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Mike Campbellis a phenomenal guitar player whose prolificacy could bring many of his peers to shame.
Heartbreakerbegins with Campbell climbing out of poverty in Gainesville, Florida, thanks to his guitar skills.
(I played like my life depended on it, he writes on more than one occasion.)
He met Petty while in college; Campbell believed in him enough to become a proud dropout.
Even now, at 75 years old, Campbell still cant believe his luck.
Its kind of scary.
You famously have the opposite of whatever writers block is.
So what took so long to translate that into a memoir?I wasnt ever planning on doing one.
She said, You should write a rock book.
I wasnt really that interested in it.
Besides, I dont like nostalgia.
I dont look back at old memories.
Sometimes it makes me sad.
But she talked me into it, and I enjoyed the process.
I know what he means.
You get stuck in the past.
If Im looking back, I fear Im missing out on what I could be doing now.
I thought,Ill have a go at conjure that up for you, whatever that means.
There was magic in the air with The Boys of Summer.
Theres nothing special about me.
There are a million guitar players and songwriters who are all really good.
Ive just been in the right place at the right time.
Our gigs leading up to that were playing in sawdust places on the floor it was awful.
We arrived at the venue and the band came in wearing their robes like heroes.
I said, What are you guys doinghere?
We were in a very small town somewhere in the South on a weekday.
Not exactly a place you would expect to see Kiss.
He looked at me and said, Listen, kid, and went right into it.
He told me all about honoring the markets.
He was like a professor.
Did this reaction surprise you?Yes, but everything Bob says surprises me.
Hes an enigma wrapped in a puzzle.
Did you use the drum machine on that?
Do you still have it?
I said, Yeah.
And he went, Could you bring it down tomorrow?
Id like to have a hit, too.
In his mind, Im the same guy who did it, so it would work for him.
So you actually tried to get him that hit.
Why didnt it work?He didnt play along with the drum machine and got frustrated.
I dont know how he didnt comprehend that.
He was playing freestyle.
He looked at me like its my fault.
And he responds, You mean it wont follow me?
Well, what good is it?
He was dead serious.
I thought that was the most illuminating thing about Bob.
Its a thin line between child and genius.
I love the guy.
You describe the tour the Heartbreakers underwent with Bob as a transformative experience.
The Heartbreakers honed into showbiz.
Bob doesnt do any of that.
The Heartbreakers would never.
Tell me what you consider your second-proudest moment.Coming up with the guitar parts of The Boys of Summer.
I still love it when I hear it on the radio.
But its not as good as the solo I didnt play.
The first thing he said was, Do you have any lyrics?
I had never written a lyric in my life.
That was a big deal, even if the song never worked out.
I would like to have worked with John Lennon or Paul McCartney.
Oh, Keith Richards.
But they dont need me.
Whos left who would be inspiring to me?
Im not into the younger kids as much.
It would be old people.
If Carole King called me, I would jump through the window.
If Justin Bieber called me, Id probably say, I dont think Im right for you.
Im not waiting on any call.
To me, a sideman is the guy in the band whos literally on the side.
He doesnt sing he sits back and plays.
Their job is to support the star.
Even though Im in the Heartbreakers, I wasnt the main guy.
Tom used to call me the co-captain, but the rest of the band never felt like sidemen.
We werepartnersin a band.
Its a different mentality.
Thats one reason Tom kept the band together for so long.
Im the same now.
Theres no sidemen in my band, were all together.
You write how, time after time, Tom heard things in you that you couldnt hear in yourself.
What were some of those things?He and I were dudes.
We didnt talk about feelings or have what I think about you conversations.
There was no other way other than, I like that guitar part.
That was a great gig.
Listen, its a powerful thing to trust.
Its a big thing with musicians.
He must have seen a talent and a musical canvas that I could bring to his writing.
Tom wrote a lot of simple songs.
My musical awareness is very wide.
I know classical music, different chord moves, and stuff thats a little more complicated.
He may not have known all of that.
So I think he appreciated that I had a musical palette that was wider than his.
I never asked him, Hey, what do you really think of me?
But I know he liked me.
That was a little delicate.
He was truthful in his own backhanded way and said they were terrible.
He called me the next day and said, Im sorry.
I was on the wrong pills.
What I liked about Tom is he was straight.
He didnt sugarcoat stuff.
It wasnt good enough.
A glaring omission in this memoir is that you dont elaborate when your taste for fineheadwearbegan.
Care to clear that up?When my hair started to look bad.
I liked the idea of: Did you put on your coat?
Did you put on your shoes?
Did you put on yourhat?
It makes you feel in the zone.
Then people would come up and tell me, Thats a great hat.
So I started collecting them.
Sometimes Ill think,I look pretty good today.
Ill go without the hat.Then my wife will go, Get the hat.
Everybody expects to see you wearing the hat, its your thing now.
Ive recently been working with Linda Perry, another artist who favors a lot of headwear.
Weve almost got an entire album of material without even intending to make one.
So she asked me, What are we going to call the album?
And I said, How aboutThe Hats?
