Heartbreaker: Mike Campbell Won’t Back Down With Best-Selling Book, New Album and ‘Songs & Stories Tour’

Mike Campbell prefers not to dwell on the past.

“I like that quote from Dylan, nostalgia is death,” he explained. “That’s why I don’t like to look back. You want to continue moving forward, having the juice to do something new and creative.”

With last Oct. 2 marking the eighth anniversary of the tragic death of his Heartbreakers bandmate and lifelong collaborator Tom Petty, Campbell, who turned 75 earlier this year, has been forced to assess his own personal and musical legacy, first in his recent N.Y. Times best-selling autobiography, Heartbreaker, then in a series of upcoming theatre shows in December with his longtime “bar band,” The Dirty Knobs.

Dubbed “A Semi-Acoustic Evening – Songs and Stories from Heartbreaker,” the short five-date west coast tour starts Dec. 3 in Santa Barbara at the 2,000-cap Arlington Theatre followed buy dates in El Cajon, CA, at the 1,250-seat Magnolia (12/5), the 4,000-max Jubilee Theatre at Horseshoe in Las Vegas (12/6), San Francisco’s 1,000-cap Palace of Fine Arts (12/9) and the 1,650-seat United Theater in Los Angeles (12/11).

As a club act, Mike Campbell and The Dirty Knobs generally play 1,500-seat clubs like August dates at the Florida Theatre in Jacksonville and Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater, FL, but also opened for Southern rock act Blackberry Smoke earlier this year and two dates in June with the great Chris Stapleton at Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids, MI, selling 22,818 tickets for a $1.7 million gross, according to Pollstar Boxoffice Reports.

Of course, that’s a far cry from the heyday of his touring life as part of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, which ended in Sept. 2017 with three sold-out shows at the Hollywood Bowl, selling close to 50,000 tickets, grossing $5.4 million. According to Pollstar, since 1999, the band sold 5.3 million tickets for an average gross of $831,076, selling an average of 14,819 tickets,

With these upcoming Heartbreaker shows, Campbell and the Knobs will move into the 1,500-2,000-seat theatre range, though the veteran Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee says it’s a balance keeping Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers’ legacy alive while playing with The Dirty Knobs (Heartbreakers drummer Steve Ferrone, bassist Lance Morrison and guitarist/keyboardist Christopher Holt, who also plays with The Eagles). The sets do include a smattering of Heartbreakers songs, but it’s mostly made up of numbers from the three Knobs albums, the most recent of which, Vagabonds, Virgins and Misfits, co-produced by Campbell and studio legend George Drakoulias and was released last year on BMG.

“I have mixed feelings about that,” he admitted about playing the old songs. “I’m so proud of my legacy, I wouldn’t do anything to damage that integrity, but I do not want to be in a tribute band. That’s why I wouldn’t reunite the group.  Mike Campbell and the Heartbreakers just doesn’t sit right in my soul. I have reached the point where I can sing those songs pretty well – I do have that southern cadence and Florida accent to pull it off—but I get kind of sad playing them now. We will be performing them on this upcoming tour, though. We just started rehearsing, learning to play them in acoustic versions.”

It took a while for Campbell to get over his friend’s death.  “My first instinct was, I missed my brother,” he recalled. “I couldn’t believe he was gone. As I worked through the grief, I had to figure out how I was going to move forward. I always knew I’d continue playing music, one way or another. Because that’s what I know how to do. And things just seemed to drop into my lap.”

Fleetwood Mac approached him to go on tour with the band as guitarist, replacing Lindsey Buckingham, which went around the world and lasted for nearly two years before he dove back into touring clubs with the Dirty Knobs, which represented a return to his roots, and now has expanded to where they can book theatres in the 2,500-3,000 range.

Campbell’s manager Laurence Freedman took over the reigns after working with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers at Tony Dimitriades’ East End Management. His Telegraph Road Management, which also includes Billy Idol, partnered with Gregg Perloff’s Another Planet Management in 2021, and now is headquartered at the company’s L.A. offices.

“Even though Mike had plenty of notoriety from the Heartbreakers and was coming off the Fleetwood Mac tour, it was important to us, when we started touring The Dirty Knobs in 2022 not to skip any steps and treat the project as a ‘new band’ with the goal of winning over fans one by one,” said Freedman. “To Mike’s credit, he was totally behind this plan, and we sold out small clubs across the country before graduating to theaters.”

“The whole thing has been very romantic for me,” Campbell added. “I must say, I miss the private planes. We do fly first class, but we travel by bus. I insist we stay at good hotels and take days off to rest. Except for the sizes of the venues, it’s business as usual. I got my songs, I got my band, we show up, we play, everyone is happy, and then we’re off to the next city.  It’s a great life.”

Midsized tours in general are experiencing their own financial difficulties, with inflated prices for everything from gas to hotels as well as a mixed economy and shaky consumer confidence.

“We’re a little over breaking even now,” said Campbell. “My goal with the Dirty Knobs is, if we can get to theatres, it’s a success. I don’t expect to play Madison Square Garden. I don’t have those kinds of ambitions. I’m not getting rich from this, but fortunately, I don’t need the money. I’ve been very fortunate with my publishing. Still, there’s nothing better than playing a song you wrote with a great band in front of a live audience. You can’t get that kind of spiritual magic anywhere else in life. I’m addicted to it, and I’m going to do this until I die.”

The Dirty Knobs’ WME agents Stephen Schulcz and Noah Guthman have helped Campbell launch his post-Petty touring slate.

“Mike is nothing short of a legend, but what’s most impressive is how dedicated he remains to the work,” the pair wrote in an e-mail. “From pandemic-era club shows that had to be moved twice to theatre stages and major supports with artists like Chris Stapleton and The Who, The Dirty Knobs have been built through a strategy grounded in patience, purpose and intention.  Working alongside Laurence and Katie O’Leary at APE has been seamless at every turn.”

Campbell’s best-selling autobiography Heartbreaker, which was released last March by Grand Central Publishing, tells the tale of his amazing rags-to-riches Dickensian childhood. Brought up by a single mother in Jacksonville, a high school guidance counselor got him to apply to the University of Florida in Gainesville, where he met another 20-year-old named Tom Petty, forming a series of bands, including Mudcrutch, before breaking through with the Heartbreakers.

The book was co-written with Ari Surdoval, a Nashville-based former editor of Performance Songwriter magazine and an editorial director for Gibson Guitars, who previously published a novel, Double Nickels, in 2000, described as a “post-punk coming-of-age story.”

“I was kind of talked into doing it,” admitted Campbell. “When I was a kid, I dreamed of writing a novel, but I never thought about a memoir.  Jaan Uhelszki (co-founder) of CREEM magazine suggested I get together with Ari, so we did and I just started reminiscing about my whole life. It was kind of cathartic to remember little bits and pieces that I thought were completely lost, but were buried in my brain somewhere. I eventually came to enjoy looking back. I’ve had an amazing life when I looked back on it. Which doesn’t occur to you when you’re actually living it. It’s just one step after another, but when you reflect, it’s like, ‘Wow, I did all that?’

Still living in Woodland Hills in the San Fernando Valley with Marcie, his wife of 50 years (they celebrate the milestone on Dec. 14), Campbell has two daughters (Brie and Kelly), a son (Darian) and three grandchildren.

“I like to keep moving forward,” he said. “I may be old, but I’m not boring. Our generation tends to live longer than our parents did. I can still run, jump, play with the dogs and play guitar. As long as you’re healthy, having fun and can deliver entertainment, you should keep doing it.

“I still have my music, which drives me and gives me a reason to get up in the morning. I have my health… knock on wood. Maybe when I’m 100, you’ll be interviewing me about the legacy of the Dirty Knobs.”

Doing these series of projects has helped Campbell put the past behind him.

“What I learned was life is full of surprises and choices you make that define your path, your journey. When I met Tom, my life went in one direction. When I met my wife, it went in another direction. Those two events defined who I was and how I was going to live.”

These days, Campbell’s got several projects in the works, including a symphonic tribute to the music of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. But Campbell is far from resting on any laurels.

“There’s always the next new song to work on,” he concludes. “That’s what keeps me going. I’m just trying to get better all the time. I don’t take anything for granted.”