Mike Campbell, master guitarist, songwriter, and right-hand man for Tom Petty for decades, has written, if not the best, perhaps my favorite rock memoir yet. Finally, an autobiography by a musician/songwriter that discusses in rapt detail the process of discovery and composition, studio machinations, and the gear, technology, and inspiration that allows it to happen. Campbell achieves this and more in the eminently readable Heartbreaker, an emotional, insightful and linear journey through the mind and soul of a true rock and roller with zero artifice or hyperbole.
I adore Campbell’s enviably humble and rational voice throughout a downright harrowing story of disjointed youth, high-stakes life gambling and his musical and personal triumphs and tragedies. The characters that come in and out of the guitarist’s tale, from the original Mudcrutch (Petty and Campbell’s first iteration of professional strife and musical ingenuity) to the famed Heartbreakers that stormed rock radio in the mid-1970s to international superstardom in the following decades are riveting. This includes his time with impresario, Denny Cordell, former Eagle, Don Henley, with whom Campbell would write his biggest hit, “Boys of Summer,” former Beatle, George Harrison, and the inimitable Bob Dylan, for whom the Heartbreakers brilliantly backed on several tours, and more.
Ably assisted by author Ari Surdoval, Campbell takes us inside his methods of working in the strange but lucrative construct of Tom Petty’s sometimes chaotic and unpredictable environment that tests our conception of the celebrated singer-songwriter forevermore.
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