My Life with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Mike Campbell Looks Back
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by Mike Campbell, the legendary guitarist for Tom Petty's band, The Heartbreakers. He was also Tom's closest collaborator, writing the music for some of his biggest songs. Mike toured for a bit with Fleetwood Mac after Tom's death in 2017, and he's currently the frontman for his own band,

The Dirty Knobs. Mike, congratulations on the book. Thank you. What was the impact for you of going back through all this territory, good times, dark times? Well, it was a lot of things. A lot of memories that, I mean, I didn't keep a journal through those years or anything, but a lot of these memories were stuck in the back of my brain that came forward with my parents and with the band.

and relationships and things that happened to me in my life that I didn't even know I remembered until I started thinking about it all. And so, uh, it was a revelation to see, uh, all those things come to the surface and also made me feel really old. I've done so much, you know, it's been a lot of years, but a lot of it was accomplished in those years. Typically I don't look back, you know, I like to look forward, but the book forced me to look back and, uh,

I was really proud of a lot of the stuff that the band accomplished when I look back on it, especially the songs. It sounds like it took a while for you to gain confidence in how much you were contributing to the band in some ways. Yeah, I was a slow bloomer, I guess you'd call it.

Yeah, I saw that too as I was looking back, you know, through my... I don't know why that is. I was very insecure and shy. And that's just what it is, you know. I mean, when my parents divorced, it affected me deeply, apparently. I think it has something to do with why I worked so hard to keep the band together. I didn't want things to fall apart, you know, because I didn't like the way that felt. You were often the connector between Tom and the rest of the band,

and trying to hold things together. You were kind of in two positions, which is kind of Tom's number two, the key collaborator who was there even on solo albums. He never left his side, but you were also part of the Heartbreakers and trying to, particularly Stan Lynch, the drummer who was constantly in combat. You were the peacemaker, and it's really interesting to look at that in light of your, I hadn't thought of that, of your parents' divorce and trying to hold the family together. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, that's a job for a therapist. I don't know why that's my nature to try to... I don't like conflict. And if there's something wrong on the team, I like to get to the bottom of it and sort it out so we can get on to the game, you know?

And the same in my marriage, you know, it's just the way I am. I don't like conflict. I like to work things out right away and don't let them fester. And, you know, in a rock and roll band, things can fester really bad. And there's a lot of things that can break a band up. And I didn't want that to happen to my band. And so maybe that's why I took the charge to try and put out the fires as they came up. You also really showed this admirable and sort of preternaturally mature ability to

to see the big picture. And I would go to one moment, which is the moment when a new part of management came in, Elliot Roberts, who worked with Neil Young, came in and told the heartbreakers that, hey, you all have something, I think he said, called the Sideman disease.

You're not Tom Petty. And basically, we're going to cut your pay. And everyone kind of understandably freaked out. Stan freaked out. Stan was always kind of the squeaky wheel, as drummers often are, weirdly, when you look at stories of bands. But you took the long picture. You looked at the long picture and said, guys, would you rather have this small percent of millions or would you rather have zero? Which is basically...

Yeah. Once again, you know, bands, there's egos and there's different people in the band that do...

different tasks. When I look at it, it's like, well, obviously, Tom is working a lot harder than I am. He's responsible for a lot of the earnings that we're making. Just like any business arrangement or baseball team or whatever, I think the pitcher should get more money, because he's carrying the game. That was not hard for me, really. I also didn't balk at it, because I knew we were all going to do well anyway.

And I don't think I'm a greedy person by nature, but I had a feeling that, you know, whether Tom gets this slice or that slice, my slice is very healthy. And if we all do well, if he does well, I'll do well too. And that's where I try to communicate to the other guys, like, don't break it up over this. I mean, we're all going to do fine, you know, if we just hang in there and make music. At the same time, a moment like that has got to be an emotional blow. And yet you were able to roll with it. It wasn't that big a deal, really.

My wife wasn't happy about it, but I had to explain it to her. "Look, don't worry, it's going to be okay." It was a second of, "Oh, that stings a little bit, but I get it." It wasn't any big emotional trauma for me. Maybe for some of the other guys. Now, if it had been a situation of splitting the pie to someone who didn't deserve it, I would have been upset.

But when I looked at it, Tom was doing a lot more. He was really basically managing the band in a lot of ways, doing all the interviews, writing a lot of the songs, singing all the songs, and putting forth a face on the stage.

Engaging with the audience. A lot more work than me back there. He's going, la-di-da-di-da-di-da. Of course he should have more, you know? So it wasn't that hard for me to digest it. It was interesting to learn how far back your sort of habit of home recording and building instrumentals went. It went back to the Mudcratch days or earlier, really. But you didn't necessarily see it as songwriting, it seems like. You saw it more as musical exercises until...

I guess it was your wife who really was like, "These are songs. You should start paying attention to them." Yeah. From day one, when I got a little one-second sound-on-sound recorder, I was just fascinated with putting a part down and putting a second part down with it. I realized pretty quickly that I was really good at that, taking a fragment of an idea and adding a second part.

our second guitar part and make the whole thing open up. And I just found affinity to that. And I realized that I had a knack for it. And that came in really handy when I started working with Tom. And I do that on my own songs. Now I'll write a song and it'll just be a sketch. And I'll think, well, wait till I put that second guitar on. It's going to come alive, you know? And so it usually does. Undamned the Torpedoes, obviously. You gave Tom the music to Refugee. ♪ It's not a refugee ♪

And I hadn't realized, I learned from the book, that we're partially inspired by a song that it's very hard for me to hear the musical resemblance other than it's in the same key, which was the Jamel... A Pretty Woman. A Pretty Woman, yeah. It might be a listen to or a listen. Or...

Yeah, I do hear that. It was in that feel, and that's what I was keying off of. I loved that key for the guitar. It was great. And I had my four-track at that point, and I wanted to put down a guitar rhythm, cording, so I could practice solos and develop my technique and try to get better. And that was an exercise that turned into a great song. Songs are magical that way. You never know what's going to happen.

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I find it so fascinating when you write these musical beds that sort of demand an exciting chorus, but you deliver it without the vocal melody. And I think you said that sometimes you would have a version of maybe lyrics and a melody, but you wouldn't tell Tom about it. You'd see if he could top you. Is that right?

Yeah, I was not keen on writing my own lyrics or singing my own melodies over these demos, but I could imagine how they could go. And I could imagine, well, there should be a space here so I could sing something.

And I might go la-di-da to my head, you know, maybe there's definitely something that would be there. And then I would leave it blank and see what Tom came up with. And it was always a thrill for me to hear that he would pick up on those gaps and sing in those gaps and make the song into a song. You know, it was a partnership we had that was really pretty special. In a way, it was inevitable that you would end up doing something like the Dirty Knobs because you, you know, you...

Just we're writing non-stop for decades in a way a similar to your friend George Harrison's situation of just having way more material than could ever be done in your primary situation It does pile up on you I've just been going through all my analog tapes the two-inch tapes, you know that I had from the 70s 80s and 90s and transferring them over to a digital format so they don't get lost and

And there's so much stuff in there, I'm trying to find time to sit down and go through it, but when I do, I always find little gems that I forgot about, like, "Oh, that was a good idea. I can use that on the next record for the noms or whatever."

So, yeah, if you're a writer, once you become afflicted with the writing thing, it's always in your head. You're always writing. And you never know if this little sketch is going to be a big hit or maybe it's just a piece of junk. So you save them all. And then, you know, over a lifetime as long as mine, they do pile up. And I'm still right. I write every day still. They're still piling up on me.

I just hope I live long enough to get them all out there. You described a dynamic, you almost had the opposite of writer's block, where it was just coming and coming and coming, that sometimes it would actually overwhelm Tom. You were giving him more than he could listen to, let alone write over, which was fascinating. That's true. I mean, like I said, it's almost like an affliction. But it's a religious experience, getting in touch with that muse and that higher power that comes to you. It's a gift.

that I don't take for granted. And so I just, you know, anytime that's open, I grab it. And then as it piles up, I finally realize after several years, like, I can't give him all these. He'll never have time to listen to them. I don't even have time to listen to them. So I just pick out the best ones that I thought he might like. But yeah, it's kind of like the opposite of writer's block. I hope I never get writer's block because I love writing. Here comes my blues

Another track on Dan the Torpedoes was Here Comes My Girl. And I think you said that that actually came from, you had this sort of epic song called Turd that Mudcrutch would do. And I guess it had that little, where you move the A triad to the B slot and keep the strings open. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That was part of a little jam that we used to do, and I was writing one day, and I remembered it, and I thought, you know, that's too good to just be lost on a shelf called turd somewhere. So I brought that out and pieced a better song, put a chorus with it. And you're right, the A suspension, it creates a mystery, that chord.

And I remember Tom saying he had trouble singing over that because it creates an interesting melody because it hasn't resolved to the main chord yet. So he ended up talking the verses. And that's how he came around to the song, which is brilliant on his part. Yeah, that's Tom. But if I hadn't had that music, I wouldn't have pushed him into that zone. That's right. That was our relationship. We pushed each other and inspired each other. Don't do me like that. Oh, I love you, baby. Don't do me like that. Don't do me like that.

It also was crazy to realize that Don't Do Me Like That, it was this thing that his pretty scary dad used to say all the time. That's a weird resonance with that song. Yeah, I didn't know that. I guess Tom Ledin must have said that to the writer. Yeah, that adds a dark edge to this tune. I was interested to read that as well. Well, you know, Tom had a relationship with his dad that was pretty...

full of friction, I guess, which kind of made him the rebel that he was. But I like Earl. I, he always made me laugh, you know, but I would, I don't think I would have wanted him for a dad. I never saw any violence. I just saw, I just saw that Earl was kind of on, on the edge. He was, you know, just enjoying his life and kind of wild spirited. And I can see some of that in Tom too, but I never saw any violence myself. I heard about it, but you know, yeah,

Yeah, parents that hurt their children, you know, are unforgivable, I think, you know, for that. It should never happen, but it does. You had your own version of darkness in your childhood, and it was cool to read about the sort of dreamlike way that your life transformed once you went to college and

and saw this sort of paradise of the prettiest girls you've ever seen, and music everywhere. And then it goes from there to, again, in this dreamlike way, once you join Mudcrutch, and once you have the gig at the strip club, it seems like on some level that was already huge success. It was. I was playing music and making more money than I ever had made. It's nothing to hear about it now, but at the time that was a lot of money for a kid.

I was playing my guitar and getting paid for it and seeing naked girls now and then. We were having a great time. Gainesville at that time, a college town, was a real free-spirited place. There's a lot of that 60s energy about it. Free love, free life, free music.

And it was a really great place to be. It was a creative place to be. And that part of my life was the beginning of a blossoming where I just came out of a dark shell and like my wildest dreams started happening. It was crazy. I mean...

I kind of don't even understand it. I was just very grateful, you know. You mentioned that there were guitar players everywhere, bass players everywhere, bands everywhere. It sort of underscores just how good you guys had to be to break out of hundreds of people trying to do this just locally. And then, you know, God knows how many people around the world, the amount of talent and dedication, it's unfathomable. It is unfathomable, but I think, uh,

To our credit, just by stroke of life, whatever, we had songs. A lot of those bands, there were good players all over the place, but there were a few people writing songs, but nobody was really writing good songs like Tom was or like I was with him. We were more...

tuned into trying to write great songs. And I think that's what that served us well over the getting out of Gainesville and moving on. One thing that was interesting was what you first heard of Mudcrutch was that sort of sweetheart of the rodeo type approach. And it's interesting how little...

relatively speaking, that played a part that didn't end up being like a huge part of what eventually you and Tom did. And yet it was the very thing that made Mudcrutch unique when you first heard them.

Well, you've got to remember that the sweethearts of the rodeo, the thread there is Roger McGuinn. And the Byrds thread that went through that and the Burrito Brothers and everything else. Tom and I were both completely enamored with the Byrds almost as much as the Beatles. And that 12-string and Roger McGuinn's style and his soul...

That did continue through her Heartbreakers records. There's a lot of that string in a lot of the songs. Even American Girl has got a bird's-east tone. When she was an American girl, he's done privacy.

And the way Tom sings is with a snarl. Some of that is similar to Bob Dylan and Roger McGuinn. So I think that what I heard that day, I liked the Byrds, of course. I liked Sweethearts of the Rodeo and Graham Parsons and all that. But here was a band in Gainesville when all the other bands were either doing San Francisco Jefferson airplane outtakes or trying to be the Allman Brothers. That ground was already kind of covered.

But they came on, and it's like, "Wow, they're playing stuff on that record that I like. It's country rock, and it's got harmonies." That kind of thing also brought out the Eagles later on, that whole movement. So I heard that day in that band, and that's part of what drew me to it. The bands I was playing with or hearing mostly were jam bands, lots of blues, long jams. These guys came on, they played three-minute songs with harmonies.

And I thought, well, that's really good music craft that not many people are doing. And so when I got together with Tom, that was one of the things I liked about him. You quote someone in the book saying that songs are made out of songs. And it does seem like that apprenticeship, you guys served as a cover band as much as you guys were sick of playing all those covers together.

may have helped you become what you became you're a product of what you listen to and what you're inspired by and Tom and I were inspired by all the same things the 60s the Beatles of stones the Beach Boys Chuck Berry the kinks the zombies we were enamored with that stuff and we both felt it the same way and connected through that source and

And those things you listen to when you're starting out that establish your desire to want to be a musician, they come through you, you know, and if you're lucky, you kind of make it your own, you know, but you have to, you have to draw from somewhere. At the same time, you guys were playing at dubs, which was the strip club in question. And you guys would have to sneak in originals. You would say they were by Santana, but they were actually by Tom. And then you got away with that somehow. Well, yeah. Dubs was an experience. It was a,

Definitely getting your feet wet in life playing there. And the crowds were hardworking Southern dudes with pickup trucks, and they went to dubs to get drunk and hear music and see girls or whatever. So they may not have even been paying that much attention. Their band's up there playing. Here's one by Santana. They're probably too busy talking to their girl or drinking to her. They go, wait a minute. No, it's not.

you know so we had that luxury of just kind of pulling the wool over their eyes to some extent as with many bands that became huge it took longer than you'd think longer than people might think to get signed and then to have a hit there were so many false starts and so many different styles tried out especially before you got to sort of like american girl and solidified what this was going to be

It's amazing, given all the talent at hand, how long it took to land on that.

Yeah, it is amazing. I noticed that in the book, too, as I was writing it. I think people will see that with our band, and a lot of bands that come from our era, it was not handed to us. You get in there, and we worked. We slept on mattresses, we drove around in conline vans and ran out of gas, and played some stupid little places with four people and sawdust on the floor.

It wasn't like we just showed up and made a record and all of a sudden there we were. It took a while for the thing to evolve and find its own identity. And I know Denny Cordell said that once to us. We were talking about that. What are we? How do we make something special? He said, just follow your influences and keep doing it and yourself will appear.

And eventually it did. We found our thing, you know. But it wasn't easy. It took a lot of sacrifice. And I think people will see that. You know, it's a tough road if you want to go down that road. Well, you listen to something like Depot Street, which was at one point what you guys hoped would be a breakthrough single. I live on a wet site by the county reservoir.

It's like reggae, it's a pretty good song, but it's hard to sort of grok what the thinking was that that was the big one for that. Well, it was Denny Cordell. He had a connection with Bob Marley and Island Records and all that. And he turned us on to reggae. He took me and Tom to the Roxy to see Bob Marley when the Naughty Dread album was out. And it turned our heads around. The music was so cool. It was so different.

And then that song came in and we said, well, let's put it and just put that, that feel in it and see if it fits with us, you know? And it was just something we tried one day. It was nothing that we really,

grabbed onto because it wasn't completely what we were looking for, but it's a catchy little record and it has a bop to it, you know. There's a point where you talk to him about getting a bigger share and he says, but I'm Tom Petty. And you had to grapple with that a little bit. Well, not much. I mean, he kind of had me checkmate. You know, I did my big speech and he just looked at me like, okay, Mike, but I'm Tom Petty. And I was like,

I started to say, well, but I'm Mike Campbell. But I knew what he would say. Well, nobody knows who the hell that is. So Tom was brilliant that way. He had a way of just controlling the situation. But he was right. And eventually, though, he did end up giving me a bigger piece of the pie for my production help and this and that. And we wrote all those songs together. So it was just a little brotherly thing that we had one night. And it was kind of funny really thinking about it.

I wasn't insulted. I just thought, well, okay, you got me. Oops. I can tell you my love for you will still last.

The Boys of Summer saga always fascinates me, and there's so much there. There's a great video that people should watch where you break down the making of that track, which was even on a technical level fascinating. When you first played it for Tom, obviously it was intended to be a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers song. He said it was too jazzy, and it was because of a minor seventh chord? Yeah, I'll tell you why, because it was going...

And when I went to the chorus, instead of going to... Instead of going up, I went to... It was a minor seventh. It was just because I did it so fast, I didn't think about it much. But he was right about that chord.

But he was wrong about the song, which he admitted. But I did change the chord before I went any farther with it. But yeah, there you go. It was a minor seventh. That's a perfect example of the thing that you like to do, which is the layering of the parts to get that ostinato or whatever it is. Running over the chord changes. Well, fortunately, yeah. I remember writing that. I was playing with a little...

Early version of a Lendrum. I was messing around I got that beat and I had borrowed a OBX and I was just playing the chords on the OBX and I started going And what's cool about is that stays the same but the chords under a chain exactly So yeah, it creates a suspension and a mystery about it. I know it's just luck really I don't know you know, it's one of those magic nights where it just fell into place and

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I was having so much fun doing the drum machine parts and typing out all my little beats that I had in my head. I threw the music together kind of quick. That's why I ended up with the minor chord and the chorus. Was there any advantage in how difficult it was to do all that at that point? Yeah. I do believe that. I was a four-track, a TX four-track. Necessity is the mother of invention. It's so true. The gear that was available to me at the time was so Neanderthal compared to what we have now.

Before I had a drum machine, I had to make drum loops. I would find records where the drums were playing and record that and hold it with my slide while it went around and around and around looping a beat onto one track or the four track. Nowadays, you don't have to do that. That made it...

a creative energy that was, I think, advantageous. Even, for instance, on the same subject, on Full Moon Fever with Jeff Lynne, it was all analog, too. All those background parts and layered things, we did it with a two-track. We recorded multiples, put it down to a two-track, fly it back onto a new tape with two tracks, so you had all this stuff in stereo coming out of nowhere. But the gear made you do that. It made you creative in a different way than you are now.

And there was rewind. There's no rewind now. You just go, go, go, go. Back in, you can do something. You sit there for a minute and you wait for the tape to go. And while it's going, you're contemplating what should happen next. And so that's a different energy. And you're absolutely right. Yeah.

I presume you do when you write now and do demos, you use a computer and a DAW and all that. At the same time, despite what you just said, are you ever like, Jesus Christ, this would have taken me three weeks in 1987? Yeah, sometimes. Yeah. Well, I've got my tape recorder sitting in the corner. I look at everything and then, oh, that...

Such a great girlfriend I had once. But I know just enough about the Pro Tools to record my stuff, and I still treat it like a tape machine. I still think like that. I don't think digital, per se, and technical. I look at it like, OK, rewind, play it again, punch in, instead of typing and editing. I do that sometimes if I'm really in a hurry, but I try to approach it like it's a tape machine. That's where my head's at.

How do you feel about amp emulators, just out of curiosity? Have you ever messed around with those? Are you opposed? Well, yeah. It's interesting about those, because I like them until I plug in a real amp. I got some of those. Honestly, I got some of those, and they say, OK,

Sounds like the Beatles, you know, and I play, oh, wow, it kind of does, you know, that's kind of cool. And I unplug that and plug it into the amp, and I'm like, no. It's like a little image of what it could really be. Right. Yeah, I don't go for that. I like to plug it into my amp and put a mic on it and maybe a pedal now and then, but emulators, no. I mean, I guess if you don't have room for an amp, that'd be good to get your idea down, but it's not going to sound as good.

to my ears. How much discussion has there ever been about doing something, you know, obviously you've kept busy with Dirty Knobs and there's so many great songs on those albums. How much discussion has there ever been about doing something as the Heartbreakers with Stevie Nicks or with, you did that little one, that very surprising and delightful one-off with Dylan at Farm Aid. How much, if any discussion has there been about doing something else?

Like that. Well, there was a little of that thrown around right after Tom passed away. And it just didn't feel right to me. It still doesn't feel right. I mean, I like working with the guys, but to call it the heartbreakers with another guy or another person up there, I'd be like, no, it's not the heartbreakers. You know, Tom was the heartbreakers and he was the leader of the band. And I have no interest in getting up there with another singer doing those songs. If it's not him, I mean,

I think that just doesn't feel right. You know, I just, I don't, I don't pursue that idea. I don't think the other guys do either. I think we would like to leave it like it was and not mess with it. I guess regardless of what you call it, again, that farm aid performance, which you write a little bit about in the book was really fun. It had Bob back

on electric guitar, which we don't see in his regular shows anymore, a setlist that we wouldn't see in his regular shows. It felt like a whole different thing. And it was very Bob for it to happen, this amazing thing to happen this one time and we never see it again. But I can't help but wonder if that was possibly could have led or still could lead to something bigger. I don't think so. But that was fun. The odd thing about it is that Bob did play guitar. In rehearsal, he didn't touch the guitar.

I'm not gonna play any guitar. I'll just play some harmonica and sing. Get to the gig, there's his amp, and he's jamming away. So, you know, that's Bob. That's the beauty of Bob. So that was all just a one-off. I loved him a lot. But, you know, the Heartbreakers, it was Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. It wasn't just the Heartbreakers. I don't see that happening. And I love my new band now. I'm into that groove, and it's...

It's nostalgia, you know, and to go back and just do a tribute. There's so many tribute bands now too that do us that are so weird. You know, I don't want to be one of those. The whole Dylan era is, is so fascinating with, with the heartbreakers and, and, uh,

It blew me away that Bob called you and said, hey, what do you think about the idea? This is back in the 80s. He called you up and said, what do you think about the idea of having an already existing band back me? And of course, you're like, yeah, sounds good. Thinking that, you know, starting to think presumably he's talking about the Heartbreakers. And he said, basically goes, great, because I'm thinking about taking the John Cougar band out.

Out with me. So I have to assume that you said what he actually wanted you to say. I have a hunch he was having me on there. He was baiting me. But at the moment, I didn't think about that. I said, oh, no, take them, take us. And later on, I thought, oh, okay.

That is very Bob-ish to do that, but I don't know. I never asked him about that, but he probably, maybe it was only half in his head. He was probably just, you know, I don't know that he had a scheme of any kind. He doesn't work that way. The challenge of that, it's hard to sort of overstate how difficult it must have been to sometimes to follow him into songs he had no idea he was going to play. And you point out that the way he

The way he played electric guitar isn't what people might think. It isn't the way he played acoustic guitar. You couldn't just look and see he's playing a G chord with a capo on the second fret. His fingerings meant that sometimes you couldn't tell what the hell he was playing. So that was a whole level of different talent. Yeah, you just had to listen. You had to listen. And we had Ben Mott. We could always look at his hands.

Right. You described that Bob changed keys, I think, on In the Garden, a super complicated song, and that Ben Montt instantly was able to realize it and transpose, but maybe everyone else wasn't so quick on the draw. Well, we didn't know. Were we supposed to go with him, or is he going to go back to the way it was rehearsed, the way it's supposed to be, or is he going into a new land?

How do you know? You hang on for dear life. There's also an incredibly revealing story where Bob asked you to bring your drum machine to the studio and he tries to play with it and it just shows how he thinks of bands and drummers because he tried to get it to follow him. And when it didn't, he said, yeah. What good is it? Yeah. That's the genius of Bob. It's like it's a simple straight to the point. Well, really, it's no good at all. It doesn't follow you. Yeah.

honestly, but I thought it was hilarious, you know, but that's just, that's why I love being around him. He's just so almost childlike in a way, but, but so genius, you know, just like get right to the source of what, what you're trying to do. Yeah. That was a funny moment.

I get a lot of funny moments with him. The songs on the Dirty Knobs records, are any of them older from your stash, or are they kind of freshly written from start to finish? Both. About almost half and half, maybe three quarters new. Like the last album, I think, was about half and half old stuff that I just found because the tech was going through the tapes. And I heard them in the middle of the record, and I said, oh, that's better than the song we're working on. Let's work on that one.

So about half of them, and I've still got more to go through on the next record. Probably some of those will pop up too, you know. Songs are curious. They, throughout your life, you know, and I've heard the writers talk about this.

When you're in your 20s and 30s or 40s, whatever, you're drawing on a source and the songs come in a certain form. As you get older, maybe you're drawing on a different source and you can't write those type of songs anymore. So I like to go back and see maybe I missed something that was really good that I'm not in that channel anymore that I can bring out. In the book, you...

Talk about an early incarnation of you recording and writing your own songs, finishing songs and playing it for Tom. And the reaction wasn't good. And it seemed like he just did not like the idea of you doing that. What did you make of that, especially going back and looking at that incident? Well, from the perspective I'm in right now, where I have my own band and I'm writing the songs and I'm singing them.

I went and one of the guys come in and go, hey, look, I got some songs. And if they sounded a little bit like me or whatever, I'd probably like, hey, you know, keep that to yourself. I'm busy here, you know. So I think Tom just he liked having me in the role I was in.

of helping him channel his musical vision. It made him uncomfortable that I might step outside that circle. I can understand that. Actually, his words were not the most tactful words. I think he did me a service by telling me straight, "No, you really aren't ready to do this yet." I don't think I was. In retrospect, I'm glad I didn't put anything out then. I'm better now. I have to thank him for that. Stevie Nicks played a big part. I also didn't realize that until the book

in getting you to this next phase because she told you that you were going to sing on the Fleetwood Mac tour and literally set you up with her vocal coach even. And that led really directly to your record deal. It led to this new phase of your career.

Yeah, I owe Stevie a lot. But that was just the way she was, you know? And like, we were in rehearsal one day and they wanted to do Oh Well, and I guess they didn't feel that it was the right song for Neil Finn, so they said, well, you do it, you know? And me, you know, okay. I think I can handle that one. It's mostly talking anyway. Yeah.

And then so we put that in the set and I really got confidence doing that, you know, that I could be on the mic and lead the song. And then Stevie had this guy, Steve Rial, who...

who would come to me every day. We'd sit in the dressing room and he showed me some things to open up, some exercises and things, and talk to me about confidence. A lot of it's just confidence. I learned that, just like, don't be afraid of yourself. Just be confident you can do it and you'll do it. You'll do the best you can do. And I was also looking for a nuance that didn't sound too much like Tom.

Part of my problem early on was that because I'd been around him so much and grew up with the same accent and everything, I tended to unintentionally sound like him. And I didn't want to do that. Your speaking voices are naturally somewhat similar. Well, there you go. And so the singing voice was too. But I was unintentionally...

borrowing some of the little nuances and phrasing that I didn't want to do. I didn't want to sound like a clone of my brother. So Steve helped me find a different timber in my throat, a different personality, like to try and find my own personality. I mean, I can't get rid of all of it because that's just in my DNA. But I found my own voice now. It's not Tom. It's some nuances of the Heartbreakers because that's who I am.

So Steve helped me and Stevie and Steve Rial, they helped me kind of get the confidence to, uh, to work on it and not be afraid of it. You know, it's an interesting dichotomy in you as a player, which is that on the one hand you've always loved, as we discussed sitting, uh,

alone with your four track or you're recording apparatus and carefully layering parts. But when it comes to playing some of the key solos, intros, fills that we know by heart, and some of us have tried to learn off the records over the years,

A lot of that stuff or all of it was improvised. Yeah, that's where the magic is for me. I mean, sometimes I work things out and then if you work it out, it's a struggle to make it sound like it wasn't worked out. For things like that, I prefer to just let it be stream of consciousness. And then once you've done it, then listen back and go, oh, how did I do that?

I wouldn't have thought of that, but I stumbled onto it, and it's better than anything I could have thought of. The end solo of American Girl, which is, you know, it's this sort of pull-off-y thing where I think you're using your pick and your fingers, and it follows the chords. ♪

But that was done spontaneously, and you weren't even sure. You thought it sounded like Freebird and didn't even want to keep it. Yeah, I was just jamming along on the track and got to the end. I guess I got bored, so I was going, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And I thought, well, this is kind of silly. And then Tom liked it, you know? So there you go. And another one I like for instance is that song, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

That was an afterthought, just jamming along at the end of the take. And wasn't even thinking about it, because I think I got bored and just started playing loose. That's where the stuff is. And then Tom heard that in Dry Trillium, and they said, that's the lick. We'll put that at the top of the song. And this happened on a lot of the songs where...

You know, there's just, yeah, you're right. That's the way I like to work because that's what's exciting for me. You know, because I got to be surprised, you know. Perfect example is Boys of Summer. Yeah. When I did the Boys of Summer four track, I had the basic form. I got the guitar on and I played it one time with all those, you know, all those little licks in it. Not even thinking about it or counting the measures or anything. Of course, Don Henley, being Don Henley, said, okay, we're going to do this. We should get to learn all those licks again.

And I had to go back and learn them and go one, two, three, and, and figure out where they came in. But that was the beauty of them. And I finally did it. Uh, and then he changed the key and I had to do it again. But, um, so, but that's, yeah, that's, I'm glad that you picked up on that. Cause to me, that's where the magic is, you know, where that,

The guitarist gets to this point and he steps over the edge. Like he might fall off or he might land on something really that he didn't expect. And if you catch those, that's what's fun. You know, I think that's where the real juice is. I did want to ask you about the Rumble Doll album, because that's an underrated and beautiful album that you did with Patti Scalfa. And that was a whole other experience. I know that people who know that record love it, but it sounds like that was a great experience for you.

It really was. She's an amazing singer, great writer, and I love that record. I wish it would have gotten more noticed because I think it deserves it. I heard it recently. It holds up. The songs are good. It's produced well. She sings her ass off. Thank you for mentioning that. I think it's a great... All the songs are good. Every single song is good, and I like the way the sounds are put together. And that was a lot of fun.

You were around for the Traveling Wilburys sessions. Another story I'd never heard before, which is that George asked you to play a solo on Handle With Care. You played it and he told you to play like Clapton. So you broke out a Blues Breakers thing that I guess we'll never hear. And then you said, and everyone loved it. And you said, I don't love it. George, you should play. Which is really, really interesting, selfless musical thinking. Well, I was right.

Yeah. You know? And, uh,

History proves me right. I just had a hunch. I didn't think I played that well. They were just being nice, I think. I played pretty pedestrian, I thought, because I was intimidated. I'm sitting there with George and Jeff, and I'm like, okay, I'll try something. That wasn't my best. But I had a hunch that he could pull something out with the slide that would be more in the soul of the song, which he did. ♪

I just handed him the guitar I had, handed him a slide. The amp was already set up. And he went... And he just did it. It took the pressure off of me. One of the things that always amazes me is the ability to, even years into your career, to find magic in seeming simplicity. Something like, you wreck me. Tonight we rock.

Which was already by 95, you've been in rock and roll for a long time, but you found something fresh and exciting and really elemental rock and roll chords. Interesting. That's hard to do. I still try to do that. It comes with a riff nobody's played before.

or come up with a chord turnaround that's familiar but not exactly like anything else. I think that's just, sometimes you're just lucky. But that's just three chords, you know, just, it was more the feeling of it. And then the chords were just simple. I didn't want to make anything too epic about it.

Was it running down a dream that originally had the Hendrix chord and Tom changed it to an E major? Yeah. It was actually half time originally.

That's what I was doing. See, that's cool too, though. Yeah, it was kind of cool. But Tom and Jeff were listening to it, and they go, "What if we double the tempo and just took the regular E chord that could sing over it with more melody?" And there you go. Yeah. The little bass riff at the beginning is, again, that's something so simple and elemental, yet no one else ever came up with it before.

There's no souvenirs, you know. Yeah.

I mean, it's all those notes are all in there, but it's all in one string. Right. So I don't know. I'm just bonehead, really. But it worked out. Sometimes those are the best things. Are you able to appreciate sort of what you've done and the fact that a lot of these songs will live forever and so much of their DNA comes from you? I mean, is that something you're able to step back and appreciate? Yeah.

Absolutely, and believe me, I don't take it for granted. I remember the Boys of Summer once, which I did in my little guest room studio with a four-track and a sound craft board. A year later, or six months later, or whatever, it was out, and Stan Lynch came over, and we went back into that little room, and he said, I was just at the beach, and there was a bar band playing Boys of Summer. And I thought, really? And I looked around the room, and I said, you know what? That germ started right here.

And it dawned on me that, you know, it's a good feeling if the germ starts with you and it grows into something bigger than you can imagine. And, you know, I don't know. I think these songs will last a long time, long after I'm gone. You know, I hope so. I think they will, because I think the quality of Tom's lyrics and music and all.

It's something that will not be stuck in the genre. It'll continue. Like say Beethoven or Mozart. I don't know. You know, it's getting kind of mental, but I think songs do live forever. And it's a pretty awe-inspiring feeling to know that you can do that. I don't know how, you know, there's just, I keep asking myself throughout my whole life, like, how did I get here? How did I get here? But here I am, you know?

You describe a breakthrough with guitar where you realized that the licks and the chords were actually in the same place on the neck when you were trying to find them in different places. Finding the scale in an A bar chord, like as it related to an A bar chord or something like that? Well, yeah. I mean, that's a deep question. The truth is the guitar is so amazing because, you know, there's what, 24 frets and six strings, right?

And in that little zone, there's unlimited ideas. And I'm always learning new things. Like a chord that I make a chord and I'm on the wrong fret and it's an open string and go, oh, wow, you know?

A little light goes on, I could use that. I didn't even know that was there. I had that all the time still on the guitar. I find things in different versions of chords. Like you mentioned, "Here Comes My Girlhood," you just move your fingers up with the low strings ringing. I like that kind of stuff, droney stuff. I'm always finding new things on it. It amazes me that I haven't thought of everything already.

But there's no limit to it, really. Lover of the Bayou. Obviously, when Mud Crotch reunited, you recorded that. That particular bird song was something that you played a lot in the initial recording.

version of Mud Crutch and it seems pretty influential. It seems kind of one of the sort of forming bricks of the of your whole thing possibly. Yeah, it's the Roger McGuinn thread. I mean, I don't think he wrote the lyrics to that one, but it's the 12 string sound and Clarence White who played on the record with the string bender, which I used on our version, a Fender string bender to get that tone and that feel.

I like that track on the Mudcrush record. It's a jam. We didn't arrange it. We just went, cut it off, and everything was kind of in the moment without being thought out, which, like I said, is the stuff I like. And I love that guitar. It's really good. It's very inspired and an homage to Roger, really. Finally, there's been so much pulled from the vault from what Petty and the Heartbreakers did. Is there stuff still unheard that...

Is it worth hearing or have you pretty much pulled it all out? To my memory, there's not much that hasn't been pulled out already. I remember pretty much everything we did. I mean, there might be alternate takes of certain songs that the estate may decide to play out later on. I'm not really hands-on with that stuff. I like to look forward, not backward.

But no, I don't think, you know, like I said, there's no great surprise gems are going to pop up like this out of there. I mean, most of the stuff that was good, we put out, you know. Oh, and you mentioned the next Dirty Knobs record. You put one out last year that was really good. Are you already, how deep are you in the next one? I've been writing a lot. We haven't started recording it yet, but I'm really excited. I think next month we'll go in and start tracking these songs. Oh, wow. But it's going to be a great record. Yeah, I'm really excited. And we go back on the road? Yeah.

Yeah, we have a tour next summer. I'm going to go just do some book promo. And then maybe May or June, there's some touring. We're doing some opening shows with Chris Stapleton and a few of our own shows. And then later in the year, we may do another thing. I think we're going to go to Canada this time, go up and go across Canada.

And it's nice now because the dirty knobs have progressed to where we can play theaters, you know. Yeah. The smaller theaters and not just the... I like biker bars, but I don't want to stay there the rest of my life. I did that once already, you know. But most of our gigs now are nice, the old ornate theaters, you know, with 2,000 to 4,000 people. And fans have been great. We've had great turnout. So...

I feel almost like we've succeeded, you know, like most I ever hoped for was to play theaters and we're there now. So I'm just going to enjoy it. Yeah. I guess a rare case where Tom thankfully was one time was wrong when he said he couldn't see the theater thing happening. Well, at the time I couldn't, but now I can. Yeah. I had to work for it. Mike, thanks again for joining me. Brian. I appreciate it.

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