FTV: Heartbreaker – Part 2

 

     When we left Part I, Mike Campbell was living his rock ‘n’ roll dream playing in the band Mudcrutch.  Mike’s first band in Gainesville (Dead or Alive) had broken up when their lead singer / bass player quit and sailed to Hawaii to be a surfer dude.  Mudcrutch had come to the farmhouse to audition Mike’s drummer friend Randal Marsh but after Marsh suggested they let Campbell jam Johnny B. Goode with them, it became a two-for deal. After they were both asked to join Tom Petty’s band, Mudcrutch’s reputation grew steadily as they played six week blocks at Dub’s Steer House.  When Mike dropped out of school to join the band, he lost his draft deferment (which Tom had told him not to worry about because ‘we will take care of that’).  At the end of Part I, Campbell’s future in the band became extremely murky when his draft notice arrived at the band’s farmhouse residence / band house.

     Mike’s sudden bout of anxiety about being drafted coupled with lack of sleep, poor diet, and amphetamines dropped his slender 160 pound frame to a skeletal 125.  By the time he got to the final interview session at the induction center, the doctor focused on his decreased hearing (“Do you play music loud?”) and his drug use, particularly his consumption of marijuana and LSD.  Campbell had been a frequent user of both but had long since gotten away from LSD after having a frighteningly bad trip.  He was sent home after they classified him 1-Y:  Registrant qualified for military service only in time of war or national emergency – in other words, he was considered a ‘bottom of the barrel’ candidate.  In retrospect, he was fortunate that he didn’t do permanent damage to his own health trying to escape being drafted.  He was glad to be sent home, but Mike never could shake the feelings of sadness he had for those who never came back from the war or came back but were never the same.

     An aborted trip to Birmingham (they were fired after three weeks) and almost losing Mike to the draft shifted the band’s focus.  The gigs at Dub’s continued and when Dub wasn’t paying attention, they began slipping in a few of Tom’s originals.  Campbell began writing more himself but always turned the tapes over to Petty to see if he could find lyrics to go along with the music.  They branched out by expanding more of the songs with jams a la The Allman Brothers.  When they played anywhere but Dub’s, they could concentrate on their original songs.  Mudcrutch  decided to organize their own small festival at the farm.  It was advertised as Mudcrutch Farm – Turn left about 1 block past Dubs.  Everyone invited.  Come enjoy yourself.  The first one attracted at least 600 kids and the local police.  The officers came to check it out but it was over by then so they didn’t shut it down.  The second Mudcrutch Farm party was bigger than the first but it had a more significant impact:  they were evicted.

     After their living arrangements at the farm were disrupted, they drifted apart a bit as each found new living quarters.  In 1972, they finally found another place where they could all live and rehearse again.  Tom Leadon’s brother Bernie kept them abreast of what was happening out in Los Angeles.  Bernie had left the Burrito Brothers and hooked up with a guitar player from Detroit, a drummer from Texas, and a Nebraska farm boy on bass.  First, they played together backing Linda Ronstadt and now were going out on their own as the Eagles.  The Mudcrutch boys were still playing all over Florida by this point and had some wild encounters with fans, bar owners, and bikers.  One of the strangest was with Petty’s father Earl.

     Earl and some female companions showed up unannounced at the band’s house and he was well into his cups.  Earl was slurring his words and as he greeted the other guys in the band, he asked Mike to play Wildwood Flower.  Tom was mortified and paralyzed;  he stared at the floor as his father danced drunkenly around the room.  Petty finally told his dad that the band needed to get back to practicing and maybe it was time for him to go.  Earl stepped toward his son, grinned, and told him, “Don’t you do me like that, boy.  Don’t do me like that, son.”  They left but Tom’s embarrassment hung in the air for many days.

     A friend of Randall’s had a pepper farm on the outskirts of town.  After he harvested a bumper crop, he offered to fund a Mudcrutch single.  Using vans provided by a couple of fans, they hauled their gear down to Criteria Studios in Miami.  Recording the resulting disk (Up In Mississippi backed with Cause Is Understood both written by Tom) was an interesting experience for the band but, as Mike put it, “Having a single with our name on it wasn’t the handful of magic beans we thought it would be.  We sold some on consignment at head shops and record stores around town.  We dropped a copy off at the local station, but they wouldn’t play it.”  

     After a four hour drive to a gig in Macon, Georgia, they dropped off a copy of their single at Capricorn Records, the Allman Brothers’ label.  “They said we sounded too English,” Campbell recalled in his book Heartbreaker – A Memoir (Mike Campbell with Ari Surdoval, Grand Central Publishing, 2025).  Still, the band was thrilled when they finally heard themselves on the radio.  Mike said, “Everything was amazing, but it still felt like nothing much had changed.  Until it did.”

     The change Mike referred to started slowly and rolled over the band.  Mudcrutch was getting louder and jamming more.  Tom Leadon wasn’t a fan of their new direction or the drudgery of the long nights at Dubs.  His brother’s success out west was tugging him toward making a move to L.A..  The last straw happened one night when Dub himself came on stage to announce the club was closing for renovations.  The way he said it rubbed Leadon the wrong way:  “We will be back open soon and better than ever.  Hotter girls.  A longer bar.  A nicer stage.  More bands. [Dub looked back at Mudcrutch and continued] Better bands.  Real bands.”  Leadon was livid.  Randall and Petty tried to talk him down, “Who cares what Dub says?” but as the band returned to the stage after their break, Leadon wasn’t with them.  He had gone down to Dub’s office to confront him.  Mike figures Dub liked Tom so he didn’t have his bouncers break his fingers.  Dub did like Tom, but he still fired the band on the spot.

     In the aftermath, Petty was livid.  “I told him to drop it, didn’t I?” TP told the band.  “That’s it.  He’s gotta go.  That’s it.”  When he dispatched their roadies / fans to collect the P.A. from Leadon’s house, he told Mike to go with them:  “Tell Leadon he’s out of the band.”  Leadon was apologetic and told Mike he had tried to call Petty but he wouldn’t answer.  Leadon said, “Maybe I should quit for you guys.  I am sure I could go over and apologize to Dub.  I mean, we only had two more nights there.”  When Mike told him he was supposed to tell Tom he was out of the band, Leadon acknowledged, “It was a very poor decision on my part.”  Devastated to have lost his band and friends, Leadon waited three months for the Eagles to return from a European tour before he left for L.A.  He showed his character by offering to take tapes of Petty’s songs to show around when he got there.  Bernie introduced his brother to Don Felder (also from Gainsville) and Tom gigged around with some local cover bands.  Bernie even took him to meet the singer the Eagles had backed before they went on their own.  Tom soon found himself in Linda Ronstadt’s touring band.

     In the fall of 1973, Tom Leadon drove down from a Ronstadt show in Atlanta to visit.  He told the guys in Mudcrutch about the burgeoning scene in L.A. and encouraged them to make the move.  They were playing the same old dive bar set and were amazed when Leadon told them about the venues they had played and some of the acts they had opened for.  “He was so humble about it,” Campbell recalled, “He told us not to be discouraged.  He told us to come out to L.A.”   He then left to open for the Eagles, Beach Boys, Humble Pie, and the Electric Light Orchestra while Mudcrutch, “stumbled along from gig to gig, wondering what to do next.”  Petty thought about all the Gainesville musicians who were ‘out there’ in L.A. and he got a little panicky – they might end up stuck in the rut they were in.  What they needed to do was to make the move – now – but first they needed a demo record to shop around.

     Back in the ‘good old days’ at Dubs, a young keyboard player named Benmont Tench sat in with them.  Eventually, Tom P convinced him (and his parents) that he should drop out of Tulane University and join the band.  Their roadie’s friend had a mobile recording set up in a van which they parked outside Benmont’s home.  There they recorded eight tracks while his folks were on vacation.  They mailed copies to every record label they could find ads for and only one didn’t reject it outright – Playboy Records.  The Playboy rep actually listened to it and told them what they were doing wrong, wished them luck, but he still rejected it.

    Tom decided he, Danny (the new guitar player who owned a van), and roadie Keith would drive out to L.A. to shop for a label in person.  Before they left, Petty showed Campbell a chorus he was fooling around with.  The song hadn’t actually been written, but over the progression of G to F to C to D, he sang ‘Don’t do me like that.  Don’t do me like that’.  Mike asked what it was but Tom waved it away saying, “That’s my dad’s line.  That’s what he always says to me.”

     A few days after their arrival out west, Tom called Mike and said, “Start packin’.  We got three record deals to choose from.”  Campbell was skeptical but Petty insisted they had offers from Capitol, MGM, and London Records.  Mike was right to think it was too good to be true.  The advanced party were crashing at Bernie Leadon’s cabin with Tom Leadon and their grand plan was to visit the offices of record companies.  Petty had found a list with addresses and phone numbers discarded on the floor of a telephone booth.  “That,” Mike remembered, “was the full extent of the plan.”  When Tom came back to Florida, he told the band London Record’s advice:  “Record a demo of Top 40 songs and play bowling alleys to develop the band and they would re-evaluate.”  They gave it a brief try (the recording part) and then gave up.

     Another decision was made:  They would all go to L.A. and sign the London Records deal just to get a foot in the door.  Before they left, Tom went to Benmont’s parents (his father was a Judge) to convince them their son’s future was in music.  Benmont had not actually told his folks he had already dropped out of college.  They listened to what Tom had to say.  To his surprise, they gave their blessings for Benmont to chase fame with Mudcrutch and even gave them the family station wagon for the second trip out west.  

     Just before they left, Denny Cordell called from Tulsa, Oklahoma.  Cordell was a famed producer of hit pop records.  He and the keyboard player of the famous Wrecking Crew, Leon Russell, had joined forces and founded Shelter Records.  He said he wanted to record Mudcrutch.  Cordell told them they could be the American Rolling Stones.  Tom had not mentioned dropping their demo off in Tulsa on the way to L.A. the first time.  Cordell did listen to it but the call was probably from their head of A&R, Simon Miller Mundy.  Mike points out that Petty was always pretty good at telling stories as he thought they should play out, but maybe it was Cordell who had called.  They were already running late so two more days to swing by Tulsa and meet Cordell seemed a prudent course of action.

     Cordell’s credentials are too long to present here.  Suffice to say his royalties from producing A Whiter Shade of Pale for Procol Harum and Joe Cocker’s With A Little Help From My Friends were used to start Shelter Records.  Mudcrutch had a great discussion with Denny and when he asked how they were fixed for cash (they had driven into Tulsa on fumes), he handed them three grand to get them to L.A.  Randall thought they should have listened to London Records’ pitch first, but in the end, they signed on with Shelter’s L.A. office for ten thousand dollars.  The band hung around Tinsel Town long enough to know it wasn’t going to work.  They opened a couple of shows at the Whisky A Go Go for Dick Dale, but they were not playing much.  Their recording efforts sounded flat and Cordell told Tom he needed to show up with more than one song in his pocket, “Write – all the time – write a LOT!” he told him.

     They were shuffled back and forth to ‘recording bootcamp’ in Tulsa a couple of times but the band started to get discouraged.  Denny got Tom voice lessons and seemed to recognize what Campbell was bringing to the partnership, songwise.  Leon took a special interest in Tom, tutoring him, introducing him to the likes of George Harrison, and sending a white limo around to pick him up.  They managed to record a single called Depot Street and it flopped.  The only truly good thing Mike got out of the end of 1974 was a serendipitous meeting with his future soul mate and wife, Marcie.  They met at a party he almost didn’t go to and they have been together ever since.  

     As 1974 drew to a close, Denny had given up on Mudcrutch.  Shelter had invested a lot of time and money in the band but had nothing to show for it.  Tossing in the label’s own financial troubles and the tension that was building in the band and their future became clear.  The label wanted to sign Tom Petty and ditch the rest of them by the roadside.  It was not an amicable break up by any means.  Mike was married and continued to write and consider his options.  Randall and Benmont scraped by playing in cover bands.  Randall eventually landed in a power trio called Code Blue who were courted by Clive Davis himself.  Marsh decided to move on from the music business after he was beaten within an inch of his life at a party he attended.  He survived and moved to Ojai to live a different life.

     Tom Petty began to find that making music with session players and not his Gainesville posse wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.  Mike was asked to add guitar to some recordings Benmont was working on that included another Florida ex-pat named Stan Lynch on drums.  They invited Petty to come by one of the sessions and their lives were forever changed.  Petty heard what they were doing and literally poached Benmont’s new band.  There are three or four other story lines that this new situation created, but those are stories for another day.  Suffice to say, from the ashes of Mudcrutch came a musical phoenix that would come to be known as Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

     The one part of Mike Campbell’s story that I didn’t really understand was his deference to Tom Petty in just about all things.  Petty was the star of the show and a creative genius in the songwriting area, but many of the songs Tom penned lyrics to were created by Mike Campbell.

When Mike himself had the same kinds of thoughts about how Petty treated him, he explained why he stayed in his own lane:  “Tom and I were like brothers.  Even when we disagreed, I decided that the best way to deal with things was to be grateful.  I am forever grateful for the life my association with Tom has given me.”  Petty was a little less kind in his assessment of Mike’s efforts to write his own material.  Tom adjusted his thinking somewhat when a tune Mike had offered him (and he turned down) turned out to be a big hit for Don Henley.  It was called The Boys of Summer.

     With Petty’s passing in 2017, Campbell was adrift for a while until he got a call from drummer Mick Fleetwood.  He asked Mike to tour with Fleetwood Mac in place of Lindsay Buckingham who had either quit or was fired from their band (choose which version you like).  The tour and encouragement from Stevie Nicks to step up and sing gave Campbell new purpose.  He has dusted off his side project (The Dirty Knobs) who have just released a second album and are touring.  Yes, the venues are smaller than the arenas TP and the Heartbreakers filled back in the day, but Mike Campbell is still grateful to be doing exactly what he has done since he arrived in Gainesville – creating music.

Top Piece Video:  TP was less than encouraging about Mike Campbell’s efforts to write his own songs – until he turned this one down and Don Henley turned it into a world-wide hit.