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Mike Campbell talks about FM in New interview
Sorry, I can't bring it up here, but it's on Yahoo entertainment. Talks about possibly recording with FM, why they included Free Fallin', and most interestingly, why FM didn't take his suggestion to ask Steve Winwood to join :shocked:
Hopefully someone else can find the link and post it. |
Seems like he's starting his media blitz for his band's album.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/20...rs-dirty-knobs Mike Campbell on life after Tom Petty: 'I think I found my own voice' Jim Farber The guitarist turned singer talks about his first album with band the Dirty Knobs and how he’s processing his grief for his late Heartbreakers bandmate Tue 17 Nov 2020 08.06 GMT Last modified on Tue 17 Nov 2020 11.45 GMT ‘I will probably be grieving Tom for the rest of my life’ ... Mike Campbell Heartbreakers’ guitarist Mike Campbell vividly remembers the first time his star bandmate Tom Petty heard a recording of him singing. “‘That’s weird,’ Tom said, ‘it kinda sounds like me,’” Campbell recalled. “It comes from the way I talk and the way he talked.” It also comes from the place where they both grew up – the American south, a lineage evident in both the drawling cadence of their vocals and the defiant core of their character. While Campbell sang lead on only one song in the deep Heartbreakers’ catalogue – I Don’t Wanna Fight from their 1999 album Echoes – he’s now the front-and-center singer, writer and, naturally, lead guitarist, on every single song on the brand new album, titled Wreckless Abandon, by his own band, the Dirty Knobs. Fans will recognize the connection between the vocals of Campbell and Petty right away, though the band leader said: “I really made a conscious effort to try and filter out stuff that might sound like I’m mimicking my friend. I think I found my own voice. But some of it I can’t get rid of,” he admitted to the Guardian from his Los Angeles home. There’s also an inescapable connection between the two artists in their songwriting styles. Campbell either wrote, or co-wrote, 36 songs in the Heartbreakers’ canon, including hits like Refugee, Here Comes My Girl, Runnin’ Down A Dream and You Got Lucky. For all of those songs, Campbell provided the bulk of the music while Petty fleshed out the melody and wrote the lyrics. More, he served as producer on some Heartbreakers recordings. The Knobs’ album represents Campbell’s first full studio work since Petty’s death three years ago, which resulted from an accidental overdose of prescription opioids he was taking to deal with a long history of hip and knee pain. That shocking event brought one of America’s most popular, representative and long-running bands to a tragic close. As rousing and rocking as the Heartbreakers’ music was, the Knobs churn out a more raw and dirty sound, bringing in some of the muddiness of Neil Young’s grunge. “It’s a four-piece – with no keyboards – so it’s a guitar band, essentially,” Campbell said. “All the takes on the record are live. The solos are live. I wanted to capture the four of us playing all at once to get a really big sound.” One highlight of the music is the intimate relationship between the guitars of Campbell and co-lead player Jason Sinay. “He instinctively knew how to fit in with my sound,” the band leader said. “I had a great guitar dynamic with Tom. I would listen to what he was playing and try to support it or lift it up. If there was a solo, I usually played it because Tom was busy singing and playing rhythm. In the Dirty Knobs, Jason is in my old role. He listens to what I’m doing and he tries to fill it in the best he can.” The two also share a similar philosophy about how a lead guitar functions in a song. The new album extends Campbell’s career-long focus on concise solos informed by an attention to melody. “If there’s a solo, it’s short and to the point,” he said. “And if there’s a fill that’s required between the voice, it serves the song.” Boosting the band’s rapport is their long-aborning history. The roots of the Knobs snake all the way back to 2001, when Campbell first had the notion to start a side band to fill in the gaps between the Heartbreakers’ albums or tours. At first, it was hard to consider the Knobs a proper side project because it involved two other members of the Heartbreakers – drummer Steve Ferrone and bassist Ron Blair. While that version of the band played the odd club gig, it didn’t last long. “It became apparent to me that having two members of the Heartbreakers was probably not a wise choice,” the guitarist said. “‘That would be competing with myself and it would probably make Tom uncomfortable.” So, a few years later, he formed a new Knobs featuring Sinay and a different rhythm section – drummer Matt Laug and bassist Lance Morrison. For over a decade, this unit casually wood-shopped songs Campbell wrote by playing the odd club gig, filling out their set with 60s covers. “It would be a real challenge to win the audience over without playing any hits,” Campbell said. “You’re not going to hear Free Fallin’ or Runnin’ Down a Dream. It was like going back to how I started out, playing for a small audience and enjoying it. There were no preconceptions.” That laissez-faire arrangement continued for years. “There was never any ambition beyond, ‘Hey, do you wanna come over and play?’” Campbell said. “We were never going to try and make a record.” All that changed when the Heartbreakers came to an abrupt end. After some emotional healing, Campbell intended to revive the Knobs but in the meantime an offer came from Fleetwood Mac to join their world tour as a replacement for Lindsay Buckingham. Campbell had already enjoyed a long history with Mac member Stevie Nicks, having co-written her massive hit Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around, as well as other songs on her solos albums over the years. Still, the situation with Mac seemed potentially awkward, considering Buckingham had been thrown out of the band just before the tour. “I’ve always respected Lindsay Buckingham and I took it on as a challenge to do justice to the songs the best I could,” Campbell said. “I’m not Lindsay and he’s not me, but I learned the best I could to support the songs as they were on the record. It was out of my comfort zone because I’m used to playing my own guitar parts. [But] I really enjoyed it.” In fact, he said, he’d work with Fleetwood Mac again, if the opportunity arose. After all, he’s used to being “a team player”, as he calls it. For that very reason, Campbell said he never thought about doing more lead singing during his 40-plus years with the Heartbreakers. “I was in a band with Tom and he was so good,” he said. “And I really didn’t much confidence in my singing then.” Even now, he said “I’m not a singer singer. It’s like something Roy Orbison once told me when the Traveling Wilburys were in the other room. He said, ‘I’m a singer. Those other guys [meaning Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and George Harrison] are stylists.’ I also think I’m more of a stylist than a singer.” Even so, Campbell was able to bring deep emotion to his vocals in the most personal song on the Knobs’ album, I Still Love You. It’s the only lyric on the set that reflects his personal life. The rest, he says, were written in character or in the third person, like the single **** That Guy, which shoots a witty middle finger to the selfish pig of your choice. By contrast the wrenching I Still Love You addresses issues “between me and my wife”, Campbell said. “We were going through a rough patch. I still get very emotional every time I play it because I remember how I felt going through that.” Things worked out in his marriage but, Campbell acknowledges, the song’s lyrics now give him a chance to exorcise some of the pain he feels from the loss of his greatest musical ally. Since Petty’s passing, some observers have speculated that he pushed himself too far, covering up his physical pain with pills in order to fulfill his obligations to his fans and his larger team. Campbell dismissed that view. “Tom’s decision to tour, with the pain he was having, was because he wanted to play,” Campbell said. “I remember talking to him and saying, ‘Are you up to it?’ and he said, ‘I’m doing this tour if I have to sit in a chair. I’m not staying home.’ It’s like the sailor and the sea – you always want to be out there. I know he was struggling but he was also really happy. Even to the very last gig, I saw that look on his face that said, ‘There’s nowhere else in the world I’d rather be.” In terms of processing his grief over the loss, Campbell said: “I don’t know what phase I’m in. I’m still grieving. I will probably be grieving Tom for the rest of my life. We were best friends. We were poor kids who had a dream to play music and maybe make a record someday, and all of those dreams came true for us, together. That’s huge.” At the same time, he takes comfort in his belief that Petty “will always be around. People will never forget him,” Campbell said. “And I want to carry that torch in my music. I still have more dreams to dream.” Wreckless Abandon will be released on 20 November |
Of course they wouldn’t get Steve Winwood.
How many post-Buckingham lineups can feature ex-members of Traffic? That said, Winwood did stand in for Lindsey in 1996 when the Rumours crew went to the Kentucky Derby. |
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Tom Petty guitarist Mike Campbell talks new(ish) band the Dirty Knobs, possible album with Fleetwood Mac and ‘cathartic’ reunion with Benmont Tench Lyndsey Parker Lyndsey Parker·Editor in Chief, Yahoo Music When former Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers members Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench got together last month for an all-star live-stream celebrating what would have been Petty’s 70th birthday, it was their first joint performance in three years. Campbell, whose debut album with his (relatively) new band the Dirty Knobs, Wreckless Abandon, is out this week and features Tench on one track, admits that the experience — which actually took place at the old Heartbreakers headquarters — was “cathartic” and “tugged on the emotions.” But the affable guitarist, speaking from his home in the San Fernando Valley, tells Yahoo Entertainment, “It wasn't hard per se, because, you know, I'm a professional. I do my job.” Still, he adds: “I certainly felt it, because we were in the clubhouse where we all used to play as well, and I hadn't played in a while. But Ben and I are just instantly connected musically. We just play together a certain way. We always have just had an intuitive way of playing together that works. And so, that was nice to feel that again. But yeah, there were moments where it was a little tugging on the heartstrings, a little here and there. But that's what makes it real.” Understandably, Campbell says, “After Tom died, I couldn't picture emotionally the Heartbreakers continuing.” But he stresses that he never once considered retiring from music. (“I never thought that. I'll never retire. I might as well just slit my wrists.”) And the excited public reception to the rare Campbell/Tench reunion does prompt the question: Would he and his fellow Heartbreakers ever fully reunite for other occasional musical celebrations of Petty’s life and legacy? To that, he answers, “Well, there’s a little bit of conversation here and there, but any time it comes up, it's always like, ‘I'm not ready.’ You know, I just can't. I can't emotionally handle getting all the Heartbreakers in a room without Tom there. I just don't think I can. It doesn't make any sense to me, really, even as a tribute. It's just like, he's not here. I would rather let the recordings and the live stuff we've done be a tribute to what we were. I don't know, maybe in time; I'm not completely closed-minded to it. I love the guys in the Heartbreakers, and I miss them terribly. But I think I need more time to even answer that question realistically.” Campbell has worked on two recent Petty retrospectives, 2018’s An American Treasure boxed set and this year’s Wildflowers and All the Rest deluxe reissue, since Petty’s October 2017 death; he says the next Petty project he’d like to “dig into” is a live album from the Heartbreakers’ 20-night residency at San Francisco’s Fillmore in 1997, which featured nightly rotating setlists and surprise guests like Bo Diddley, Roger McGuinn, and John Lee Hooker. But for now, Campbell’s focus is on the Dirty Knobs, which he actually formed with guitarist Jason Sinay, bassist Lance Morrison, and drummer Matt Laug 15 years ago, as “just friends getting together to play for fun.” Campbell eventually “started to casually think about an album,” but his commitments to the Heartbreakers and, later, Fleetwood Mac put all that on hold. “The guys are very patient, obviously,” he chuckles. Now the Knobs are making up for lost time: Campbell has in fact already penned 11 new songs for a second album that he plans to have out by May 2021. The irony, of course, is that the Dirty Knobs started out as a live project, gigging at clubs in between Heartbreakers dates, and now that they finally have an official studio album to promote, they’re unable to tour due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “Taking into account… my age, we don't have that much years to just give away. Unfortunately, this has happened, so we'll have to suck it up,” the 70-year-old Campbell says. “So, we lose a couple of years, probably, because of this, but things happen for a reason in terms of destiny and all of that. I could use these two years while I'm still young — or relatively young — but I'm still OK. I’ll pick it up when it's ready. I try to remain optimistic about it.” So, Campbell has addressed the pandemic in the wryly comical Dirty Knobs music video “F*** That Guy,” in which the hated “guy” is the coronavirus itself. “We were thinking about the video, and it was like, OK, who is the ‘guy’? Who's the most evil force out there that you would say ‘f*** you’ to? And it came to me that it was COVID. So I said, ‘Let's have a guy with a COVID head,’” Campbell laughs. The fuzzy, coronavirus-headed villain in the “F*** That Guy” video is played by the drummer of rising L.A. garage-glam band Starcrawler — with whom Campbell jammed on “I Need to Know” for the Petty birthday live-stream special — and it was directed by Gilbert Trejo, the boyfriend of Starcrawler frontwoman Arrow De Wilde. “Starcrawler, actually, they're one of the only new bands that I've heard that I really of dig,” Campbell says, adding that he’d love to work with them in the future, “but I don't know why they'd want to work with me. I'm too old for them!” However, Campbell did work with Chris Stapleton (a huge fan, who participated in the Tom Petty tribute at the 2018 Grammy Awards), on both “F*** That Guy” and another Wreckless Abandon track, “Pistol Packin’ Mama.” “I never knew Chris, and I didn't even know much about his music. I met him for two seconds backstage at Wrigley Field when he was opening for the Heartbreakers,” Campbell admits. “And then years later, when things changed, he gave me a call and said he was a big fan, and would I be open to writing songs? I don't normally do that, but I figured he seemed very likable, and I love his voice. So I said, ‘Sure, let's give it a shot.’ So he came out and we spent two or three days writing songs, and it was really enjoyable. And we did become friends, because we are cut from the same cloth musically. We got along really well and I actually enjoyed the process.” (Campbell has returned the favor by appearing on Stapleton’s just-released fourth album, Starting Over.) As for other possible future Campbell collaborations, is it possible that now that he’s a full-fledged member of Fleetwood Mac — having, along with Split Enz/Crowded House’s Neil Finn, replaced Lindsey Buckingham in 2018 — the new Mac lineup might record new music? “I would love to do an album with them. In fact, when I first got the call, I thought we were going to do a record,” says Campbell. “And then I realized, ‘Oh, they've got some tour commitments. So that's going to take a year and a half.’ And at the end of that tour, we were all pretty tired — you know, we went around the world once or twice. So, we had a meeting and everybody said, ‘Let's take a couple of years off and relax and do other things, and see how we feel in a couple of years. And if everybody is engaged, come in and we're up for it.’ We'll reconvene and see what we can do. So, it's up in the air.” Campbell reveals that even though he had a long history with Nicks — he co-wrote her Bella Donna Petty duet and one of her biggest solo hits, “Stop Draggin' My Heart Around,” and “she always wanted to be in the Heartbreakers, but you know, there were no girls in the Heartbreakers” — it was actually Mick Fleetwood who offered him the Mac job. “It was just an opportunity that came my way. It dropped in my lap. … It was on my birthday, actually,” Campbell recalls. “I was at home and Mick called me. I'd only met him once or twice before. He said, ‘Lindsey has left the band,’ and I said, ‘Oh, that's really sad, I know how you guys must feel.’ And then he goes, ‘I'd like you to think about joining the band.’ I was kind of shocked, really, but honored. I said, ‘Give me 24 hours to think about it,’ and I thought over the pros and cons and decided it would be a good thing. But Mick said, ‘This is not an audition. … If you want the gig, I'd like to give it to you.’ And I don't know if this is true or not, but he also said, ‘This is not coming from Stevie. This is coming from me.’” Campbell reveals that Fleetwood Mac did “throw around some names around” before settling on Finn. Campbell suggested another Stevie for the job — Steve Winwood, that is — but was shut down immediately. “They just looked at me like, “Um, what did he say?’” Campbell chuckles. “Mick said, ‘I think that'll tip the scales a little too far.’ … I think they wanted somebody that wasn't already that strong of a voice that would maybe pull away from the Fleetwood Mac legacy too much.” Fleetwood Mac didn’t play “Stop Draggin' My Heart Around” on that 2018-2019 tour, but Nicks did insist that they include “Free Fallin’” in the set as a tribute to Petty. Campbell confesses that he resisted that idea, because he was “tired of playing it. … I said, ‘Oh no, not that song again!’” (Incidentally, Campbell, who has co-writing or co-producing credit on some of Petty’s most iconic hits, cites “All or Nothing,” from 1991’s Into the Great Wide Open, as the most underrated Petty song.) “But we put together a little video, and honoring Tom was an emotional point of the night, every night. It was a nice send-off to him. Stevie was right, it really was a high point of the show — although it brought tears to my eyes, you know?” As far as other tributes of sorts go, Campbell stresses that his work with the Dirty Knobs is “a lot different from the Heartbreakers,” but he does acknowledge that “in terms of carrying on the [Petty] legacy, I played guitar and produced and co-wrote a lot of the songs in the Heartbreakers, so some of those influences and some of that sound is going to come out.” And while he only ever sang lead on one Heartbreakers song, 1999’s “I Don’t Wanna Fight, he’s since become settled into the frontman role, and he’s looking forward to hopefully getting back out on the road with the Dirty Knobs, opening for Stapleton, in summer 2021. “In the Heartbreakers, I just was able to stand back and play guitar and Tom did all the work! So, I have gained a new respect for Tom, realizing how much more there is to do when you're in front of a band,” says Campbell. “Singing is something that I would share with the Knobs over the years, being in front of the band and connecting with the audience. I've gotten really comfortable with that; it feels like second nature to me now. So, I'm not intimidated by it. I actually love it. It’s not a problem for me. I'm happy to be where I am.” |
No matter how many times I hear it or read it.........it irks me that Mick called Mike to ask him to join because Lindsey "left" the band. Its also ridiculous to pretend this was Mick's idea since he made the call. Mick was told to make the call the same way Mick was told to fire Lindsey.
He's just being the ultimate optimist. I don't think FM will ever record an album especially with him. |
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That comment by Mike is what a contractor would say, not a member of a band. |
Its also funny and very revealing that Mike stated that he only had met Mick once or twice before and he could not remember exactly.
Both their careers lasted decades and they barely met and had no relationship. Its so laughable that Mike would be the first person Mick called to replace Lindsey Mick: Hello Mike, we may have never met or maybe we have but Lindsey left us and I want you to join Fleetwood Mac. Mike: OMG, I will have to think about it and get back to you (IF THE TRUTH CAME OUT) Mick: Mike, I need you. Stevie said she wont tour with us with Lindsey in the band. So we had to fire him. I am almost broke again and need big money fast. I'm even leasing half my restaurant just to stay afloat. Stevie told me to call you to join the band. We can really have fun and much so much money together. Mike: OMG, I will have to think about it and get back to you Mick: Hurray up, we need to move on this so I can start pre-sale for my personal meet and greets. Get with Stevie, she will fill you in on everything. |
Thank you for posting the link and article, bombaysaffires.
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Steve already THINKS she’s being truthful. She believes her own lies. No self awareness whatsoever. Persian carpet or no Persian carpet. |
Campbell suggested another Stevie for the job — Steve Winwood, that is — but was shut down immediately. “They just looked at me like, “Um, what did he say?’” Campbell chuckles. “Mick said, ‘I think that'll tip the scales a little too far.’ … I think they wanted somebody that wasn't already that strong of a voice that would maybe pull away from the Fleetwood Mac legacy too much.”
ha haa... it was already pulled away from the legacy :mad: |
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Personally, I am willing to think that Mick reached out to Campbell on his own initiative without Stevie specifically prompting either of them. But I think that the reason Mick did reach out to Campbell was specifically to warm the cockles of Stevie’s heart. Mick knew he had a bad situation (with “psychic jiu-jitsu”) with his superstar draw, so he did it to please her — whether or not she requested it. He probably figured, what better way to fill her with the positive spirit for a drastic lineup change than to bring in an old pal who liked her. Whether or not Mick knew Campbell is irrelevant; he knew that Stevie knew Campbell, and so this was his idea to support Stevie first and foremost, not to launch the band in some lovely new direction. |
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