Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell is set to release his new memoir, Heartbreaker, on March 18. In a new Guitar Player interview he opens up about his relationship with Petty and discusses the rocker’s 2017 death.
Petty died of an accidental drug overdose; he had been self-medicating to deal with pain he was suffering from hip problems. Campbell says he never confronted Petty about his drug use because that wasn’t the type of relationship they had.
“With Tom, it was like ‘Your private life is yours, and mine is mine,’” Campbell shares. “I can see what you’re doing, but out of respect for you, I’ll trust you’ll do the right thing. If you need me, call me.”
He says he doesn’t think confronting Petty would have done anything anyway, explaining, “[T]he thing with Tom was, you could say that and he would just look at you like, ‘But I’m Tom Petty. I’m going to do whatever I f****** want. Get out of my face.’”
Campbell says he doesn’t torture himself over what he could have possibly done to save Petty, noting, “My conscious is clear because Tom knew that I knew, and Tom knew that I wasn’t forcing him and getting in his face about it.”
“We had this invisible understanding, and I didn’t have to confront him for him to know how I felt about it,” he says. “So I have no second thoughts about it. I don’t beat myself up like that.”
Campbell’s Heartbreakers bandmate Howie Epstein died of a drug overdose in 2003, a year after he was kicked out of the band for substance issues. Campbell says of his late bandmates, “I miss them … but I did all I could.”
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