Mike Campbell (musician)


Michael Wayne Campbell is an American guitarist, songwriter, and record producer. Campbell was a member of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and co-wrote many of the band's hits with Petty, including "Refugee", "Here Comes My Girl", "You Got Lucky", and "Runnin' Down a Dream". His work outside the group included composing and playing on the Don Henley hits "The Heart Of The Matter" & "The Boys of Summer". Campbell, along with Neil Finn, joined Fleetwood Mac to replace lead guitarist Lindsey Buckingham on their world tour in 2018-19.
November 11, 2011 Rolling Stone magazine named Mike Campbell to their top 100 guitarists coming in at number 79. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002.

Early years

Campbell was born in Panama City, Florida. He grew up there and in Jacksonville, Florida, where he graduated from Jean Ribault High School in 1968. At 16, his mother bought him his first guitar, a Harmony acoustic model which he later described as "unplayable", from a pawnshop. His first electric guitar was a $60 Guyatone, but playing a friend's Gibson SG was a transformative experience. Like Tom Petty, Campbell drew his strongest influences from The Byrds and Bob Dylan, with additional inspiration coming from guitarists such as Scotty Moore, Luther Perkins, George Harrison, Carl Wilson, Jerry Garcia, Roger McGuinn, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, Jimmy Page, Mick Taylor, and Neil Young. The first song he learned to play was "Baby Let Me Follow You Down," a song which appeared on Dylan's eponymous debut album. He formed a band named Dead or Alive which quickly disbanded.
Campbell met Tom Petty through drummer Randall Marsh. Marsh was auditioning to be in Petty's band Mudcrutch and learned that Mudcrutch had recently lost their guitarist. He suggested that Petty try Campbell, who was his roommate and had actually been listening to the conversation in the next room. Campbell impressed Petty with his version of Johnny B. Goode and was offered a spot in the band. Mudcrutch became a very popular act around Gainesville and north Florida in the early 1970s. They relocated to Los Angeles in 1974 and signed a record deal with Shelter Records, but released only one poor-selling single and broke up soon after.

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

In 1976, Campbell rejoined Petty to found Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers with former Mudcrutch member Benmont Tench along with Ron Blair and Stan Lynch.
Like the other players in the Heartbreakers, Campbell avoids the virtuoso approach to playing, preferring to have his work serve the needs of each song. Guitar World magazine stated, "there are only a handful of guitarists who can claim to have never wasted a note. Mike Campbell is certainly one of them". He is a highly melodic player, often using two or three-strings-at-a-time leads instead of the more conventional one-at-a-time approach. Like Tench, he was heavily involved in constructing the arrangements for the Heartbreakers' tunes. And also like Tench, he prefers rawness to polish in the studio and onstage.
Campbell co-produced the Heartbreakers albums Southern Accents, , Let Me Up , Into the Great Wide Open, Songs and Music from "She's the One", Echo, The Last DJ, The Live Anthology and Mojo, as well as the Petty solo albums Full Moon Fever, Wildflowers, and Highway Companion.
Campbell collaborated, recorded, and toured with Tom Petty for almost 50 years. His last live performance with the Heartbreakers was on September 25, 2017, at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. Tom Petty died unexpectedly about one week later, on October 2.

Other projects

Outside the Heartbreakers, Campbell has co-written and performed on songs including "The Boys of Summer" and "Heart of the Matter" with Don Henley. Other songwriting and performance credits include songs for the Blue Stingrays, Johnny Cash, Fleetwood Mac, Lone Justice, Roger McGuinn, Tracy Chapman, Warren Zevon, George Harrison, Stevie Nicks, John Prine, Bob Dylan, Restless Sleeper, Patti Scialfa, Brian Setzer, J. D. Souther, Jackson Browne, The Williams Brothers and Robin Zander. He produced four songs on Roy Orbison's Mystery Girl album and played guitar on The Wallflowers' "6th Avenue Heartache," as well as "My Sweet Passion", theme of Amy Rose from Sonic Adventure.
In 2004, he recorded the guitar solo for the song "Los Angeles Is Burning" from the punk rock band Bad Religion's The Empire Strikes First album. In 2010 he recorded the solo for the song "Cyanide" on their 2010 album The Dissent of Man.
In 2007, he joined a reformed Mudcrutch with Petty, Tench, Tom Leadon and Randall Marsh. In 2008, he played banjo on the track "Love Song" from the album ...Earth to the Dandy Warhols... by The Dandy Warhols. He played guitar and mandolin on Bob Dylan's 2009 album Together Through Life.
On April 9, 2018, Fleetwood Mac announced that Campbell would be joining the band along with Neil Finn to replace lead guitarist Lindsey Buckingham for their coming world tour.

The Dirty Knobs

While in the Heartbreakers, Campbell played with a side band, the Dirty Knobs, with guitarist Jason Sinay, drummer Matt Laug and bassist Lance Morrison. "It's rougher-edged ," Campbell says of the group. "It's slightly over-driven, less polished, lots of Sixties influence: The Kinks, Led Zeppelin, The Animals. It's something I probably should have done a long time ago, but I didn't 'cause I was wrapped up in the Heartbreakers." In January 2020, "Wreckless Abandon", the title track from the forthcoming Dirty Knobs album was released.

Collaborations

With Stevie Nicks
With Roy Orbison
  • Mystery Girl
With Jeffrey Osborne
  • One Human
With Linda Ronstadt
  • We Ran
With Joe Cocker
  • Night Calls
With Don Henley
With Philip Bailey
  • Soul on Jazz
With Patti Scialfa
  • Rumble Doll
With Matthew Sweet
  • Inside
With Linda Ronstadt
  • We Ran
With Susanna Hoffs
  • Someday
With Stephanie Mills
  • If I Were Your Woman
With Rob Thomas
  • ...Something to Be
With Michael McDonald
  • Blink of an Eye
With Tracy Chapman
  • Matters of the Heart
With Randy Newman
  • Land of Dreams
With Paula Abdul
  • Spellbound
With Bob Dylan
  • Empire Burlesque
  • Knocked Out Loaded
  • Together Through Life
With Tift Merritt
  • Tambourine
With Christine Lakeland
  • Reckoning
With Warren Zevon
  • Sentimental Hygiene
  • Transverse City
  • The Wind
With Aretha Franklin
  • Who's Zoomin' Who?
With Jackson Browne
  • I'm Alive
  • Looking East
With Jennifer Holliday
  • I'm on Your Side
With Bob Seger
  • The Fire Inside
With Tom Petty
  • Full Moon Fever
  • Wildflowers
  • Highway Companion
With John Prine
  • The Missing Years
With Neil Diamond'