs on the record.

And if people have interest in them that’s fine, but I don’t really have any interest in digging up all that stuff. Or trying to re-envision Southern Accents. It is what it was, you know? And besides that, I wouldn’t want to conceptualize what Tom might’ve wanted, without him doing it. It was his baby.

I like Southern Accents, and also Let Me Up, I’ve Had Enough – maybe it didn’t sell so much, but I prefer it to, say, Full Moon Fever. Because it’s got so much guts to it.

Well, those two albums, it’s like comparing Sgt. Pepper to Exile on Main Street!

Do you have favorites in the catalog?

Yeah, I like the first album (Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers). I like our very first album the best. I like Damn the Torpedoes. I like Full Moon Fever. I mean, I like them all, but any time I get asked I always go to that first record, ‘cause there’s some kind of kinetic discovery in those tracks that I find exhilarating.

The original Heartbreakers (1976): Stan Lynch, left, Mike Campbell, Benmont Tench, Tom Petty and Ron Blair. Shelter Records publicity photo.