When Mike Campbell was a young musician, Iit didn’t take long before he was hooked on the Beatles — and, more crucially, the quiet one: George Harrison.
Years later, a strange twist of fate, he found himself asking his hero to replace the “pedestrian” guitar solo he’d laid down for the Traveling Wilburys’ debut single.
And yes, Campbell stands by his decision to this day.
Born in 1950, Campbell was an impressionable teenager when the Fab Four took over the airwaves, TV stations and concert halls on both sides of the Atlantic. But it was Harrison’s silky and vivacious lead lines from a track on 1963’s With the Beatles that set him on a guitar journey. It would define the rest of his life.
Retrospectively ruminating on that moment in his recently published book, “Heartbreaker: A Memoir”, he writes: “I couldn’t take my eyes off them. Especially the one in the middle, the tall, skinny, dark-haired guitarist with the big hollow body Gretsch Country Gentleman. George. The quiet one.
“He smirked and played the perfect, 10-second solo to ‘All My Loving’ — one minute in to a two-minute song — and that was it for me. That was it. I knew I needed a guitar. I needed one. I didn’t know why. I just knew.”
Campbell's work as Tom Petty’s foil and chief Heartbreaker soon earned him a space at the high table of rock and roll guitar. And soon enough the man who started it all for him sat beside him.
When Harrison, Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison and Tom Petty formed the supergroup Traveling Wilburys in 1988, it put Campbell within a hair's breadth of his hero.
"Handle with Care" would become the band's first single, having been promoted from its original fate as a George Harrison B-side by the so-called Quiet One's record label. The track needed a solo, and in what must have been a pinch-me moment for Campbell, he was asked to deliver one, albeit wrung out in the style of Eric Clapton.
Campbell stepped up to the plate and tracked a solo, only to request Harrison play the solo instead.
“I was right,” Campbell tells Rolling Stone’s Brian Hiatt decades later. “History proves me right. I just had a hunch. I didn't think I played that well, but they were just being nice. I think I played pretty pedestrian.”
Hearing the playback, he realized that there was a better man for the job.
“I thought — because I was intimidated, you know, I'm sitting there with George and Jeff — ‘Okay, I'll try something.’ That wasn't my best, but I had a hunch that he could pull something out with the slide that would be more in the soul of the song, which he did.
“I just handed him the guitar, I had handed him a slide. The amp was already set up, and he just did it. Took the pressure off me!”
The unbridled success of the track — it hit number two on Billboard's Album ROck Tracks — proves Campbell’s hunch was correct. His cut, meanwhile, will likely never see the light of day.
While on the promo trail for his new book, Campbell has explained that his famed "American Girl" Fender Broadcaster was retired from touring after a shipping incident left him fearing for the instrument's wellbeing were it to stay out on the road.
He's also detailed his last conversation with Tom Petty, who died in 2017, while reflecting on the highs and lows of being his right-hand man.
Last year, Campbell revealed how he nearly replaced Lindsey Buckingham in Fleetwood Mac, only for one member to block his path.
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