Interview with Mike Campbell
Thursday / October 1, 2026
About Mike Campbell
Guitarist, songwriter and producer from Florida, a longtime member of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. He co-wrote Refugee and Don Henley's The Boys of Summer and leads The Dirty Knobs.
Source: Professor of Rock on YouTube
These answers are taken from He was Tom Petty's Secret Weapon...and Don Henley's too | Professor of Rock on Professor of Rock's YouTube channel. You! Backstage did not conduct this interview.
What was your very first experience with making music?
My dad was not an athletic type guy. We never played catch or shot baskets. He was in the Air Force, and he would come home and lay down on the couch and put these records on, like Johnny Cash, and he would just zone out. He'd lay back on the couch, his eyes would close, and I'd look like, "What's wrong with Dad?" And then I would hear this music, and of course Scotty Moore with Elvis and Luther Perkins, Johnny Cash's guitar player, on these records. We would talk about the music, and it was a connection between us that we had.
So I asked him, "Dad, why do you like Johnny Cash so much?" And he says, "Well, because he tells the truth. He speaks the truth. He talks about everyday people that I can relate to." And I guess there's a lesson in there.
We did a lot of listening in the house: Elvis, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, all the greats. So I soaked that up as a kid. And he ended up being so proud of me when I was successful with music.
What do you enjoy most about making music?
When you write any kind of music or any kind of art, you're always hoping to inspire somebody, or that they're going to like it, or it's going to make them feel a certain way. With Tom, and with Don, when you have this little baby that you created and you give it to them, and they listen to it and they come back and give it to you and enhance it so much beyond what you could have done, it's a very spiritual feeling. It's a very loving, gracious feeling. It's very emotional actually, when it's that good. If he'd have been a girl, I would have kissed him.
These ideas that come to me out of the air, I just feel like, how did I get here? I'm so lucky that this is being given to me. It is a gift. I treat it like a gift and I respect it like a gift, and I try to do the best work I can. Without music, I don't know what I'd be. I'd be a shell. I still love to write. I write every day. I love to play with my band. I love to listen to music. And I love to share it with my family.
What was a great moment for you as a musician?
It was first thing in the morning. I crawled out of bed and I had a guitar, and I liked this chord which I had learned from Bob Dylan. So I just mindlessly hit that chord, and that was it. I thought, well, that's a good sketch. Then I took it in the studio and fleshed it out a little bit. It's pretty simple musically, just three or four chords. And it's a really strong lyric. Don really came through on that one.
I heard that song once at the Forum when I went to see Don on a solo tour, and he did that song and the whole Forum sang along, and it kind of brought me to tears. It was so beautiful. It's such a beautiful lyric about forgiveness.
Sometimes I won't hear that song for five years and it'll pop on the radio right when I'm feeling some kind of forgiveness issue in my life. I think, "Oh God, what a great song." It's a spiritual accident, musical accident, that turned into something that people relate to. It sounds corny, but I really do feel blessed when I hear stuff like that on the radio now.
What advice do you have for new musicians?
Tom was a great leader. I learned a lot about leadership and about confidence. Tom had confidence: we can do this, I'm going to make this good, we're going to be great. We can do it. We're good. And not kind of like, well, I don't know, maybe we're okay. And confidence is like 90% of the game: playing, singing, writing, whatever it might be. If you believe in yourself, that's what it was. He believed in himself and he believed in the band, and he was not going to stop until we broke through. And I owe that to him.
When Tom and I started out, all we cared about was music. I'm going to do this, and maybe someday I'll make some money, maybe I won't, but I'm going to do this because I love it. I don't know if people are coming from that place nowadays, but we certainly were. And I think if you do something you love, you're probably going to be successful at it, because it's you. And if not, at least you were happy. At least you did what you loved.
What has been your greatest accomplishment as a musician?
I was making a demo. Roger Linn had given me the original LinnDrum, which pissed a lot of drummers off back in the day. I was playing around with that one night, and I had borrowed Benmont Tench's OB-X synthesizer, and I came up with the chords on that to go with this drum beat and then put some guitars on it. When I showed it to Tom, the chorus went to this weird minor chord which really did not lift up at all. So they passed on it. Then I got the call from Jimmy that Don was looking for a song, and I thought, I'm just going to change these chords for the chorus and make it go to a major key.
Boys of Summer is a magical moment. I don't know how that happened. We captured some magic out of the air. I knew it was good the day it came out. KROQ played it three times in a row, which they never do. It went to the top five.
Every time I hear it on the radio, I feel so lucky that it's lasted so long. I think that song will last forever. And it was also good timing for me financially. I was in some trouble and that song pulled me out of it. It kept me from bankruptcy that year.
Think about a demanding producer, bandleader or collaborator. What made them difficult, and how did you work with them successfully?
I do remember when I did the solo at the end of Running Down a Dream. It was all off the cuff, wasn't rehearsed or anything. I did it off the top of my head. And I do remember Jeff standing there. Jeff was hard to please. I remember he was watching me, and when I did one of the more intricate things, he kind of went like this. Every time Jeff looks over his glasses, you're either in big trouble or it's really good. I was focused. I was doing my job. I had Jeff Lynne and Tom standing there. I had to do something good. I can't be posing.
Working with him on that record was such a breeze. He was so sharp and everything went really fast. On Free Fallin', they came over that afternoon, we got this song, and by six o'clock that afternoon it was done, overdubs and all.
With Don, on Boys of Summer, he didn't tap his foot, didn't [move] his head, anything. I thought he hated it. At the end he goes, "Okay, thank you." And then I left, and then he called me and said, "Oh, I think I got the best song I've ever written." I go, "Really? Let me hear it." That's the way he is. He doesn't give it up.
Has your career as a musician progressed the way you expected?
When Tom and I started out, we dreamed about money, but we didn't ever think we'd have as much success as we did. We never thought we'd have houses and cars and stuff like that. We came from a poor background, all of us, and so we just went way beyond our dreams. We got to meet so many of our heroes. You could have never thought that when you were young. Like, oh, I'll get to hang out with those guys someday, maybe they might like my music too. It was unthinkable.
The video for I Won't Back Down was a trip for me, to go to England. George Harrison and Jeff Lynne and Ringo Starr were in the video, and there's me from Gainesville. It's like a pinch-yourself moment. George and Jeff and Ringo and Dylan, all those people are so gracious to me and so kind. It was nice to see that they're genuine people and that they're not snobs. George especially was so friendly and generous. If he'd come over to the house, he'd bring me a jacket or a hat or whatever. I learned a lot from him about being a good person.
Who is your favorite musician, and why?
Tom was closer than a brother to me. We just connected, and I miss him terribly. When I was writing Refugee, I made a point of: I want the chorus to have the same chords as the verse, and hopefully the singer will go up or do something with it. And of course, I had the best writer in the world, and he did that.
Tom was like that. He'd bring a song in, and then a week later he'd come in: "Oh no, I fixed all those bits that weren't right, and you'll have better lyrics." Tom is real good at simple words that a lot of people can go, that's me, I know how that feels. It's kind of mysterious almost. I don't want to talk about it, because I don't want to jinx it.
And Don is a genius, and so is Tom. They're both genius writers. Don is one of those writers who can really create a character. The Heart of the Matter and Boys of Summer are like movies. There's characters that you can see in your mind as the music goes by.
Describe your style.
The Dirty Knobs is my band. They're like a rock and roll boogie outfit. I don't think there's anybody else doing this kind of music right now, quite this way. I think we found our little niche of rock boogie attitude that is ours. The music these days is so diverse and weird, but I think that we're staying true to the old stuff, which is where I come from. In my era: the Beatles, the Stones, the Animals, the Kinks, the Zombies, the Beach Boys. There was so much great music, and that's where my sources are drawing from. That's what I'm trying to emulate in this band: bring that music alive, keep it alive.
Most of our songs don't have long solos, because we're not wired that way.
I still use the 12-string a lot. I play a lot of Rickenbacker here and there. It's a great sound, but it's hard to do. It requires a different technique than a six-string, and I learned some of this from Roger McGuinn. You have to find the tonalities and hit the strings a little different, because there's two for each one. But if you put the time into it, it's a beautiful instrument.
Tell me about a record or a part that was hard to get right. What was it and why was it challenging?
I had a four-track by that point, a TEAC four-track, and Refugee was realized on that four-track. I had a Gibson Goldtop and I wanted some chords to practice playing lead with, really. I just threw those chords together and made a little demo and showed it to Tom. He hit it right off. He goes, "I know what to do with this."
It was hard, because sometimes you make a demo of the idea, the germ of the song, and it's inspired and it's got this feel and spirit to it. And then you go in the studio with all the bells and whistles and you try to recreate that moment that was off the top of your head, and it's sometimes hard to get back to that. We would just struggle to get it to feel as good as the demo. I don't know why it was so hard, because it's a simple song, but it just took a while to get it to float just right, and it nearly drove me nuts.
After 70 takes of Refugee and none of them sounded good, I just threw my hands up. I said, "Look, I can't do this right now. I got to get out of here." It's the only time I've ever done that. I went away for a few days with my wife, cleared my head out, came back, and we knocked it out pretty quick.
Tell me something I may not know from reading your credits.
On the I Won't Back Down video, the thing I remember the most is Ringo. It was at Twickenham, in the wintertime. It was freezing cold, nobody wanted to be there, and Ringo comes down and goes, "Why did I say yes to this?" So the second day, when we're going to do the follow-up shots, Ringo didn't show up. He sent a double, a lookalike. He has this Ringo lookalike guy that goes and does things that Ringo can't do or doesn't want to do. So if you ever see that video again, all the long shots where the drums are in the background, that's not him.
And Full Moon Fever got rejected. We were flabbergasted, because we thought we had this great record, and the A&R department said, "We don't hear any hits. Why don't you go back and write a hit?" We came back to my house going, "They don't like it. We must be completely delusional." We don't know how to write a hit. Of course, six months later, there's a whole new A&R department. They play them the exact same thing, and it's, "This album is six songs deep." Okay, guys, whatever you say. Just put it out. Let the people decide.
Mike Campbell's Full Biography
Mike Campbell was born on 1 February 1950 in Panama City, Florida, USA. He is a music artist and actor, known for Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021), Larry Crowne (2011) and Book Club (2018).