For the few people who don’t know, Mike Campbell was the lead guitarist for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers from the band’s inception in 1976 to Petty’s tragic death in 2017. His iconic, melodic playing helped form the foundation of the band’s sound, as heard on definitive classics like ‘American Girl’, ‘Breakdown’, ‘Refugee’, and ‘Learning To Fly’. From their early days in Florida to their dizzying rise to superstardom, Petty never made an album without Campbell. Now, almost eight years after Petty’s death, it has fallen on Campbell to tell the true story of the Heartbreakers and, with it, his own story of how a teenage kid from a broken family living on the north side of Jacksonville, often just days ahead of homelessness rose to became one of the finest guitarists of his generation.
The book itself is a co-write with Ari Surdoval, an author living outside of Nashville whose work includes the acclaimed independent novel “Double Nickels”, and opens with an insightful three-page introduction of the final night Campbell saw Petty alive, which immediately sets the tone for the rest of the book.
Throughout his career in the Heartbreakers, Campbell was always seen as the quiet one, softly spoken and unconfrontational; however, as the book evolves, it reveals a songwriter’s eye for detail along with his astute observation and interpretation of all the triumphs, tragedies, and absurdities that befell both his early years and that of the band his life was so integral to.
As with many books of the genre, much of its strength lies in uncovering the lesser-known, less glamorous period of the journey, as Campbell recalls with unnerving detail the challenges he faced growing up as an extremely bright but socially inadequate teenager, raised by a single mother struggling to provide for Campbell and his two siblings on minimum wage. Intelligent enough to get to the University of Gainesville on a scholarship, his college years would be consumed by the local music scene, which would eventually lead to his fateful introduction to a certain Tom Petty.
Those early years provide some of the most revealing stories about the characters that would be entwined around the heartbreakers, helping to deliver greater clarity and understanding of the dynamics within the band from the early days in Gainsville with Mudcrutch to LA and the formation of the Heartbreakers in the mid-seventies which brings you to the midpoint of the book.
The second half of this story evolves almost totally around the band’s gradual rise to stardom, but whereas Peter Bogdanovich’s acclaimed documentary “Running Down A Dream” focussed on portraying a band of brothers, a band that Stevie Nicks and almost everyone else secretly wished they were a member of, Campbell’s book removes the facade to present a far more uncompromising version, a band consumed by egos, jealously, and power, fuelled on ambition, passion, alcohol and increasingly harder drugs. And yet, despite all that, a brotherhood mentality co-existed, with no bond stronger than the one between Campbell and Petty.
The pace and feel of the book mirror Campbell’s personality, thoughtful and astute, with little need or desire to over-embellish the facts, but with such a keen eye for detail, matched with an almost photographic memory, that many key conversations are recalled with such clarity as to create a fly-on-the-wall documentary aura, all delivered as an intimate conversation.
Campbell’s love of guitars, and latterly his family, are a constant theme throughout the book, and he’s never happier than when sharing details about each of the guitars that helped shape his sound and the songs they were used on, from the $15 pawnshop acoustic he got for his sixteenth birthday right up to recent tours as a replacement for Lindsey Buckingham in Fleetwood Mac and his own band The Dirty Knobs.
“Heartbreaker” is an excellent read, full of fascinating and previously little-known details that should be a must for all fans of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, telling a story that only he could tell, giving us an insight into Petty that the great songwriter would probably have never willingly revealed himself, and yet ironically would probably never have been written but for his sad passing.
It’s a great book, one of the best rock autobiographies I’ve read. Campbell comes across as modest, endlessly grateful to and in awe of his peers, and thoroughly likeable.