The Waiting
IF HE EVER TIRED of his day job as a guitarist, songwriter and producer, Mike Campbell could always go into team counseling. During his nearly 50-year career in music, the veteran picker has become something of an authority on interpersonal relationships. “You learn a lot about how people tick by being in bands,” he notes. “Keeping a group together requires a lot of care and management. A band is like a marriage, but one with four or five brains in it, and each one has a different idea of how things should go.”
He pauses, then adds, “It can be a struggle at times, because things flare up. Band members can be like brothers — they get into tangles. But I’ll tell you something: When the chips are down, your brothers are there for you. That’s the most important thing I’ve learned.”
A dozen or so years ago, Campbell was looking to blow off steam and showcase some of his songs that didn’t make their way into the repertoire of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, so he formed a side band, the Dirty Knobs. While a guitarist of his stature could have put together a supergroup, he assembled the Knobs with a batch of stellar, yet under-the-radar players. The first to join
