Heartbreaker

A Memoir

By: Mike Campbell, Ari Surdoval

Narrated by: Mike Campbell

A fast-paced, tender-hearted rock ’n’ roll memoir for the ages, Mike Campbell’s Heartbreaker is part rags-to-riches story and part raucous, seat-of-the-pants adventure, recounting Campbell’s life and times as lead guitarist of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Mike Campbell was the lead guitarist for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers from the band’s inception in 1976 to Petty’s tragic death in 2017. His iconic, melodic playing helped form the foundation of the band’s sound, as heard on definitive classics like “American Girl,” “Breakdown,” “Don’t Come Around Here No More,” “Mary Jane’s Last Dance,” “Learning to Fly” and “Into the Great Wide Open.”

Together, Petty and Campbell wrote countless songs, including some of the band’s biggest hits: “Refugee,” “Here Comes My Girl,” “You Got Lucky” and “Runnin’ Down a Dream” among them.

From their early days in Florida to their dizzying rise to superstardom to Petty’s acclaimed, platinum-selling solo albums Full Moon Fever and Wildflowers, Petty never made a record without him. Their work together is timeless, as are the career-defining hits Campbell co-wrote with Don Henley (“The Boys of Summer”) and with Petty for 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. After months of saving, his mother bought him a $15 pawnshop acoustic guitar for his sixteenth birthday. With a chord book and a transistor radio, Campbell painstakingly taught himself to play.

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. They were soon inseparable. Together they chased their shared dream all the way to Los Angeles, where Campbell would meet his destiny, and the love of his life, Marcie.

It was an at-times grueling dream come true that took Campbell from the very bottom to the absolute top, where Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers would remain for decades, creating an astonishing body of work.

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 voice as direct and unpretentious as his music.

An instant classic, 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.

fantastic

I don't know if I even consider myself a huge fan, although I know a good deal of their catalog, but especially as a musician, this was a fascinating listen. highly highly recommend if you're a musician yourself or have been, but if you're just curious about the band definitely give it a whirl.

Amazing

Humble, honest and genuine. An exhaustive history of the Heartbreaker’s incredible journey from a bar band in Gainesville to the highest rung on the rock and roll ladder.

HONESTY

Mike Campbell deserves SO MUCH CREDIT FOR TOM PETTY AND THE HEARTBREAKERS he’s the heart and soul of that band what a true musical GENUIS

Authenticity of the story

Mike Campbell lived all of our dreams. His memoir should be required reading for all bands no matter where they are in their career

Unreal story!!

Great American dream story. You couldn’t write a better rags to riches story. Mike is the rare humble rock star.