“It’s hard to describe to someone who hasn’t stood on that stage and felt that love from that many people rushing over you,” Mike Campbell says. “It’s like a wave knocking you off. It’s a magical thing that you can’t really get anywhere else in life. It’s a buzz, a high, a spiritual joy.
“And that’s why we kept doing it — because there’s nothing like it.”
For most of his career, Campbell has felt that rush while performing onstage with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, where he served as lead guitarist until Petty’s death on October 2, 2017. Given that group’s deep, multi-decade catalog, Campbell would experience the audience’s intense reaction to their music time and again over the course of a single night’s performance.
But there is one song that stands out from the rest for him — a favorite tune that was "a dream come true" for audiences to hear every night. And it was one of the group’s very first tunes: “American Girl.”
“A lot of songs come to mind,” Campbell tells Under the Radar about the tunes that move him. “But I guess the most important one right now, in my mind, is ‘American Girl,’ which is one of our first songs.
“All through our career, every time we would play that song, I would feel that rush of adrenaline. As if it was the first time I heard it. It always had this power to it. It connected with people.”
As it did when Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers performed “American Girl” at what would be their final show, at the Hollywood Bowl, on September 25, 2017, the last stop on their 40th-anniversary tour. In his recently published memoir, Heartbreaker, Campbell recalls the audience emotionally singing along with every song at the show.
“And that night at the Hollywood Bowl, that was the last song we played, and I felt it then,” Campbell says.
“So did Tom.”
Composed by Petty and recorded on July 4, 1976 — America’s bicentennial anniversary — “American Girl” was the band’s third single off its self-titled debut album.
Campbell says the song moved him when he first heard it. Notably, it was among the initial tunes he recorded with the Heartbreakers using the rare 1950 Fender Broadcaster electric guitar he purchased — along with a blackface Fender Deluxe Reverb combo — for $600 shortly before the album’s sessions.
But he also recalls another song that took longer to become one of his favorites: “Refugee.” A Petty and Campbell co-write, “Refugee” proved difficult to record when the band tracked it for their third album, 1979’s Damn the Torpedoes.
“It was so easy to write,” says Campbell, who strapped on his his iconic Red Dog Fender Telecaster — a unique mutt of a guitar — for the recording session. “But when we went in the studio, under the microscope with the producer and everything, trying to make it great, it took a lot of work. We just couldn’t get it to come together for so many takes. I found myself thinking, Maybe we’ll never get this.”
What kept them going was Campbell’s four-track demo of the tune: It was so good that the band knew the song was worth the effort.
“We must have recorded that 100 times,” Campbell told Songfacts. “I remember being so frustrated with it one day that — I think this is the only time I ever did this — I just left the studio and went out of town for two days. I just couldn't take the pressure anymore, but then I came back and when we regrouped we were actually able to get it down on tape.”
“Refugee” went on to reach number 15 on the charts — the highest placement for a Heartbreakers record at the time — when it was released as a single in 1980.
“After going through something like that, it’s a beautiful thing when a stranger comes up to you, and they tell you how your music has made their life happier,” Campbell tells Under the Radar. “For instance, I’ve had several people tell me they played ‘Here Comes My Girl,’ which is a song I wrote with Tom, at their wedding because it was that important to them.
“When someone shares that kind of joy with you, or when someone just tells me a certain song of ours lifted their spirits… I mean, what more could a person want?”
Campbell is currently on tour with his group, the Dirty Knobs, through August 14, in support of their third album, Vagabonds, Virgins & Misfits.
