THEN PLAY ON

Mike Campbell is what you might call a “band guy.” Currently, he’s a member of two outfits — Fleetwood Mac, which he joined in 2018, and his own act, the Dirty Knobs, a group he formed as a side project more than a dozen years ago and which is readying its debut album [see page 50]. If he had more time in his schedule, he’d probably join a third band. “It’s just the way I am,” the veteran guitarist says. “Some guys join a band and use it as a springboard to go solo. I never saw the point in that. I like the idea of being in a gang and having your buddies around.” He chuckles, then adds, “It’s less lonely that way.”

For more than 40 years, Campbell was the ace lead guitarist and sometime co-songwriter of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and if fate had turned out differently he’d still be making music with his lifelong friend. “I’m still going through grief and processing the fact that Tom is no longer here,” he says. “I treasure the memories of what we did together.”

The Florida-born Campbell first hooked up with Petty in the early ’70s in a Gainesville-based group called Mudcrutch. The band would ultimately relocate to Los Angeles, sign a record deal and morph into Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Before then, Campbell was playing around Gainesville in a band called Dead or Alive, which he remembers as being “pretty good.” “We got gigs, so that put us ahead of most local bands,” he says. “We played around the college for free and did some women’s clubs here and there. ‘Oh, the women’s club wants to give us 200 bucks?