Heartbreaker A memoir

Mike Campbell, 1950-

Book - 2025

"One of the most respected and influential rock and roll guitar players of all time, Mike Campbell was the guitarist for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers from the band's inception in 1976 to Petty's tragic, sudden death in 2017. His melodic and iconic playing formed the foundation of the band's sound, as heard on definitive classics like "American Girl," "Breakdown," "Listen to Her Heart," "Even the Losers," "Don't Come Around Here No More," "Mary Jane's Last Dance," "Learning to Fly" and "Into the Great Wide Open." But he wasn't just Petty's guitarist--he was also Petty's lifelong songwriting partner. Together, they w...rote countless songs, including some of the band's biggest hits: "Refugee," "Here Comes My Girl," "You Got Lucky," and "Runnin' Down a Dream." From their scuffling early days in Florida to their dizzying rise to superstardom to Petty's acclaimed, platinum-selling solo albums Full Moon Fever and Wildflowers, Campbell was a constant co-writer, co-producer, and confidant, and Petty never made a record without him. Their work together is timeless and loved by millions--as are the career-defining hits Campbell co-wrote with Don Henley ("Boys of Summer" and "The Heart of the Matter") and Stevie Nicks ("Stop Draggin' My Heart Around"). But few know of the less-than-glamorous background from which Campbell emerged--a hardscrabble childhood on the north side of Jacksonville, often just days ahead of homelessness, raised by a single mother struggling on minimum wage to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads. After months of scrimping and saving, his mother managed to buy him a $15 pawnshop acoustic guitar for his sixteenth birthday. With a chord book and a transistor radio, Campbell taught himself to play, lost in a love for music and hiding from the hardships of a life on the margins. When a chance encounter with a guidance counselor inspired him to enroll in the University of Florida, Campbell--broke, with nowhere else to go and the Vietnam draft looming--moved into a rundown farmhouse in Gainesville, where he met a 20-year-old Tom Petty. That night, after they roared through a blistering version of "Johnny B. Goode," a stunned Petty turned to the painfully shy Campbell and prophetically proclaimed, "I don't know who you are, but you're in my band forever." From that moment on, they were inseparable creative partners. It was an at-times grueling dream come true that took Campbell from the very bottom to the absolute top. From an initial audience of heckling rednecks at a Gainesville strip bar, Campbell went on to play to hundreds of thousands of screaming fans at Live Aid and the Super Bowl, and on countless arena tours around the world, with the Heartbreakers and Bob Dylan. From an early embrace of recording on a discarded reel-to-reel in order to practice guitar alone, he became a masterful co-producer and engineer, and a critical component to the sound of the Heartbreakers' records, as well as Petty's solo work. Part rags-to-riches story, part raucous, seat-of-the-pants adventure, HEARTBREAKER presents Campbell and Petty as a rock and roll Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer on a poor boys' ride of a lifetime. Brilliant, soft-spoken and intensely private, Campbell opens up within these pages for the first time, revealing himself to be an astute observer of triumphs, tragedies and absurdities alike, with a songwriter's eye for the telling detail and a guitar hero's ear for an incredible hook. As humble as it is insightful, the book features a cast of characters almost too dazzling to imagine, including the uproarious and at times contentious Heartbreakers themselves, along with legends like George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr, Roger McGuinn, Neil Young, Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, and Bo Diddley; contemporaries Don Henley, Stevie Nicks, Jeff Lynne, John Prine, and Joe Strummer; and music industry titans like Jimmy Iovine, Elliott Roberts, Rick Rubin, and Denny Cordell. All are brought to vivid life in this fast-paced and inspiring memoir. An insider's look like no other, HEARTBREAKER is Mike Campbell's heartfelt portrait of one throwaway kid's lifesaving love of music and the creative heights he achieved through luck, collaboration, humility, and extraordinary talent"-- more