Tom Petty was instantly unforgettable with his blond hair and swagger says Heartbreakers bandmate Mike Campbell
IN the summer of 1970, Tom Petty met one of his future Heartbreakers – and made a friend for life.
He was 19 when he invited guitarist Mike Campbell, then 20, to join his band Mudcrutch, named after the rundown Florida farm where they practised.
“Tom was instantly unforgettable,” says Campbell today. “Of course, he had the long blond hair but he also had a swagger.
“He had this vibe around him of knowing where he was going — and he was smarter than anybody else in the room.”
The pair hit it off from the get-go, resulting in Campbell being by Petty’s side throughout his career — playing lead guitar in The Heartbreakers, joining Tom on his solo albums and taking part in the Mudcrutch revival in 2007.
“We immediately connected as musicians,” continues Campbell. “We had a similar dream — not to be rock stars, just to be professional and successful.
“The whole rock star thing came later. Tom lived at home [with his parents Earl and Kitty] and was a hippie dude like me.”
The first incarnation of Mudcrutch “paid their dues” in Petty’s hometown of Gainesville, Florida, known for its vast university campus.
Campbell recalls: “I’d come down from Jacksonville and was pretty much homeless. I was sleeping on couches and giving guitar lessons. It was a meagre existence.”
Things began to fall into place when he hooked up with two Toms — Tom Petty and Tom Leadon (brother of Eagles’ guitarist Bernie) — and drummer Randall Marsh to form Mudcrutch.
He says: “Gainesville was a great place to be. There was a thriving artistic community around the university, lots of parks for us to play for free and little bars to play in around town.
“We even got a gig in a topless bar for a while but it kept us in money for a few months.
“We mostly played covers but Tom was beginning to write and I was dabbling around with ideas.”
I ask Campbell what kind of music and which artists were his and Petty’s chief inspirations.
“Florida was a hotbed for all kinds of music, from blues and country to rock ’n’ roll,” he replies.
“But the strongest influence on both of us was the whole British Invasion — The Beatles, the Stones, The Kinks, The Animals.
“We would draw on them our whole lives.”
I’m speaking to Campbell, 76, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the band that Mudcrutch eventually morphed into, all-American icons Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers.
Campbell is in Memphis, Tennessee, for the last stop on his tour with his post-Heartbreakers band, The Dirty Knobs.
He notes that he is in the music-loving Southern city where Elvis Presley started out at Sam Phillips’ Sun Records.
“The tour is coming to a close and everybody has picked up the flu,” he sighs when we’re connected via video call from his hotel room.
“Sorry if I sound a little under the weather but I’ll be OK.”
The main hook for our chat is a new boxset documenting the earliest recorded forays of Mudcrutch, Petty’s solo excursions as he searched for his direct yet melodic sound, his first two albums with The Heartbreakers, an incendiary 1977 Heartbreakers gig and footage from BBC Two’s cult late-night show, The Old Grey Whistle Test.
It is nine years since Petty’s death, aged 66, from an accidental overdose of prescription meds a week after his final show with The Heartbreakers, at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.
Campbell is still coming to terms with his loss. Before returning to memories of their early years together, he reflects on the man he was proud to call his “best friend”.
“It was like losing your right arm,” he affirms. “Very hard — and a surprise — and I’m still grieving.
“Tom and I were close, not necessarily to hang out all the time, but our musical and spiritual connection was about as strong as anybody can have.”
When touring with The Dirty Knobs, Campbell makes sure to include Heartbreakers songs in the set, featuring some of his co-writes with Petty such as Runnin’ Down The Dream and You Got Lucky.
“I can’t believe it’s nine years,” he says. “But, as time goes on, I’ve dealt with the grief better.
“I like to perform Heartbreakers songs to keep them alive, to remember and revisit my time with Tom.
“It is bittersweet but there are moments when I feel his spirit. He’s right behind me, saying, ‘Go man, go!’ ”
Campbell concludes: “You might never get over the loss of your brother or your father or your mother or your best friend but you learn to cope. That’s what grief is.
“Memories seem to have a life of their own and I have very good memories. I treasure them.”
This is a cue for more of Campbell’s precious recollections of the Seventies, beginning with Mudcrutch’s first attempts at recording.
On the first disc of the new boxset, No Sleep Till LA, there is an unpolished but promising song from 1971 called Up In Mississippi Tonight — a self-financed single — and later efforts including Depot Street and Wild Eyes.
So what does Campbell make of those initial studio forays all these years later?
“I hear immaturity and I don’t hear any big hit singles,” he decides. “But I do hear dedicated dudes trying to learn their craft.
“We drove down to Miami to cut a couple of demos and were intimidated because we only knew how to play live.
“We were ducks out of water so it was quite an education.
“The looseness of it all is shocking to me now but you sense the germ of something special is about to show itself.”
Their chastening early studio endeavours meant that Petty, Campbell and the rest of Mudcrutch decided they needed “to get smarter and get out of Gainesville”.
By this time, another future Heartbreaker, keyboardist Benmont Tench, had joined the fold, bringing an extra level of sophistication to the group’s music.
Campbell says: “We had done everything we could do as a local band. We had played everywhere, we had a following, but there was nowhere else to go.
“So we thought either New York or LA was our best shot at getting into the rat race.”
He adds that they chose the West Coast because “we already had a friend in Bernie Leadon, who came back to Florida and said, ‘It’s all going on in LA — record companies and musicians everywhere’.
“He encouraged us to get our asses out there, take our hard knocks, and get into it.”
Mudcrutch arrived in LA in 1974 but things didn’t go well. Although famed musician Leon Russell signed them to Shelter Records, their first single, Depot Street, flopped and they were dropped soon afterwards.
Petty, however, still had a solo deal with Shelter and his next efforts are represented on the No Sleep Till LA disc by a gorgeous acoustic demo, Unheard Kind Of Hero.
Campbell remembers the period like this: “After a couple of years of Mudcrutch struggle and the band falling apart, then Tom trying to go solo, The Heartbreakers showed up like magic one night — and boom!”
He explains: “Benmont had put together a demo session [in 1976] to work on songs and he called us all down.
“It was as if a light went on — this is who we are, this is what we do.
“Tom immediately said he was fed up with trying to make a solo record. He wanted to be in a band and said, ‘I’ve still got a deal and this is my band!’ ” It consisted of Petty, Campbell, Tench and new recruits Stan Lynch on drums and Ron Blair on bass.
“And we started that first Heartbreakers record almost overnight,” continues Campbell.
As for calling themselves Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, he says: “I never had any issues with that. Tom was a great leader and frontman.”
Producer Denny Cordell gave them “unlimited studio time and nice equipment” and soon songs flowed thick and fast.
“They just started exploding out of Tom like they were waiting for an outlet,” says Campbell. “He’d come in and say, ‘Oh, I’ve got a song, it’s called Breakdown. And here’s another called I Need To Know’.”
The self-titled debut album kicks off in thrilling fashion with Petty/Campbell’s Rockin’ Around (With You).
“I wasn’t even trying to write a song,” says the guitarist. “I was sitting in the studio playing the riff and Tom walked by and goes, ‘What’s that?’
“He took it home and came back the next day with Rockin’ Around (With You). But the real lightbulb moment was on the 4th of July, 1976, when we recorded American Girl.”
Campbell watched Petty demo the first Heartbreakers stone-cold classic on acoustic guitar and decided it would benefit from a 12-string.
“But we couldn’t afford a 12-string so I tried to emulate it with my six-string by playing octaves,” he says.
“When we finished that song, we realised something had happened. We had found our sound — and nobody else sounded like that.
“From then on, it was smooth sailing. Tom was finding his persona and his voice. He was getting confident and he was proud of the band.”
The self-titled debut album, released on November 9, 1976, failed to make an impact in the States but, as Campbell points out: “The British press loved us. They thought we were a punk band.”
A brief UK tour in May and June, 1977, brings back fond memories for Campbell.
He says: “Our first show was in Cardiff supporting Nils Lofgren. We drove there in a little bread truck, facing each other on wooden benches.
“For the last song, Tom and I were running around in circles and got our guitar cords tangled up. We were literally hog-tied to each other and everyone was laughing.
“After that it was Heartbreaker mania for a while. We played places like Stoke-on-Trent, Sheffield, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds.”
On returning to the States, the Heartbreakers set about trying to break through.
“But we couldn’t get arrested,” laughs Campbell. “The first album came and went so it was back to the grind. The second [1978’s You’re Gonna Get It!] picked up a little traction with songs Listen To Her Heart and I Need To Know but the response was still pretty meagre.
“We were opening for Bob Seger if we were lucky or the J. Geils Band, going from city to city in a minivan.”
Everything changed with the fabulous third album, Damn The Torpedoes (1979), which reached No2 on the Billboard charts despite what Campbell calls “a difficult birth”.
It opened with two of his co-writes, Refugee and Here Comes My Girl, but the story behind that album is for another time.
Before I let him go, I ask Campbell about playing not just with Petty but many great artists during his career.
“I feel like the luckiest guy in the world,” he says. “My path has landed me in the presence of my heroes — and they always tripped me out.
“I’d think, ‘Wow, I’m just this little kid from Florida and there’s George Harrison or Bob Dylan or Roy Orbison or Johnny Cash. How did I get here?’
“People like that can overwhelm you. You get a gush of confusion but it soon settles down.”
As for Petty, it was never like that. He just wanted to be one of the boys.
Campbell says: “Tom could have gone solo and could have been like Rod Stewart or whoever but he grew up in a band and he wanted to keep it that way.
“It’s why we stayed together for so long. I always liked that about him.”
On a personal note, he adds: “If Tom was working on a record, he could always look at me and say, ‘Should I go this way or that?’
“He trusted me and we loved each other.”