Mike Campbell and Tom Petty only had two guitars during the band’s first two album cycles.
Despite their limitations, the dynamic duo managed to co-write some pretty timeless hits, including the sultry slow-rocker, Breakdown – the first single from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' self-titled debut album, released in 1976, and their first Top 40 hit in the States.
As Campbell looks back on the songs that his trusty companion – the 1951 Fender Broadcaster he bought for $600 in 1975 – helped shape, Breakdown is a clear standout.
“Tom had been playing bass up until then, so I let him borrow my ’64 Strat, and that was his guitar for the first few years,” he tells Guitar World. “Then I got the Broadcaster and, eventually, a Les Paul. But with Breakdown, all we had was my Strat and the Broadcaster.”
The limitation worked in their favor, however, as it pushed him to come up with a throwaway lick that became the song’s main hook.
“It was about a six-minute take one night at Shelter Studios in Hollywood,” he explains. “I said, ‘Let me put some guitar on it.’ It didn’t have the lick; it was just the chords, so I noodled for six minutes – and then I got bored. I couldn’t think of anything, so I picked up a slide and played that lick.”
He continues, “I didn’t think much about it and went home. An hour later, the phone rang. Tom said, ‘You’ve got to come back. We want to put that lick you played at the end at the front of the song.’”
Campbell made the effort to get up and drive back to the studio – and even had to listen back to the recording to remember what he had originally played.
“I ended up playing it without the slide, but I played that melody. That became the hook of the song,” he concludes.
And, speaking of classic gear and more throwaway hooks, Campbell recently talked about how American Girl came to be – and how the song was originally supposed to have a 12-string.
For more from Campbell, plus fresh interviews with John 5 and John Osborne, pick up issue 606 of Guitar World from Magazines Direct.
